On March 21st President Trump signed into action an executive order protecting the freedom of speech on college campuses. This comes following a buzz recently where conservative activists have claimed their views are being diminished at campuses around the country.
Trump was quoted saying “ this is a historic action to defend American students and American values that have been under siege.”
This development is following a promise, made by Trump, that would give the government the ability to suspend funding from universities if they did not comply with his new free speech act. With this, it also prompted questions. Questions like, who will define and judge free speech? Also, what type of funding could be taken away from universities? The White House has declined to comment on the specifics of this threat by the president.
The biggest issue in a lot of people’s minds is who will define all of the scenarios that will come about from this proclamation from the president. At the roots of this issue is the First Amendment. Trump appears to want to uphold citizens first amendment rights within universities. But, many have questioned if the president has thought about the repercussions of giving students complete freedom of speech. The government and universities must be careful while not discriminating against groups or individuals due to their viewpoint while also having a gauge on extremist points of view that are threatening. Without having some sort of monitoring system or standards, there could be problems of safety as a result. There will need to be some sort of policing of situations so individuals expressions do not become out of hand and harmful towards others. But then again where exactly is the line drawn there? One must consider that the majority of college aged students are between the ages of 17 and 22. These are experimental years for many people and without some sort of authority there could be negative consequences of this type of freedom. And what if students will begin to attack what the president is doing as the leader of our country? How will the government deal with that?
In the end I believe that the president is just trying to become relevant within young people and this is an outlet to doing that. I believe that this is a tactic to get more young people to talk about and support trump in a positive way. Trump does not want an uprise within young people against him, he wants something like this to create buzz for him. What he may not see coming though, is this play working against him.