We think this right of free speech to be absolutely essential to human freedom and flourishing and we want to help you exercise that right. For many, going back to school means selfcensorship, discrimination, and ridicule on the basis of their religion or their political beliefs. We are here today to help you with a stellar class of panelists will be helping us to work through this issue. First, we have sarah, the senior legal fellow for the center for legal and traditional studies, as part of an institutional government and heritage. Sarah joins heritage after serving on the council to the assistant secretary for civil rights at the u. S. Department of education, where she focused on policy reform, technical guidance, and the office for civil rights annual report to congress. While at ocr, she was the acting assistant secretary to a counsel and in coordination with the secretary for enforcement overview the hiring. She spent six years at the Family Research council as senior fellow for educational reform. She has a law degree from the university of Virginia School of law, where she was editor of the virginia journal of international law. A recipient of an american jurisprudence award, and she argued before the Fourth Circuit court of appeals. She holds a degree in journalism from liberty university. We also have someone whos served as an attorney and director of the First Amendment project. After earning her undergraduate degree in american government, she attended Georgia State University College of law. In addition to represent clients in state and federal courts, sisi plays an integral role in launching a project. Charisse trumps speech first director. She was at the ellenton Hamilton Society and the associate director of relations. She is the host of well said, where she interviews activists, professors, and students about free speech, Higher Education, and american culture. She and her masters degree from georgetown university, and she earned her bachelors degree from george mason university. We are also joined by vic, who serves as the Young Americas Foundation Vice President and counsel. He has been a warrior fighting on the front lines of the conservative movement for 30 years. As general counsel, he oversees and advises on all legal issues and needs the foundations legal efforts to protect student rights on high schools and College Campuses. He spent seven years and americans for prosperity. Additional nonprofit and private sector work includes senior counsel at pew charitable. Vic serve consecutive threeyear terms as general counsel for the office of administration under george w. Bush, director of lives that a counsel in the office of secretary of defense donald rumsfeld, an attorney advisor at the department of justice. He served as an active duty officer in the u. S. Navy judge admiral court. He has many leadership roles in maryland, including roles in the board of education, Higher Education commission, and the Governors Commission on quality education. Please join me in welcoming our panelists. [applause] thank you for joining us today. We have a lot of ground to cover in not a lot of time so i want to get right to it today. The land of the free is now the home of the easily offended, and our First Amendment freedoms should unify the nation, but unfortunately, there is some division in case you havent seen culturally. The mere invitation to uc berkeleys campus in 2017 resulted in violence, distraction of property, and a shelterinplace order. Earlier this year, Dartmouth University canceled an event for a journalist on extremism in america citing threats from antifa, the very extremists about which he was going to speak. At the State University of new york, College Progressives and other agitators shut down the remarks of an economist within seconds of him taking the podium. He was eventually removed. The agitators were not. Today, we are going to talk about what many consider to be one of our preeminent individual rights, and that is the right to free speech, where no word is infringed on College Campuses and universities nationwide. I have a panel of distinguished experts and we will go through a couple of questions, leaving 15 to 20 minutes at the end to take questions from the audience. Lets get started. Vic, let me start with you. Because we need state action for the First Amendment to apply, tell us a little bit about the protection for private school students, private University School students as opposed to public where we all know the First Amendment automatically applies. Victor that is exactly right. Of course, it does apply to Public Schools. There is a misnomer out there that it not apply at all in a private setting. But that is not exactly true. It is more challenged, but there are a couple ways to continue to bring First Amendment challenges even at a, private school. The first is take a look at what the state laws are where that particular school is situated. A lot of states have gone ahead and make sure they have expanded First Amendment protections to the schools within their jurisdiction. So that is one ticket. Another one is looking at the schools own policies. Many times, schools will adopt broadbased policies that have the practical effect of being the same as First Amendment protections at a Public School and get held to account when they do that. It is not a situation where there are no protections at all. There are really unique circumstances like in washington, d. C. , where protect the class includes your political viewpoint, your partisan affiliation. So because the district expands protection to that, it now becomes a protected class. So the folks at the George Washington University Get to have some additional protections that they might not have otherwise. Sarah charisse, let me ask you a question. In the First Amendment space as we talk about freedom of speech, is the speech of a professor and student regulated differently . Cherrise yes, that is absolutely true. They are regulated different because students have a different relationship with the university than the professors do. That is a separate contract. But also with regards to the private and Public Schools also, students have unique relationships too. You read your student handbook, sign your student code of conduct, you are agreeing to certain rules and recognitions on the campus so it is important students read the fine print and know what they are signing onto. Obviously, Public Schools are much more beholden to the constitution that private schools are. With regards to the professors, it is important they also look antsy what the agreements are between the university and them with guts to Academic Freedom because a lot of times, especially these days, new employees at universities are required to sign statements that when they come on, if they Say Something that might offend someone mentioned and what the regulations are for the university, that means they could possibly be beholden to whatever consequences or reactions of the university. Sarah de i diversity, equity, and inclusion, which is the new parameters we are discussing to be inclusive but not always inclusive of civil rights, and many of it taking place on college and university campuses. I want to talk about places for speech, cece. Your foundation has put out a tremendous guide that discusses the difference between certain forums in which you can say certain things on Higher Education campuses. Can you explain that a little bit . Cece exactly. Where you are standing on campus actually does matter. Your rights differ depending on where you are located, where you are engaging in those activities. So if you are standing on a sidewalk or quad, a place that traditionally you would expect members of the public to come right up off the street and Start Talking to you and you would not think it is so weird, your rights are most protected their. Your college can only impose reasonable restrictions, very minor limits on your speech in those areas. But if you think about your classrooms, your dorms, it would be kind of weird if a stranger knocked on your door at 11 00 at night in your dorm room. So speech is a little more restricted in those locations. Theyre your college has a little more leeway to regular your speech, but still have rights there. Your views can never be discriminated against, the matter where you are standing on campus. Your college cannot silence you. They cannot prevent you from sharing your belief with other people. Sarah so we have seen a number of those censorship incidents. Vic, you know very well exactly the extent of those incidents. What do you attribute sort of the lack of response to this . We have colleges and universities regularly shutting down conservative speakers or conservative students want to espouse conservative viewpoints. Explain to us what you think is behind the failure to cut off such a predilection. We see it so often, and yet it does not seem to be getting better. Victor that is 100 true. My own thoughts on this, this is not a new phenomenon. The far left take over of our College Institutions is now probably in its 60th year. And it just got progressively worse. It got progressively worse as time has gone on. There is just a natural instinct of the leaders of the school, whether it is the School Administrators or the professors. They are seeing the world through their straw and not seeing the big picture. They are absolutely determined to protect what they feel are folks who are going to be subject to feeling diminished in any way. So they end up imposing all kinds of restrictions that are just nonsensical. The way i often think about this is there is good news and bad news. The good news is that free speech as a matter of law on campus, and i am sure my esteemed colleagues he would agree with this, it is wellestablished. It is not some new area of the law that is still developing. It is wellestablished that free speech on campus is to be protected in almost all of its guises. However, that is not the common practice because of the implicit bias of so many, and sometimes not implicit bias of administrators and professors. Rather than continue on here, i just think it is a really deeply buried challenge and we are going to have to continue to fight against this. The last thing i will say is it is analogous in my mind, and i know you heard me say this once before, to the situation with being able to opt out of a union. The Supreme Court now ruled on that, and you can. But the union keeps setting up all kinds of rules to make it difficult to do. Those bizarre examples of, yeah, you can opt out if you want on december 27 between 2 00 and 3 00 a. M. Otherwise, you have to pay your dues for another full year. It is insane. That is equivalent to what is happening on College Campuses. The freespeech law is wellestablished, but they keep finding different ways to impose silly restrictions, and they are all onesided. This is not twosided stuff. They are all against the center right, and it is all very frustrating. Sarah so the protections exist. It is a matter of making sure we know they are there and actually following through. Cherise . Cherise yes, i was going to make a similar comment on following through and knowing they are there. In addition to everything vic laid out, there is a significant level of ignorance we have not seen before on behalf of the students and people becoming a victims of a lot of these we policies. K12, there has been an active intent to read our school ri id education rid our School System of a proper civics education. It is important to realize how unique freespeech laws are in the united states. We like to compare ourselves to other countries, and that is something a lot of students dont realize. Congress shall make no law to abridge freespeech. But if you look at any other university sorry, any other country, i challenge you to read whatever theyre freespeech or Free Expression laws are in their constitution if they even have a constitution. They will lay out exceptions oftentimes more often than not with regard to the exception of free speech. We are the only country that does not really recognize those. The reason is because a lot of the restrictions people want to put on speech are completely subjective and relative. They cannot be welldefined. This is why the Supreme Court over the years has held up that speech is protected and hate speech cannot be defined and therefore is still protected by the First Amendment. Sarah yet we see so much about viewpoint discrimination as sort of the pinnacle of the exercise of the censorship incidents. We dont see as much on time, place, and matter, which are restrictions held to be appropriate. We dont want people to going out with a blow horn at 2 00 in the morning and protesting outside of a house. Those are reasonable, legitimate, rational sort of restrictions on speech that have held consistently to be appropriate as long as there is a rational basis promoted. But we are seeing viewpoint discriminations specifically on politically unpopular opinions. Whether that be on politics or religion or what have you. But there is a unique intersection between civil rights law and freespeech. Cece, i want to talk to you a little better about this. We know, for example, there are increasing incidents of miss gender been an individual or failing to use their preferred pronouns, and that goes to naturally the question of title ix, which is another education specific law. So that might amount to harassment under the current administrations definition of the saying. So explain a bit about how that might amount to verbal harassment. Cece sure. Let me take a step back really quickly and frame up where we are so far with the First Amendment. The First Amendment protects your right to speak, to share your views without the government stopping you. It also protects the right not to speak. You cannot be forced to a firm beliefs and ideas you do not agree with. Ok. So that is fundamental. That is what vic and cherise have been saying. Subtle law. Title ix, currently the rule is that you can be punished for harassment on your College Campus if you engage in speech that is so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive that it deprives another student of access to their education. That is a very High Standard to meet. That is because we are concerned about offensive speech being swept into this category, right . Offensive speech is protected by the constitution. And so under the current administrations proposed changes to title ix, that rule goes out the window. Now you can be punished for speech that is severe or pervasive. Thats it. Let me kind of put this into an example. An example of speech that would be severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive would be a man calling a woman a derogatory name. He says it and we all agree it is a bad name. He says it over and over again. And it causes her to may be for her physical safety. Maybe he is shouting it at her as he is running at her. Or maybe he is saying it over and over and over again in class to where she does not feel safe going to class. That would be harassment under the current rule. Under the proposed change to the rule, it would be saying a comment. It would be misgendering someone, saying the wrong pronoun that person does not identify with. Under the new rule, that person can find that comment severe, period. And they can report you and the college can find you guilty of harassment. Under this new proposed change to title ix, we are worried students are going to have their speech chilled even more than it already is. Students are going to be deterred from ever speaking up and saying anything because they risk, especially conservative students will risk being punished on campus. A concrete example of this could be you want to host a conservative speaker. Lets say you want to have met while scum on the campus and debate somebody. Matt walsh on the campus and debates of any. You might not do that because matt walsh is named a harassing figure at this is harassing speech and the college will not allow him come on the campus. There are definitely some serious concerns with this title ix change. And there are other concerns as well that i am sure michael panelists can speak to my copanelists can speak to. Sarah this is a will that has been proposed to upend what we know to be the basis for antidiscrimination law. It is full of permutations going from sex discrimination to discrimination based on sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, but gender identity itself proves to be problematic within the context of speech and within the context of private spaces for womens athletics. Without going down that road too much, we talked a little bit about that intersection between the First Amendment and other federal laws that are specifically germane to education. We talked to title ix. I want to talk a little bit about title vi and what we have seen with this rise of Critical Race Theory and sort of the expression, the request for the sort of hegemony that all goes to the same issue of racism. In other words, individuals who are forced to affirm their inherent privilege or the fact that they are inherently racist or they are somehow an oppressor. Can an individual forced to affirm a belief like that within an education context if it is completely anathema to what they believe to be true . Victor no. But that is an easier said than done. Because in practice, it is a very intimidating environment. It is not just the school. It is the fellow students. So the law is clear, but the practice, we need to be realistic about it. That is a ton of pressure to put on a young person, to face literally hundreds of fellow students who are going to be angry and possibly screaming at them. You know, in those sorts of circumstances, in order to fight back, it is essential i think to take a step back, talk to loved ones, talk to people you trust, talk to folks like here on the panel. What are my rights . How can i go about doing this . Not necessarily just go out and try to blow up the situation b y, yes, stating your situation. There are ways to do this and to say it is not right. I would appreciate it if you would handle it in this way or that way so it takes some pressure directly off a student. Students should not feel alone in those circumstances. They need to look to others for help. I think out of the gates, you start with your parents and then start reaching out to folks like us. I will even leave a prop here out on the table. We have a pamphlet of defending your right to free speech on campus. Take that with you. It will help you think through what to do, how to approach such a situation so you are not just feeling totally isolated and alone. And even though the right is yours, feeling i just cant even exercise it because it is going to be devastating. Sarah so there were two parts to that question that i would like to address to cece and cherise. Cherise, i want to talk to you in little bit about that student on student pressure. The rise of the Bias Response Team or the microaggression that will forcibly shut down an individual compulsion to say what they believe to be true. Cece, i would like to talk to you about the inability to bring conservative or divergent viewpoints to campus and if that ability as a result, how to respond. Cherise, first about the Bias Response Team. Cherise this is something pretty scary. There has been research on Bias Response Teams and the various forms that take place. These are administered bodies on your campus or systems that allow students to report on one another or their professors. Oftentimes, the university will encourage it by sending out emails soliciting this. A bias incident is up to the university. It is no Legal Definition to what it is. They will say hateful speech, microaggression, hateful or unwanted speech. Oftentimes, they will get these reports in and they would launch an investigation on the student that is reported. If you are reported, you dont get to face your accuser. Oftentimes, these are anonymous reportings. What is even more concerning is the amounts these systems are used. When i was on campus, knowing what was in the handbook was one thing. Barely even knew it was a handbook, let alone using whatever systems were in place on campus. Students seem to be taking full advantage of this. There seems to be some sort of new wave of wanting to censor one another. I think it started before covid but covid exacerbated it. It was for students who were not wearing masks, not vaccinating, congregating on campus when they were not supposed to be. When they started to go on the rise, now more and more universities have them. We look at 800 universities, public and private. 56 of them have bias reporting systems. This is something only increasing. You can go to our website and check out every school has one. They are usually easy to find. It is important to talk about what this means. This is a gen zer i was talking to. They said they were proud of their generation. I am not in gen z. They said, we are proud of our generation because at this age, we are the most moderate and independent voters. More than any other percentage generation before us. There is a certain complacency among the younger generation. They are not willing to stay up and fight for something or take a side. They would rather be with sometimes is considered more openminded but going along with the flow of things and not pushing back when really necessary. I think part of that has to do with Civic Education in k12. And i think the other part has to do with genuine fear. Speaking up, they know what will happen if they speak up. Dont want competition or pushback. They want to put their head down, get through the four years, and be done with it. What are you accomplishing in those four years . Are you spending your money wisely . This is thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars. Is it worth that complacency for that kind of money . That is a question you should be asking yourself. Sarah that is a great point. One of the important things you said at the beginning was full, unwanted, unwelcome speech is constitutionally protected. There is this rise of victimization and we are very conscious of the feelings of other people. That is always a good individual character to express as a person. But in a democratic nursery, which is what Justice Breyer called classrooms, they are the nurseries of democracy, we need to have different perspectives and ideas to come up with those motivating factors, the principles in our lives by which people live and move forward. Cece one more thing to this. It is one thing to enforce within your society and culture. Maybe dont be rude out loud and use hateful speech or hateful slurs. That is something society can enforce on itself. It is another thing when the state, the administration steps in and regulates your speech completely and determines what is considered all of those definitions. That is different here. I am not saying people should go around telling each other all the time. I am saying that is something we enforce on ourselves in societal norms, not something we are asking the government to define for us. Sarah so lets talk a little bit, cece, about the inability to bring conservative speakers or divergent ideologically individual speakers who might either be shut down, canceled, or from the outset even prevented from stepping foot on campus. How do you respond to incidents how do we respond to incidents like this . Cece u have the fear of bringing someone to campus. Now it is time to bring them to campus. There are hoops to jump through. The first in your college might do is flat out say you cannot bring this speaker to campus because they are conservative. That is blatant viewpoint is clinician that will always be unconstitutional. It is time to call a lawyer if your school says that. As vic has said, the law has been settled for 50 plus years. Colleges are smarter than that. They are not going to tell you you cannot bring this speaker to campus because they are conservative. Instead, what they are going to say is, well, the speaker tends to draw a pretty crazy crowd and we are concerned about security. So we are going to charge you a little bit extra money for security fees because we will need extra security guards. Since it is your speaker, you have to pay the bill. That is also unconstitutional. Anytime your colleges looking at the effect a speaker will have on the student body, that is violating your First Amendment right because they are making a judgment call about the views the speaker will express or the views the speaker will cost to come about. So your college can impose security fees on students, but those fees have to be reasonable. Going back to those reasonable restrictions we talked about. They have to apply equally to everybody, so there has to be a set flat security fee for all events of a certain size. Ok. I like to get that example because that is one way colleges can be sneaky about it. Lets say your speaker does draw a wildcard. It is always a good idea to have a game plan in place, especially with your administrators. Your administrators do not want anybody to get hurt either so they will usually be happy to work with you to come up with some sort of plan if you expect what we call hecklers. I will say as an aside there is a word for students who stand outside of an event or come into an event and shout down a speaker that effectively stops the speaker from speaking. That is called a hecklers veto. People do not have the right to be hecklers. Your college actually does have the authority and obligation to stop students from shoving down speakers shouting down speakers. You have the right to speak and share your views. You dont have the right to suppress other peoples. Speech if you dispute a crowd like that, if you anticipate if you anticipate a crowd like that, if you anticipate hecklers, you might want to have some sort of a signup sheet before your event, or if the heckling begins during your event, the court the names of the students who are doing the heckling. If you dont know who the students are, you might be able to take pictures or Something Like that so you can identify them later because chances are your school does have a hecklers veto policy where your school says, usually it is in your freespeech policy, you cannot shout down a speaker or you will face punishment. Then you can go to your administrators and say, the students heckling my speaker, shouted down my speaker. We were not able to have our event. I would like you to do something about it, and the school can take action. That is my advice. I dont know if the two of you have run into this and have other advice. Victor unfortunately run into it all the time. We have a case right now. This was an incident that occurred at a State University of new york, binghamton. Bringing a speaker who is not exactly one of these crazy speakers that inflames an audience. He is everyones grandfather and comes to speak about economics. He just speaks about economics and speaks about it freely. He underwent a hecklers veto. It was awful. Just a few circumstances around it because we talked about security fees, but there are the only limit to the number of restrictions and challenges that other students and a university will bring is to limit the imagination. They will keep trying all kinds of different things. You cannot pass out those flyers. We need to preapprove your flyers. Or they can only be passed out over here. You need to take them out from that billboard. They can only be on this billboard. All types of restrictions. He is controversial. Why dont we move into this other auditorium, which is much smaller in size than this other one . Or another reallife incident because of the incident at the State University of new york, just picture if this auditorium had one of those folding walls right down the middle. So the speech will happen on the side. Well, where do they put the protest . They put it on the side. As soon as the doors open, all the protesters came in, flooded the entire auditorium, blow horns and everything else. The doctor walked out to speak and never get a word in, not one. The students are going crazy with blow horns. The University Security does absolutely nothing. After about seven or eight minutes of this where it just looks like this is really going south, what do they do . The University Police escort the doctor out, not the protesters. So he never got a word in. That is why we are assuming. These are reallife examples of what can happen when a university is, as we believe, entirely complicit in the hecklers veto that ended up occurring. The only limits of the imagination and when you put your mind to it, if you want to stop some buddy from speaking, there are a variety of ways to do it. Starting up a new organization, requiring you to jump through all kinds of hoops. And where we are sitting now, i am sure you are seeing similar type things too. Oh, there is another conservative Student Organization so we dont need another one. You just go join that one. No. You get to choose because there are differences between the various organizations out there. Not all onesizefitsall. It is reallife ends up being a lot more challenging. Sarah real quick on advertising for your events if you are on a public campus, they cannot restrict you handing out flyers. As long as you are in a public space, you can hand out flyers. That is in your constitutional right. But talking is another thing they put restrictions on. You absolutely have the right to do that as well. They cannot put restrictions on that if you are talking in a public space at the university. Additionally on the chartering a club or getting an event approved, oftentimes this has to go through Student Government associations approval and they are completely run by far left, woke, social justice agendas. This is why we need to balance that out a little better. Keep in mind their advisors are often on the side of the lefts agenda so they will encourage or be complicit or even step aside and say anything when the Student Government associations are trying to run amok. I have seen situations where Student Government have passed unanimously outside parties have had to step in but removing funding from a club unless they participated in a movement against israel or unless they held an event every other semester on Critical Race Theory. This was going to be a requirement or the clubs would lose funding. These are all things Student Governments are trying to do. And they are getting more and more successful as we have seen. I encourage you all to also participate very heavily on your campus in that white. Sarah cece, let me ask you a little bit about the imbalance of power because we have talked a little bit about that in terms of bringing in a guest or hosting a student group. Lets also talk about reallife classroom dynamics. What does a student do if he is afraid of his or her perspective being different from the professors but is army sleep or to get a good grade . Is there any recourse . How do students handle that . Cece i have been there. The very first thing i would say is i know we all have syllabus day. The first day of school, nobody looks at the syllabus. Please look at your syllabus. I encourage you to go look at the books your professor has assigned. You will very easily get a feel for if the professor is teaching a balanced course or the professor is going to skew one way and make his or her views known. If it is too late anywhere in the class and there is no getting out of it, i would encourage you to record everything. I dont mean video record classes. There are different rules about that. I am not saying to record without your professors permission, but in writing. Every time your professor says something in class that makes you think they will be hostile to what i say, write down exactly what the professor said so you start to build a record. Then when it is time to write your paper, that way you have a stronger case to show viewpoint discrimination. Because i will not lie to you, it is going to be difficult to show your professor gave you a bad grade because of your view. The professor could easily say, no, you did not develop your argument right. It is not about your views. That is a situation you created a backandforth with the professor emailing or in class and you can establish the professor has a certain viewpoint and has been hostile to your viewpoint. You will have an easier time making that case. Sarah so i want to open it up to questions. I dont want to wait too long because we have covered a lot of material and i am sure there are plenty of individuals who have questions themselves. We have two. He around with microphones so feel free to flag one down. We are also moderating questions that come in online also. Any questions for our panelists . Yes, right here. Thank you all for speaking with us today. A question for i guess all three of you. Are you all First Amendment absolutists, or do you see any circumstances in which a speaker speaking on a College Campus is inappropriate or unjustified . Cece so there are a few categories of speech the First Amendment does not protect, and that is very well settled law. I would say i am not an absolutist when it comes to this category. Those categories are obscenity, inciting people to imminent lawless action, meaning lets go burn down this building, lets go start a riot, Something Like that, defamation, spreading false rumors about somebody, or violence, where you are putting some buddy in fear for their physical safety. Each of those elements, each of those categories have an element of conduct to them where you are putting someone in fear for their safety or you are going to cause a massive disruption or a ride on campus. In those circumstances, a speaker is trying to incite people to lawlessness, i would say their speech is not protected. But for the most part, if it has to do with their views, their speech is protected and they have every right to say what they believe. Cherise i would like to emphasize the whole point of college is to challenge your own assumption, right . To come in thinking the way that you maybe think and have your ideas and then people challenge them while you challenge their ideas and you go back and forth. I dont think there is anything wrong with going to event you definitely disagree with and definitely just like the speaker and dont agree with the viewpoint, but it is worth giving their arguments and understanding how their logic and reasoning works. Maybe they might convince you of something. Otherwise, it is a great alternative way to figure out how you want to strengthen your own argument. I would never want to restrict any kind of speaker on campus as long as they were within the legal right to do that. Victor i will just chime in and say absolutism is a word i dont normally associate myself with. But i am really forward leaning on all of the freedoms that are enshrined in our constitution. You know, when you asked the question, the first example that popped into my head that predates by many years almost everyone in this audience and many of the younger folks here may not even be familiar with the case, but i remember vividly when the nazis marched in illinois and the aclu stood up and defended their right to do so. Of course they found them abhorrent. But it was not about the principles underlying National Socialism they were supporting. They were supporting the freedom of speech enshrined in our constitution. And to the extent that i am going to be an absolutist in anything, it is going to be about our constitution and defending what is in there. Yeah, i supported the aclu then. I wish they were as adamant about things today as they were back then. Because the aclu has a very unix unique structure with state chapters. Many of them are fantastic. And the National Body is kind of divided 5050 with some of them being oldschool this is all about the constitution and freedom of speech and many of them being, well, we support a particular party, the Democrat Party in the united states, and we need to make sure we are not taking on any cases that would look bad for a particular governor or senator or even president of the united states. Yeah. Absolutist, rarely. But constitution, yes. Sarah another question. Yes, down here. Hi. I am sarah clark and i work for the Leadership Institute specifically over campus events. Very few heckler stuff happening at this point. What we are running into is gobs of bureaucratic red tape everywhere. We know Student Governments and all of this. What other ways can we show the students like how to roll some of those back . Can we or do we just have to continue to dance and play the dance in order to get these speakers on campus for the students . Sarah sort of jumped the administering of hurdles. That is a great question. Cherise my first instinct to that not knowing what policies you are talking to is to ask whether they are required or optional. To get it in writing that they are required, yes, you have to abide by the School Policy to do this, and then we can look into any legal viewpoint discrimination questions there. Additionally, i would say this is why i encourage students to find professors who can sponsor your events because it comes down to having to maneuver through the bureaucratic system on the university, having faculty and administrators that are on your side and willing to vouch for you and help you get around some of that red tape issue. That would be my first advice. Cece sometimes it just takes one administrator who is on your side. That can make all the difference. I definitely encourage you to be polite and respectful to your administrators. They can be your allies. They are not all the enemy. Yeah. And i think educating yourself about the First Amendment is really important. It depends on a casebycase basis. We have to look at the individual policy in each school. That is something we offer in our programming. We go to campuses either in person or through webinars and sit with student chapters and walk through every policy on campus and say, here is where administrators might try to infringe on your First Amendment rights. Here is where we think they actually have a good policy. Lets use that. Lets look at the administering is on your campus and see if we can find one who would be favorable to you. Just know that you have allies in these organizations who want to help you and work with you. Dont hesitate to reach out to us if you have any questions. We are happy to walk through the red tape with you. Sarah any other questions in the audience . Yes, over here. Thank you so much for speaking with us today. I think these issues are a sign of the lifetime. I go to a Public School in virginia, and i started a conservative club on my campus. And i was told everything you have said, that i can i have events in certain areas or i cannot start a club because there is a conservative club on campus or even written articles in the school newspaper. Beyond that, an issue i faced was a lot of students that know these issues are right and agree with our side politically and religiously and all of these aspects, but they are scared because what i have had these events, we have had so much hate. People hate us on campus and say i have to maintain these relationships. And ultimately, they are like, i have other things i can do with my time. But convincing the students as is the fight of a lifetime. So what would you say to the students that are on the cusp of putting themselves out there socially to be hated . And why would you convince them this fight is worth fighting . Sarah good question. Vic . Victor courage. Be not afraid. It is really important to stand up. But know again one of the things i mentioned earlier is you are not alone. There are plenty of resources out there to help you. Dont just think in terms of law. Law is really important. There are great lawyers out there ready and willing to help you. But think in terms of media. Think in terms of politics. Media, there is a Public Relations plate associated with this play associated with this. There almost always is. Whether it is local or national depending on the size of the issue, make sure you are talking to people who understand the media environment and can help you frame an issue. Suddenly, you find yourself making the Television Circuit talking about your case. You see it all the time. It can be done. On the politics aside, there are friends and allies out there. Whether it is at the university. Go back in time when william f buckley, junior, spoke at yale, his big message at the end of that was the trustees, they need to step up and you need to go to them. It did not work at year, but it can work yale, but it can work. Trust change over time. They are the avenues. Other politicians. There is now a freespeech caucus in but the house and senate that is devoted to tackling issues of bias on College Campuses. They will help you. You bring into their attention and they will be able to get on the news much quicker than almost anyone else because they are used to doing it all the time. Think big picture that there are plenty of other folks who can help you. But know that when you are working through this, try to figure out, who are the people you trust and who has your back . That is one of the things that i will close with that we try to do at Young Americans foundation, not just as a legal team but all the way through governor walker. We will not only talk to the student and the students peers that are affected by this, but their parents, and explain how the entire process work from soup to nuts and be there with them. If we need to be there physically with them, so be it because we want them to know literally and figuratively we have their backs on the stuff so they can feel and get bucked up to have the courage they need to take on these fights. These fights are not easy and they take courage. Sarah i will add to that. If you are asking an individual why, what is the incentive to speak up, to bring a speaker, or start a new club even though there might be one in principle that looks like it, i would say it ensures the endurance of our democracy. One of the chief virtues of our country is diversity, but diversity is increasingly trending toward homogeneity. We dont want that. We want diversity of perspective as much as we want diversity of race, ethnicity, national origin, all of the things that make america wonderful are the fact that she represents so many different things. But ideas must be included in that diversity. We cannot see classrooms as the nurseries of democracy if we are unwilling to protect democracy from the outset. Other questions . Yes, right here. Thank you. So i attended a college. I dont know if you heard of it. It is a conservative school. There was an incident that happened last year involving a speaker who came in. He was kind of a more liberal theologian and gave a talk in which he challenged the white students in the audience to be considered the way they think about race. It caused a lot of backlash among alumni and parents who were marine about Critical Race Theory who were worried about Critical Race Theory indoctrination. It was kind of a big thing that went to the trustees. The school had a report and decided it was a mistake. We should not bring people who talk about things like that in the future. I was wondering what you thought about that regarding intellectual diversity and things like that. If you have an institution like one that is a specifically conservative school, where is the line between maintaining that conservative perspective and info turning that and infiltrating that perspective with having diversity . Cherise if the board of trustees and parents are getting involved, that is one thing, but one thing that would be an interesting solution to the problem you are mentioning is a debate, to bring in a speaker who is willing to debate one of your professors. Most of the professors will have one set of viewpoints or a similar set of viewpoints. It might be worth bringing in a speaker who will do the crt stuff to debate. That might be an easier way around that rather than having to go through all this redtape with the administrators and board of trustees. That is my suggestion. Sarah i would say also that when we are dealing with colleges and universities, we recognize a level of maturity. And your age student that we do not recognize in k12, where we see the biggest influx of Critical Race Theory were students who are 11 or 13 like my youngest are being told you are inherently racist because of the color of your skin, which is a violation of civil rights law. That is title vi, which we were talking about, which prevents the segregation of individuals based on race. It was the work of the civil rights movement, not viewing people by their skin color. And colleges to my welcome intellectual diversity. I think a debate would be terminus. When talking about something that does not force an individual to affirm a particular perspective, remember we see the First Amendment as a negative right. We do not want the government involved. We dont want them to enforce a belief you do not have. I am all for letting individuals speak in a voluntary format where the students can get up. They can walk away. They can ask questions. That is a different scenario. One more question. Yes, down here. So this is more of a general question about freedom of speech and what purpose it serves. You believe that i raise this question for all three of you. In terms of freedom of speech and freedom of thought, is it good itself or is it good because it serves the end of discovering truth . Sarah wow. Cherise how long do we have . [laughter] cherise certainly the latter that it is a means to the end, which is the truth. When you are engaging in debate, you are engaging in a way that students should be looking at it, that you are speaking truth to your debate. That is why it is so important that we protect these rights. Cece and i will speak to the First Amendment specifically. If you take away one thing from today, please take away the knowledge that the First Amendment was made for you. You are probably all with the exception of maybe a few of you who are on conservative campuses in the minority on your campus right now. The framers very specifically established bill of rights to protect the minority faction from the team any of the majority. The First Amendment is yours to use as a sword and shield to defend your right for this broader philosophical purpose. It is for this end, to pursue the truth. But it is the structure will you having placed. So it is yours for the taking. So please use it. Know that you have these rights and can assert them against your college. Sarah with that, we need to wrap up todays event. I encourage everyone who has been here today to avail themselves of the resources that our panelists have included out in the auditorium foyer. And this event will be libraried, stored online. We encourage you to share it with your friends. Let fellow students of years, college administrators, professors, or your social media platform. Thank you for joining us. These give our panelists a round of applause please give our panelists a round of applause. [applause] [indiscernible chatter] i am sure if i could have spent time bearing a part of this last year, i would have kicked there but out. Cspans washington journal everyday we take your call live on the air. Coming up this morning, we will talk about the u. S. Economy and bidens economic policy. Then richard white, director of the center of the Hudson Institute will discuss the First Anniversary of the taliban takeover of afghanistan. Todays republican primary between liz cheney. Watch washington journal live at seven eastern or our free mobile video app, during the discussion with your phone calls, Text Messages and tweets. Next, formal alaska governor, sarah palin. She will look to fill alaskas vacant congressional seat to a special election tonight
comparemela.com © 2020. All Rights Reserved.