On Friday, Columbia University arrested more than 100 pro-Palestinian campus protestors and dismantled an encampment the students had set up.
“These actions are creating a precedent of safetyism to justify crackdowns on free speech,” Villasmil writes. “After all, in the name of promoting order to deter not violence but an ‘intimidating environment,’ the same framework could be used to shut down virtually any protest about a contentious issue.”
Villasmil concedes that many of the protestors’ chants are ugly and radical and says that any “harassment and violence should obviously be prosecuted.”
But “free expression protects the ugly and radical statements,” he says. “It also protects most abstract calls for violence, the use of slurs and advocacy for evil causes.”
“The speech of those we disagree with — the speech of those we even hate — is the very speech that our Founding Fathers would invite us to hear.”
Read the op-ed at TheHill.com.
