The First Amendment is imperiled at college campuses across the country.
That’s according to Eugene Volokh, a free speech expert and law professor at the University of California at Los Angeles, who is deeply concerned about the fallout over demonstrations on the Israel-Hamas war.
“I’m worried that there is pro-Palestinian speech being suppressed. I’m worried that there’s some pro-Israeli speech being suppressed,” he said in an interview with POLITICO Magazine. “I also think that there are some things that are being too much tolerated.”
College leaders have faced intense scrutiny as they’ve attempted to navigate competing pressures on campus, and critics on both sides of the issue and in both parties say they’re failing.
Lawmakers have slammed university officials over their responses, with Republicans taking aim at the presidents of Harvard, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania at a House Education Committee hearing Tuesday. The Biden administration, meanwhile, has launched more than a dozen investigations into incidents of antisemitism and Islamophobia in schools since the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks roiled campuses across the country.
Volokh, who helms the popular “Volokh Conspiracy” blog now housed at the libertarian Reason Magazine, said he thinks college officials should more often just keep their mouths shut.
“It’s not our job to opine on, or to even express horror, at horrible things,” he said.
Protests over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on college campuses are nothing new, but the war has clearly heightened the long-simmering tension. And now college leaders are stuck playing referee over what might be considered legitimate pro-Palestinian advocacy and what’s discrimination against Jewish people.
The Education Department is expected to soon come out with its own answer in a long-delayed regulation that Jewish civil rights groups say should make clear when a university must intervene in antisemitic or Islamophobic incidents. The proposal could closely align with former President Donald Trump’s executive order, which threatened to pull federal funding from colleges that ignore antisemitism on campus.
Clarifying Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to say it protects against discrimination based on national origin could be useful, Volokh said, but restricting how people speak about Israel on campus could set a “very dangerous” precedent for universities.
He also discussed what he called “censorship envy,” and why activists on the left may soon decide they’re not as eager to curb so-called “hate speech” after all.
This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
The First Amendment is one of your main areas of expertise as a legal scholar, and you’re a big free speech proponent. How do you feel about the climate on free speech, amid fierce debate over pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses?
I’m worried that there is pro-Palestinian speech being suppressed. I’m worried that there’s some pro-Israeli speech being suppressed. I also think that there are some things that are being too much tolerated.
When there are demonstrations where people take over some school building or something like that, that’s not protected speech.........