First Amendment Scholars Weigh in on Threats to Campus Free Speech
At Yale Law School’s Alumni Weekend this fall, the newly launched Center for Academic Freedom and Free Speech (CAFFS) hosted a panel discussion with First Amendment experts. The Oct. 17 event included the center’s faculty director, Keith Whittington, and its executive director, Joe Cohn. Joining them were Lee Rowland, executive director of the National Coalition Against Censorship and Will Creeley, legal director of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). John Kim ’00 introduced the panel.
“I’m sure many of you would agree that free speech is the bedrock of a constitutional democracy,” Kim said. “As such free speech and academic freedom should be a guiding principle of all academic institutions.”
Cohn, the panel’s moderator, prefaced the conversation by laying out the mission of the new center.
“Our mission here is to improve the state of affairs for free speech and academic freedom at Yale University, at the Law School, at universities and colleges across the entire country with direct advocacy with them, to train future lawyers and existing practitioners who work on these issues to be better and fiercer advocates for free speech and academic freedom, and to hopefully teach people in government as well about these important values.”
Rowland began with a stark warning, contrasting the robust free speech rights we enjoy on paper under the First Amendment with the way people are now experiencing those rights in practice.
“I think free expression is on life support,” Rowland said. “In my work, what I see in this moment is an immense amount of fear, confusion, and self-censorship.”
Rowland then turned to Yale specifically. She described the questions the University faces about free expression and academic freedom such as time, place, and manner restrictions or whether outsiders have free expression on Yale’s campus.
“It’s a microcosm of all those free expression questions that may have very little relation to the First Amendment because we are in a private element of civil society,” she said.
I think free expression is on life support. In my work, what I see in this moment is an immense amount of fear, confusion, and self-censorship.”
— Lee Rowland, National Coalition Against Censorship
With that framing, Rowland made a case for the audience of Yale Law School alumni to use their influence to promote free speech and free inquiry. She called on Yale to be a leader in promoting those values.
“Yale has an opportunity on its campus to demonstrate what those values look like in practice for real people and real voices whether or not the First Amendment mandates or limits that choice,” Rowland said.
Creeley started with prepared remarks centered around legislative trends threatening campus free speech. He described one response in Congress to the aftermath of Oct. 7, the Israeli reaction, and campus protests of Israel. Some members, including a former member of the House Caucus on Free Speech on campus, demanded “that university presidents declare that speech plainly protected as political advocacy — how offensive and horrible many might find it notwithstanding — was grounds for expulsion at their universities,” Creeley explained.
He then shared an example of how the political winds have also shifted in state legislatures. This year, Texas passed an amendment to a 2019 campus free speech law that was considered robust by free speech advocates. Cohn and his team and his team at FIRE co-authored the 2019 bill when Cohn was the organization’s legislative and policy director. The amendment, however, alarmed free speech advocates. It banned all expressive activity on public university campuses from the hours of 10 p.m. to 8 a.m. — essentially turning campuses into “speech-free zones” after dark, according to critics.
“Folks, I don’t even know how it’s possible to comply with that law,” Creeley quipped. “You’re miming to your roommate, and even then, I think miming is protected expression. I don’t know how you do it. It’s lights out, brains off, you’re done.”
This fall, FIRE filed a lawsuit to stop the University of Texas System from enforcing the law. A federal court ruled in plaintiffs’ favor, blocking the law’s enforcement.
Next, Whittington highlighted the longstanding differences between threats to free speech that come from off campus and threats that come from within the campus. He noted that threats from off campus have even included pressure on what could be taught in the classroom. Over the last couple of years, outside threats, including those from the government and from activists, “have by far become the most prominent and the most important,” Whittington said.
However, he added, threats from on-campus persist, like when members of a campus community demand that other members of the same community have their speech and expression suppressed.
“So, it’s worth recognizing that we continue to face on a university campus, pressures from all sides of the ideological spectrum,” Whittington said.
The panelists continued a spirited in-depth conversation of campus and political censorship resulting from reactions to conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s recent murder on the Utah Valley University's campus and the free speech rights of noncitizens.
The panel also took questions from the audience, including one about how restrictions on federal research dollars are impacting academic freedom and campus free speech and one about the proper limits of speech on campus.
Concluding the event, Cohn noted that “the challenge ahead of us is really immense.”
Cohn added, “there is so much work that needs to be done to defend these rights. I hope you will join us in doing so.”
