First Came the Free Speech Zones

Now the Free Speech Topics.

One of the most dangerous threats to campus free speech has been emerging at the highest levels of the University of California system, the sprawling collection of 10 campuses which includes UCLA and UC Berkeley. The University’s governing Board of Regents, with the support of University President Janet Napolitano and egged on by the State’s legislature, has been attempting to adopt new speech codes that – in the name of combating “anti-Semitism” – would formally ban various forms of Israel criticism and anti-Israel activism.

Under the most stringent such regulations, students found to be in violation of these codes would face suspension or expulsion. In July, it appeared that the Regents were poised to enact the most extreme version, but decided instead to push the decision off until September, when they instead would adopt non-binding guidelines to define “hate speech” and “intolerance.”

[...]

The San Francisco Chronicle put it this way: “Regent Dick Blum said his wife, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., ‘is prepared to be critical of this university’ unless UC not only tackles anti-Jewish bigotry but also makes clear that perpetrators will be punished.” The lawyer Ken White wrote that “Blum threatened that his wife . . .would interfere and make trouble if the Regents didn’t commit to punish people for prohibited speech.”

[...]

Blum’s verbatim comments at the Regents meeting are even creepier than that reporting suggests:

[...]

Not only is Blum demanding adoption of the State Department definition, despite the fact that (more accurately: because) it would encompass some forms of BDS activism and even criticisms of Israel. But, worse, he’s also insisting that it be binding and that students who express the ideas that fall within the State Department definition be suspended from school or expelled. And he’s overtly threatening that if he does not get his way, then his wife – “Your Senior Senator” – will get very upset and start publicly attacking the university, a threat that public school administrators who rely on the government for their budgets take very seriously.

  Glenn Greenwald

Don't mess with DiFi.

To ban the expression of any political ideas in such a setting would not only be wildly anti-intellectual but also patently unconstitutional.

But totally modern Amerikan.

 ...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.