Is it infuriating to see people who kept mum during years of assaults on the First Amendment suddenly acting broken up about its future? Of course. But that doesn’t mean they’re all wrong. There are serious concerns about the new administration. I spoke with Tyler Coward, lead government counsel for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, or FIRE, the group that did such incredible workdefending civil liberties during the digital censorship era:
Matt Taibbi: Let’s start with the broader issues and work our way toward [Palestinian activist] Mahmoud Khalil. Could you walk me through some of the recent speech controversies involving the Trump administration?
Tyler Coward: First, student political protests at institutions have been around for almost as long as institutions have existed. I was just on a panel this past weekend at the Stetson University Higher Education Law and Policy Conference, and a professor who does education law and the history of education law talked about protests, dating back to the Whiskey Rebellion era. Then obviously, even before the 60s, we had a big protest movement in the 30s. There’s a lot of overlap between workers’ rights protests, and organization and labor organizations in the UK and the strikes there, and progressive and labor-type movements on campus in the U.S.
When I started at FIRE 10 years ago, there were campus protests centered around invited speakers. A lot of invited speakers were protested and shouted down at institutions. They tended to be right of center.
