Free speech is under assault, but we still need to talk
After witnessing Vladimir Putin brutally, yet routinely, assault basic freedoms in Russia and Ukraine, it is reassuring to think of free speech as alive and well in America.
Yet polls and recent news events show free speech to be under renewed assault here too, and often from both political sides.
Free speech disputes are hardly new in our Land of the Free but, inflamed by new media and clickbait propaganda, they certainly sound a lot louder and, too often, out of control.
Take, for example, the wave of televised school board meetings that turned rowdy over such seemingly simple questions as how we should raise our kids.
Although the furor over such issues as “critical race theory,” which isn’t even taught in public schools but energizes a lot of culture warriors, seemed to quiet down after November’s off-year elections, only to move to Republican-controlled state legislatures.
In just the first three weeks of 2022, more than 70 bills have been filed in 27 states seeking to regulate how and what educators may teach about race, history and sexuality in schools, according to an analysis by PEN America, a nonprofit group that promotes freedom of expression and calls the legislation “educational gag orders.”
Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has gained national attention and set himself up for a possible presidential bid by supporting a bill to ban discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity in the state’s lower grades.
Famously rebranded by critics as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, its language is so ambiguous about such critical terms as “age appropriate” and “developmentally appropriate” that both sides argue about what it really means, which makes a lot of teachers increasingly confused and nervous.
At the college level, we have such cases as University of Illinois at Chicago law professor Jason Kilborn, who fell into hot water over a question on a final exam that he had been using for years. It contained slurs, self-censored with dashes as “n-----” and “b----,” by an imaginary woman of color in a pretend civil case.
The headline-making controversy led to his ouster, placement on leave for more than a year and a requirement to complete diversity training courses, according to his federal lawsuit. That’s too bad. Diversity education shouldn’t become a punishment, but instead of an opportunity for us to learn about one another in our diverse society.
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