The Real Threat to Free Speech on Campus? It’s Not Administrators

President Donald Trump’s promise to issue an executive order guaranteeing free speech on campus was typically vague. Still, it is worth thinking through the actual threats to free speech. The biggest culprits, in general, are those with a vested interest in fomenting controversy: sometimes students or university staff, but also outside shills working for fun or profit. It is hard to see how a presidential order would address such actors.

First, there is a distinction between private institutions and public ones. (The president said colleges and universities would have to abide by his order “if they want federal research dollars,” but both almost always receive federal funds.) Professors at state schools, as public-sector employees, already enjoy formal free-speech rights. That is my situation as a professor at George Mason University, a state school in northern Virginia.