Authoritarianism at home: free speech at American universities under attack

Photo via AP News

Alex Li: In October, administrators at Indiana University made the sudden decision to pull news content from the student paper’s homecoming edition, cut print editions, and fire the student media director. Accusations of censorship followed quickly, and due to swift backlash from alumni and students, the print edition has since been reinstated. The student media director, however, remains out of a job and is now suing the university over his dismissal. Though there has been some resolution to this story, this incident should be a warning to us all that university free speech is increasingly at risk, threatening the erosion of the care for truth and free speech rights that make democratic citizenship possible. 

The Free Speech Movement was born on a college campus. Almost 61 years to the day before this recent incident at Indiana University, Jack Weinberg, a student at UC Berkeley, was tabling for the Congress for Racial Equality. It was university policy at the time that only the college Republicans and Democrats could fundraise on campus. Weinberg was arrested for crossing this rule, setting off months of demonstrations involving thousands of Berkeley students. Students demanded that the administration lift the ban on political fundraising, re-open the university’s free speech area, allow in outside political speakers, and lift the ban on political demonstrations. The demonstrations also encompassed protests against the Vietnam War and racial inequality. The students' efforts drew nationwide attention as the first of a wave of student activism on American college campuses throughout the 1960s. When Martin Luther King Jr. addressed protesting students during a speech at Berkeley, he told them “you, in a real sense, have been the conscience of the academic community and our nation.”

In the years since, students have upheld that legacy of political activism with protests against South African apartheid in the 1980s and Gaza Solidarity Encampments just last year. Through it all, student journalists have been there to document the historic moment. During the two weeks of the Columbia University Gaza Solidarity Encampments, the student-run radio station was live 24 hours a day. But this work is increasingly threatened by censorship and self-censorship. Two student journalists involved in covering the Columbia encampments were called in for a meeting with Barnard’s Community Accountability, Response, and Emergency Services office and asked to prove they were not involved in the protests. Others were denied access to the main protest area inside of Butler Library despite having press badges. Three other Columbia student journalists were briefly suspended for covering the Butler Library protests. This May, Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish PhD student at Tufts University, was pulled off the street and arrested by plainclothes Homeland Security agents after she co-wrote an opinion piece for the student newspaper urging “the university to listen to its undergraduate student body in the democratic resolutions passed by the Tufts Community Union Senate, including acknowledging the Palestinian genocide.” Following the revocation of her F-1 student visa, Öztürk was detained for six weeks without access to a lawyer, medical attention for her asthma, and religious accommodations. It is right to worry that what these student journalists have been facing are test cases for further revocations of fundamental civil liberties.

Outside of campus grounds, the Trump administration has attacked large swaths of civil society. In September, the White House put out National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7) which baselessly and callously conflated the president’s political opposition with political violence. NSPM-7 explicitly highlighted “anti-facism,” “anti-Americanism,” “anti-capitalism,” and “anti-Christianity” as animators of violent conduct and promised investigations of organizations, networks, and funding sources that the administration believes are involved in “criminal and terroristic conspiracies” motivated by those common ideological threads. Already, the administration has called nine liberal groups “domestic terror networks” and a House panel has announced that it would be investigating 200 NGOs. Among those groups is the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA), whose executive director Angelica Salas received a letter from Republican Senator Josh Hawley accusing her of “bankrolling the unrest” in LA. The letter followed the arrest of David Huerta, president of Service Employees International Union California which is a frequent partner of CHIRLA. Speaking to union activists and organizers who have worked with immigrant rights groups like CHIRLA to push back against ICE raids in LA, the top federal prosecutor in LA said this: “we have FBI teams working around the clock. We will identify you. We’ll find you and we’ll come get you.” It is unclear whether NSPM-7 holds much legal force, but it is a clear attempt by the Trump administration to intimidate civil society and silence the president’s political opposition.

Each move that undermines the freedom of speech not only oppresses the direct target of the move, but also instills fear and leads to self-censorship among others who are watching people lose their jobs, their research, and their immigration status over their speech. This chilling effect on speech is disastrous for democracy. In 2023, Brendan Carr wrote that “free speech is the counterweight – it is the check on government control. That is why censorship is the authoritarian’s dream.” Today, as the chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Carr is leading the Trump administration’s efforts to kick late night hosts who criticize the administration off the air. Now, more than ever, when the Trump administration is undermining truth and hollowing out institutions like universities and NGOs, it is important that we exercise “the very habits that make democratic citizenship possible.” Student activism and student reporting are a few of those habits.

Alex Li is a Sophomore in the College majoring in public policy and double minoring in Law, Justice, and Society and Theology and Religious Studies. They are from Albany, California.