Free speech is a fundamental right. Free speech allows people to disagree with and challenge popular or unpopular ideologies through discourses, which help individuals to learn. For instance, Keoni Scott-Reid from Largo High School at Mary Land, enhanced his analytical skills and argumentative development skills, and improved his GPA ever since he joined his school’s debate program; furthermore, Keoni’s topic comprehension, logical arguments, and evidential deductions of controversial debate topics were praised by the judge, and he won the Urban Debate League tournament in Washington, D.C. (Boser). Evidently, Keoni gained profound knowledge and improved his academic life through the debates of controversial topics by gaining subject comprehension, while enhancing his critical thinking and argumentative development skills. Thus, free speech is fundamentally beneficial for people, especially high school and college students. However, hate speech accompanies free speech. According to Merriam-Webster, hate speech is “intended to insult or offend a person because of some traits (i.e., race, religion, sexual orientation, national origin, or disability)." Hence, to protect their diverse students, campus officials have been placing restrictions on free speech to suppress hate speech. Still, even though it seems rational to limit free speech on college campuses, it would unintentionally do more harm than having unrestricted free speech.

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It seems rational for campus officials to prohibit free speech because it would suppress hate speech and psychologically protect their diverse students; however, it is unconstitutional and illegal for such prohibitions to happen. According to Esmaili from the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School, the First Amendment protects the people’s freedom of expression, which essentially is the freedom of speech, from the government and public universities. Therefore, any attempts to place limitations on free speech or suppress hate speech by public universities and the government is unconstitutional; since, hate speech is a part of free speech, and both are constitutionally protected. Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of U.C. Berkeley School of Law, stated in an interview with Natalie Shutler from The New York Times that “it is important to recognize that a public university has no choice but to allow speakers on campus even if their message is regarded as hateful or racist. If the campus tried to exclude such a speaker, it would get sued and the speaker would win and likely would be made a martyr for the First Amendment in the process.” Chemerinsky’s expert opinion is clear: nothing will be gained from excluding hate speech on public campuses, an expensive lawsuit would be lost, and the schools would get demoralized in the process. Thus, it is rational for public universities to act constitutionally and have unrestricted free speech on their campuses. Moreover, it would be irrational for private universities to place limitations on free speech and suppress hate speech to protect their students, even though the First Amendment argument does not apply to them; since, it would interfere with their students’ expensive education.

 

Fundamentally, students attend colleges and universities to get educated by accumulating knowledge; still, placing limitations on free speech and having hate speech codes would interfere with that knowledge. To reiterate Merriam-Webster’s legal definition, hate speech is designed to offend or intimidate one’s trait, like sexual orientation or religion. However, revolutionary discoveries that benefit education can be “offensive” to the status quo, and people could prohibit them because they are associated with hate speech. In the late 1980s, the University of Michigan deliberately adopted a hate speech code that banned speeches that “demeans or stigmatizes anyone based on race or gender;” however, a sociobiology student challenged the university’s law by stating: “I want to study whether there are inherent differences between women and men. What if my conclusions are deemed stigmatizing on the basis of gender?” (qtd. in Chemerinsky). Consequently, the federal court ruled the university’s law unconstitutional (qtd. in Chemerinsky). Hypothetically, if the sociobiology student actually discovered that women and men are inherently different and she tried to publish her work, but then her study would be labeled as hate speech and banned because it basically insulted people’s sexual orientations. Logically, this prohibition would stifle an important controversial discourse, which can lead to the discovery of new educational knowledge that students need to enhance their expensive education. Thus, prohibiting hate speech or limiting free speech could interfere with the college students’ expensive education, since it limits new learning opportunities and knowledge. To be fair, the aforementioned dissent from the sociobiology student was just a hypothetical situation. However, this “hypothetical situation” actually happened around the 16th century, where prohibiting hate speech has historically stifled with a profound fact about our universe.

 

Before the Copernicus Revolution around the sixteenth century, we incorrectly believed about our place in the universe. For 1500 years, we heavily relied on Ptolemy’s geocentric model, where the Earth is stationary at the universe’s center and everything revolves around it (Laura, et al. 27). Apparently, Ptolemy’s model emphasized the humanity’s importance in the infinite universe, since we are at its center, which enhanced the credibility of philosophical and religious beliefs promoted by the powerful Roman Catholic Church back then. However, Copernicus developed mathematical models in his book that supported the heliocentric theory, where planets orbit the Sun, and this theory basically trivialized our role in the universe. Undoubtedly, the church banned his book because it philosophically contradicted the popular geocentric model, and offended the ideologies promoted by them back then. Still, his book started the Copernicus Revolution (Laura, et al. 65). Years later, Galileo Galilei provided telescopic observations and experiments that scientifically supported the Copernican Heliocentric theory and the Copernicus Revolution. Obviously, the church was conflicted with Galilei due to his proof and support of the heliocentric model; moreover, through many disputes with the church, Galilei was put on trial for heresy and sentenced for house arrest. Additionally, Galilei had to “publicly recant his belief in the Copernican Heliocentric to escape a harsher sentence.” Still, he continued his studies and experiments which paved the ground work for Newton’s profound laws of motion (Laura, et al. 76). Renowned scientists like Tycho Brahe, Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler, and Sir Isaac Newton collaborated on the heliocentric theory, and it has become one of humanity best collaborations (Laura, et al. 65). However, if the Copernicus Revolution and Galilei’s bravery did not happen, then we would have been completely wrong about the most basic facts about our existence in the universe.

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Ultimately, the Copernicus Revolution in the 16th century reminds us about the aforementioned notion that revolutionary discoveries can sometimes be “offensive” to the status quo, and thus banning them would be educationally catastrophic. The heliocentric model, supported by Copernicus, Galilei, and other brilliant scientists, was significantly more accurate than the geocentric model promoted by powerful Roman Catholic Church. However, despite its accuracy, the heliocentric model was basically hate speech back then, according to Merriam-Webster, and it was banned because it offended religious beliefs promoted by the church. Moreover, if Galilei was also banned to continue his studies because he offended religious beliefs, then Sir Isaac Newton would not have had the physical framework for his laws of motion, and maybe his laws would have not been developed. Obviously, this would be educationally catastrophic for students, especially physics majors, because Newton’s laws of motion are some of the fundamental logics that they have been using to explain world and explore the universe. Thus, students cannot accumulate profound knowledge, like the Copernicus’s and Galilei’s brilliant works or the aforesaid sociobiology student’s hypothetical discovery, if it is prohibited. Therefore, it is imperative to have unrestricted free speech and hate speech everywhere, including private institutions, because we do not want to prohibit any more revolutionary discoveries that are offensive to the status quo. Additionally, we do not want to jeopardize any opportunities to learn more about the world around us. On top of that, unrestricted free speech also means that the people can debate against powerful governmental forces, just like what Galilei did with the Roman Catholic Church, which is extremely beneficial to education; since, it can lead us closer to the truth, let us learn though debates, and keep the government in check. Hence, letting students accumulate knowledge is the fundamental mission of any educational institutions, but letting them freely debate about it is just as equally important.

 

One of the elementary ideas behind a college education is to let students exposed to diverse ideas and beliefs and freely challenge those ideas through discourses, so that they can learn new perspectives; furthermore, unrestricted free speech allows this fundamental idea to happen. Columbia University professor Cole stated in an Atlantic article that “the goal of a college education is for students to learn to think independently and skeptically and to learn how to make and defend their point of view. It is not to suppress ideas that they find opprobrious.” Hanna Holborn Gray, a former University of Chicago President, agrees with Cole and stated: “education should not be intended to make people comfortable, it is made to make them think. Universities should be expected to provide the conditions within which hard thought, and therefore strong disagreement, independent judgment, and the questioning of stubborn assumptions, can flourish in an environment of the greatest freedom… debate or deliberation may not be suppressed because the ideas put forth are thought by some or even by most members of the university community to be offensive, unwise, immoral, or wrong-headed” (qtd. in Cole). Professor Cole and former University of Chicago President Gray strongly support unrestricted free speech because they believe college is not about protecting ourselves from opinions and views that contradict or offend us and suppressing them; instead, it is about exposing ourselves to them, and the debates where we have to rigorously defend our point of views and expand our limited perspectives, just like Keoni did at the beginning of this paper. Thus, unrestricted free speech and hate speech is beneficial to students, according to experts’ opinions, since they allow room for beneficial “offensive” debates or discourses that educationally challenge the students. However, students and campus officials do not realize the meaningful value behind the “offensive” debates, and so they are willing to trade off the freedom of expression for greater inclusion and the suppression of offensive ideas.

 

Despite the aforementioned benefits of “offensive” debates, students and campus officials are doing their best to suppress political hate speech and offensive views. For example, Fairmont State University student was confronted by security for speaking with other students about his conservative beliefs; University of Delaware students were stopped by the campus police because they were rolling “an inflated free-speech ball around campus; California State University, Los Angeles canceled a conservative speaker after students’ protest; University of Massachusetts, Amherst students enraged in a free speech event that featured conservative speakers; Yale University students silenced a former Yale student because of his controversial ideas (qtd. in Maloney Jr.). As a result of the suppressive events above, Maloney Jr., the Executive Director at Young Americans for Liberty, stated in an article with the Times that: “if you do not politically agree with someone, are uncomfortable with an idea, or do not find a joke funny, then their speech must be suppressed. Instead of actually debating ideas that span topics from the conventional to the taboo, a generation of American students do not engage, they just get enraged. In doing so, many students believe that they have a right to literally shut other people up.” Maloney Jr. has a good point because we cannot learn anything or gain any knowledge if we exclude controversial debates and do not productively participate in them, and remember that debates are academically beneficial. Moreover, a revolutionary idea will not be challenged and learned, and it will not become common knowledge if we actively ban it, just like the aforesaid Copernicus Revolution. Thus, banning offensive ideas and controversial debates, which is basically prohibiting hate speech and restricting free speech, is academically regressive instead of progressive. Actually, if we continue to prohibit offensive ideas or hate speech in colleges, then we would slowly become the socially-regressive-uncheck-authoritarian Vietnamese government.

 

I am a Vietnamese that have lived in the authoritative Viet Nam for over 17 years, and I testify the fact that banning ideas that are offensive and prohibiting hate speech would be a nightmare for progressive societies. For years, I was never taught about the greatness of democracy and the Industrial Revolution, because those “illegal” ideologies are basically hate speech in our country, which they contradict the “intrinsically good” communist ideology. Instead, I was only taught about their unforgivable sins when democratic countries invaded Viet Nam, and the fantasized stories about how my ancestors fought of foreign invaders. I remembered in one of my middle school field trips, they took us to a war memorial site, the Cu Chi tunnels, to show us the wickedness of American soldiers and implant the idea that democracy is bad. Thus, publicly speaking against communism, which is basically disseminating hate speech, means imprisonment in Viet Nam. According to the editorial board of The Washington Post, Vietnamese bloggers were imprisoned for just blogging about “the social, political, economic and cultural issues in Vietnam that drew from state media and activists”; moreover, the Vietnamese judge stated that the articles they had posted “‘present a one-sided and pessimistic view, causing anxiety and worry, and affecting people’s confidence’ in the Communist Party and the government, and ‘go against the interests of the nation.’” Hence, Vietnamese do not have to luxury to debate ideas that challenge the Vietnamese political and social norms, to keep the government in check, and to move society forward. Sadly, even though we would love to exercise hate speech, we do not have the luxury to do it because we will be incarcerated if we try to do so.

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Based on my experience, I genuinely believe it is imperative that the American institutions, especially colleges, must protect the freedom of speech and not prohibit hate speech because they would not limit other perspectives. Limited perspectives mean limited knowledge, like when I was only taught about communism and not democracy and other facts; furthermore, this would be academically catastrophic for college students because they will pay for an expensive education that provide limited perspectives; importantly, unrestricted free speech keeps the government in check, unlike the Vietnamese government where everything they say is always right and any attempts to publicly say things against them means imprisonment. Consequently, unrestricted free speech and unsuppressed hate speech are academically and socially beneficial, since they allow room for profound and accurate knowledge and controversial debates that push society and student forward. Still, despite its academic and social benefits, some types of hate speech are biologically bad.

 

Unacademic hate speech causes negative biological effects and triggers chronic stress. Dr. Barrett concluded in a New York Times article that “words can have a powerful effect on your nervous system. Certain types of adversity, even those involving no physical contact, can make you sick, alter your brain — even kill neurons — and shorten your life,” after she consulted academic studies in credible sources like the American Journal of Psychiatry, PubMed.gov, and the Journal of Neuroscience. Our immune systems include “pro-inflammatory cytokines” that cause swelling when we are physically injured, but they can cause physical illness under certain conditions like chronic stress; moreover, chronic stress can also shorten our lives by shrinking our telomeres, and we die when our telomeres become too short (qtd. in Barrett). According to Dr. Barrett, unacademic hate speech triggers chronic stress, which is essentially prolonged stress, because hate speech can make one constantly worries about one’s safety in a harsh environment. Therefore, unacademic hate speech that are abusive can cause physical harm by shortening our lives, killing neurons, and causing physical sickness.

 

However, our bodies are designed to withstand the hate speech contains the academically beneficial “offensive” speech or debates. Dr. Barrett from stated that “academic offensiveness is not bad for your body and brain. Your nervous system evolved to withstand periodic bouts of stress, such as fleeing from a tiger, taking a punch or encountering an odious idea in a university lecture." After years of teaching and researching, Dr. Barrett, a University Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Northeastern University, concluded in her New York Times article that “when you’re forced to engage a position you strongly disagree with, you learn something about the other perspective as well as your own. The process feels unpleasant, but it’s a good kind of stress — temporary and not harmful to your body — and you reap the longer-term benefits of learning.” Dr. Barrett is basically saying that we can withstand academic hate speech, and prohibiting hate speech and restricting free speech in general means giving up those types of hate speech that are academically good for us in the long-term. Thus, while campus officials cannot exclude hate speech due to its legality and educational benefits, they can still condemn them. However, Dr. Barrett’s provided medical facts and opinions are just predictions of what certain types of hate speech can benefit or harm people; moreover, she did not account for the fact that unacademic and abusive hate speech in general is actually lethal, and it has recently injured and taken innocent lives.

 

The dreadful Charlottesville incident in August 2017 was one of numerous violent events provoked by hate speech, where it provoked white nationalist to violently protest in Charlottesville, Virginia. According to The Washington Post, white nationalist James Fields Jr. drove his car into a crowd of pedestrians, killing the 32-years-old Heather Heyer and injuring nineteen others innocent lives; however, the death toll did not stop there because two state troopers, Lt. H. Jay Cullen and Berke M.M. Bates, died in a helicopter crash when they were aerially assisting with the protest (Joe, et al.). It is horrific to think of the fact that small children of those who were affected in the Charlottesville incident will have to wake up with no parents, and brothers and sisters will have to wake up with no siblings after that dreadful event. Therefore, it seems rational to ban all kinds of hate speech to prevent the future loss of priceless lives, since they outweigh all of the aforementioned academic benefits combined; nevertheless, banning all types of hate speech would more social damage than allowing it.

 

Banning any kind of hate speech means restricting free speech, which is bad because unrestricted free speech has been responsible for American’s greatest social milestone. Moreover, unrestricted free speech is pivotal for the advancement of rights and equality in the U.S. Chemerinsky, the Dean of U.C. Berkeley School of Law, stated in his Vox article that “there would not have been a 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote, without the women’s suffrage movement and its widespread demonstrations. The civil rights protests of the 1960s— lunch counter sit-ins, the march on Selma, demonstrations on campuses — were essential to bringing about the end of segregation.” Chemerinsky’s examples are just some of the major social milestones that unrestricted free speech has allowed. Furthermore, if there was restricted free speech back then, then Martin Luther King Jr. could not have said the four words that forever changed the U.S. history: “I have a dream.” Hence, we know that allowing all kinds of hate speech means that more lives would be taken due to violently provocative people, and yet it would also mean that countless lives will be saved because they can legally fight and protest for their civil rights. Everything is two sided, and campus officials must realize that there are intrinsically good things about unrestricted hate speech and free speech. Thus, it is imperative that all campus officials need to protect unrestricted free speech and allow any kind of hate speech. Additionally, protecting hate speech and unrestricted free speech in only a part of the story, protecting their students and faculties must be one of the top priorities.

 

Undoubtedly, there will be protests and violence at free speech events, due to their controversies, and therefore campus officials need to utilize their financial resources to protect everyone in those events; however, it will be extremely costly to do so. In the Fall 2017 semester, U.C. Berkeley has spent more than $2 million just to ensure the security of their students and the conservative speakers can safely deliver their remarks; hence, when it was financially impossible to simultaneously ensure the security of college students, faculties, and the controversial speakers, then campus officials would have no choice other than cancel the event (Chemerinsky). Still, canceling controversial speeches must genuinely the last option for campus officials, and the viewpoints in the speeches must not be a factor in the decision. In fact, instead of spending money on a pointless wall, the U.S. government needs to increase their federal funding for colleges and universities that advocate unrestricted free speech to promote students’ academic freedom and educational benefits.

 

In conclusion, it is unconstitutional for the government and public universities to ban hate speech and restrict free speech. Moreover, even though private universities can prohibit hate speech and restrict free speech to psychologically protect their diverse students, it would be irrational for them to do so; since, one of the most fundamental astronomical facts would not exist because we labeled it as hate speech. Hence, unrestricted free speech allows room for accurate knowledge and academically beneficial debates or discourses, and it also keeps the government in check. Still, despite some of unrestricted free speech and hate speech flaws, such as some kinds can be biologically bad and are lethal, they allow academic freedom and civil rights movements that will save countless lives. Nonetheless, allowing unrestricted free speech and hate speech does not mean that campus officials cannot condemn it; therefore, campus officials must do their best to denounce abusive hate speech, and promote hate speech that encourage educational debates. However, the U.S. government needs to increase the federal funding to academic institutions that allow hate speech and unrestricted free speech; since, ensuring the security of the students and faculties and the speakers at those events are extremely expensive. Ultimately, based on my experience, if we do not protect the freedom of expression, accurate knowledge, and educational debates, then we would slowly become citizens of a socially-regressive-uncheck-authoritarian government, just the like the “intrinsically good” Vietnamese government.

 

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Sources:

1. “First Amendment.” Edited by Tala Esmaili, Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School, 15 June 2017, www.law.cornell.edu/wex/first_amendment. Accessed 4 Nov. 2017.

2. “Hate Speech.” Merriam-Webster.com, Merriam-Webster, www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Hate%20speech. Accessed 4 Nov. 2017.

3. Barrett, Lisa Feldman. “When Is Speech Violence?” The New York Times, The New York Times, 14 July 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/07/14/opinion/sunday/when-is-speech-violence.html. Accessed 4 Nov. 2017. 

4. Boser, Ulrich. “A Better Way to Learn in City Schools.” U.S. News & World Report, U.S. News & World Report, 24 May 2017, www.usnews.com/news/education-news/articles/2017-05-24/urban-high-school-debate-programs-highlight-a-better-way-to-learn. Accessed 4 Nov. 2017.

5. Chemerinsky, Erwin. “Hate speech is protected free speech, even on college campuses.” Vox, Vox, 25 Oct. 2017, www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/10/25/16524832/campus-free-speech-first-amendment-protest. Accessed 4 Nov. 2017. 

6. Cole, Jonathan R. “The Chilling Effect of Fear at Americas Colleges.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 9 June 2016, www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/06/the-chilling-effect-of-fear/486338/. Accessed 4 Nov. 2017. 

7. Editorial Board. “Free speech is under siege in Vietnam.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 22 Apr. 2016, www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/free-speech-under-siege-in-vietnam/2016/04/21/76ee3c94-fb5a-11e5-9140-e61d062438bb_story.html?utm_term=.0ff6c93ce9d3. Accessed 4 Nov. 2017. 

8. Heim, Joe, et al. “One dead as car strikes crowds amid protests of white nationalist gathering in Charlottesville; two police die in helicopter crash.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 13 Aug. 2017, www.washingtonpost.com/local/fights-in-advance-of-saturday-protest-in-charlottesville/2017/08/12/155fb636-7f13-11e7-83c7-5bd5460f0d7e_story.html?utm_term=.51c2008d07ba. Accessed 4 Nov. 2017.

9.  Kay, Laura, et al. “Chapter 2: Patterns in the Sky—Motions of Earth.” 21st Century Astronomy, 4th ed., W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2013, pp. 27.

10. Kay, Laura, et al. “Chapter 3: Motion of Astronomical Bodies.” 21st Century Astronomy, 4th ed., W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2013, pp. 64–76.

11. Maloney, Cliff. “College Campuses Have No Right to Limit Free Speech.” Time, Time, 13 Oct. 2016, time.com/4530197/college-free-speech-zone/. Accessed 4 Nov. 2017. 

12. Shutler, Natalie, and Erwin Chemerinsky. “The Free Speech-Hate Speech Trade-Off.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 13 Sept. 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/09/13/opinion/berkeley-dean-erwin-chemerinsky.html. Accessed 4 Nov. 2017.