Boundaries of Free Speech

Paper Summary:

This paper asserts campus speech codes are the wrong way to address the problem of hate speech, especially because they exist in a academic setting where freedom of speech should be better understood. The paper concludes that curbing the speech of those who would curb our speech is never the answer. The only way to transform minds is to challenge the ideas behind the hate speech directly through dialogue.

From the Paper:

"Americans value the freedom of speech assured them in the U.S. Constitution, but they also seem to accept that there are some boundaries to freedom of speech, though what those boundaries are is controversial and may shift over time. One issue of free speech today is described under the title "Political Correctness," or "PC." It is defined as efforts by certain political groups to enforce some form of speech code in order to control speech and ban any term or phrase that might be considered demeaning to any group in society, so-called "hate speech." One of the problems with these efforts is the vagueness of the terms used to define it--what is "demeaning," and how is it to be decided when a given phrase is demeaning or not? In his chapter, "Hate Speech, Free Speech, and the Unspoken," from the anthology Signs of Life, Richard Goldstein writes, The perception of crisis is why hate speech has become a divisive issue among progressives. The distressing force of the current backlash against hard-won minority rights creates a fundamental conflict between our commitment to free expression and our desire to protect and preserve the victims of abuse. The result is an aching uncertainty about where to draw the line. (412) The question, then, is whether campus speech codes are the right way to address the problem of hate speech, or if such speech codes violate free speech to such a degree that they should not be adopted."

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