Societal Growth Can Only be Achieved with Freedom of Speech and Diversity of Opinion
In the world we know today, freedom of speech is a very important right to protect. With everything going on in our current political climate, we need to learn at a young age that diversity of opinion and thought are the only ways we can proceed as a society. And the perfect place to start? College.
College introduces us to different cultures, religions, and ideas that one may or may not disagree with. While disagreement may occur, it is important to appreciate anyone’s opinion, whether society deems it offensive or hateful.
This generation of millennials have two common themes: Soft skin, and polarization. Soft skin refers to the idea that it is very easy to offend some (not all) of them with “hate speech,” while polarization refers to the straying of centrist ideas to either side of the political spectrum, whether it be Democrat or Republican.
Hate speech is defined by Merriam-Webster as speech expressing hatred of a particular group of people. This can include things such as race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, etc. While people like to associate hate speech with violence, the U.S. Constitution protects hate speech only if it does not directly incite violence. That goes for any speech in that regard.
College campuses, however, are beginning to establish places known as “safe spaces”. Places where students can be free from ideas or thoughts that could make them uncomfortable. Speakers are forced out of their spots if their ideas are too “controversial” for the general class. Protests erupt in places like Portland and Berkeley, just because a group of people hear something they don’t like, or in Portland’s case, would rather take to the street in anger rather than sitting down and having an intellectual discussion with their town hall or police commission.
These are what barriers to diversity of opinion create. An intolerance to political and societal discussion, replaced instead by riots, screaming, and in some cases, violence. While there has been pushback against these ideas in the recent years, we still have a long way to go to get free speech back on the menu.
In a 2017 interview at the University of Chicago, CNN contributor Van Jones notes the both positive and negative effects of safe spaces. While they can be a great way to deter violence based on prejudice, there is a factor that weakens the future of students for their transition into the real, working world.
“You can’t live on a campus where people say stuff that you don’t like? You are creating a kind of liberalism that the minute it crosses the street into the real world is not just useless but obnoxious and dangerous. I want you to be offended every single day on this campus. I want you to be deeply aggrieved and offended and upset and then to learn how to speak back.”
While the message he promotes is clear, it does leave a hole that needs to be taken care of. Students should not be offended by everything they hear. That argument only promotes radicals who seek to invoke the spaces. What college students need to learn is that people in the real world will say things we don’t like. We will hear things that we don’t agree with. Instead of getting upset, remember that it is just an idea. It won’t hurt us. It won’t kill us. It’s just an idea.
Again, speech and ideas that DIRECTLY incite violence are not protected with the 1st Amendment, and will result in being removed, amongst other consequences. But promoting offense to every little idea only makes more problems. It results in a slightly less cushiony populous where anything that disagrees with anything is found offensive.
You can see that colleges that protect the 1st Amendment entirely can still be culturally diverse, having no need for “safe spaces” or even “Free Speech zones” which are areas where speech can be said without intervention, as long as it doesn’t incite violence. The perfect example for this? The University of Houston.
As seen in their Free Speech FAQ, the university does not ban hate speech. In fact, they ban speech that is not protected under the 1st Amendment only: Defamation, Obscenity, True Threats and Fighting Words (along with speech that violates university policy).
In an audio interview with a UH professor that wishes to remain anonymous, we discuss how intolerance can lead, and has led to many problems in our political and social societies, including the nationwide reaction to the Trump presidency.
As our society grows, we must become tolerant of people’s ideas, whether they be of good or bad intent, to push forward in our discoveries. Safe Spaces protect you from what you don’t want to hear, but they also bar you from your intellectual potential, and the future of youth in our country.
