Campus Intolerance of Free Speech Roots Revealed in Recent Study | National Review

Campus Intolerance of Free Speech Roots Revealed in Recent Study | National Review

"At first, I objected to the question. We are not 'forced to choose' between inclusivity and free speech. But on reflection, I realized the question's worth. That's exactly how free-speech debates are framed on campus. Advocates of free speech are often cast as enemies of diversity and opponents of inclusion. Students are told time and again that if they value historically marginalized communities, then they should endeavor to protect them from problematic or offensive speech.

"Yet that line of thinking posits a false conflict. No one is more empowered by free speech than the historically marginalized and dispossessed. Writing in 1860, Frederick Douglass rightly declared free speech to be the 'great moral renovator of society and government.' He argued that 'slavery cannot tolerate free speech' and that 'five years of its exercise would banish the auction block and break every chain in the South.'

"Federal court rulings defeating state efforts to suppress the civil-rights movement were indispensable to the cause of equality. I remember asking the Reverend Walter Fauntroy, an early member of the Congressional Black Caucus, why he believed the movement for African-American equality made such rapid legal gains once it was able to fully mobilize.
'Almighty God and the First Amendment,' he responded. The First Amendment gave the most visible marginalized group in American history a voice, and God softened men's hearts to hear the message that spread as a result."