By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley acknowledges that some advocates of free speech care more about their political agenda that the actual concept of free speech.
Turley, this year’s Convocation on Critical Issues speaker at Missouri Western State University, says that’s the nature of those who support free speech.
“As free speech advocates, we’re used to having unreliable allies,” Turley tells the news media prior to his speech. “Our allies always tend to be in the minority. When you’re in the minority, it’s when you get sensitive about free speech.”
Turley, also a legal analyst for Fox News, titled his speech “The Rise and Fall of Free Speech." He spoke Tuesday at the 28th annual R. Dan Boulware Convocation on Critical Issues on the St. Joseph campus.
Turley tells media members he hopes this isn’t the fall of free speech in the country, but he does see troubling trends in society. Turley says American society seems to have become unmoored from the rights that define the United States, free speech being the most important. Turley asserts all the other rights Americans hold dear hinge on free speech.
A promising trend Turley sees is in the courts, which have consistently struck down speech codes as a violation of the First Amendment. The discouraging trend Turley sees is on college campuses.
Once bastions of free speech, universities have become campuses of intolerance, according to Turley. Free speech, Turley says, is targeted in times of rage, in times of tension. Turley says that universities once upheld the rights of free speech against those who wanted to silence certain voices.
“But there came a tipping point at universities about 20 years ago where suddenly we saw a pronounced decline in conservative and libertarian faculty,” Turley says. “Now, it’s the rule. A recent study came out that showed that Harvard’s faculty self-identifies; 83% self-identify as liberal or very liberal.”
And, he says that lack of diversity drives the current campus intolerance.
He says it has had a noticeable effect. Turley says some faculty now are cowered into silence, because they worry if they speak their mind, it will ruin their careers.
“If you’re tagged in one of these cancel campaigns, they will take everything that matters to an intellectual life away from you,” Turley says. “They’ll bar you from conferences. They’ll bar you, effectively, from publications. If you get tagged in one of those campaigns, you become radioactive.”
Turley says conservative faculty and conservative students must be willing to take the risk and speak up or free speech will die.