Trump’s newest executive order rings hollow
The issue of free speech on college campuses has become more of an issue on the national scale. The students at many campuses have protested the appearance of speakers whose ideologies they find offensive or disturbing and occasionally violence has erupted at these protests. As the more popular of these have largely focused on right wing speakers, Republicans have more and more frequently claimed that their right to free speech is being stifled. A result of these years of complaining has been the recent signing of a new executive order protecting free speech on college campuses. On signing the order, President Trump claimed that he had taken “historic action” towards protecting free speech.
The reality of this order suggests otherwise. To begin with, the order makes no substantive advances or any new directives having to do with the laws and policies already in place at public colleges and universities around the country, it merely restates their obligation to follow said rules. In the case of private colleges, the order basically tells them to keep following the policies that they have in place already. The only new element at all is the threat of revoking research funding from school that do not follow free speech laws. But again, as the EO does not create any new laws to follow there are no new grounds for the revocation of funds.
In addition to being ineffectual, this order is also downright hypocritical, it was made very clear based on the bill being revealed at CPAC and being signed while surrounded by conservative activists that this EO is meant to protect only that speech which leans a certain way. This obvious pandering as well as the fact that the EO did absolutely nothing to prevent the silencing of liberal voices at more conservative private schools which have a long history of discouraging liberal thought and speech drives the hypocrisy home. Adding on to this is the recent acts by prominent Republicans or the party at large to try and stifle free speech in America. Some examples of this would be Congressman Devin Nunes’ suing of Twitter as well as several Twitter users for the creation of parody accounts, and the creation of laws in several Republican
JOSEPH DONER
Political Editor