I'm Pete du Pont with the National Center for Policy Analysis. Today and tomorrow, two takes on free speech.
In 1951, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas said Americans sometimes fear free speech and are unwilling to grant it to others. For proof, go to college.
Conservative David Horowitz has been trying to place an ad in college newspapers arguing against reparations for slavery. Most of the papers — at places like Harvard, Notre Dame, Columbia and Virginia — refused to run it for political reasons. The paper at Cal Berkeley — the very font of the free speech movement — did, then cravenly apologized. At Brown, students stole and destroyed copies of the paper, although the administration, to its credit, backed the editors. At only one other paper I've been able to discover did the editor tell protesters to stick it, arguing that freedom of the press was not something that could bend to winds of leftist intolerance: the University of Wisconsin Badger-Herald and its editor Julie Bosman.
At most universities, speech is free as long as it's liberal collectivist speech.
Those are my ideas, and at the NCPA we know ideas can change the world. I'm Pete du Pont. Tomorrow, supressing free speech in congress.