The Left Suddenly Like Free Speech Again, or: Universities and "From the River to the Sea"

Well, I'm glad that the left has suddenly decided that it cares about free speech...

   And, as I've said, "From the river to the sea" is clearly protected speech. Even "kill the Jews" is protected speech. It's not directed to deciding or promoting imminent lawless action (see: Brandenburg). Rather, it's, at most, advocacy of illegal action at some indefinite future time (see: Hess). 

   So, yeah, the right is now approaching advocacy of--or outright advocating--unconstitutional restrictions of speech. 

   In their defense:

(a) To some extent they are just criticizing university's inconsistency. There's no way that "women are female" and "all lives matter" can be deemed harassment (etc.), when quasi-calls for genocide aren't. 

(b) "From the river to the sea" is plausibly a veiled call for genocide. So the case against it is much, much stronger than the case against "women are female."

  Also, I hear second-hand (from friends whose son is at Yale) that a lot worse is going on / being said there. FWTW.

   Anyway, bottom line: conservatives are right to push the inconsistency point. They're also within their rights to encourage private universities to discourage e.g. "From the river to the sea." But blah blah blah.

   Also: there's a significant difference between (i) an individual professor or student saying e.g. "women are female" in a paper or talk or lecture or discussion and (ii) a mob screaming "From the river to the sea"...

   Anyway: I'm in no way sympathetic to suppression of speech, in case that last bit might suggest otherwise. And anyone who doesn't think that the right is capable of restricting free speech has a short memory (or has lived a short life).