Trump and the threat to free speech
The US president’s latest declaration on ‘illegal protests’ suggests his support for the First Amendment is shaky at best.
Whatever the imposed constraints on freedom of expression, one of the biggest challenges for those arguing for a free society is realising a consistent and principled position defending free speech for all. Unfortunately, over the years, we’ve become far too familiar with a partisan, self-interested approach that effectively says ‘free speech for me, but not for thee’ - where in numerous situations those defending free expression are happy to do so for the ideas judged agreeable or palatable, but where defending the views of our opponents are all too easily sacrificed to would-be censors.
With the Trump 2.0 presidency, the challenge of consistently defending all speech is once again to fore. Assessing the implications of a so-called ‘vibe shift’ for freedom and free speech will be central to the lectures, debates and workshops at Living Freedom Summer School 2025. If you are aged 18 to 30, have a passion for freedom and an appetite for ideas and intellectual engagement in the issues then there really is no better place to be that coming along to the three-day residential school in London (26-28 June) organised by the educational charity Ideas Matter. Full details are available here. Apply now to join your peers and engage in the debate on contemporary challenges and opportunities to make the case for freedom.
In the following guest post, Felice Basbøll - project assistant at Ideas Matter and Living Freedom veteran - examines what Trump’s pronouncements on campus protest mean for free speech.
In a recent Truth Social post, Donald Trump, the president who vowed to ‘bring back free speech to America’, has declared war on campus protesters. He announced harsh punishments for student ‘agitators’ and threatened to revoke federal funding from universities which failed to sufficiently clamp down on ‘illegal protests’.
For those worried about the rise of anti-Semitism on US campuses, who watched in horror last year as lenient administrators let law-breaking protesters off the hook, this might look like a welcome – if characteristically erratic – call to law and order. But this signalling by Trump represents a more sinister trait of the MAGA coalition: that in this new era, flashing anti-woke credentials is more important than any avowed commitment to free speech under the First Amendment.
For years, the archetypal depiction of the threat to free speech on campus has been the shrill campus activist, with pink, green or blue hair, who shuts down debate by labelling everything ‘problematic’ and bending the deferential university bureaucracy to her will. Anyone who raised a careful voice in defence of free speech was denounced as right wing or worse, and defending free speech has indeed become synonymous with criticism of the ‘woke mob’. For many, the picture of left-wing censorship that underpinned Trump’s election promise rang true, and, in light of some pretty depressing years of campus life, a chance to ‘own the libs’ is undeniably satisfying.
Even before Trump’s election, the pro-Palestinian protests marked a new frontier in the campus free-speech wars. The response to the wave of encampments last summer was far from consistent, and most universities failed to draw a meaningful or principled distinction between violent conduct and protected speech. In most instances it was within the rights of universities to shut down encampments, but they often failed to do so with reference to consistent principles. It is notable that liberal students in America are now more likely to report concerns about free speech than moderate or conservative students.
They are right to be concerned: under Biden, the proposed Antisemitism Awareness Act would have criminalised a broad swathe of speech, including otherwise lawful criticism of the state of Israel, such as drawing comparisons with Nazi Germany. Within universities, de-platforming attempts are increasingly targeting pro-Palestinian speech. An excessive response to campus protests should then be a concern for the avowed free-speech president. But the Act, which was ultimately never brought into force, was in fact an attempted codification of an executive order from the first Trump presidency. Clearly, Trump’s administration has found it difficult to make a robust defence of speech it dislikes. While it is also true that the protesters themselves might not possess any will to extend their free-speech rights to their opponents, gratitude or consistent principles - though they would be appreciated - should not be prerequisites for First Amendment protections.
Trump’s latest Truth Social post confirms what might have been suspected all along: that his love for the First Amendment has shaky foundations, and does not robustly cover the right of his political enemies to protest. The sophisticated outburst ‘NO MASKS!’ denies protesters the right to anonymity, a cherished foundation of real freedom – from eighteenth-century pamphlet wars to shitposting on Twitter – which allows citizens to air unpopular truths and controversial opinions. Most of his proclamation bears little relationship to recognisable presidential powers. The US free-speech organisation, FIRE, pointed out in a statement that the president has no legal authority to expel individual students or unilaterally revoke federal funding.
Even if only expressed in another dubiously binding post on Truth Social, this statement will have a chilling effect on free speech. Threats to revoke federal funding from universities who fail to comply with vague executive edicts, even if it is specified that he is talking about ‘illegal’ protests, will leave administrators whose ultimate concern is avoiding lawsuits erring on the side of caution. As noted by FIRE, precedence shows that ‘schools will censor first and ask questions later’.
The free-speech debate is rapidly deteriorating into an exercise in trench warfare, and both the MAGA hat and the Keffiyeh often signify little more than the cliched ‘free speech for me and not for thee’ dictum in action. But with Trump at the helm, the left-wingers are increasingly more likely to find themselves in the crossfires of arbitrary censorship. Right-wingers, who have long been able to unite their anti-wokery with their free-speech liberalism, will have to prove that the latter was more than simple opportunism. And those of us who advocate for free speech will have to get comfortable with a new set of American enemies, as well as, perhaps, a new set of unlikely friends.
Felice Basbøll is project assistant at Ideas Matter. She studies history at Trinity College Dublin and sometimes writes on Substack at Inside Basbøll. She is also a former competitive figure skater.
Free speech and limits to protest from Battle of Ideas 2024.
Watch Greg Lukianoff‘s talk on the new authoritarians and the problem with the heckler's veto from last year’s Battle of Ideas festival.
Subscribe to Academy of Ideas youtube channel for all the latest videos from from Battle of Ideas festival:
Much needed reality check.