Free speech has once again become a highly charged issue on college campuses, where protests frequently have interrupted, and in some cases halted, appearances by polarizing speakers. At a lively panel last week during the Education Writers Assn.’s annual conference in the nation’s capital, free speech advocates and a UC Berkeley student leader debated who was at fault and what could be done. They asked liberal student groups to pick a speaker to come to campus and debate with students from all sides. Greg Lukianoff, president and CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), which promotes free speech and due process rights at universities, said the narrative so often gets oversimplified to “the cliche PC run amok.” Lukianoff said not all free speech issues are political. This national fight over where to draw the line, however complicated, needs to focus more on emphasizing the power of engagement than on “protecting free speech for free speech's sake,” Jandhyala said.

Source: Los Angeles Times June 05, 2017 16:41 UTC