Free Speech is in Peril. Here’s How You Can Protect It. | The Daily Signal

“What's the point of attending college if you can't ask hard questions? What's the point if the First Amendment of the Constitution is not protected by those that are giving you instruction, by the professors, by the administrators?”

This week, Jonathan Butcher explains what parents and state lawmakers should do to protect free speech.

Full transcript:

Free speech is in peril on college campuses across the country.

Students need to know that they can ask hard questions and they need to be heard. They need to know what other peoples' opinions are, on the tough issues of the day and that's the only way that we'll be able to develop civil society in the future.

Here's what parents and state lawmakers can do to restore the pursuit of truth at our schools and colleges.

I'm Jonathan Butcher, senior policy analyst at The Heritage Foundation. Everyone has seen speakers shouted down on campus, and too many college students have been a part of speaker shout-downs or disrupted events.

State lawmakers should be looking at proposals that are prepared to issue consequences to those students that violate the free expression of others. Administrators need to be prepared to tell students that that is not acceptable. And students should be ready for facing suspension or expulsion if an event is disrupted.

For parents, they need to look not just at the price tag of the tuition at the school when they're looking to send their child. They also should look for free speech zones … or speech codes. They need to look at the campus environment before they make a choice about where they send their child to school.

What's the point of attending college if you can't ask hard questions? What's the point if the First Amendment of the Constitution is not protected by those that are giving you instruction, by the professors, by the administrators? Students need to know that they have the right to express themselves, that they can ask the hard questions about what is truth on college.

When they're adults, we're going to need to expect them to be able to handle situations that they don't agree with. It's not a college's job to protect students from ideas with which they disagree.