In the United States, this supposed land of the free, there’s hardly anything we cherish more than our right to freedom of speech — our right, within reason, to say whatever we want, whenever we want, without fear of government retaliation or repression. That constitutional right is, after all, enshrined in the very first amendment to our founding document.
But in Tennessee, the notion of free speech has been warped into the opposite: just another tool, wielded by a de facto one-party state, to force its preferred ideology onto the public and stifle any semblance of dissent.
There’s the banning of books containing any LGBTQ+ themes; the continued threats against cities like Memphis for daring to voice opposition to the state’s inaction on gun violence; and the imposition of debunked right-wing Christian ideology into the public school classroom.
And now, through the Charlie Kirk Act, passed by state lawmakers and on its way to Gov. Bill Lee’s desk, the GOP supermajority in Nashville is forcing its exclusive worldview onto the college campus, under its distorted definition of free speech.
The legislation would require Tennessee’s public colleges and universities to adopt the University of Chicago’s freedom of expression policy — a set of guidelines concerning guest speakers on campus that, among other things, prohibits the school community from obstructing “the freedom of others to express views they reject or even loathe” and assigns the university “a solemn responsibility not only to promote a lively and fearless freedom of debate and deliberation, but also to protect that freedom when others attempt to restrict it.”
Of course, this is an ideal any public institution should aspire to. It would be beyond hypocritical for this editorial page, whose content is protected by the First Amendment, to suggest otherwise.
However, this is not what the Charlie Kirk Act would do. This legislation is not some good-faith effort to promote rigorous debate and free speech on campus. It is the enforcement, by the supreme authority of the state, of what amounts to conservative safe spaces at each public college and university in Tennessee.
The clear purpose of the bill is not to offer blanket protection for any university speaker, but to limit such assurances to those of a certain ideological leaning.
And that leaning, of surprise to no one, is centered around opposition to abortion and the LGBTQ+ community. The legislation would prohibit universities from “discriminating or retaliating against a person on account of the person’s opposition to abortion, homosexuality, or transgender behavior, regardless of whether that opposition is motivated by religious or non-religious beliefs.”
Under threat of injunction, universities must impose disciplinary action against faculty and students who fail to comply. Noncompliance is defined broadly, including the disruption of guest speakers via protests or staging a walkout.
In essence, the legislation mandates free rein for conservative speakers on campus, if they pass the low bar of an invitation from sympathetic student organizations. It should be noted that this bill also reinforces existing protections for student groups, regardless of their political or religious beliefs.
Again, the state and its public universities should provide free-speech protections, within reason, for any person or group, no matter how abhorrent their views may be.
But by essentially criminalizing dissent or demonstrations against conservative guest speakers, the state is distorting free speech into a draconian dichotomy where one side is told to shut up and listen while the other is given a deafening megaphone.
And of course the state GOP is, once again, partaking in shameless hypocrisy and participating in the exact thing it accuses its opposition on the left of doing.
Just look at the bill’s namesake. Kirk, before his assassination in September, made a career out of targeting left-leaning university faculty, or even those perceived to be too liberal. The late right-wing activist was notorious for leading harassment campaigns against these instructors by placing them on his Professor Watchlist.
Tennessee’s U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn led an anti-free-speech assault last year by pressuring public and private colleges into suspending or firing any faculty member who mocked or even merely criticized Kirk after his death.
Ironically, the Charlie Kirk Act would prohibit “retaliating against a faculty member on account of the viewpoints expressed in the faculty member’s scholarly work, or on account of any speech or writing protected by the First Amendment.”
This political project, led by bad-faith actors like Blackburn, does not promote true free speech. That would require tolerating differing views and perspectives. Such a notion is diametrically opposed to the exclusive aims of the MAGA movement.
No, this is not freedom of speech. This is an authoritarian movement insincerely hand-wringing over a false interpretation of the First Amendment until everyone accepts their misguided views as undeniable fact — a quintessential case of free speech for me, but not for thee.
This article is republished by permission from the Chattanooga Times Free Press. See original article.
See also: 5 questions: The Charlie Kirk Act and free speech on campus
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