AMHERST — Colleges and universities in Massachusetts have grappled with free speech and First Amendment rights in recent years — especially when controversial speakers come to town.
The debate over free speech and counter-protests was recently elevated when Attorney General Jeff Sessions in late September called the American college campus “an echo chamber of political correctness and homogeneous thought, a shelter for fragile egos” during a speech at the Georgetown University Law School.
Sessions said he believes free speech on college campuses is under attack and advocated for First Amendment rights over “disruptive tactics” of hecklers who try to stop controversial speakers. There’s been a “crackdown on speech” on campuses spanning “creeds, races, issues and religions,” he said.
“The Department of Justice will do its part in this struggle. We will enforce federal law, defend free speech, and protect students’ free expression from whatever end of the political spectrum it may come,” Sessions said Sept. 26. “To that end, we are filing a Statement of Interest in a campus free speech case this week and we will be filing more in the weeks and months to come.”
The Georgia free speech case pertains to the on-campus expressions of a Christian group that the justice department believes were improperly constricted, said Sessions, who urged all higher education officials “push back against some of the trends we’re seeing today,” including efforts to block free speech.
But it isn’t always that easy, as Sessions’ appearance at Georgetown proved. Dozens of protesters took a knee ahead of Sessions’ speech, inspired by protests during the national anthem led by NFL players that both President Donald Trump and Sessions have railed against. Asked about condemnations of those protests, Sessions said “the president has free speech rights too” and called it “a big mistake to protest in that fashion … ”
Clashes over free speech have come to a head here in Amherst, a college town in the western part of the state home to more than 30,000 students who attend the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst College and Hampshire College.
As Sessions pointed out, debates over free speech often flare up around controversial speakers. UMass Amherst caught national attention last year when its campus hosted a panel called “The Triggering: Has Political Correctness Gone Too Far?” headlined by Milo Yiannopoulos, a conservative associated with the alt-right. Other speakers at the UMass College Republicans event included Christina Hoff Sommers and Steven Crowder.
Yiannopoulos proclaimed “feminism is cancer” and inflamed protesters sprinkled throughout the crowd who shouted and booed. Two female protesters who referred to his comments as “hate speech” faced harassment online for months after the event.
To foster a “supportive environment” on campus, UMass Amherst operates a “Hate Has No Home At UMass” campaign, Chancellor Kumble Subbaswamy told the faculty Senate this fall.
At Amherst College, the fall semester got off to a raucous start when an anti-war banner appeared above a dining hall on Sept. 11. “There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people,” the banner read. “In honor of those killed and displaced by America’s so called ‘war on terror.’” Amherst officials called the banner “deeply insensitive” but said the college’s obligation to free speech prevented its removal.