Im a Yale free-speech champion arrested for words I never said

I never thought I’d end up in handcuffs and a jail cell for something I didn’t say.But last May, police in New Haven, Conn., arrested me — because a parking attendant falsely claimed I had used a racial slur against him nearly a year earlier.I denied it.I asked the cops to check the parking lot’s surveillance video.They didn’t — and the state charged me first with disorderly conduct, then with three counts of breach of peace in the second degree.It took almost a year, tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees and endless stress before the nightmare ended on March 27, when the prosecutor finally dropped all charges.Why? “Insufficient evidence,” “inconsistencies,” “credibility issues,” video that “clearly contradicted” the accuser’s claims — and a possibility that I wasn’t even the right person.The judge dismissed the case.If this can happen to me — a First Amendment advocate with resources, legal counsel and a public reputation to defend — it can happen to anyone.In 2011, while still a student at Yale University, I founded the Buckley Institute, named for conservative hero William F.

Buckley, Jr.Our mission is to promote intellectual diversity and freedom of speech at Yale.For the past decade, we’ve hosted an annual Disinvitation Dinner featuring speakers who have been disinvited from and disrupted on college campuses.And now here I was, facing not merely an attempt at cancellation, but actual criminal charges that could mean prison if I was convicted.It did not exactly feel like a coincidence.The interest in my case seemed to have more to do with what the Buckley Institute represents than anything I ever did, or was accused of doing.Headlines in local newspapers made much of both Buckley and conservatism generally, as left-leaning media outlets welcomed the opportunity to advance the dishonest narrative that everyone on the right is racist.They made the malicious assumption that those who defend free speech do so to say off...