Why we need a new free speech movement

And why universities should sue the Trump regime for abridging the First Amendment rights of their institutions and their students

Friends,

The Trump regime is actively suppressing speech at major American universities.

Trump’s recent executive orders bar diversity, equity, and inclusion programs at all educational institutions that receive federal funds.

Last week, Trump threatened in a social media post to punish any university that permits “illegal” protests but did not define what he meant by illegal protests.

On Friday he cancelled hundreds of millions in grants and contracts with Columbia University for allowing peaceful protests the regime dislikes.

On Saturday, Trump’s immigration officials arrested a Columbia graduate student — who is a permanent resident of the United States with a green card and an American wife — and sent him to a prison in Louisiana. Why? He did not engage in criminal activity. The graduate student peacefully expressed political views that the regime dislikes.

Then on Monday, the Trump regime warned 60 universities that they could face penalties for allowing peaceful demonstrations and speech that the administration dislikes.

And on Tuesday, Karoline Leavitt, the White House spokeswoman, told reporters that Columbia had refused to help the regime identify people engaged in speech the regime found objectionable, and warned, “We expect all America’s colleges and universities to comply with this administration’s policy.”

The particular objectionable speech that the regime is using as a pretext for its crackdown on free speech on university campuses is the student-led protests against Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israeli government for its bombardment of Gaza.

Trump has turned those protests into accusations of antisemitism. Trump’s border czar, Thomas Homan, described the graduate student who was arrested and whose green card was voided as a “national security threat.”

But let’s be clear: Peaceful protests against Benjamin Netanyahu’s policies in Gaza are not the same as antisemitism. (As I’ve said repeatedly in this letter, I’m Jewish, I am not antisemitic, and I am disgusted and appalled by what Netanyahu has done to Palestinians in Gaza.) Nor does a peaceful protest turn someone into a national security threat.

And let’s be clear about another thing: The Trump regime is using antisemitism as an excuse for cracking down on free speech on university campuses.

Trump used the same accusation against Democrats during his presidential campaign — blaming the alleged rise in antisemitism on “the leadership of this country,” but conveniently ignoring the fact that the rise in reported antisemitic acts began during Trump’s first term.

Trump also conveniently disregarded prominent Republicans who have engaged in antisemitic behavior — such as North Carolina’s then nominee for governor, Mark Robinson, who called himself a “black NAZI” on a pornographic website, and Trump ally Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has made a string of antisemitic remarks, including blaming Jews for killing Jesus to explain her vote against a bill meant to address antisemitism.

The real reason Trump and the Republican Party are cracking down on universities is their belief that universities are dominated by the left.

As I’ve noted, JD Vance (Yale Law ‘13) has called university professors “the enemy” and suggested using Victor Orban’s method for ending “left-wing domination of universities” — giving universities “a choice between survival or [being] … much more open to conservative ideas.”

Yet whether you like or dislike what’s said at universities, free speech is at the core of our democracy, and protecting it should be one of the core missions of universities.

Which is why America needs a new Free Speech Movement, similar to the one that broke out on college campuses 61 years ago.

Do you remember?

In the fall of 1964, Berkeley’s university police arrested a student who was staffing a table in the middle of Sproul Plaza and put him in a police car. The student had violated Berkeley’s ban on political activity on campus.

When someone in the surrounding crowd of students yelled, “We can see better if we sit down,” hundreds of students sat — trapping the police car for the next 33 hours. Berkeley administrators negotiated an end to the siege but refused to end the ban on political activity.

The student protests grew. At an even larger rally, a graduate student named Mario Savio addressed the crowd, criticizing not only Berkeley but America itself.

There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part, you can’t even tacitly take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all.

Hundreds of Berkeley students occupied its administration building, leading police to make the largest mass arrest of students in American history and shocking a public accustomed to campus conformity.

As Savio later told The Washington Post, the Free Speech Movement was an outgrowth of the Civil Rights Movement. “Are we on the side of the civil rights movement? Or have we gotten back to the comfort and security of Berkeley, California, and can we forget the [Black] sharecroppers whom we worked with [to register to vote] just a few weeks back? Well, we couldn’t forget.”

A few days after Savio’s speech, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover told aides that he feared Savio and other protesters would inspire student rebellion at other colleges across the land. Hoover turned his secret surveillance machine on Savio, including covert action to “disrupt” and “neutralize” him, for more than a decade.

In 1976, a U.S. Senate subcommittee exposed these activities and forced the FBI to restrict those it investigated and what measures it could take. (The guidelines remained in effect until September 11, 2001, after which time George W. Bush’s attorney general, John Ashcroft, loosened them to “fight terrorism,” and the Patriot Act gave the FBI more power to pry.)

Now, Trump is president and the FBI is under Kash Patel.

If I were young university student again (wouldn’t that be nice?), I’d do whatever I could to reignite the flame of the Free Speech Movement. It’s needed today as much if not more than it was 61 years ago. (If you’re a university student, I urge you to take this suggestion to heart. If you know any university students, you might suggest this to them.)

If I were in charge of any of the 60 American universities that Trump has just threatened for allowing “illegal” protests, I’d join together with the heads of the others and sue the Trump regime for violating the First Amendment rights of those universities and their students.

Why isn’t this happening now?