Ted Cruz schools education establishment on the 1st Amendment

Ted Cruz:

The headlines from colleges across America tell the story: universities disinviting lecturers, student activists shouting down speakers, and professors being harassed both inside and outside their classrooms. A loud minority targets individuals for expressing viewpoints it finds unacceptable.

As the animosity toward free speech on college campuses grows, it threatens to undermine not only the First Amendment but also the fundamental principles of higher education. We must not allow that to happen at our colleges and universities here in Texas.

In December, San Antonio area higher education leaders and Mayor Ron Nirenberg published a letter in the Express-News titled “Hate disguised as free speech.” They wrote, among other proposed diktats, that “hate speech has no place at our colleges and universities” and that “appropriate messages, such as banners and flyers that are meant to provoke, spread hate or create animosity and hostility, are not welcome or accepted.”

As a policy matter, that is a sadly misguided view for any college to take. But it is even more shocking to see that the signatories included presidents from San Antonio’s public colleges and universities, including the University of Texas at San Antonio and Texas A&M-San Antonio. On those public campuses, a ban on disfavored speech isn’t only bad for higher education — it’s unconstitutional.

The Supreme Court has consistently rejected the idea that the First Amendment protects only opinions that the government likes. Just last year, the court reaffirmed that there is no hate-speech exception in Matal vs. Tam: “Speech that demeans on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, age, disability, or any other similar ground is hateful; but the proudest boast of our free speech jurisprudence is that we protect the freedom to express ‘the thought that we hate.’”

These college leaders would be wise to follow that principle. Regardless of whether some speech is offensive or obnoxious — and there is nothing uglier than racist, hateful speech — shutting down every speaker that an administrator finds potentially disagreeable violates the Constitution. In a free society, the best cure for bigoted speech is more speech, not forced silence.

Moreover, the term “hate speech” is an elastic term that gives university administrators broad discretion to censor speech they don’t like. A Christian pastor preaching biblical teachings on marriage is not “hate speech,” even if it offends the political sensibilities of university professors. Likewise, a Marxist professor espousing the virtues of communism — a truly hateful ideology whose proponents have murdered and tortured millions (including my own family) — shouldn’t be muzzled either.
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 Cruz is right on the law and the dangers posed by the censorship.  There have been several examples of conservative speakers who have been shouted down or not even allowed to speak because the liberal fascists on campus do not want anyone to hear voices that disagree with their agenda.  I find it striking that supposedly educated people in the education business do not comprehend how wrong their censorship is.