Blog: Opening Statement: First Amendment Protections on Public Campuses

Statement

June is graduation season for many colleges and universities across America. It's a time of reflection as these graduates take what they've experienced in college and go off to pursue their own happiness in a world that consists of people of different views, perspectives, philosophies, and beliefs. So it's timely that today's hearing is about protecting students' constitutional rights on public colleges and university campuses, particularly the rights to free expression and association.

The First Amendment prohibits the government, including governmental entities such as public colleges and universities, from encroaching on free speech and the free exercise of religion. The First Amendment of the United States of America clearly states: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble "

Yet regarding free speech, the American Association of Colleges and Universities found in a 2010 survey of 24,000 college students that only 36 percent strongly agreed with the following statement that "it is safe to hold unpopular views on campus." Of 9,000 campus professionals, only 19 percent strongly agreed with the same statement. And as students progress toward their senior year, they become even more doubtful that it is safe to hold unpopular views on campus. We should all let that sink in for a moment. According to the American Association of Colleges and Universities' own survey, an overwhelming majority of students and faculty were not confident that it was safe to hold unpopular views on campus.

Regarding religious liberty, one of our witnesses today, Greg Lukianoff, in his book Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate, writes:

"While it sometimes seems like there is no rhyme or reason to what can get a student group in trouble on campus, certain trends emerge over time, in particular, the fundamental misunderstanding of tolerance and freedom of association that is widely applied to evangelical Christian groups. If you told me twelve years ago that I, a liberal atheist, would devote a sizeable portion of my career to Christian groups, I might have been surprised. But almost from my first day at [the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education], I was shocked to realize how badly Christian groups are often treated."

Indeed, a survey conducted by the Institute for Jewish and Community Research showed that the only group a majority of faculty were comfortable admitting evoked strong negative feelings in them were evangelical Christians.

According to a 2015 report published by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, 55% of the 437 colleges and universities they examined "maintain policies that seriously infringe upon the free speech rights of students." These are shocking numbers.

With very few, and very narrow exceptions, the Supreme Court has declared that the government cannot regulate speech based on its content. The Court has stated that above all else, the First Amendment means that government has no power to restrict expression because of its message, its ideas, its subject matter or its content.

This core principle is neither conservative nor liberal. Indeed, it is to the mutual benefit of all to oppose the silencing of others. As Thomas Paine stated in his Dissertations on First Principles of Government: "He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from opposition; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself." Thomas Jefferson stated it in another way, but even more directly, when he said, "I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."

A nation of free people must be vigilant of government encroachment on unpopular thought. We must be particularly vigilant to protect the freedom of religious exercise, since it is the cornerstone of all other freedoms. Today, in America, we face the very real danger of allowing students at our public colleges and universities to graduate without experiencing what it is that makes us truly free as Americans.

Whether on college campuses or anywhere else across this Nation, it is our undeniable and sworn duty to guard those sacred First Amendment rights contained in our Constitution for our young and for all Americans; and to make sure that we pass them along intact for all American generations to come.

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