States Consider Legislation To Protect Free Speech On Campus
Friday, May 5, 2017, 10:29pm
By Samantha Raphelson
On college campuses, outrage over provocative speakers sometimes turns violent.
It's becoming a pattern on campuses around the country. A speaker is invited, often by a conservative student group. Other students oppose the speaker, and maybe they protest. If the speech happens, the speaker is heckled. Sometimes there's violence.
In other cases — as with conservative commentator Ann Coulter at the University of California, Berkeley last week — the event is called off.
Now, a handful of states, including Illinois, Tennessee, Colorado and Arizona, have passed or introduced legislation designed to prevent these incidents from happening. The bills differ from state to state, but they're generally based on a model written by the Goldwater Institute, a libertarian think tank based in Arizona.
The model bill would require public universities to remain neutral on political issues, prevent them from disinviting speakers, and impose penalties for students and others who interfere with these speakers.
Attorney Jim Manley, who co-wrote the bill, says the institutional neutrality provision serves as a reminder to public universities that they are funded by taxpayers, who shouldn't be forced to subsidize speech that they disagree with. He says the other provisions are important because the students who have engaged in these protests have not been adequately disciplined by universities.
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https://www.wpr.org/states-consider-legislation-protect-free-speech-campus
The market place of ideas and debate needs to flourish unhindered.
