The Real Threat to Free Speech Is Coming From the Right | Opinion

July 27, 2023 1 min read

Jonathan Feingold, Angela Harris & Athena Mutua
Newsweek

Excerpt: Last March, Stanford Law students protested when a Trump-appointed judge spoke on campus. An administrator intervened, defending her students' and the judge's right to speak. Her actions nonetheless triggered a rightwing campaign demanding her ouster, and last week, Stanford announced the administrator will not return. To borrow from modern parlance, she was "cancelled."

The story is one of many examples, a reoccurring dynamic in which students speak, then administrators respond (or don't), followed by pundits decrying "cancel culture" and a "free speech crisis." These pundits are in fact right, though not in the way they think. Free speech is under attack. But the students aren't to blame.

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