"Challenging the Campus Speech Police: A Call for Restraint"
The recent debates over free speech and speech regulation on college campuses were sparked by a viral moment during a congressional hearing where the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and MIT declined to say that a call for the genocide of Jews would violate their schools' policies against harassment. Republicans criticized the administrators' non-answers as evidence of moral deficiency and double standards, while critics of progressive campus orthodoxies argued that the presidents took the right position on offensive speech. The House passed a resolution condemning the presidents' testimony, and the left and right have differing views on the real threat to free speech on campus. The article discusses the complexities of speech regulation, the double standards that exist, and the need to differentiate between offensive speech and conduct that is harassing or threatening.