Freedom of Speech: A Two-Way Street

By Alec Liberman

Opinions Contributor

Whether you realize it or not, we live in an incredible country. The first amendment of our Constitution guarantees the right to speak freely and express ourselves without any backlash from the government. It is a basic American freedom, and even a fundamental human right. This freedom should be followed, and even revered on college campuses.

So why isn’t it?

Well, the answer is unfortunately quite simple: people don’t like hearing things they disagree with, and some people will do everything in their power to protect themselves from other viewpoints.

There has been a recent trend on college campuses in which students have protested guest speakers and disallowed them to speak. At California State University, Los Angeles, for example, students blocked entrances to a building and shoved away to-be attendees where conservative speaker Ben Shapiro was speaking. Shapiro later had to be escorted off of the campus by police for safety concerns.

This is, frankly, nothing short of unacceptable. As a college student in your early twenties, you have the right to speak, but you also have to recognize that it’s not a one way street. Disagree all you want, but not allowing others to speak because you disagree is an immature and a blatantly hypocritical act.

Students these days seem to be more interested in being pampered than in being educated. They only accept things as fact if they agree with them– everything else is deemed a lie.

Now, as much as I would like to say that Shapiro was an isolated incident, it wasn’t. Not even close. There are countless reports of all sorts of people not being allowed to speak, from random students with a camera to former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice.

If nothing else, this movement is incredibly hypocritical. A University of Delaware article states that “on a campus that is free and open, no idea can be banned or forbidden. No viewpoint or message may be deemed so hateful or disturbing that it may not be expressed.”

As a college student in your early twenties, you have the right to speak, but you also have to recognize that it’s not a one way street. Disagree all you want, but not allowing others to speak because you disagree is an immature and a blatantly hypocritical act.

This means that if you participate in a Black Lives Matter protest, as many have, a school newspaper has the right to run a critical article about the protest without the threat of getting shut down (yes, that actually happened).

My mother has always told me that the person who starts yelling in an argument first is the one who has nothing better to say. The same logic can be applied here: those who protest and don’t let the other speak have nothing better to say, no other way to respond. The best way to look smart and win an argument is to listen to the other’s points and counter them with facts, not scream “nope, nope, nope, nope.”

This problem has not gone unnoticed, yet not much has been done about it. Even President Obama has encouraged students to listen to speakers whom they do not agree with, saying that students are often “coddled and protected from different points of view.”

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, or FIRE, created a list of universities that have policies that “unambiguously impinge upon expression.” These aren’t small-town colleges; the list includes Cornell, Harvard, CalTech, and a barrage of other famous institutions. The best rating from FIRE, by the way, went to the University of Pennsylvania for having policies that “normally protect free speech.”

Unfortunately, this problem is becoming more and more present at high schools as well, Newton South included. Conservatives are scoffed at (at best), and much more often made fun of.

For example, I was talking with a few of my friends (and some of theirs) before advisory the other day. We stumbled across the topic of politics, a touchy subject at South for conservatively-inclined people like me. After finding out that I wasn’t a Bernie supporter, a girl proudly told me that I needed to “get a life.” I didn’t even know her name.

This is a daily occurrence for people who don’t share the popular opinion, myself among them. This article is not a cry for help; it is merely pointing out the hypocrisy and immaturity of those who do not listen or are too afraid to. If we are all equals, then why does one side get shunned while the other proudly expresses their views?

Lastly; if you only remember one thing from this article, let it be the following statement by Noam Chomsky: “If we do not believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we do not believe in it at all.”