It’s Time to Crush Campus Censorship - David French, NRO

[TomSea]

It’s Time to Crush Campus Censorship

by David French April 24, 2017 3:07 PM @DavidAFrench

 Congress needs to mandate larger penalties for public universities that indulge the student-radical mob. The courts have failed. The culture is failing. Unless Congress acts, we may lose not only free speech on college campuses, but free speech in America. In the memorable phrase of my friend, Foundation for Individual Rights in Education president Greg Lukianoff, college students are “unlearning liberty,” carrying the virus of censorship and oppression beyond the university and into the nation.

The courts are failing not because the underlying legal doctrines are flawed but because the remedies for censorship are completely inadequate. As of right now, there is a far greater financial incentive for a university to keep its sidewalks shoveled in the winter than to protect one of our nation’s founding liberties. If a student slips and breaks an arm, they stand to win much larger damages in court than a professor denied a promotion because of his speech or a student group thrown off campus merely because it’s Christian.

As it is, students and professors can launch exhausting legal cases, fight the university tooth-and-nail through years of depositions, motions, trials, and appeals, and at the end of the ordeal win an injunction and attorneys’ fees. In one memorable case, I fought a university for more than seven years and won a week-long jury trial, only for my client to be awarded a total (including attorneys’ fees) of far, far less than $1 million. Universities are some of the richest institutions in American life. These dollar amounts are utterly meaningless to their bottom lines.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/446999/free-speech-campus-censorship-congress-must-punish-universities-indulging-student-mob

[r9etb]

All it would take is a law holding that if a court of final jurisdiction finds that a public university has violated the constitutional rights of a student or faculty member, then the university will pay liquidated damages to the plaintiff....

Assuming that it's possible for Congress ever to pass such a law in the first place, which it probably is not.

In the meantime, publicity is the worst enemy of the censors.  Use their own tactics against them to publicize their thought control games.  Normal people are sick of their crap -- make it easier to see their crap in action.

[Cyber Liberty]

Assuming that it's possible for Congress ever to pass such a law in the first place, which it probably is not.

In the meantime, publicity is the worst enemy of the censors.  Use their own tactics against them to publicize their thought control games.  Normal people are sick of their crap -- make it easier to see their crap in action.

Problem is, the reaction you describe will be crushed by the same unbalanced rules in place today.

[r9etb]

Problem is, the reaction you describe will be crushed by the same unbalanced rules in place today.

Leaving .... what recourse, precisely?

The comments to French's article show the likely unintended consequences of his proposed legislation.  Publicity, on the other hand, is relatively easy.

[Cyber Liberty]

Leaving .... what recourse, precisely?

The comments to French's article show the likely unintended consequences of his proposed legislation.  Publicity, on the other hand, is relatively easy.

I'm more aligned with you than with French.  I don't think a law is going to help.

[Doug Loss]

You don't need to (or want to, really) do this on a federal level.  I advise that you contact your state legislators and ask them to introduce a bill based on this proposal:

Campus Free Speech: A Legislative Proposal

I've done this already here in Tennessee.  I further advise you that you urge your state legislators to introduce a bill rescinding accreditation for any institution of higher education that censors students' free speech rights in any way.