Students for Free Speech

Scott Jaschik:

The news is full of recent incidents in which students have blocked or attempted to block campus speakers. Students have shouted down or shut down appearances of controversial speakers at Middlebury College, Claremont McKenna College and the University of California, Los Angeles, among other campuses. While the students involved there are on the left, invitations have been rescinded for views favoring abortion rights (an invitation withdrawn at Saint Mary’s College in Indiana), and invitations have been protested for speaker views seen as anti-Israel (as in a case at the City University of New York, in which officials are refusing to block an appearance).

In much of the public discussion of these incidents, students are portrayed as intolerant of views with which they disagree.

Over the weekend, 25 students from about 20 colleges around the country gathered at the University of Chicago to try to start a movement in which students would become leading defenders of free speech on campus — including speech that they find offensive. The students issued a statement Sunday that they plan to urge other students to sign and to abide by.

“The Free Speech Movement began as an entirely student-led initiative,” says the statement, referring to the University of California, Berkeley, movement of the 1960s. “However, free speech has been increasingly undermined by attempts of students and administrators alike to silence those with whom they disagree. We seek to reclaim that original tradition.”