UNC Holds First Amendment Celebration With One-Sided Condemnations of Free Speech Values JONATHAN TURLEY
A professor at the University of North Carolina recently sent me an article on a free speech event held at the UNC Center for Media Law and Policy as part of the University s 13th First Amendment Day celebration. What was striking about the free speech panel was not just that it was decidedly opposed to core free speech principles but it lacked a single panelist who spoke primarily in favor of free speech and against censorship. The panel, Weaponizing First Amendment Rhetoric, was clearly designed to offer the opposing view to traditional free speech and First Amendment values, but the lack of a dissenting voices allowed these views to go unchallenged. The panel could have served a more valuable purpose if they had allowed a single panelist to voice opposing views.
Overall, the North Carolina First Amendment Day celebration seemed more like a condemnation event on the threat posed by free speech. Indeed, it often seemed like a collection of vegans assembled to celebrate meat-based diets. One professor even chaffed at the very purpose of the event in celebrating the First Amendment: what about a Reconstruction Amendment Day? & Why is it that this particular amendment is what takes on outsize concern, both in our imagination on our campuses and in our rhetoric?
Notably, the other panels included one on how best to regulate social media, exploring new efforts to regulate speech in Europe and the United States. As shown by the recent call of New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern for a global censorship system, many on the left have embraced private and state censorship to silence opposing voices on issues ranging from climate change to gender identification to election fraud.
In an article entitled Whose freedom of speech deserves protecting, The Well reported on the panel of Carolina experts discussed how political extremists use the First Amendment to justify spreading misinformation. All of the panelists were associated with the Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life and held forth on the abuse of free speech and alternative ways of thinking about expression. Not a single voice was heard on the other side in opposition to such censorship or in favor of social media as a forum for open and free speech.
I would welcome such opposing views in any celebration of the First Amendment if the panel also included just one professor who would allow for balance and even a real debate over such issues. Instead, the event was pile-on panel on how free speech can be harmful and the need to redefine the right to stop some from voicing harmful thoughts.
When you think about it, there aren’t many of the first ten amendments that the Left likes anymore.