Jim Dey: Free-speech issues more complicated than some like to pretend

Yahoo

12-03-2025

Mar. 12—ACLU of Illinois spokesman Ed Yohnka, in a commentary published in Tuesday's News-Gazette, gave a full-throated defense of free speech.
"'Free speech on campus is lawful — no matter who is president," the headline stated.
President Woodrow Wilson vehemently disagreed. But few others would. Yohnka's general proposition is dead on.
Most of Yohnka's commentary was a negative critique of President Donald Trump. There's nothing wrong with that. Presidents can — and should be able to — take a punch.
But it fell short, failing to recognize that freedom of speech can be a more complicated issue than it may seem at first blush.
That's why the law books are bulging with judicial decisions addressing what constitutes freedom of speech — and what does not.
Yohnka urged university officials to support the "great" and "lawful" tradition of free speech. But what does that mean?
Too many people view free speech as a constitutional guarantee for others to express opinions they share.
Au contraire. Free speech also guarantees people's rights to say or write things others may find despicable or disturbing.
The ACLU was much more expansive than Yohnka in a Jan. 14 letter to University of Illinois bureaucrats in which it noted that it "monitored" the UI's response to last spring's anti-Israel protests and called for the UI to "show restraint" and respect for students' constitutional rights.
The issue then was not what students were saying, but what they were doing while purporting to exercise freedom of speech.
Let's call it free-speech-plus, the fact-intensive and sometimes controversial behavior that often accompanies free speech.
The UI objected to students taking over university property for their tent encampment. The UI also objected to protesters using bullhorns, which were potentially disruptive to the teaching that occurs on campus.
And the UI — as well as the local state's attorney — objected to protesters wrestling and fighting with police officers carrying out lawful orders to dismantle the tent city.
In these kind of displays, campus and community rebels want to stick it to the man, speak truth the power, laugh in the face of would-be oppressors, afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.
But, being mostly self-absorbed youngsters, they also want — or, more accurately, demand — their self-congratulating effrontery to be absolutely risk-free, with no recriminations of any kind relating to discipline or, especially, prosecution.
That's not what happened at the UI. Hence the ACLU's warning letter.
The protesters' expressive behavior was not the problem. But what went with it became the UI's problem.
Former UI law school Dean Vic Amar, a constitutional scholar, has written that the concept of free speech does not allow protesters to take over public buildings, block public sidewalks used by people traversing campus or establish tent cities on public property.
He has written that noise control is a "valid (government) interest" because teachers and students are in classrooms, libraries and labs pursuing their studies or research.
Here's another issue that doesn't get much consideration:
Tent cities can become nightmarishly filthy. That why "sanitation" is a "significant regulatory concern."
As far as free speech goes, people are and should be free to have at it on all sides of an issue.
While subject to time, place and manner restrictions, it doesn't cost a thing and can be a useful in calling attention to perceived wrongs.
But speech-plus can be a horse of a different color. While it doesn't come with a get-out-of-jail-free card, protesters can invoke their own legal immunity by exercising their legal rights while simultaneously respecting those of others.