The government will have an agency that makes sure that college campuses are places of "free thought" and debate. The appropriate steps they will take to ensure that they are places of "free thought and debate" will be to withhold federal funds. So if the government determines that a college is not meeting their requirements for "free thought", money can be withheld.
I don't know about you, but that doesn't sit well with me.
It doesn't sit well with me either. The radical left and the radical right both like to shut down free thought and debate. I don't think adding a political agency to oversee campus discussion will help things at all.
Actually, NO, it is not covered by the First A.
That only prohibits Congress from making a law.
(eg- you many not say anything bad about Democrats)
A college can operate anyway it wants - and if they want to operate without goverment $$ that is their business.
Now, I am waiting for the Dems to make a big deal out of this.
Will they say that a college has a right to prohibit certain speech?
Remember - Bob Jones U - was penalized for keeping the right not to allow inter racial dating. - oh - I keep forgetting that is not PC - so that was okay for the Feds to get involved........
I am - as it will protect the rights of minority students on some campuses.
Without knowing the verbage of the EO, hard to say, but, BUT, something had/has to be done to reverse the gestapo tactics used by the left at places like Berkley et al!
I would prefer that the general public raise so much cain about such that it would solve itself, but so far doesn't seem to be happening.
Unfortunately the "silent majority" seems to just go along with the status quo as we have since the rebellious '60s, and I am one of the guilty. Guess that is the reason
we are called "silent"!
But, as to your question, I am not OK with more "GOV'T MANDATES"!!
Have I been to a public college in the past 20 years? Yes, last Thursday. And quite frequently for the past four years. I don't attend but I'm there plenty. I also hear about what happens in classrooms and on campus thanks to my two sons who do/have attended.
So, you got bad grades for thinking things? Must be rough. Hopefully the President having a photo op and signing a piece of paper will help future students in your predicament.
Could it have more to do with inquiry in the process of forming opinion, as opposed to expressing it?
If you are not even allowed to raise certain questions in the quest for truth, then that would indeed be policing thought.
Consider (quotes found on Wikipedia):
‘"Without freedom of thought there can be no such thing as wisdom & no such thing as publick liberty without freedom of speech", Benjamin Franklin, 1722.’
‘U.S. Supreme Court JusticeBenjamin Cardozo reasoned in Palko v. Connecticut (1937), “Freedom of thought... is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom. With rare aberrations a pervasive recognition of this truth can be traced in our history, political and legal.”’
I'm simply saying we already have the first amendment protecting free speech. In light of that a declaration by the President that there shall be free speech on campus seems unnecessary and then using the stick of withholding funding if the free speech does not meet his standard makes me a bit uneasy.
Yes, it's hard to imagine, as it would have been antithetical for Obama to do such a thing.
His was a reign of terror that allowed these issues to grow out of control via BAMN, BLM, Antifa, riots supporting thugs, violence outside Trump rallies, “rogue” IRS agents “investigating” conservatives, even going after Hillary’s presidential rival, etc.
Obama’s agenda had almost nothing in common with free speech, but rather the opposite.