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Marisa Warman Hirschfield ‘27
I worry that many progressives are abandoning free speech as a core value of our movement, endorsing it only when politically advantageous. “We believe in a diverse set of thoughts,” a University of Wisconsin student told the Associated Press earlier this year. “But when your thought is predicated on the subjugation of me or my people, or to a generalized people, then we have problems.” FIRE president Greg Lukianoff told the New York Times that in the current era, libertarians and conservatives are more often the champions of free speech.
There is undoubtedly tension between free speech and progressive causes. Consider, for instance, how permitting racist speech might hinder our fight for racial justice, or how reposting sexist jokes about Kamala Harris might empower opponents of gender equality. There are real costs to protecting all speech, but, importantly, there are numerous benefits too. Free speech is a double-edged sword – it hurts as well as helps us – and progressives must fully embrace it if we are to reap its rewards.
Legal protections that span political causes, no matter the cause, make us all safer and more free. Take one of the ACLU’s most controversial and consequential cases: Brandenburg v. Ohio.In 1969, Ku Klux Klan leader Clarence Brandenburg told a rally in Ohio that he desired “revengeance” against Jews, Black people, and the federal government. After he was convicted of violating the state’s Criminal Syndicalism statute, the ACLU represented him before the Supreme Court and successfully reversed his conviction. The per curiammajority opinion articulated new legal language that is now essential for discerning what speech is constitutionally protected: seditious speech can be censored or punished only if it is likely and intended to incite “imminent lawless action.”
Decades later, the Brandenburgprecedent protects a wide range of beliefs. In 2021, the ACLU invoked Brandenburgto advocate on behalf of a Black Lives Matter protester. How remarkable that case law used to protect the repugnant speech of a white supremacist was later adopted to defend an activist protesting police violence.
For precisely the Brandenburgreason, ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero ‘87 insists that it’s critical to protect free speech regardless of the speaker. “When we defend clients with positions with which we disagree, or even abhor, it’s because we are defending values crucial to the work of civil rights advocates in the past and present.”
Indeed, most major milestones in the progressive movement were only possible because dissidents could express unpopular viewpoints without fear of retribution. Free speech was the engine that made abolition, women’s suffrage, and civil rights advocacy feasible. The First Amendment allowed for radicalism, for reimaginings of our country, and for movers and shakers to realize their visions.
Frederick Douglass was a major proponent of free speech. In 1860, he delivered a lecture in Boston and declared: “Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one’s thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down. They know its power. Thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers, founded in injustice and wrong, are sure to tremble.”
Alice Paul, the founder of the National Woman’s Party, echoed similar sentiments in her fight for the franchise. Along with thousands of other suffragists, she picketed outside the White House. When she was arrested, she pleaded to be granted political prisoner status.
Many of the Supreme Court decisions born of the Civil Rights era, Brandenburgincluded, are the basis of free speech protections today.
Given this history, progressives should be stronger advocates for First Amendment rights than anyone; they made progress possible. We should speak up not only when our own expression is threatened, but when conservative speech is silenced.
Let us reclaim free speech as a progressive principle. Let us partner with our partisan opponents to uphold the value that, for centuries, has propelled our causes. Take it from Frederick Douglass: principalities and powers are sure to tremble.
Marisa Hirschfield ’27, a PFS Writing Fellow, is the Education and Social Action Chair for the Center for Jewish Life, an editor for the Nassau Weekly and a writer for the Triangle Club.
By Edward L. Yingling, Cofounder of Princetonians for Free Speech
INTRODUCTION:
It is now widely understood that for years many of our country’s colleges and universities have been losing their way; they are no longer bastions of the core values of free speech, open discourse, and academic freedom, nor are they focused on promoting learning and the advancement of knowledge. Instead, they have increasingly become focused on a specific agenda and advancing that agenda, in the process often repressing these core values.
Cynthia Torres
Daily Princetonian
Excerpt: The 13 University affiliates arrested at Clio Hall during pro-Palestine protests last spring are scheduled to go to trial starting on April 14, almost one year after the Clio Hall sit-in. The latest development at a hearing on Tuesday followed months of court proceedings and came after the collapse of yet another plea deal that would have allowed 12 of the arrested protesters to walk away with community service while singling out the other.
All the arrestees are charged with defiant criminal trespassing, a petty offense in the state of New Jersey. The defense attorney for those arrested in the spring, Aymen Aboushi, claimed that a change to a new agreement with the municipal prosecutor, Christopher Koutsouris, had been made in the days before the 14th.
By Marisa Hirschfield ‘27
Last year, for a comedy show on campus, I wrote a sketch about the fictional Society to Lessen Unamerican Teaching (note the acronym), a group that wants to rewrite history textbooks in Florida. In the skit, the characters pitch ridiculous falsehoods about American history (e.g., Hillary Clinton wrote the Communist Manifesto and also brought smallpox to the New World). My intention was to satirize classroom censorship of historical injustice and expose the absurdity of legislation like the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which shapes curricula in a politically-pointed way.
