Does Free Speech Offend You? | 5 Minute Video — Transcript

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1. 0:00Freedom of speech. The ability to express yourself. It's a cherished idea -- as well it should be.
2. 0:07Most of us who live in liberal Western democracies think of it as a basic human right.
3. 0:13People have fought and died for it. But now we may be in danger of losing it.
4. 0:18The threat is not coming from without -- from external enemies -- but from within. A generation
5. 0:25is being raised not to believe in freedom OF speech, but rather that they should have freedom FROM speech
6. 0:34-- from speech they dislike. This is a threat to both pluralism and democracy itself.
7. 0:40We see this in Europe where "sensitivity-based" censorship attempts to ban anything deemed
8. 0:45hateful or even just hurtful, and to ban criticism of religion, especially Islam.
9. 0:52But the United States, despite its strong Constitutional protections in the Bill of Rights
10. 0:56is far from immune from the rising trend of suppression of speech, or what is
11. 1:01sometimes called political correctness. This is especially true at America's colleges and
12. 1:07universities, the place where our future leaders are educated and where you'd expect speech
13. 1:12to be the most free.
14. 1:14Highly restrictive speech codes are now the norm on campuses, not the exception.
15. 1:20According to a study by my organization, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education -- FIRE --
16. 1:2754% of public universities and 59% of private universities impose politically correct speech
17. 1:34codes on their students. And thanks to recent Department of Education guidelines
18. 1:39100% of colleges may adopt speech codes in the coming years. How bad is it?
19. 1:45At a public campus in California on Constitution Day in 2013, a student who also happens to
20. 1:52be a decorated military veteran was told he could not hand out copies of the Constitution
21. 1:59to his fellow students. The objection from the university was not ideological;
22. 2:05it was out of control bureaucracy imposing limits on speech.
23. 2:10That same day another college student in that same state was told he could not protest NSA
24. 2:16surveillance outside of a tiny "free speech zone," an area that comprised only 1.37% of the campus.
25. 2:25Months later, college students in Hawaii were told both they could not hand out the constitution
26. 2:30to their fellow students and that they could not protest NSA policies outside the school's
27. 2:35free speech zone! FIRE took these colleges to court, but the that fact we had to shows
28. 2:41you how bad it has become.
29. 2:43Recently, students and sympathetic faculty have joined forces to exclude campus speakers
30. 2:48whose opinions they dislike. At FIRE we call this "disinvitation season"
31. 2:53although the season lasts all year round.
32. 2:56Since 2009 there has been a major uptick in the push by students and faculty to get speakers
33. 3:02they dislike disinvited. These speakers have included former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice;
34. 3:08the Somali-born feminist and critic of Islam, Ayaan Hirsi Ali; and the director
35. 3:14of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde. And that's only the obvious part
36. 3:20of the disinvitation problem. Few conservative speakers are invited to speak at colleges
37. 3:24lest they have to be "disinivited" later.
38. 3:28The newest threat to speech comes from so-called "trigger warnings" -- alerts that warn students
39. 3:33that they are about to read or hear something that "triggers" a negative emotional response.
40. 3:39A 2014 NY Times article cited the example of a Rutgers student requesting "trigger warnings"
41. 3:45for the classic American novel The Great Gatsby because it "possesses a variety of scenes
42. 3:52that reference... abusive, misogynistic violence."
43. 3:56Recently, Oberlin College attempted to institute a policy that heavily encouraged the faculty
44. 4:02to avoid difficult topics and to employ trigger warnings as a means of "making classrooms safer."
45. 4:10"Safety" has been watered down to essentially mean the "right to always feel comfortable."
46. 4:16New demands for trigger warnings are popping up on campuses across the country.
47. 4:22Add in popular academic theories that encourage students to scrutinize speech for "micro aggressions
48. 4:28-- any statement that might be construed as racially insensitive, classist, sexist,
49. 4:34or otherwise un-PC -- and it's clear that campuses are teaching students to police what they say.
50. 4:42This is precisely the opposite of what is needed. Our society needs candor and it needs
51. 4:48freedom of speech, not freedom from speech.
52. 4:52Intellectual comfort is not a right. Nor should it ever be. Not if we want freedom of speech
53. 4:59-- let's just call it freedom -- to survive.
54. 5:03I'm Greg Lukianoff, President of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education for Prager University.