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Specifically, we heard members of Harvard Law School’s Black Law Students Association (BLSA) recently announce their desire to introduce a code to ban offensive, racially-charged speech after a number of on-campus incidents involving racial slurs. It was not without some historic irony that Harvard’s BLSA called for codes proscribing offensive words; after all, it was in this very same law school’s marketplace of ideas that eventual Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., studied, taught and vigorously defended the constitutional right of free, unfettered speech...
Those calling for speech codes frequently see themselves as victims, and victimism exploits its position by calling for greater “diversity” in the community in which the victim exists. Likewise, BLSA members have advocated greater diversity in the student body and faculty at the Law School. But that very diversity normally brings individuals with unpopular views into the academic community, precisely the views the proposed speech code would attempt to silence. Thus, the call for diversity is actually disingenuous—what speech code advocates really want is a greater representation in their community of individuals...
There is another, more practical, reason for not implementing a campus speech code: in every instance when such codes have been challenged in court, they have been struck down for being overly broad, containing ambiguous and vague guidelines, or for attempting to modify hateful behavior by suppressing speech. In the significant 1989 Doe v. University of Michigan case, for instance, the Court, in finding against the University’s speech code, commented that, “If there is any star fixed in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall...
...ISSUE The Secret of Life Cracking the DNA code has changed how we live, heal and imagine the future...
...ISSUE The Secret of Life Cracking the DNA code has changed how we live, heal and imagine the future...