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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.
The shooting at Brown is deeply tragic. But it is not the time for mere thoughts and prayers. It hasn’t been for decades. As another Ivy League university, this moment calls for Princeton to stand in solidarity with the victims of the Brown shooting by pushing for significant reform to fight violence. University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 is uniquely equipped as the past chair and active board member of the Association of American Universities (AAU) — an organization with a precedent of condemning gun violence — to lobby for gun reform policies on the national and state level.
A discussion about Fizz and the role of social media in our discourse took place at Princeton University on December 3rd, 2025, hosted by the Princeton Open Campus Coalition (POCC) and funded by Princetonians for Free Speech (PFS), While the discussion has been lauded as an example of what can come about through open and civil exchange of ideas, several questions remain worth considering. What is the place of anonymous speech in our society? Should someone take responsibility for the things they say? Or has our public discourse been hollowed out by social media to the point where online commentary should be considered performative?
Tal Fortgang ‘17
When Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber spoke at Harvard on November 5, 2025, he expressed what to his detractors may have sounded like an epiphany. “There’s a genuine civic crisis in America,” he said, noting how polarization and social-media amplification have made civil discourse uniquely difficult. Amid that crisis, he concluded, colleges must retain “clear time, place, and manner rules” for protest, and when protesters violate those rules, the university must refuse to negotiate. As he warned: “If you cede ground to those who break the rules … you encourage more rule-breaking, and you betray the students and scholars who depend on this university to function.”
