Noah Feldman, Columnist

Trump’s Plan to Protect Free Speech on Campus Is a Bad Idea

An executive order that conditions federal funding on a speech code would violate a university’s rights.

March 4, 2019 at 2:26 PM UTC

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of “To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People."

Protest is one thing. Censorship is another.
Photographer: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

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Free speech on campus is crucially important in a free society, and in some ways under significant threat. But President Donald Trump’s proposal over the weekend to impose free speech on universities isn’t the answer.

Rather, any effort from the White House to control campus speech would become part of the problem.