Thank Goodness Trump Is Here to Save Free Speech

Let’s be fair. President Trump had been sorely provoked when he threatened, at the Conservative Political Action Conference last Saturday, to issue an executive order “requiring colleges and universities to support free speech if they want federal research funds.”

After all, it was just last month at the University of California at Berkeley that Zachary Greenberg, who is not affiliated with the university, allegedly beat up Hayden Williams, who is also not affiliated with the university, because he didn’t like what Williams had to say.

Williams was recruiting for Turning Point USA, a self-described “student movement for free markets and limited government,” whose adherents have adopted the brave view that “socialism sucks.” Williams was merely trying to express Turning Point’s classical liberal principles by displaying signs that reportedly read, “This Is MAGA Country” and “Hate Crime Hoaxes Hurt Real Victims.”

So it’s small wonder that Trump, who invited Williams to share the stage with him during part of his interminable speech, wants to cut off federal funding to colleges and universities if they don’t straighten out. If universities “want our dollars — and we give to them by the billions — they have to allow people like Hayden and many other great young people and old people to speak — free speech.”

We know that places like Berkeley have no respect for free speech. We have learned of this disgrace from commentators like Dennis Prager, whose “No Safe Spaces” tour carries the same message as his film of that name, that college is “the most dangerous place in America for ideas.” Or we may have picked up the knowledge from Ben Shapiro, author of Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America’s Youth. To be honest, it’s all over YouTube.

Come to think of it, we might have learned about Berkeley’s disregard for speech a year ago, when Prager spoke there, or in 2017, when Shapiro spoke there with the help of security measures that reportedly cost the university hundreds of thousands of dollars. Shapiro also spoke at Berkeley in 2016. The audience then, according to Shapiro’s own Daily Wire, was “civil and polite,” as Shapiro cast pearls before them, such as “socialism is rape, while capitalism is consensual sex.”

That miracle of left-wing tolerance, the Wire speculates, occurred because Berkeley’s “politically conscious campus is likely used to politically charged speech.” It’s almost as if Berkeley, for the most part, honors free speech. It takes some of the force out of the claim that your voice is stifled when you are making that claim from behind the podium of one of the most prestigious universities in the nation.

Still, in Trump’s defense, it took hours — as in more than one! — after news of the recent beating broke for Berkeley’s chancellor, Carol Christ, to “strongly condemn” it and to reaffirm that the university’s “commitment to free expression is unwavering.” Then it took another entire day to identify a suspect for whom, fully four days later, the Berkeley police sought a felony arrest warrant.

Charlie Kirk, the president of Turning Point and champion of due process, was understandably outraged that the name of the suspect was not released to the public the moment it entered the mind of a detective. Finally, at long last, after more than a week, the alleged perp has been named, arrested, and charged with “assault with a deadly weapon and attempting to cause great bodily injury.” It’s this kind of liberal foot-dragging from our otherwise lightning-quick justice system that demands a vigorous shove from the chief executive.

Lest the judiciary feel neglected, Trump also suggested a lawsuit, because why shouldn’t Berkeley be held responsible for one human being punching another human being on a public square on its 1,232-acre campus? Hayden Williams “is going to be a very wealthy man,” said Trump. That’s the best way to make it in a land of free markets and limited government.

Let’s be serious. Colleges and universities, including Berkeley, sometimes impose unreasonable restrictions on campus speech that get dusted off disproportionately when conservatives come to town. Shapiro has, indeed, had appearances canceled on several campuses. In 2017, Charles Murray was met with actual violence at Middlebury College, and Berkeley itself was the scene of a riot that shut down a planned appearance by Milo Yiannopoulos.

All has not been well for campus free expression, particularly for conservatives but also for liberals. Ask James Livingston of Rutgers University, who was subjected to an investigation and an initial finding that he had violated the discrimination and harassment policy at Rutgers, over an obviously satirical “antiwhite” Facebook post.

Still, in 2018 the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), an effective champion of free speech on campuses, recorded just nine attempts at disinviting or shutting down speakers. In the same year, 20 — if you’re keeping score, that’s 11 more than nine — colleges and universities adopted versions of the University of Chicago’s model principles of free expression. Among those principles is this one: “Debate or deliberation may not be suppressed because the ideas put forth are thought by some or even by most members of the university community to be offensive, unwise, immoral, or wrong-headed.”

None of that would seem to warrant sending in the feds to manage speech at our colleges and universities. Granted, our standards for declaring a national emergency have grown lax, but this is ridiculous.

Indeed, as the political scientist Jeffrey Sachs observes, colleges seem to be making strides on their own with the help of organizations like FIRE and PEN America, longtime advocates of free expression, and the Heterodox Academy, a relative newcomer that advocates for viewpoint diversity in higher education.

Turning Point, whose activity has thus far been limited to performing juvenile stunts, calling out dangerous campus radicals like the former Council of Economic Advisers member Betsey Stevenson, and cozying up to the Trump administration, has played no role at all in promoting a more tolerant atmosphere on campuses.

That doesn’t mean its operatives deserve to be mistreated, much less assaulted. But their sincerity about campus free speech merits our skepticism. As for our president, who recently proposed an investigation into NBC because Saturday Night Live had made fun of him, it’s a safe bet that when he cries “free speech!” what he is really saying to his many critics in the academy is “shut up!”

Jonathan Marks is a professor of politics at Ursinus College.