Coronavirus Crisis Could Present New Challenges for Free Speech on Campus
“Are they going to say, well, you can’t have a conservative speaker in this venue because we’re worried about how many people will show up, and we don’t know if we can social-distance them?”
This is bad news because free speech on campus was already an ongoing issue before the pandemic.
The College Fix reports:
Campus officials may use COVID-19 as cover for restricting free speech, activists say
Colleges might use the coronavirus pandemic to excuse censorship against conservatives when students return to college campuses in the fall, citing disease prevention guidelines, free speech activists said Tuesday.
“We’re going to have a whole new realm of administrative restrictions and regulations that we’re going to have to contend with,” Spencer Brown, spokesperson for the Young America’s Foundation, said on an online discussion panel organized by the Alliance Defending Freedom.
University administrators often cited security concerns regarding protests when attempting to restrict a campus lecture by a speaker such as Ben Shapiro, Brown said. But now, administrators can just cite warnings from public health officials.
“Are they going to say, well, you can’t have a conservative speaker in this venue because we’re worried about how many people will show up, and we don’t know if we can social-distance them?” he said. “How are we going to be able to say this is a reasonable restriction or this is a viewpoint-based discriminatory action?”
Colleges had been all too eager to restrict campus free speech even before the coronavirus outbreak, often hiding behind policies and codes to justify restricting the speech of students, said Young Americans for Liberty President Cliff Maloney.
He predicted that universities “will use any type of excuse to push back, whether it’s to coddle, or whether it’s because of a partisan opinion.” If the campus is “a level playing field, and all ideas can be heard, I actually think the free market of ideas leads people to our side, to believing the government is not the answer to all of our problems,” Maloney added.
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Comments
Really? This sounds like the sort of pre-excuse-making the left pulls. Man up and go out and do your thing. If there’s an actual discrepancy in treatment, then hammer them.
Forewarned is forearmed. If they’re expecting officials to use any and all excuses to block them then when they are blocked they can take steps. If they don’t expect to be blocked then they’ll have to investigate before realising it’s discrimination. Plus an excuse like difficulties social distancing folk can be easily overcome with an offer to move or obstruct chairs etc. If that doesn’t work, and the same pretext hasn’t been used to prevent Far Left speakers, then clearly it’s discrimination not a genuine reason.
Does this extend to the “safe space” rooms the wussies will crowd to get away from the conservative group?
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