As the Conservatives fought against the cancellation of culture in campuses, they developed a special love for the first amendment. He was non -American, they argued, to punish someone for exercising their right to speak freely.
Today, however, many of the same conservatives, now in power in state and federal government, are behind an increasing suppression of political expression in universities, in ways that they are trying to bypass the guarantees of free speech of the Constitution.
President Trump and Republican legislators say that new laws and policies are essential for the protection of students from harmful and unacceptable content, to prevent harassment and to discourage compliance.
To this end, Mr Trump threatened to withhold hundreds of millions of federal dollars from universities because they moved too late to launch the protests left by many Jewish students to feel threatening. And Republicans in state legislative laws have drawn sweeping bans against the “catechism” of order and the promotion of certain LGBTQ symbols. They also called for the removal of art they consider inappropriate.
In some cases, Trump’s administration stated that the existing federal law is already giving the president all the power he needs to act. When Mr Trump said he would expel students’ activists, for example, he claimed to be acting in the interest of US foreign policy.
Saying, administration officials said they were not committed to the first amendment when it comes to non -militarians.
“This is not the freedom of speech,” Foreign Minister Marco Rubio said. “These are people who do not have the right to be in the United States to start.
Critics of this broad approach, including some on the right, say that Republicans are just as heavy and censorship, as they claim that the left were towards them.
“This makes the situation so worse,” said Greg Lukianoff, chief executive of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a free speech group that often represents moderate and conservatives who claim to have opposed their political views.
“Now we have all this federal pressure and pressure from state governments – sometimes really immediate and clear, and sometimes blurry and confusing,” he said, adding: “There are much less people interested in non -profit defense of freedom of speech now.”
For many experts and academic first amendment, new laws and commands reveal a particularly insidious threat: public officials who are willing to drain the power of the state against people whose views do not like.
“Many people in the elected office have taken extremely comfortable with the idea that they will have to use this office to control the spread of ideas and information,” said Jonathan Friedman, chief executive of Pen America, a Freedom Defense Team.
“And on a fundamental level, this does all this so dangerous,” Mr Friedman added.
While the role of the federal government in some aspects of education is quite limited, it has powerful tools that the Trump administration was willing to use. It may launch investigations into civil rights rights, for example, or withhold research grants.
States, which provide greater funding for public schools and universities than the federal government is doing, have greater leverage and control.
The legislation approved last month by the Ohio State Senate sets parameters for the debate on any “controversial faith or policy” in state universities – including climate change, electoral policy, abortion and immigration. The bill requires members of the teachers “not to seek to retreat to any social, political or religious point of view”.
Sponsors say its purpose is to “allow students to exercise their right to freedom of speech without threatening retaliation”. If the law is made, universities should also publish all undergraduate programs online, along with the contact information of the teacher and professional qualifications.
Many states are aimed at the programs of diversity, justice and integration into university recruitment and imports. But Republicans in Arizona are further, trying to remove the issue entirely from the class. The State Senate has approved a bill this month that will refuse funding at any public college or university teaching for modern American society through the academic context of concepts, such as “critical theory, whiteness, systematic racism, racism, racism, racism.
A bill waiting for the signature of the Commander in Utah will prohibit flags of pride in public schools and in government property.
In some cases, Republicans directly interfere with campus activities. Students at the University of North Texas occupied a Palestinian art exhibition last month after a Republican legislator complained that he had referred to genocide in Hebrew.
At Texas A&M University, officials banned drag performances on the campus, saying it was “inconsistent” with university values to host events that “include organic males dressed in women’s clothing”.
The American education system has long been a target for conservatives, many of whom consider it hostile to their values. In recent years, the country’s most explosive political and cultural conflicts – above Covid’s policy, racial inequality, gender identity, immigration, Gaza – have played intensity in campus squares, school meetings and classrooms.
Student disorders were a matter of cartoon for Mr. Trump. In 2017, he proposed to recall funding from the University of California, Berkeley, after the university cancels the appearance from the professional right facade Milo Yiannopoulos.
Today, Mr Trump – who stated in his recent direction in Congress that he “brought back freedom of speech” – continues to compete with the academic community, but this time uses the power of the Presidency.
After his administration announced that he canceled $ 400 million in funding for the University of Columbia, accusing him of failing to protect students and members of the school from “anti -Semitic violence and harassment”, legal scholars called for the movement.
“The government never has such leverage against a higher education institution,” said Lee C. Bollinger, a former president of the University of Columbia.
Some conservatives have stated that this type of action is delayed and amazing.
“When you get federal funds, you agree to comply with all kinds of rules,” said Ilya Shapiro, Director of Constitutional Studies at the Manhattan Conservative Institute. Universities agree, for example, to comply with certain accounting standards and policies against discrimination.
These rules do not always apply consistently, Mr Shapiro said. Not even Trump’s administration “is exactly legally accurate” in many of what it has done, he added.
“But part of this Vibe shift that has elected Trump wants the law and order in many ways,” Mr Shapiro said. “And that includes in campuses.”
The arrest earlier this month of Mahmoud Khalil, a green card holder born in Syria and studied in Columbia, was one of the most aggressive moves by Trump’s administration in an attempt to punish pre-Palestinian protesters. Mr Khalil has served as a representative of a student group that embraces the hard anti-Israeli rhetoric and says he supports the liberation for the Palestinians “by any necessary means, including armed resistance”.
Announcing the arrest, the Ministry of the Internal Security has accused Mr Khalil of aligning with Hamas, a defined terrorist organization. Expressing support for Such reasons, however, are not a crime and the Supreme Court has stated that all hate speech must be protected from the first amendment, including the deaths of the soldiers in their funerals and, in some cases, cross -burning burns.
“It cannot be a crime – or even an urban crime – just keeping and expressing the deterioration,” said Ann Coulter, the conservative fire, whose college speeches were the goals of the protesters and are sometimes threatened with violence.
Mrs Coulter, a cruel immigration-corner who acknowledged that he had rarely heard of an expulsion he did not support, said the president would set a terrible precedent by making a protected speech-so much aggressive A legal holder of a green card such as Mr. Khalil.
However, Eugene Volokh, a senior associate at the Stanover Hoover institution, said the law is not always clear when the non -Citizens speech is in question. And he said that Mr Trump’s efforts to punish non -politicians seemed consistent in many ways with powers that Congress had already given to the presidents.
Does this mean that Mr Khalil can be deported for protest, which is a constitutionally protected act? “The only honest answer,” Mr Volokh said, “is that we don’t know.”
Conservatives have recently tried the field of first amendment in other ways. Ed Martin, the US intermediate lawyer for the Columbia region, told the dean of the University of Georgetown that he had begun a “research” in teaching and promoting the diversity, justice and integration of the school.
In response, the school’s dean, William Treanor, wrote in a letter that the first amendment guarantees Georgetown, a private Catholic institution, “its abilities to determine, for academic reasons that they can teach, what to teach and how to teach it.”
“This is a principle of constitutional law,” Mr Treanor continued, “he recognized not only by the courts, but by the administration you serve.”
