Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s administration has ordered state universities to ban a pro-Palestinian student organization, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). The state has denounced SJP as supporting a “terrorist organization” after the massacre of Israelis by Hamas. I have previously written how Hamas is morally and legally a terrorist organization. However, this move would, in my view, violate the First Amendment and chill the exercise of free speech in higher education.
State university system Chancellor Ray Rodrigues wrote to university presidents Tuesday directing them to disband chapters of SJP. He quoted the national group’s declaration that “Palestinian students in exile are PART of this movement, not in solidarity with this movement.”
That is a rather thin rationale for declaring that the student groups are now aiders and abetters of terrorism. Nevertheless, Rodrigues declared “it is a felony under Florida law to ‘knowingly provide material support … to a designated foreign terrorist organization.’”
Students for Justice in Palestine has been on U.S. campuses for decades with more than 200 chapters across the United States. The Supreme Court has repeatedly struck down such content-based bans and has been particularly protective of free speech in higher education. In 1943, in the midst of World War II, Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson wrote schools “educating the young for citizenship is reason for scrupulous protection of Constitutional freedoms of the individual, if we are not to strangle the free mind at its source and teach youth to discount important principles of our government as mere platitudes.”
The Supreme Court has protected speech that is vile and prejudicial. That included the racist and anti-Semitic speech of a Catholic priest in Terminiello v. City of Chicago, 337 U.S. 1 (1949). In that case, Justice William O. Douglas wrote:
The right to speak freely and to promote diversity of ideas and programs is therefore one of the chief distinctions that sets us apart from totalitarian regimes.
Accordingly a function of free speech under our system of government is to invite dispute. It may indeed best serve its high purpose when it induces a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are, or even stirs people to anger. Speech is often provocative and challenging. It may strike at prejudices and preconceptions and have profound unsettling effects as it presses for acceptance of an idea. That is why freedom of speech, though not absolute… is nevertheless protected against censorship or punishment, unless shown likely to produce a clear and present danger of a serious substantive evil that rises far above public inconvenience, annoyance, or unrest. …There is no room under our Constitution for a more restrictive view. For the alternative would lead to standardization of ideas either by legislatures, courts, or dominant political or community groups.
I strongly disagree with many of the protests being held on campuses, including a deeply disturbing incident at George Washington University this week praising “the martyrs” in the Hamas attack. Our Jewish students need to feel safe on our campuses — a concern magnified this week by the image of Jewish students locked in a library for their own protection in New York.
However, the solution is not the denial of free speech on our campuses. Higher education demands a protective space for a diversity of viewpoints. The solution to bad speech remains better speech, not censorship or criminalization of speech.
I don’t think that dissolving an organization that draws on university and student resources is necessarily an infringement on speech. They can still march around and express their views without the cachet of being an officially recognized group.
If a number of students formed a KKK organization I assume they could but would they be enrolled formally as a student group recognized by the school?
Meanwhile I read that SJP students in Stanford are demanding that the university pay for them to go to Gaza. Stanford should jump on that opportunity.
I’m sure they could find lots of additional donors and funding for their trip, too. I’ll chip in a twenty if they leave today.
On campuses, it’s building up gradually to anti-Jewish violence, just as it did in 1930s Germany. It would be a different story if we had confidence there were only a few wackos, and/or the police were on the situation with Leftist violence erupting at so many colleges. But we don’t have that confidence. Virtually never is anything of consequence done about those who commit violence against conservatives or aggressively shout-down conservatives speakers. Here is the most recent example, at Cooper Union in New York City. “The students called 911 but nobody came.”
OldManFromKS,
I saw that video.
I commented earlier how this is a difficult one to answer in regards to the 1stA.
Then watch that video and we can easily see how things could of gone truly bad.
And why I fear things will get worse.
Here is a read you may find interesting. Note the part of how,
“Social justice theory became part of everything.”
https://www.thefp.com/p/why-my-generation-hates-jews
Upstate, thank you for the link to an excellent essay. It should horrify everyone that our future will rest in the hands of a generation whose brains have been developed by 30 second videos on TikTok.
Upstate – thanks for the link, the article looks interesting, and disturbing. Ironically, that social-justice type of thinking that now pervades everything, where everyone is either an oppressor or oppressed (and invisible forces determine behavior) goes back to a Jew named Karl Marx, or at least he popularized it. It’s not a coincidence that the first six letters in both “social justice” and “socialism” are the same.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/26/anti-israel-protests-college-campuses-00123875
Many of the claims made by that Inside Edition have been proven inaccurate.
– Doors were not locked. No one was barricaded.
– Protesters were not pro-Hamas, they were pro-Palestine.
– There were several NYPD officers on side at Cooper Union and were accompanying the pro-Palestinian protesters.
– there were no direct threats, there was no damage, no danger to any students in the school – ACCORDING TO NYPD CHIEF OF PATROL.
None of this means I support what occurred at Cooper Union. But it is important to get the facts right.
The video shows the protesters were banging on the locked library doors in a menacing and threatening manner, and the students were understandably pretty scared. And if the doors weren’t locked that’s even worse, because then the students were less secure. To me that, and how this is leading up to anti-Jewish violence, is the main takeaway. Your other points are peripheral nit-picks.
If you don’t believe Inside Edition, maybe you’ll believe CBS news, after all they are part of the liberal media:
“Protesters were not pro-Hamas, they were pro-Palestine.”
And yet the “pro-Palestine” protestors keep cheering Hamas’ “historic win for Palestinian resistance.”
Anonymous:
You claimed that “protestors were not pro-Hamas, they were pro-Palestine.” That’s like saying during WWII, protesting against the Allies for bombing the Nazis wasn’t really in support of Nazis.
These demonstrations were against the entire country of Israel, which just suffered the worst genocidal attack since the Holocaust. The demonstrators were out there, siding against Israel, when Hamas just raped, tortured, mutilated, killed, and kidnapped, as many Jews as possible, bragging about it online.
The Palestinian mantra is, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” That refers to ethnic cleansing. The goal is to kill all the Jews on every square foot of Israel.
Israel has offered land for peace to Palestinians many times, and been rebuffed. This is because the goal is to kill all the Jews and “cleanse” Israel of Judaism. This violent antisemitism is inherent in Islam, which is why antisemitism is public policy and culturally the norm in all Muslim-majority countries.
The first land for peace deal was when 90% of Israel proposed in the British Mandate was given to the Arabs, to form Jordan and part of Syria. This was in response to the Peele study that determined that Arabs would refuse to live in peace with Jews. That left Israel the size of New Jersey. Giving most of Israel away did not appease the violently antisemitic Arabs. All land for peace deals were declined. When Israel surrendered the Gaza Strip to Palestinians, they simply used that land as a base to launch continuous terrorist attacks. Withdrawing from the West Bank allowed Palestinians to use it as a bank to launch terrorist attacks.
That’s what all the fences are for, to hold back the genocidal antisemitic Islamic terrorists trying to kill all the Jews.
In spite of all of this, Palestinians are allowed to live and work in Israel, and participate in the Knesset.
Since Palestinians seek to kill all the Jews, then land for peace deals are really pointless. Every square foot of land they are given, is then used to launch terrorist attacks. The goal is to keep chipping way, until they kill the indigenous people of Judea, cleanse the region of Jews, and create yet another oppressive Islamic regime.
In Israel, gays and women have equal rights. Not so in Muslim majority countries.
Palestinians are indistinguishable from any other Arab, because they ARE Arabs. They began calling themselves “Palestinians” as part of Yasser Arafat’s plan to claim the region Palestine is some sort of unique homeland to a particular set of Arabs.
Judea is the homeland and holy land of the Jews. They have their own language, culture, religion, traditions, and dress. Palestine was never a country, and has nothing to distinguish it from any other Arab.
Anonymous claimed the doors to the library were not locked.
From a Jewish student who was there:
https://pix11.com/news/israel-war/jewish-students-locked-inside-library-told-security-they-felt-unsafe/
“I genuinely don’t know what would have happened if the doors were left open,” said Jacob, a senior.
Karen – I’ve watched several interviews, and in them all the people who were actually there say the doors were locked. Further, you can see from the videotape how menacing the banging on the door was, as well as the banging of bat-like pieces of wood right outside the library window. The NYPD chief of patrol wasn’t there, but Anon claims that he says the doors weren’t locked, and by implication, he is to be believed over the people were right there on the spot. Anon even put the guy’s job title in all caps as if that made his version of events more reliable.
If I looked outside and saw that it was raining, but the NPYD head of patrol told me it was not raining, I think I’d believe my own eyes regardless of any official-sounding position the other person may have held, and regardless of whether an anonymous commenter put his job title in all caps.
OldManFromKS,
One of the things I found interesting was this young woman tells us exactly that they did in fact have a class where they were divided into oppressor and oppressed categories. Had it not been for the fact so many of her class mates at that time were Jewish, as she points out, her and her fellow Jewish class mates would of been put into the oppressor category.
We have been told over and over again by our leftists friends this is not happening but as we can see, it really is.
Hence, as she states 48% of her peers want her dead.
The Muslim Declaration laid out clear plans for the destruction of the West. They Even listed organizations under them and since that time the spider web has grown but the connections are there. Here is the original list.
A list of our organizations and the organizations of our friends
[Imagine if t they
1- ISNA 2- MSA 3- MCA 4- AMSS
5- AMSE 6- IMA
7- ITC 8- NAIT 9- FID
10- IHC 11- ICD 12- ATP 13- AVC 14- IBS
all march according to one plan!!!]
ISLAMIC SOCIETY OF NORTH AMERICA MUSLIM STUDENTS’ ASSOCIATION
THE MUSLIM COMMUNITIES ASSOCIATION THE ASSOCIATION OF MUSLIM
SOCIAL SCIENTISTS
THE ASSOCIATION OF MUSLIM SCIENTISTS AND ENGINEERS ISLAMIC MEDICAL ASSOCIATION
ISLAMIC TEACHING CENTER NORTH AMERICAN ISLAMIC TRUST FOUNDATION FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
ISLAMIC HOUSING COOPERATIVE ISLAMIC CENTERS DIVISION AMERICAN TRUST PUBLICATIONS AUDIO-VISUAL CENTER
ISLAMIC BOOK SERVICE
31
32
15- MBA 16- MYNA 17- IFC
18- IPAC 19- IED
20- MAYA 21- MISG 22- IAP
23- UASR
24- OLF 25- MIA
26- ISNA 27- BMI 28- IIIT
29- IIC
MUSLIM BUSINESSMEN ASSOCIATION MUSLIM YOUTH OF NORTH AMERICA ISNA FIQH COMMITTEE
ISNA POLITICAL AWARENESS COMMITTEE ISLAMIC EDUCATION DEPARTMENT
MUSLIM ARAB YOUTH ASSOCIATION MALASIAN [sic] ISLAMIC STUDY GROUP ISLAMIC ASSOCIATION FOR PALESTINE UNITED ASSOCIATION FOR STUDIES AND RESEARCH
OCCUPIED LAND FUND
MERCY INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION
ISLAMIC CIRCLE OF NORTH AMERICA BAITUL MAL INC
INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR ISLAMIC THOUGHT
ISLAMIC INFORMATION CENTER
In the order banning SJP, here is the reason given by Chancellor Rodrigues:
“Based on the National SJP’s support of terrorism, in consultation with Governor DeSantis, the student chapters must be deactivated.”
Here is how National SJP described Hamas’ terrorism: “A historic win for Palestinian resistance.” We need “not just slogans and rallies, but armed confrontation with the oppressors.”
If that is *not* support for a terrorist organization, support that deserves banishment, then there is no such thing.
It helps to know who you’re dealing with:
SJP was founded by Hatem Bazian (a UC Berkeley professor). He is a virulent anti-Semite. Here is just one of his genocidal pronouncements:
“The day of judgement will not happen until the trees and stones will say: ‘Oh Muslim, there is a Jew hiding me. Come and kill him.'”
Bazian also founded and headed the Berkeley chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood — an organization that spawned the terrorist affiliates: Hamas, Al Qaeda, Islamic Jihad.
DeSantis got this one right.
Would a pro-gun student group advocating for armed protests be support for a terrorist organization? This standard doesn’t meet the smell test.
Check out Students for Concealed Carry at UF: https://www.facebook.com/SCCGators/
I support their right to protest and to advocate for armed protest. Do you?
What is “armed protest”? There is peaceful protest and there is not peaceful protest. Carrying a concealed weapon makes it neither one or the other.
SAM – The crucial question is what “support’ is being provided to Hamas by this group. If is merely congratulations, then it should be protected. But if it provides more than rhetorical assistance — e g. money, organizational help, protection to agents — then it should not be protected
“If is merely congratulations, then it should be protected.”
I disagree.
That spiritual support is support (and very valuable to the terrorists and their masters). It is more than sufficient “support of terrorism” for a chancellor to banish SJP.
P.S. Some mistakenly believe that this is a legal proceeding. It is not. It is a matter of educational policy — of what is considered civilized behavior at a university.
Wow, just another example of Deep State Covert-Ops coming Home to Roost.
When will Langley learn that it’s numerous operations have Domestic implications and consequences.
Seems things are totaling up Globally. They’ll get Their War (III).
Professor Turley takes great care not to mention DeSantis himself or all those republicans who support his call to stifle the free speech of those students. Not once he states “republicans” or DeSantis himself. But will gladly mention party affiliation and individuals when democrats are involved. He wants to avoid upsetting his base who gleefully and gladly support republican anti-free speech movements against groups they don’t like. The evidence is right here on this blog.
The professor should be given credit at a minimum for calling it out. But it’s still a case of too little too late. It deserves a nice pat on the head for good effort.
+100
Professor Turley calls out DeSantis by name at the very top of the article. Please learn to read.
Good pick-up. That person was left-wing Anonymous. Let’s remember that Anonymous hasn’t learned how to read.
No, he calls out the DeSantis administration not the governor himself. It’s as general as possible. Learn to understand context.
Since he refers to Ron DeSantis’ administration, rather than the government of Florida, that counts. Learn to use sense.
The Ron DeSantis administration IS the government of Florida.
He’s not singling out DeSantis. He’s being ad general as possible
“The Ron DeSantis administration IS the government of Florida.”
Dumbest statement ever. They have a House, a Senate, a Juducial, a whole bunch of bureau’s and agency’s.
So, not so much.
Fools a-many exist in the educational system of America! They run about taking on causes they have little or no understand of avoiding any learned knowledge just their feelings. This is cutting a path-way to oblivion of despair and ruination of our great county. These fools blindly support barbarians at the gates of Hell.
Miguel de Unamuno ‘Vida de on Quixote y Sancho’: “Cure yourself of the condition of bothering about how you look to other people. Concern yourself only with how you appear to God, with the idea that God has of you.”
This is my free speech.
“However, this move would, in my view, violate the First Amendment and chill the exercise of free speech in higher education.” Agreed. Counter-questions: When will be the ‘right time’ to ‘do something’ to offset the current, popular muzzling of speech on campus the Left doesn’t want to hear? At what point, professor, will you begin to fight fire with fire?
This is a difficult one.
On one hand, I agree with the good professor, and we should counter bad speech with good speech. I would also like to see counter-protesters to SJP.
On the other hand, if in fact this group is raising funds to support Hamas, well that would be a fundraising extension of the Hamas group.
Unfortunately, the numbers of anti-Semitic acts, violence and hate crimes have spiked over the past few weeks. I fear it will escalate even more if things go hot in the Mid-East.
They are not raising funds to support Hamas. Please read the actual “toolkit” – https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/10/DAY-OF-RESISTANCE-TOOLKIT.pdf
This is nothing other than a call for protests. Where did you get the notion that there was a financial connection? Was it because DeSantis cherrypicked a line out of the toolkit without providing the context?
Please read the actual toolkit, then answer the above question again. It should no longer be a “difficult one” based on your own parameters.
It’s a “difficult one “ because he wants it to be true. Because it gives him and others like him reason to eliminate the groups. The “difficulty” lies in the fact that they have to acknowledge that they have a right to say what they’re saying while vehemently against what they stand for.
Governor DeSantis doesn’t care about free speech. He wants to trample on the rights of those he doesn’t like. Just as any two bit dictatorship would do.
The organizations are linked so that the call for financial support will be under a different name but part of the same group.
You have zero proof of what you claim. Lying about it just makes you look stupid.
The linkage has been repeatedly proven. Go to the MB Memorandum and see the 29 listed groups at that time.
Your response is always the same, dumb.
You don’t show the links. All you do is insinuate without backing up your claim. Vague reverences are not proof of your claim. You’re only providing insinuations.
I showed the link to the Muslim Brotherhood. Did you read it?
I’ll provide a quote from a respected source. You are under an anonymous name so I won’t provide the address.
“In 1993, the FBI wiretapped a meeting of top Hamas activists in the US held in Philadelphia. The wiretaps show internal discussions on how to improve activities in support of Hamas within the US and how to shield them from the designation of Hamas as a terrorist organization. US-based Hamas activists agreed that hiding their affiliation and intentions was the best tactic to avoid negative consequences. “I swear by Allah that war is deception,” said one senior leader, “[d]eceive, camouflage, pretend that you’re leaving while you’re walking that way. Deceive your enemy.” “Let’s not hoist a large Islamic flag and let’s not be barbaric-talking. We will remain a front so that if the thing [the U.S. government ban on Hamas] happens, we will benefit from the new happenings instead of having all of our organizations classified and exposed.”
You are a liar and it seems that you are the same ATS we dealt with in earlier days playing the same type of games. Of course there is a copycat ATS so one can’t be absolutely certain.
You talk the same language as those protecting Hamas. ““[d]eceive, camouflage, pretend that you’re leaving while you’re walking that way. Deceive your enemy.”
Part of your deception is your use of an anonymous name. You never want to be tracked because someone might put all of you together and find out how despicable you are.
It takes 5 minutes to create a terrorist organization that kills people. It can take a decade or more to prove it. Therefore, proof is not required. Just look at the money flow, support and the names even though sometimes they change them to remain anonymous.
https://extremism.gwu.edu/hamas-networks-america#:~:text=In%201993%2C%20the%20FBI%20wiretapped,Hamas%20as%20a%20terrorist%20organization.
That appears to be your source… Nowhere is there any mention of Students for Justice in Palestine. How is this support for your claim: “The organizations [SJP & Hamas] are linked so that the call for financial support will be under a different name but part of the same group.”
It doesn’t even mention any college student group, let alone SJP? How could this possibly be support for taking action against an unrelated student group?
Where is the logic? Or are you a bot?
S. Meyer never read thru the link he provided. That’s why he’s upset bring caught lying.
“It can take a decade or more to prove it. Therefore, proof is not required. Just look at the money flow, support and the names even though sometimes they change them to remain anonymous.”
Proof is not required. Just insinuations count. S. Meyer is a liar.
You are stupid. You sound too stupid to do a search for the site like ATS did, but since your name is Anonymous and Anonymous is ATS we can accept this stupidity to be the stupidity of ATS.
We don’t need to prove it. All we need to know are the people involved and its supporters. You can trace the people from one organization to another.
Thank you for making ATS doubly stupid.
“Nowhere is there any mention of Students for Justice in Palestine. “
ATS, why would you think SJP would be listed if it was formed after the Declaration was written? Are you that stupid?
There are loads of groups that hide the bad guys just like Biden has loads of shell companies hiding his profits from the public. It takes minutes to create a shell company but years to prove the illegalities behind it.
You have been proven wrong on everything important in the past. That will not change because you are a liar and trickster. No one is fooled by you any longer.
S. Meyer,
That is pretty much what I was saying.
We have seen it in the past, some have noted raising funds here in the US for the IRA under the guise of some benevolent banner when in reality some if not all of the funding goes towards the terrorist group itself.
Since when did we adopt the French guilty until proven innocent system of justice?
Don’t you think we should censor speech and freedom of association after finding evidence of financial contributions made to support terrorism?
Yikes.
Should we also ban UF’s AiligÇadar Irish Dance Company because of its ties to Ireland? That’s certainly closer to the IRA then SJP.
https://arts.ufl.edu/students-parents/get-involved/student-clubs/
This problem with Turley is his taking of a “principled” but amoral stand. Let me offer a comparison.
Federalist 46, written by “The Father of the Constitution and future President James Madison, explicitly sets forth the reason for the Second Amendment: Its purpose is to enable the citizenry to prevail against a despotic government intent on using the military to suppress dissent. In short, its goal was to enable the citizenry to overthrow a despotic government through armed resistance.
Would Turley be OK with Constitutional Conservatives calling for the armed overthrow of the government despite the clear argument from a Founding Father that it is an inalienable right ? I doubt it.
But he IS comfortable with supporters of an organization whose charter calls for the extermination of the Jewish people and whose members have committed the most horrible of atrocities. Don’t be fooled, Turley’s moral compass needs an RPM gauge
So true. If a Nazi organization in the second world war, were doing the same things, I wonder if the civil libertarians would acquiesce then
Again, professor Turley’s “principles” conveniently change depending on the Leftist politics involved. The Leftists are all for “free speech” as long as that speech aligns with the Leftist narratives.
Thus, the Leftists declare that promoting, sponsoring, and supporting the mass murders of Jews, Israelis, and Americans is a matter of “free speech.”
But, if a different hate group happened to make blacks the targets, for example, why then, professor Turley and his Leftist ilk would be all for shutting them down.
The “principles” are flexible, depending on the political narrative. How convenient.
Abortion of civil rights has diverse precedents in social progress exercised with liberal indulgence.
No bans on free speech as long as there is No violence. There should be a huge counter protest to show we are better.
Jonathan: It seems you and your loyal supporters part ways on whether SJP should be banned from FL university campuses. Of the 43 comments so far on Anonymous (the sane one) and I endorse your stand that “the solution to bad speech remains better speech, not censorship or criminalization of speech”. Seems many on your blog only give lip service to 1st Amendment rights.
+100
Dennis – It is amusing to see your praising JT’s commitment to free speech. I would point out that you spent much of the past six months cheering on gag orders against Donald Trump.
The pro-Palestinian movement is as much a terrorist movement as Hamas and Hezbollah‼️ censure foreign students who are here by invitation!
What is lacking is an unbiased, profound understand of the incontrovertible facts of the history of that part of the world since Rome conquered and occupied it and, in particular, the geopolitical chess games played in that region across the centuries by the major Western colonial powers. Add to that, those who identified themselves as ‘powerbrokers’ in the Arabian peninsula and East, during the 18th, 19th, and 20th century from the rise of the Ottoman Empire up to and including today who, as well, sat at the table. Anyone who lacks that knowledge does not belong out on the street supporting theocratic totalitarianism and wholesale genocide until they can regurgitate that history chapter and verse. In that, the educational establishment of this nation and the rest of the FREE world, has failed utterly. I for one, am tired of all the yada yada, and airy persiflage from the media that never looks back at this and opens the book for their audience. There’ ought to be a vaccine for stupid.
OT, but related,
My Old Friend Is Ripping Down Posters of Kidnapped Children
https://www.thefp.com/p/my-old-friend-is-ripping-down-posters
“Accordingly a function of free speech under our system of government is to invite dispute…”
These pro-Hamas Brownshirts passed inviting “dispute” years ago. They now are inviting violence and terror…….and terrorizing university students in their dorms, libraries and other locations at the universities they’ve paid good money to attend, should not in any way be included as, and confused with, “free speech”.
Good post, Cindy. The linkage of these organizations leads directly to terrorism. I don’t understand why Professor Turley thinks it is a free speech issue since these organizations, including SJP, are closely linked to terrorist groups.
Many Middle Eastern countries already consider the Muslim Brotherhood to be a terrorist organization. It should officially be designated as a terrorist organization in this country as well.
“The process of settlement is a ‘Civilization-Jihadist Process’ with all the word means. The Ikhwan [Muslim Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and “sabotaging” its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”
The PDF for these documents presented in court is at:
https://centerforsecuritypolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/CSP-Explanatory-Memorandum.pdf
S. Meyer….Thank you, and thank you for that link. I’ll never forget Obama’s pandering to Ikhwan…….good lord, the damage he did to this country…..and Egypt!
Jonathan: For over a year I have submitted comments critical of of Gov. DeSantis’s attacks on “free speech” in public education in FL. It started when DeSantis signed his signature “Don’t Say Gay” bill early last year that prohibited the teaching of LGBTQ+ issues in K-12. Hundreds of books have been banned and teachers silenced. You have been strangely silent about those existential threats to protected speech.
Now, all of sudden, you find offensive DeSantis’s order that SJP be banned from FL colleges and universities. You call the ban an attempt to “chill the exercise of free speech in higher education”. A correct position. You don’t have to be a supporter of Hamas to also support the rights of independence of the Palestinian people. But why didn’t you object when DeSantis attacked K-12 education. Don’t you think that also has had a “chilling” effect on public education in Fl schools?
I think you are a little late to the game. When you defend the “free speech” rights of ALL teachers and students in FL I will believe you are serious about protecting 1st Amendment rights in FL!
For over a year you have submitted comments critical of Gov. DeSantis’s attacks on “free speech” because you are a groomer and believe that the state has more rights over children than the parents. You wish 8-year-olds subjected to books and pictures demonstrating adults on children BJ’s. There is something fundamentally wrong with you, so I will leave you to the psychiatric profession to treat, but in the meantime, I want to keep you away from children.
S. Meyer,
Well said.
I can personally sympathize with this particular ban; being that these groups advocate the death of American/Israeli citizens. I wonder why other such hate-mongering groups have not, yet, been banned from universities? A noble, but I can’t help but thinking, a political move that only heightens our awareness of what vile, contemptible ideologies are flourishing within academia and thus throughout our culture in general. If you really want to make a difference, fumigate the democrat party and all its attendant organizations and hate-mongering groups
Instead, airdrop the student group into Gaza. Word is, Hamas needs the group’s support there more than any quantity of virtue-signaling student’s might offer in the States. Rumor has it they’re running out of human shields. Sending the students there will affect a “win-win” for both groups.