So it looks like the left has embraced the idea of using #TakeAKnee to show its opposition to President Donald Trump and his administration without taking into account the perception it gives.
Georgetown Law School faculty and students decided to protest a free speech event by Attorney General Jeff Sessions by taking a knee. Yes, Sessions’s speech was about how free speech has eroded on campuses and that the Department of Justice plans to provide protections for speakers.
Thirty law professors at the university released a statement that decried the hypocrisy of Sessions holding a free speech since Trump has railed against the NFL and NFL players who choose to kneel during the national anthem. Students also joined the law professors. From The Washington Examiner:
Referring to Sessions as a “fascist,” one student group called the Georgetown Young Democratic Socialists of America revealed its plans on Facebook to “ask disruptive questions during Q and A and try and shut him down.” Protests will likely be restricted to outside the venue as the guest list appears to be invite-only, contained to students who previously signed up to attend the Center’s events and student’s in the moderating professor’s classes.A Georgetown attendee told the Washington Post that some students “find it extraordinarily hypocritical that AG Sessions would lecture future attorneys about the importance of free speech on campus while actively excluding the wider student body.”
So yeah, they’re ticked because the speech supposedly happened in front of a pre-selected audience. But they admit that they would do nothing but shut him down:
I could cite the numerous times protesters have caused disruptions at colleges, but I won’t because then I won’t have any room left in this blog. Considering previous actions it’s not a shock that Sessions and the university took this route.
But yes, let’s show how much we hate him by kneeling:
Someone needs to remind these people what this looks like:
In other words….
Ironically, Sessions’s speech was about the Department of Justice offering more protections for free speech on campuses. From CBS News:
“The university is about the search for truth,” Sessions said Tuesday. “Not the imposition of truth by a government censor.”In his prepared remarks, the attorney general said, “Freedom of thought and speech on the American campus are under attack.””The American university was once the center of academic freedom—a place of robust debate, a forum for the competition of ideas,” the prepared remarks said. “But it is transforming into an echo chamber of political correctness and homogenous thought, a shelter for fragile egos.”In his prepared speech, Sessions called for university officials and faculty members to “defend free expression boldly and unequivocally.” He said that a “national recommitment to free speech on campus is long overdue,” as is action to protect First Amendment rights.
Sessions brought up a survey from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education of 450 colleges and universities which showed him that at least 40% of them “maintain speech codes that substantially infringe on constitutionally protected speech.” He continued:
“But who decides what is offensive and what is acceptable?” Sessions said. “The university is about the search for truth, not the imposition of truth by a government censor. Speech and civility codes violate what the late Justice Antonin Scalia rightly called ‘the first axiom of the First Amendment,’ which is that, as a general rule, the state has no power to ban speech on the basis of its content.”
Sessions did not offer any details on the DOJ’s plans or how it will enforce free speech on college campuses, but said a brief will come out this week.
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