The right should be pro-actively defending free speech, not getting caught up in petty censorship feuds

Conservatives are champions of free speech — and they shouldn’t lose sight of that fact.When woke leftists wielded institutional power and squelched campus free speech, the right defended students’ and professors’ ability to say whatever they please.But now, a new report from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression shows a record number of students whose speech rights were violated, driven by a rise of conservative suppression of expression.The right needs to be careful not to squash the free speech it was just defending. FIRE’s Students Under Fire database shows that at least 273 students were targeted for their speech — a record breaking number that’s higher than even the depths of cancel culture in 2020.The organization says they’ve noticed “a uptick in attempts by the political right to silence speech,” mostly by threatening to strip funding if certain students are not expelled, demanding certain groups be banned and writing executive orders to ban controversial shows or festivals.“Such actions could have the effect of chilling speech across an entire campus — and across an entire generation,” FIRE Senior Researcher Logan Dougherty said.“What kind of lesson is that? That the safest move in college is to keep your head down and your mouth shut?”Conservatives were rightfully outraged when leftists trampled free speech and made conservative students self-censor for years on end.

Still today only 36% of students feel confident that their speech would be protected by their administration.The left is the party of cancel culture, shutdowns, mob mentality, speech codes, and groupthink. Left-dominated academic spaces have been outright hostile to anyone right of far left for years.But, now that the right have political control, they are indulging in some of the same instincts, and it is fighting fire with fire.Student protests about Palestine and the assassination of Charlie Kirk were both lightening rods of controversy, and b...