“If the problem with campus speech codes is the selectivity with which universities penalize various forms of bigotry,” wrote James Kirchick lately in The New York Instances, “the solution is not to expand the university’s power to punish expression. It’s to abolish speech codes entirely.”
Kirchick was writing about widespread outrage on the nuanced and hypocritical protection of speech supplied by the presidents of Harvard, MIT, and the College of Pennsylvania at a congressional listening to about antisemitic and anti-Zionist campus reactions to the October 7, 2023 Hamas assaults on Israel.
Though Kirchick, the creator of Secret Metropolis: The Hidden Historical past of Homosexual Washington and The Finish of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues, and the Coming Darkish Age, is an ardent defender of Israel, he’s additionally a self-described free-speech absolutist who’s disgusted by calls to limit expression, whether or not on or off-campus.
Motive‘s Nick Gillespie spoke to Kirchick about how identification politics has overwhelmed the left’s conventional protection of free speech, why so many youthful journalists appear lukewarm at greatest to the First Modification, and learn how to muster the braveness to talk up for first rules in uncomfortable and hostile conditions.
Articles talked about:
“What Happens Where Free Speech Is Unprotected,” by James Kirchick
“Calling Out An Antisemite,” by James Kirchick
- Video Editor: Adam Czarnecki
- Audio Manufacturing: Ian Keyser