FIRE is pleased to announce the publication of Defying the Constitution: The Rise, Persistence, and Prevalence of Campus Speech Codes in the Georgetown Journal of Law & Public Policy. Authored by FIRE’s Azhar Majeed, Associate Director of Legal and Public Advocacy, the article chronicles the existence of college and university speech codes nationwide and argues that maintaining them is untenable, given that every single court decision on speech codes has struck them down as unconstitutional. The article analyzes the First Amendment and free speech problems presented by speech codes, examines the harms that they perpetuate on the college campus, and responds to various arguments put forth by their proponents. It also offers potential ways to eradicate speech codes permanently from college campuses. FIRE expects the article to be an informative contribution to First Amendment scholarship, clarifying the state of the law on speech codes.
FIRE’s Exclusive Interview with Flemming Rose, Editor Behind Censored Mohammed Cartoons
On September 24, 2009, FIRE interviewed Flemming Rose, cultural editor of the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, about the censorship by Yale University Press of the controversial Mohammed cartoons he commissioned in 2005 to be published in his newspaper as an exercise of freedom of expression. The cartoons and several other previously uncontroversial images of Mohammed were removed from the book about the cartoons themselves, The Cartoons That Shook the World, in a widely criticized exercise of cowardice in the face of nonexistent threats.
What Causes Campus Censorship and How to Combat it
When I say that censorship on campus has become more pervasive and intrusive and focused on increasingly trivial offenses, I don’t mean to suggest that campus speech was unrestricted in the past. Censorship is a perennial problem; the urge to restrict speech you fear or dislike seems almost primal – especially to people in power, on all points in the political spectrum. In recent years, the drive to repress individual rights on campus has generally emanated from the left, but sometimes it simply represents an apolitical, bureaucratic mind-set; and, historically, for every example of left wing repression, you can find a counter-example of right wing repression. Consider mid 20th century red scares, when colleges and universities grievously betrayed their stated commitments to academic freedom by imposing loyalty oaths on faculty and collaborating in purging suspected communists or communist sympathizers from their ranks. (For a history of that period, I recommend No Ivory Tower, by Ellen Schrecker.) We’ve also passed through periods when free speech and some would say anarchy practically flourished on campus.