Jonathan Friedman is project director for campus free speech at PEN America. (CNN) President Donald Trump's recent vow at the Conservative Political Action Conference to sign an executive order supporting free speech on colleges campuses has stoked fears in the academy. Against this backdrop, government intervention to defend robust protections for campus speech may seem perfectly justified. But skeptics are still right to worry that the President's order might not be confined to measures that actually support free speech. Many draft and actual campus speech measures can have unintended, and sometimes serious, negative consequences for open discourse.

Source: CNN March 18, 2019 22:30 UTC