Hate Speech : The Value Of Free Speech

As American universities and colleges grow their demographics, diversity and ideas there is a continued and an accelerated debate regarding freedom of speech within these higher education institutions. College campuses are struggling to simultaneously provide a learning environment that is inclusive to traditionally unrepresented students while also providing an environment that allows for ideas to be challenged and debated no matter how offensive or controversial.

Many colleges have enacted speech codes in which students are governed in what they say so that they don’t offend their peers. However, according to an expert by Lukianoff and Haidt, “ It is creating a culture in which everyone must think twice before speaking...Don't teach students what to think; teach them how to think.” Students must learn to stand up for themselves. Nevertheless college campuses are a place for learning, students should be able to hear criticism, take criticism and learn how to deal with it in a peaceful way. In workplaces, in society and in rooms where hate speech is being used, students should be able to stand by what they believe in and fight for their claim with confidence. Lukianoff and Haidt point out that “Rather than trying to protect students from words and ideas that they will inevitably encounter, colleges should do all they can to equip students to thrive in a world full of words and ideas that they cannot control.” Again, offenses will be thrown out there all around you, you just have to learn how to deal with it. But where do you draw the line and say enough is

Laws banishing hate speech will evolve into laws banishing non-hate speech. According to debate.org, “Banning hate speech will be abused and lead to bans against non-hate speech.” Some people that are sympathetic with interdicting hate speech use the argument that countries like Canada and France have laws against hate speech, yet they are still relatively free and give their citizens rights similar to the rights that the United States grants its citizens. Nonetheless the people that use the argument should keep in mind that some other countries that ban hate speech also ban books advocating alternative medicine. They also ban citizens from slandering the king or president (debate.org). The article goes into further details of how banning hate speech could eventually lead to banning non-hate speech. “There is no “hate” clause exception in the Constitution, so however you rule that it’s okay to ban hate speech, it will open the door to banning other speech as well.” The United States Constitution has no section dedicated to excluding hate speech from the First Amendment. If the United States government decides to take away citizens’ right to free speech including hate speech, then that could initiate the commencement of the government neglecting other human rights. Some people may think that it is unfair for them to have to tolerate hate-mongering and insensitive speech, but it is illogical to try to tell people what they can and cannot say. While it would be great to have laws preventing ignorant, homophobic, racist protestors that routinely and happily shout phrases like, “Kill all fags,” or “Hang in there, Obama,” citizens cannot trust the government to ban hate speech without eventually categorizing non-hate speech as hate speech and banning that too. Ultimately, banning hate speech could potentially lead to censorship and a totalitarian government system.

“Free Inquiry? Not on Campus” by John Leo is an important essay that shows exactly how important it is to protect people's political views and opinions. In Leo's essay, he elaborates how times have changed and how we live in more of a liberal left-wing society and because of this everyone has to be more politically correct. Leo talks about the social change universities and colleges on how they used to promote free speech, but now are more like the speech police telling us what's opinions you should have on any given subject and any other opinion is considered wrong. Leo gives an example of this and writes “in October 2007, for instance, a student mob stormed a Columbia University stage, shutting down speeches by two members of the Minutemen, an anti-illegal immigration group.The students shouted they have no right to

“Over the years, courts have ruled that college officials may set up reasonable rules to regulate the ‘time, place and manner” that the free speech can occur, as long as the rules are “content neutral,’ meaning they apply equally to all sides of issues” (Fisher, 2008). Speech codes and free speech zones on campus do exist for many reasons: many of the causes or topics that students or others looking to interact with students take up are controversial and can frequently take on less of an academic or social justice overtone and more of a hateful one. Hate speech is the greatest threat to freedom of speech on college campuses, and the limitations colleges and universities put on student’s verbal freedoms are largely in place as efforts to avoid it. Religion, in particular, is a hot topic on campuses and it has an unfortunate tendency to become more aggressive and argumentative than universities would like. However, under the First Amendment, individuals do have a right to speech that the listener disagrees with and to speech that is offensive and hateful. It’s always easier to defend someone’s right to say something with which you agree. But in a free society, you also have a duty to defend speech to which you may strongly object.

Hate speech is a term of art in legal and political theory that is used to refer to verbal conduct – and other symbolic, communicative action –which willfully attacks a person or group based on attributes such as race, religion, ethnic origin, sexual orientation, disability, or gender. Hate speech thus includes things like identity-prejudicial abuse and harassment, certain uses of slurs and epithets, some extremist political and religious speech. For example, statements to the effect that all Muslims are terrorists, or that gay people are second -class human beings, and certain displays of hate symbols like swastikas or burning crosses are part of it. Those such activities are classified as hate speech if, and insofar as, they convey the idea that belonging to a particular social group warrants someone’s being held in or treated with contempt. However, Freedom of speech is the most important and basic right that a human in every country deserves. Freedom of speech and hate speech are two opposite things. Therefore, the government needs to draw a line between hate speech and freedom of speech to protect a citizen. Hate speech should be banned and extreme speech regulated because it is one of the reasons for many negative consequences in human lives

Harvey A. Silvergate stated in his article, “Muzziling Free Speech”, that “Our entire Country is a free speech zone, and that our campuses of higher education, of all places, cannot be an exception.” Free speech, in the form of hate speech, should be not regulated on American college campuses. Should hate speech be discouraged? Of course! However, developing policies that limit hate speech runs the risk of limiting an individual’s ability to exercise free speech. The University of California System’s response to banning hate speech, speech codes in universities, law cases Doe v. University of Michigan and Sigma Chi Fraternity v George Mason University, and the view points of law professor Greg Margarian, proves why we should protect hate speech, even though it may seem wrong.

Freedom of speech, the most quoted right of the United States Constitution but, what does this freedom really mean? People have struggled over this issue time and time again, arguing a whole array of things from total censorship to none at all. According to the First Amendment, "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech" (First Amendment). Many argue that this gives U.S. citizens the right to say whatever they want, without exception. However, many disagree with this statement (maybe elaborate on this sentence). According to the Supreme Court there are a few exceptions to this freedom. Slander, defamation, fighting words and obscenity are all not protected under the First Amendment. The main issue derived from this is whether or not the government should be able to censor hate speech or if that is a violation of the Constitution. One one hand, it is argued that it should be allowed in order to protect minorities and individuals from being slandered and targeted. On the other hand, it is said that the government should not have that authority, as such laws will undoubtedly lead to censorship in a way that truly does limit free speech. These issues have been discussed and argued over for years, with the focus always returning to the text of the First Amendment. The First Amendment provides valuable guidance to the country and is viable on determining laws and court cases concerning the issue of hate speech in present day America. Although, it has proven

Jeremy Waldron argues in favor of hate speech restrictions in his book “The Harm in Hate Speech”. He presents the central argument that vulnerable minorities are in need of hate speech regulation to protect them from harm. Another argument he presents is that such regulation must be a content-based regulation, as opposed to a time, place, and manner restriction that is usually employed to prevent certain kinds of speech. A final argument he uses is that speech is the harmful action, rather than speech simply causing harmful actions. I do not find his arguments to be compelling enough reasons to support restricting free speech with hate speech laws.

Just a couple of months ago white supremacists rallied in Charlottesville to protest the tearing down of the statue of Robert E Lee. The racism and hate they spread through their march is unquestionably disgusting and serves no purpose in our society today. This event has led to social media sites such as Twitter to crack down even harder in a plight they started over a year ago to silence hateful speech. While there are some occasional dissenters, the general population agrees with the opinion that this speech is awful in every sense. With that being said, censoring their right to free speech is a bit too rash. We can all agree that free speech is one of the most important rights we have, and with President Trump throwing around the term “fake news” at major news organizations, it is more important than ever to protect that freedom. The article “The case for restricting hate speech” by Laura Beth Nielsen of the Los Angeles Times gives an argument for why hate speech should be censored. While she provides valid points, with the absence of factual statistics, none of them are strong enough to support her thesis that hate speech should be banned. I believe that in almost every instance, hate speech should remain protected just as much as our right to free speech.

The Federal Government should restrict hate speech on all college campuses. This is due to a variety of reasons. Under the first point of analysis, one can observe that hate speech codes have a tendency to foster a more tolerant environment by teaching a difference between right and wrong (Sommers 1). Often times, college students do not realize the impact that their words may have on others (2). The problem is rarely identified in primary and secondary schools, and it worsens as the students approach the college level (1).

The First Amendment declares free speech to all types of speech by all of its people. The issue arises in a college setting where “hate speech” does not fall under free speech and is therefore enforced with speech codes. The biggest controversy is determining what is considered hate speech and what is not. So when did it become the governments job to determine a student’s acceptance or disapproval of another individual(s) train of thought? Implying speech codes on a college campus only poses a threat to ones own freedom of expression and thought. Free speech in the form of hate speech should not be regulated on a college campus because it is often times understood differently by others, it also challenges our freedom of assertion and although

Free Speech on Campus incorporates arguments in favor of promoting broad speech protections on campus as well as arguments in favor of restricting free speech to protect the learning experience of students. Ultimately, the authors of the book take the side of supporting broad speech protections on campus in that as long as professional character is maintained, all ideas and views, protected by the 1st amendment, should be able to be expressed on college campuses, no matter how offensive or how uncomfortable they make people feel. While those in favor of restricting speech argue that students should be protected from hateful, discriminatory, or intolerant speech as a means of protecting the educational setting, the authors maintain that the

Social media can connect millions of people together, in any instant location. However, many of these platforms, like Facebook and Twitter, have blasphemous users who fire up heated debates, following up with explicit language. Such opinions often times involve incitement and defamation targeted against the opposing party. However, because the First Amendment protects the freedom of speech, the U.S. Government has not strictly reprimanded the misuse of the amendment. Some citizens view hate speech as a form of speech that attacks and offends an individual or group based on their race, religion, sexual orientation, disability, or ethnic origin while others see it as a part of the First Amendment, and having it appealed, will precede with negative criticisms. There are others who are not concerned of the topic at hand completely which identifies how impactful this problem is. It has been apparent more so on social media, where people demonstrate their right to freedom of speech because they are more likely to voice their opinions individually when others are not present. The debate still continues to decide if the First Amendment should be revised due to hate speech on social media since it has promoted indirect violence, incivility amongst the online communities and has lowered ethical codes in the American society.

The Founding Fathers struggled to create a free and equal society, because the colonies had been under the British rule, which oppressed them and gave them no religious freedoms and civil liberties. The colonies were kind of scared that this would happen all over again within this new government. After the Constitution was written in 1787, the new country was directly divided into two political parties, the federalists and the anti-federalists, over the ratification. At that time most of the States believed that the Constitution by itself was enough but others felt that they needed more guarantees. After much debates, the two sides found a middle ground when the Bill of Rights was included into the Constitution in 1791 but it only guaranteed