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Free Speech Tag

Tuesday morning Facebook users found a weird new option -- the ability to mark posts as "hate speech." My entire timeline was full of posts skewering the latest Facebook feature. Then, without warning, the report-everything-you-don't-like-without-recognizing-the-subjectivity-of-your-actions option vanished.

Brian Leiter's Law School Reports website, run by U. Chicago law professor Brian Leiter, isn't a high traffic site, but it does have a following among people interested in the law professor profession. So it is not surprising that some Legal Insurrection readers also read Leiter's website. Several of those readers contacted me today about a guest column by USC Professor of Law and Accounting Michael Simkovic about me and other conservative law professors. I don't know who Simkovic is and never heard of him before.

The National Lawyers Guild is a leftist group with chapters at numerous law schools. The City University of New York (CUNY) Law School Chapter of NLG led the protests against and disruption of the lecture by Prof. Josh Blackman, as we documented in “F*ck the law” – CUNY Law students attempt shout-down of conservative law prof.

A Fresno State professor named Randa Jarrar commented on Twitter following the death of former first lady Barbara Bush, "Barbara Bush was a generous and smart and amazing racist who, along with her husband, raised a war criminal. [expletive] outta here with your nice words."

Disruptions of conservative speakers, even at law schools, has become a common tactic. We've documented dozens of such incidents. The tactic, even when it doesn't prevent the speech completely, is not merely the expression of disagreement. It's an infringement of the speaker's right to speak, and the audience's right to hear that speech.

Ever since  YouTube without any warning took down Legal Insurrection's YouTube account in January 2017, I've been well aware of the power liberal-leaning high tech oligopolies have over our ability to communicate with each other. The account was restored after a fairly massive news coverage of the takedown. That wake up call has come into further focus in the past year, after repeated instances of non-liberal voices being stifled and shut down in a variety of social media locations.