Years ago, in an effort to combat liberal censorship, Republican governments stepped in to support conservative voices at public institutions by creating safe spaces. The conflict between Israel and Gaza is making many of them reconsider the importance of free expression.
This week, a large number of protesters were apprehended by state troopers and local police when they gathered at prominent public schools in red states that have a reputation for being conservative leaders when it comes to LGBTQ+ issues, diversity initiatives, and free speech. Texas Governor Greg Abbott has issued an executive order mandating new rules on university campuses. If students in Florida violate the boundary between free speech and targeted harassment, Governor Ron DeSantis is considering expulsion.
A surge of pro-Palestinian protests is posing a political challenge to the laws and legal principles developed during the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War, as well as a test for lawmakers who have recently strengthened free speech safeguards on college campuses. As antiwar protests gain momentum and graduation season draws near, officials in charge of higher education are faced with the difficult decision of how to balance their responsibilities to free speech with their legal power to prevent disruptive protests.
According to Mark Rotenberg, a prominent lawyer for Hillel International and a former official of the Reagan Justice Department, “You can’t just have a blanket exclusion at a public university for speech activity, protests, marches, demonstrations and loud speeches” (Reagan). “The long-standing constitutional tradition makes that quite apparent. On the other hand, protesters should not be allowed to pick and choose where they demonstrate, even at public universities.
When it comes to protecting free speech, public colleges and universities are subject to more stringent legal standards than private institutions like Yale and Columbia. According to the free speech advocacy group Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, about twenty-seven states have laws protecting college students’ right to free speech, including Texas, Florida, and Indiana. Civil rights activists and Democratic legislators are locked in a legislative battle in deeply blue California over student protests.
Concerned that “cancel culture” had taken over universities and became anti-conservative, Abbott campaigned in 2019 to have Texas’ campus free speech measure signed into law.
Public schools are mandated by legislation to make sure campus green spaces “are deemed traditional public forums,” establish rules for dealing with teachers and students who “unduly interfere” with free speech, and strengthen safeguards for student groups. It further bolstered the power of schools to reasonably limit when, when, and how such activities could take place.
Prior to this week’s dozens of arrests and clashes on the flagship campuses of the University of Texas and Indiana University, among others, conservative leaders began articulating an alternative agenda.
Last month, Abbott issued an executive order requiring colleges to revise and amend their speech codes by the summer of this year in response to antisemitic occurrences and to make sure that student groups who support the Palestinian cause are penalized when they break these rules. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick of Texas has proposed that, when lawmakers meet again in 2019, they look into the anti-Semitism prevention policies and free speech procedures of public universities.
A school administrator’s ability to keep pupils safe is paramount, according to Republican state senator Paul Bettencourt of Texas.
The 2019 state campus expression law was co-authored by Bettencourt, a member of the Texas Senate education committee and a student herself. She warned that allowing occupations on public lawns, for instance, would lead to the same outcome as Columbia: a closed school and students, particularly Jewish students, feeling unsafe. “In Texas, that is absolutely intolerable.”
as Abbott’s office did not address a request for comment, he did post on social media on Wednesday, as campus arrests were happening, saying, “These protesters belong in jail.”
Since the war broke out, DeSantis has simultaneously taken a firm stance against pro-Palestinian groups and the events they host on Florida campuses.
During a bill signing event near Tampa on Wednesday, DeSantis stated, “When you’re chasing Jewish students around, when you’re not letting a Jewish professor enter a building, when you’re targeting people like that — that’s not free speech, that’s harassment.” As soon as you start doing it at our universities in Florida, we will be kicking you out. If you continue doing it, you will be expelled.
The current senator from the state, Rick Scott, who was a Republican governor, signed a bill protecting free speech on college campuses. However, schools can still dissolve some student organizations due to worries about free expression, and this has put the DeSantis administration in the middle of a judicial battle. Following his 2019 call for schools to welcome debate and contentious issues, DeSantis is now demanding the expulsion of student protestors and the cancellation of visas for international students who take part.
According to Michael Dorf, a constitutional law scholar from Cornell Law School, “the political balance of all of this was exactly the opposite from where it is now.” “On the right, you could hear them griping about how universities and colleges had catered to too many people’s sensitivity issues.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson and other senior Republicans are now demanding the deployment of National Guard troops to quell the demonstrations.
“The fact that Mike Johnson is going to Columbia to criticize it as not protecting minority sensitivities enough is not a coincidence,” Dorf said in an interview, adding that House Democrats would have been more appropriate. His arguments are similar to those that the DeSantises of the world were criticizing just a year ago.
Even on university campuses, free expression has its limitations. School administrators are using the reasonableness of their limitations on protest time, location, and style to justify crackdowns, which have alarmed numerous academic and civil liberties groups.
Protesters attempted to erect tents and canopies on Bloomington’s Dunn Meadow expanse, but were allegedly in violation of campus guidelines, according to police and Indiana University administrators. An Indiana statute from 2022 forbids governmental institutions from imposing specific limitations on free speech, mirroring a similar statute in Texas.
Concerned about possible disruption as students prepare for the end of the semester, officials at the University of Texas had previously urged the Palestine Solidarity Committee student organization against holding a “Popular University for Gaza” event on campus.
“We will not allow occupancy of our university,” UT-Following the institution’s and Abbott’s summons of state troopers to campus to aid local police, President Jay Hartzell of Austin sent a letter to the school on Wednesday.