Free Press founder: How colleges get away with punishing viewpoints they dislike
Image by The Free Press on Youtube
At the Federalist Society’s National Lawyers Convention, Bari Weiss (Free Press founder and editor) explains how many universities avert constitutional mandates and discriminate against certain students' ideas: via disproportionate “fees,” logistical hurdles, and shaming/pressure. Weiss recalls Stanford speaker Judge Kyle Duncan, whose hecklers were defended by then-DEI dean Steinbach (who, oddly, went on to praise free speech in a WSJ op-ed).
Over the past two decades, I saw this inverted [radical] worldview swallow all of the crucial sense-making institutions of American life. It started with the universities. Then it moved beyond the quad to cultural institutions—including some I knew well, like The New York Times—as well as every major museum, philanthropy, and media company. It’s taken root at nearly every major corporation. It’s inside our high schools and our elementary schools.
And it’s come for the law itself. This is something that will not come as a surprise to the Federalist Society. When you see federal judges shouted down at Stanford, you are seeing this ideology. When you see people screaming outside of the homes of certain Supreme Court justices—causing them to need round-the-clock security—you are seeing its logic.
The takeover of American institutions by this ideology is so comprehensive that it’s now almost hard for many people to notice it—because it is everywhere....
Public universities are constitutionally forbidden from imposing content-based restrictions on free speech. And yet, that’s precisely what they’ve been doing.
Ask any conservative—and I now know a few—who’s tried to speak at a public university and had a “security fee” imposed on them or had their speeches quietly moved off campus and into small, restrictive venues whether there aren’t brazen content-based restrictions on their speech imposed by public universities.
Private universities can legally restrict speech. But their restrictions may not be enforced discriminatorily. And yet, they are.
Take Yale Law School. In 2021, law student Trent Colbert invited classmates to his “trap house,” in his announcement of a “constitution day bash” hosted by FedSoc and the Native American Law Students Association. It took 12 hours for administrators to process discrimination complaints, haul Colbert in for a meeting, and suggest his career was on the line if he didn’t sign an apology they penned on his behalf. The law school’s dean also authorized a message condemning Colbert’s language. Why? Because trap house was a term some claimed had racist associations with crack houses.
But when Jewish students wrote to that dean some two weeks after the Hamas attacks, detailing the antisemitic vitriol they have received, they got a formulaic reply from her deputy, directing them to student support services.
For certain students, kid gloves. For others, the maw of whatever hate their classmates and professors can think of. The universities play favorites based on the speech they prefer, and the racial group hierarchies they’ve established. It’s a nasty game and they need to be called to account for it.
Watch the whole thing here.
Related:
Yes, Stanford could've seen its free speech fiasco coming—from a mile away
Chabot College analysis: Free speech also protects ideas you dislike
SCU case study: Free speech falling out of favor at local higher ed institutions?
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