Hate Speech And The Misnomer Of 'The Marketplace of Ideas'

Racist hate speech on campus has become the de facto litmus test for free speech protections today. But racist hate speech may not be doing what progressive free speech defenders think it is doing.

Last week in Wisconsin, Republican legislators sought support for "The Campus Free Speech Act," a bill that would punish University of Wisconsin System students and employees who disrupt or otherwise inhibit the free expression of invited speakers. The bill was introduced in response to a series of student protests across the country that interrupted scheduled talks by conservative speakers, including one given by ex-Breitbart editor Ben Shapiro at the University of Wisconsin-Madison last November. The bill requires the UW System to discipline those who engage in "violent, abusive, indecent, profane, boisterous, obscene, unreasonably loud, or other disorderly conduct" deemed to violate a speaker's right to free speech. Students could face suspension or even expulsion for repeat offenses, penalties Larry Dupuis, legal director for ACLU-Wisconsin, calls "unnecessarily draconian."

Although this bill takes objection to disruptive student protesters to the extreme, public support for students who would shout down the speech of others has been noticeably thin. This is true last month. Ulrich Baer, a vice provost at New York University, came out forcefully , but his opinion occupies a distinctly minority position. Even voices expressly opposed to the messages of those like Spencer have advocated locating racist hate speech at the outer bounds of free speech protections — a necessary but repugnant fact of democratic life.