Perspective: Trump’s executive order on free speech is remarkably thin — but a signal to the right
President Trump greets Justine Murray, a student at Syracuse University, after signing an executive order to protect free speech on college campuses. By Caroline Mala Corbin Caroline Mala Corbin is a professor of law at the University of Miami School of Law. March 25 at 12:32 PM Surrounded by conservative student activists who claim to have been stifled by liberal thought police, President Trump on Thursday signed an executive order addressing free speech on college campuses.
The order mandates that public colleges and universities comply with applicable federal rules and the First Amendment — or risk losing federal research grants. The latter is a new cudgel, but as state entities, public universities are already subject to the free-speech clause of the First Amendment, which prohibits targeting unpopular viewpoints for punishment or unequal treatment.
Third, in signing the order, Trump took care to echo the language of conservative laments about campuses. He proclaimed: “Under the guise of speech codes, and safe spaces, and trigger warnings, these universities have tried to restrict free thought, impose total conformity and shut down the voices of great young Americans.” Clearly, the message being conveyed here had less to do with preserving the robustness of debate on campuses than about protecting certain voices in that debate.
Of course, no one expects the administration to enforce the executive order against conservative-leaning schools. On the contrary, when and if enforcement comes, it most probably will target those colleges and universities that are seen as hampering conservative speech. For, while the order imposes no new requirements on institutions, there remains the risk that the government will enforce existing requirements unequally.
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