Campus Speech – Media & Communications Policy

September 18, 2025October 22, 2025 By Adonis Hoffman, Esq.

The Future of Conservative Media

The slaying of conservative activist and media personality Charlie Kirk as he spoke at a campus rally in Utah was a tragedy on many levels: the wrenching of a devoted family man from his wife and young children; the fatal silencing of a speaker in a nation where freedom of speech is a constitutional guarantee; and a manifestation of the increasingly brutal partisanship gripping this country.

This senseless killing also has drawn newfound attention to the environment in which Charlie Kirk thrived – the catalyst that propelled him to the forefront of a movement, making him a hero to millions and a public figure to all: conservative media.

December 15, 2023December 14, 2023 By Stuart N. Brotman

Threats on Campuses Need To Be Dealt With Directly

The recent explosive congressional hearing with presidents from among some of the nation’s most elite universities – Harvard, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania – nearly broke the Internet. All three academic leaders could not clearly state that advocating genocide against Jews might violate their campus codes of conduct. Politicians of all stripes – along with students, faculty, alumni, and prominent donors – were shocked that what seemed like something defined by a bright line of morality would be portrayed as requiring nuance in response.

Elizabeth Magill, Penn’s president, created the most memorable soundbite while under intense questioning by Rep. Elise Stefanik, (R-N.Y.). When asked by Stefanik whether calling for the genocide of Jews constituted bullying or harassment, Magill soberly replied, “It is a context-dependent decision, congresswoman.”

September 8, 2023September 7, 2023 By Stuart N. Brotman

Explicitly Addressing College Self-Censorship in the New Academic Year

With the beginning of the college academic year, those of us teaching this fall are drafting various course syllabi – seeing what might be worth revisiting, such as new readings that might be added.

But all too often, the upfront syllabus boilerplate sections are overlooked since they are cut and pasted from previous versions of the same course or similar ones. Unfortunately, a section dealing with free expression in the classroom is missing in many.

April 10, 2023 By Stuart N. Brotman

Stanford Law’s Free Speech Teachable Moments

I am a lawyer, First Amendment scholar, and an endowed journalism and electronic media enterprise and leadership professor at a major research university. Given these multiple professional identities, my thoughts on a recent headline-grabbing incident at Stanford Law School cannot be summarized by a pithy tweet, which is the coin of the realm in the social media world.

A recent Stanford Law event sponsored by its Federalist Society, a conservative and libertarian legal organization, has received widespread national media attention for the chaos it caused in real time, and more importantly, the threat to free speech that it represents.

December 20, 2022December 20, 2022 By Stuart N. Brotman

Two Teachable First Amendment Moments

Since Election Day 2022, we have experienced two extraordinary teachable moments about the First Amendment. Those all along the political spectrum should review them as a crash-course refresher for the clear red line that our nation’s Founding Fathers envisioned when they crafted this bedrock of the Constitution’s Bill of Rights.

Elon Musk, Twitter’s new owner, has decided to lift a nearly three-year ban on using the popular social media platform that had been imposed on Donald J. Trump during the final days of his presidency. Musk indicated this reversal represented “the will of the people,” based on a quick, unscientific online poll he posted that indicated a slim majority approved of former president Trump being allowed to use Twitter again to reach the 88 million people who had been his followers at the time of his banishment.

August 2, 2022August 2, 2022 By Stuart N. Brotman

Let’s Add the First Amendment to the Nation’s Back-to-School Checklist

With high school teachers nationwide now in the process of planning their return to begin a new academic term, a new piece of valuable summer homework for them is recommended. It’s the survey results from the Knight Foundation Future of the First Amendment project. This is the eighth such survey conducted since 2004, and it deserves a close reading and a plan of action for when students return to the classroom.

Viewed over time, there can be a sense of optimism that both American high school students and their teachers have maintained a consistency over many years regarding the notion that people should be allowed to express unpopular opinions. Yet that view now is clouded when they are confronted with “offensive” or “threatening” speech. In these instances, the level of support drops below half. And only 57% in this survey indicated that news organizations should be able to publish without government censorship.

October 16, 2017November 7, 2017 By Richard T. Kaplar

Free Speech Week: Much To Celebrate

Free Speech Week is upon us. Or, as the headline of a story about the week written by Amy Mclean in Cablefax puts it: “What a Time for Free Speech Week.” What a time, indeed.

Just last week we saw the president raising the specter of whether the government should revoke television licenses based on the content of televised news coverage. The same president has wondered aloud (via Twitter, of course) whether the National Football League should have federal tax benefits revoked if owners continue to allow players to kneel during the National Anthem.

Speech on college campuses continues to be stifled in a variety of ways, from disinviting controversial guest speakers to relegating the expression of opinions by individuals to out-of-the-way “free speech zones.” On some campuses, students are supposed to be warned by professors before controversial topics are discussed in class, lest the students be traumatized. Continue reading “Free Speech Week: Much To Celebrate”

May 17, 2017November 7, 2017 By Guest Author Jeffrey Herbst

The Real Crisis of Campus Free Expression

College campuses should be bastions of free speech. Today, they often seem to be the very places in American society where there is the least tolerance for controversial ideas. Unfortunately, much of the discussion of why this has occurred is based on the ad hoc experiences of a few campuses, including Berkeley, Claremont McKenna, and Middlebury that briefly gained national attention when lecturers were harassed or prevented from speaking by unruly and, occasionally, riotous crowds.

Systematic public opinion polling and anecdotal evidence suggests that the real problem of free expression on college campuses is much deeper than episodic moments of censorship: With little comment, an alternate understanding of the First Amendment has emerged among young people that can be called “the right to non-offensive speech.” This perspective essentially carves out an exception to the right of free speech by trying to prevent expression that is seen as particularly offensive to an identifiable group, especially if that collective is defined in terms of race, ethnicity, gender, or sexual identity.

Continue reading “The Real Crisis of Campus Free Expression”

November 25, 2015January 30, 2017 By Patrick Maines

Campus Protests and Blatant Attacks on Free Speech

The blatant attacks on free speech seen recently on college campuses pose a special challenge to Democrats and liberals. This, because the illiberalism inherent in the conjuring up by campus progressives of things like “trigger warnings,” “microaggressions,” and “safe spaces” is an outgrowth of the identity politics and victim culture that have been promoted by Democrats and liberals generally.

Take, for instance, immigration and our changing racial demographics. In a demonstration of the most corrosive kind of stereotyping, Democratic strategists like Stanley Greenberg triumphantly wave the “demographics is destiny” meme like a sword. Whether there is any predictive value in Greenberg’s recent claim that racial minorities are “supporting Hillary Clinton by more than 2 to 1 in today’s polls,” how is it helpful to profile them as bloc voters, politically defined by their ethnicity?

Are not Hispanics, Asians, and African-Americans interested in having for themselves and their families secure middle-class lives? And if so, might not some, perhaps many of them, come to see the governmental nostrums promoted by Democrats as being inimical to their ambitions?

The demographics-is-destiny meme crosses into the preposterous in the hands of people like the dyed-in-the-wool Democrat Chris Matthews…. >> Read More

The opinions expressed above are those of the writer and not of The Media Institute, its Board, contributors, or advisory councils. The full version of this article appeared in The Hill on Nov. 25, 2015.

October 19, 2015January 30, 2017 By Richard T. Kaplar

Free Speech Week: Time To Celebrate, Time To Reflect

As Free Speech Week gets underway today, it’s a good time to celebrate this fundamental freedom (as the week is intended to do) – but it’s also a good time to reflect on the state of free speech in America today. Even the most cursory reflection, however, is sure to give one pause.

Freedom of speech remains under assault on many fronts. And most people, when they think of free speech, think of the First Amendment. But it’s important to draw a distinction here. The First Amendment only protects speech that is threatened by government control, and thus laws and regulations seeking to limit speech can be subjected to First Amendment challenges in the courts.

Paradoxically, however, the gravest threats to free speech today aren’t coming from government lawmakers and regulators, but from non-government groups and individuals who want to stifle the speech of others. That type of speech suppression is, in its own way, even more insidious because there is no fail-safe defense against it like the First Amendment.

Media Institute President Patrick Maines has written numerous columns in this space decrying all manner of attempts to suppress free expression. One of the most onerous threats is the political correctness (or “PC”) movement, whereby the “politically correct” try to stifle the speech of those with whom they disagree. Nowhere is this more evident than on college campuses, which should be the ultimate marketplaces of ideas.

Examples abound of campus activist groups pushing to “disinvite” guest lecturers or even commencement speakers whose views they dislike – often with the tacit or overt support of university officials. High-profile incidents at Fordham, Brown, and Brandeis universities have captured media attention, but they were hardly isolated occurrences. In fact, an organization called the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) exists solely to fight these and other types of PC attacks on campus.

Speech suppression beyond the reach of the First Amendment takes other forms as well. Activist groups and their “speech police” routinely try to intimidate speakers, especially through social media. And even some journalists and editors in the mainstream media are prone to political correctness, though here the approach might be more subtle – a story presenting a PC point of view uncritically, or a story about a contrarian viewpoint never written at all.

Free Speech Week, then, offers the chance to celebrate the First Amendment as the protector of our speech (or the vast majority of it) from government interference. The week also invites us to celebrate free expression in the broader sense. Yet as we applaud freedom of speech generally, we need to be aware of the threats that continue to render this a fragile freedom. There is a vocal opposition to these threats out there, including The Media Institute, FIRE, and others – but the voices challenging these threats and supporting truly free speech need to be more widespread. We can indeed celebrate during Free Speech Week – but we can’t afford to be complacent.

Free Speech Week (FSW) is taking place Oct. 19 to Oct. 25. You can learn more about how to get involved here: www.freespeechweek.org.