Time for a Refresher on What ‘Free Speech' Means

The Atlantic

19-05-2025

Free speech is forever a matter of perspective. Unless you are an absolutist—and very few true absolutists exist—everyone draws their red lines somewhere, whether it's at racist epithets or yelling 'Fire!' in a crowded theater when nothing is actually burning. But the concept becomes completely meaningless unless it allows for the hearing of ideas that one group or another is bound to find abhorrent.
Salman Rushdie, the author who was nearly murdered three years ago because of a novel he wrote, once articulated what he thought supporting free speech meant: 'The defense of free expression begins at the point at which somebody says something you don't like.'
Rushdie called this view 'old-fashioned,' and, in 2025, it might very well be: Just last week, he was pressured to cancel an appearance because of something he said that a group of students did not like. In an interview with a German podcaster a year ago, Rushdie expressed surprise that young people on college campuses protesting on behalf of Palestinians were not being more circumspect about the fundamentalism and murderousness of Hamas, who started the current Gaza war. 'I feel that there's not a lot of deep thought happening,' he said about the demonstrations. 'There's an emotional reaction to the death in Gaza, and that's absolutely right. But when it slides over towards anti-Semitism and sometimes to actual support of Hamas, then it's very problematic.'
This past weekend, Rushdie was supposed to be the keynote speaker at Claremont McKenna College's commencement ceremony. The school's Muslim student association loudly protested his being 'platformed,' and they were backed up by the Los Angeles branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. On Wednesday, presumably because of this pressure, Rushdie pulled out. At the news, the exultant head of the Muslim student association responded, 'I'm surprised, relieved and happy.'
On that podcast last year, Rushdie, who had lived for decades in hiding from the forces of extremism, was trying to offer a warning based on this experience, to make sure the protests avoided supporting 'a fascist terrorist group'—an organization that spares no thought for free expression. I'd like to give the students the benefit of the doubt and assume they didn't see the irony in choosing to respond by seeking to foreclose his speech.
That these young people seem to have a mixed-up sense of free speech is not surprising; their elders are not doing much better. The Trump administration has sought to deport legal residents over their free speech. And this government intimidation has reached such a point that universities now seem to be engaging in what the historian Timothy Snyder has called 'anticipatory obedience.' In another news story from commencement season, a student named Logan Rozos, who was graduating from NYU's Gallatin School, took his opportunity at the mic to denounce 'the atrocities currently happening in Palestine' and 'complicity in this genocide.' NYU responded with a fury redolent of an X post from White House Communications Director Steven Cheung. 'He lied about the speech he was going to deliver and violated the commitment he made to comply with our rules,' a university spokesperson said about Rozos. NYU apologized to the audience who 'was subjected to these remarks' and said that Rozos would not be receiving his diploma.
I find it impossible to read this as anything other than NYU, already under investigation by the administration for its DEI practices, overreacting out of fear. A student hijacking a commencement ceremony is not exactly a new practice. Last year there was a spate of such protests, including at Duke, where students walked out of a speech by Jerry Seinfeld over his views on Israel. But NYU's response in this case was particularly harsh; the university made a point of calling out Rozos for his 'personal and one-sided political views' and disciplining him in a way that is sure to chill even the most anodyne of pro-Palestinian activism.
That the incidents at NYU and Claremont McKenna are both related to Gaza makes sense. Free speech is easy to condone when it involves issues of at least broad general agreement. But the question of how to talk about Israel's actions, Hamas's actions, the October 7 attacks, and the shockingly large number of Palestinian deaths that followed yields no easy answers. It is precisely on such difficult topics that a defense of free speech breaks down.
Take Rushdie's comments. I don't think most of the protests on college campuses are in support of Hamas (and many students, I'd venture to guess, understand neither the group's ideology nor the complexity of Palestinian politics); they just want the killing they are seeing on TikTok to stop. And Rushdie cares about this killing too; he just doesn't get why the students aren't doing more to disassociate themselves from a group opposed to their progressive ideals. For their part, the students don't see why this is so important, at least not in the way someone like Rushdie, who was the subject of an Iranian fatwa calling for his death (which nearly succeeded), would.
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This mess of misunderstanding and miscommunication has been fueled by the words and actions of the Trump administration. By characterizing practically all pro-Palestinian sentiment as a form of anti-Semitism, Trump has given others permission to declare that even the most basic expressions of humanitarian concern fall outside the bounds of free speech. And this has only encouraged those who do care about what is happening in Gaza to respond, as the Claremont McKenna students did, by enforcing their own borders, declaring certain ideas—and words—beyond the pale.
The result is a culture in which people come to believe that they have no good reason to express themselves outside a narrow range of topics. The conversation around Israel and Palestine has been impoverished by this spiral. Positions have calcified and made it nearly impossible to talk about what is happening and why. Do you believe a genocide is taking place or don't you? Answer either way and someone will challenge your right to speak.
Free speech is supposed to break through this kind of categorical thinking. It's also the force that ensures openness and helps prevent a culture from going stagnant. Without the jostling of ideas, a society is doomed to chase its tail, fighting over what freedom of speech actually means, all the while closing down opportunities for actual speaking.