In March of 2019 Donald Trump signed an Executive Order which required US colleges to ensure the protection of free speech on campuses, or risk losing funding for research. At the signing ceremony, Trump announced “Even as universities have received billions and billions of dollars from taxpayers, many have become increasingly hostile to free speech and to the first amendment.” Trump went on to accuse these same campuses of restricting free thought, imposing conformity of belief, and silencing the voices of “great young Americans.”
Here, Trump’s edicts follow the general sentiment of conservative Americans, who feel that their voices are going unheard at major universities. This order demands that colleges follow Trump’s edict to respect free speech, or risk losing over $35 billion per year in research and educational grants offered by the federal government.
Since we at Unemployed Professors take free speech on campus very seriously, we thought we’d offer an editorial on the topic. The problem with Trump’s command is that it neglects the fact that universities already are bastions of free speech. Indeed, public institutions are currently ‘ground zero’ for the free exchange of ideas. In this case, then, the federal government is attempting to mandate something that is already in existence: the enduring support offered by major public universities for freedom of expression. Many, such as the University of California’s Janet Napolitano, feel that Trump’s order will simply muddle policy around free speech. After all, universities are already required to uphold the first amendment. The executive order, in truth, is neither desired nor necessary. It is simply a way for Trump and his administration to micromanage the state-of-the-art research which is so critical to the nation’s vitality, and position globally.
Inherent in Trump’s order is also the question of who is empowered as arbiter. Who, indeed, is to define and judge what is free speech on campuses? This seems a scary proposition, because a politically partisan judge could easily rule that any speech which is adversarial to, say, conservative views, is not ‘free.’ Moreover, in such cases, it still remains clear what the exact penalty in terms of restricted funding would be. As Suzanne Nossel, the CEO of PEN America, a human rights organization that advocates for free expression, has said, “the order must be enforced in an ideologically neutral way that upholds the government’s responsibility not to discriminate based on viewpoint, otherwise there is the risk that an order that purports to uphold the First Amendment ends up violating it.”
The upshot of Trump’s order is that it makes federally-funded university research subject to political influence. This is the clear intention of Trump’s order: to ensure that research conducted on campus supports and reflects a conservative agenda. Conservative students are not treated as ‘second-class citizens’ on campus. Simply check the entrants to Harvard, Yale and Princeton every year; this is an exclusive club of mostly conservatives. Moreover, universities are already legally bound to support free speech under the First Amendment. It is the creative and intellectual product of universities that is at issue here – a product t hat should remain free of political allegiance.
With that in mind, ask the team of academic professionals at UnemployedProfessors.com any questions you may have regarding their college writing services and they will be more than happy to guide you along the arduous path!