Bringing free speech back to college campuses

By: Bella Dalba

            In what is anticipated to become the single most compelling free-speech campaign in United States educational history, FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) has embarked on a lawsuit campaign to restore and guarantee the existence of free speech on college campuses around the country. Speaking before the National Press Club in Washington on July 1, Greg Lukianoff, President of FIRE, focused on speech codes that ban offensive speech in college. These speech codes confine speech deemed to be inappropriate to designated “free-speech zones.” Free speech zones (also known as First Amendment zones, free speech cages, and protest zones) are areas set aside in public places for political activists to exercise their right of free speech.

            In summary, FIRE is intending to file lawsuits against colleges maintaining unconstitutional speech codes in each federal circuit. President Lukianoff explains: “FIRE’s new Stand Up For Free Speech Project is a national effort to eliminate unconstitutional speech codes through targeted First Amendment lawsuits. By imposing a real cost for violating First Amendment rights, the Stand Up For Free Speech Litigation Project intends to reset the incentives that currently push colleges towards censoring student and faculty speech.”

After each victory by ruling or settlement, FIRE will file against another school in the same circuit, hoping to convey the message that, unless public colleges obey the law, they will be sued. By imposing a real cost for violating First Amendment rights, the Stand Up For Free Speech Litigation Project intends to push colleges towards revoking their current limits on student and faculty speech.

            However, though speech codes have been successfully challenged in more than two dozen lawsuits over the years, nearly three-fifths of public universities still maintain speech codes that are “unambiguously unconstitutional.” Most institutions believe that pretty much all political speech requires advance approval by administrators and can usually be banned to tiny ‘free-speech zones,’ or just forbidden altogether.

            In launching this project, FIRE is trying to produce a dramatic shift in the momentum on campus. The issue will be debated, not just in the courts, but in the minds and homes of many Americans. FIRE looks to demonstrate that a single force can stand up to the culture of censorship, and that it is the right of every student to challenge that institution. College students are the single most politically active demographic in the country and, with each generation, comes profound social changes and revolutionary advances in technology. Attempting to censor them is an extremely poor decision.