Campus Misinformation by Bradford Vivian

Author:Bradford Vivian
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2022-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Freeing the First Amendment from Campus Misinformation

“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” This famous phrase is commonly misattributed to Voltaire, the French Enlightenment champion of individual rights. In truth, an English writer named Evelyn Beatrice Hall, who published under the pseudonym S. G. Tallentyre, first published the adage in her early-twentieth-century work The Friends of Voltaire.6 Regardless, the phrase is widely accepted as a faithful distillation of Voltaire’s ideas on free speech. One of the most quietly revolutionary and radically democratic elements of this pledge to defend free speech is its subtle but important hint of forbearance. Speaking freely, the adage says, does not mean speaking in a manner of which other people approve. Optimal conditions of free speech exist, instead, when social and political institutions empower the most people to speak as they wish—so long as they do not speak to restrict the human rights and dignity of others. Such optimal conditions of speech and conscience imply that members of a community may freely decide for themselves which beliefs, arguments, or ideas they find most persuasive within an ongoing contest of diverse and unregulated voices. The socially and politically revolutionary aspect of this classic Enlightenment ideal lies precisely in its omission of artificial qualifications for speech. Free speech, in the best Enlightenment versions of that ideal, does not need to satisfy subjective standards of civility, moderation, or reason. Speak freely, the adage implies, and I will leave it to you to be the best judge of what you want to say and how you want to say it.

Such forbearance is present in the language of the First Amendment from its first words. The text itself is concise yet rich with affirmations of complementary rights:

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, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

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