CAMPUS SPEECH IS UNDER FIRE. (FIRST THINGS FIRST)

• Author: Lueders, Bill
• Date: 01 April 2024

It wasn't too long ago that some of the loudest voices on the right were screaming bloody murder about the suppression of speech on college campuses. One oft-cited example, from 2020, concerned Robert Dailyda, a doctoral student at New Jersey's Stockton University who was charged with student-conduct offenses including "harassment" and "cyberbullying" for using an image of Donald Trump as his Zoom background during a virtual class. The public university's administration, in an incident report, said this caused several students "to feel offended, disrespected, and taunted."

The free speech advocacy group FIRE, which at that time stood for the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, rushed to Dailyda's defense, saying "The First Amendment protects the expression of students at public universities, including nondisruptive expression during class that other students may find offensive or outrageous." All charges against Dailyda were soon dismissed.

Today the group, which maintains the same acronym but now stands for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression after broadening its mission in 2022, is hard at work defending students and others against conservatives who are demanding that they be punished for supporting Palestinians in the Israel-Hamas war.

Take Madeline Ward, a student at Rockland Community College in New York, who was disciplined last fall after shouting "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" at a pro-Israel rally on campus. The public college found she violated student conduct rules against "discriminatory/harassing behavior," "endangering conduct," and "intimidation," even though, as FIRE noted, "Ward didn't block anyone from attending the gathering and her remarks lasted only a few seconds before she peacefully left the venue."

Rockland suspended Ward through the fall 2024 semester, declaring her persona non grata on campus. "If you fail to adhere," she was warned, "you will be subject to arrest." FIRE, in a letter, said this punishment appeared to be tied to "her pro-Palestinian viewpoints," and as such was "impermissible." The college denied Ward's appeal.

Meanwhile, University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill and Harvard University President Claudine Gay were both forced to resign after failing to state unequivocally in a Congressional hearing that calling for the genocide of Jews would violate their school policies.

"It is a context-dependent decision, Congresswoman," Magill said, in response to...