The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 132 - The Fight For Free Speech On Campus ft. Lt. Gov. Dan Forest

00:00:00.000 The majority of college students now oppose free speech, according to recent polls,

00:00:05.540 which is a very hilarious and subtle irony that these students are giving their opinion.

00:00:10.340 They're telling someone their opinion that they oppose free speech.

00:00:12.880 That is neither here nor there.

00:00:14.320 Left-wing commentators want to gaslight us all on this

00:00:17.180 and insist that the campus free speech crisis is nothing more than a myth.

00:00:22.300 We will analyze the facts and discuss what can be done about it

00:00:26.020 with North Carolina Lieutenant Governor Dan Forrest,

00:00:28.880 a driving force behind the Restore Campus Free Speech Act,

00:00:34.160 then a history of the free speech movement and why leftist activism relies on lies.

00:00:40.460 I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:00:49.500 So much to talk about today.

00:00:51.320 While we still have the ability to use our voices and to speak and to give our opinions,

00:00:55.680 there is a lot to talk about because there are a ton of misconceptions out there

00:00:58.660 and lefties at Fox and the Washington Post are simply lying to the American people

00:01:04.120 on the question of the free speech crisis on campus.

00:01:07.020 But before we get to that, speaking of the campus,

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00:03:54.260 Okay.

00:03:55.560 Leftists are denying that there is a crisis of free speech on campus.

00:03:59.720 I don't know if you've seen the think pieces over the last few years.

00:04:03.420 Matthew Iglesias over at Vox.com.

00:04:06.060 He's actually arguing that support for free speech is rising right now on campuses.

00:04:10.960 How he does that is a great question.

00:04:13.380 Jeffrey Sachs at the Washington Post says that the crisis is absolutely a myth.

00:04:18.040 It's just a scaremongering by fragile little conservatives.

00:04:22.100 Fragile little conservatives who are being beaten with bats on college campuses and disinvited

00:04:26.040 from speaking there.

00:04:27.160 And Andrew Hartman at the Washington Post says that students have never been hostile

00:04:32.360 to speech.

00:04:33.820 Oh, old people always say that students are hostile to speech. 0.93

00:04:36.600 That has never been the case.

00:04:39.120 They claim that opinion surveys show this.

00:04:42.480 They say, oh, well, you know, this survey says that students really support free speech.

00:04:46.460 And in a certain sense, they're right.

00:04:48.860 There have been public opinion surveys that show that students say, oh, no, we shouldn't

00:04:53.200 censor this speech.

00:04:54.000 We shouldn't censor this speech.

00:04:55.500 The trouble is that when the students actually get to campus and when the rubber hits the

00:05:01.920 road, you know, when they actually have to put their ideas into practice, they completely

00:05:06.380 balk.

00:05:07.220 They disinvite speakers.

00:05:09.100 They shriek.

00:05:09.700 They yell.

00:05:10.580 They shout people down.

00:05:11.940 And in some cases, like Charles Murray, during one of his campus visits, they assaulted the

00:05:16.220 speakers.

00:05:16.640 Other people, by the way, have shown that all of these claims from the lefty journalists

00:05:22.020 just are not true.

00:05:23.760 So and that isn't just conservatives who say that this is people from across the political

00:05:27.700 spectrum.

00:05:28.560 Social scientists, Sean Stevens and Jonathan Haidt have shown this.

00:05:33.480 They there was this giant survey that I think a lot of the lefty journalists are relying on.

00:05:39.520 But when you focus the research down onto the kids who are actually in college now, not the

00:05:44.400 35 year olds, not the people who are out of college, not even the millennials, when you

00:05:48.120 focus it on the iGen, the generation that comes right after millennials, people who entered

00:05:53.120 college in 2015 and onward, there is a downturn in support for controversial speakers.

00:05:58.260 These are not millennials.

00:05:59.260 We love to knock millennials. 1.00

00:06:00.440 There are plenty of reasons to knock them.

00:06:01.840 But the people who are actually shouting down conservative speakers right now and guzzling

00:06:06.040 laundry detergent in the form of those delicious Tide Pods, those are actually the next generation.

00:06:10.480 That's iGen.

00:06:11.960 Another writer, Robbie Soev from Reason writes how lefties who are using the general social

00:06:19.060 survey, the GSS, that's what Iglesias and all of those guys at WAPA were citing, they're

00:06:24.540 not including the people who are there now.

00:06:27.440 So sure, it uses older generations.

00:06:29.740 It uses millennials, but actually some of those statistics actually exclude the students

00:06:35.000 who are in college.

00:06:35.860 They exclude those, for instance, who live in group quarters.

00:06:39.220 And I don't know if you've ever been to college, but group quarters is a fancy way of saying

00:06:43.060 dormitories.

00:06:43.980 That's where people live in college.

00:06:45.600 And if it's excluding them, then not only is it giving you a lot of information that you

00:06:50.120 don't need, it's excluding the only information you're asking for, which is what do college

00:06:54.500 students right now think of free speech?

00:06:57.080 Now, it's true, even on this survey, there are increases in the tolerance for things like

00:07:04.080 speech regarding homosexuality or speech regarding communism.

00:07:09.080 Certainly, decades ago, this would have been unheard of to be so open and tolerant of those

00:07:15.420 two things.

00:07:16.300 But obviously, opinion has utterly shifted in America on those particular issues since the

00:07:21.680 fall of the Soviet Union and since the gay rights movement. 0.78

00:07:24.060 Think about racism, however.

00:07:26.420 According to this survey, in 1976, 73% of people thought that alleged racists should not be censored.

00:07:34.080 That number has dropped to 56% by 2015.

00:07:38.680 Mind you, this isn't saying we endorse racist speakers or we hold racist views.

00:07:44.240 It's simply saying people who hold views that some might consider racist should not be censored.

00:07:49.380 And that level is dropping precipitously.

00:07:52.240 And of course, it's always a tough question to say, well, what is racism?

00:07:57.460 These days, the left accuses anybody who wants to lower taxes of being a racist.

00:08:01.720 Ann Coulter, one time when I was in college, gave me excellent advice, which is that when

00:08:05.860 a left calls you a racist, you know that you've won the argument because they just resort to

00:08:10.520 these attacks, these vague attacks that just hit your character.

00:08:13.880 And in America, there's no worse thing to be called.

00:08:16.120 There is nothing worse than being called a racist in America.

00:08:19.120 They know that.

00:08:19.860 So they bandied the term about and now only 56% of people believe that alleged racists

00:08:26.600 should not be censored.

00:08:28.440 In 1976, a quarter of people thought that racist books should be banned from libraries.

00:08:34.460 So about 25% of Americans.

00:08:36.100 That number has increased to 39% by 2015.

00:08:40.840 That books that are deemed racist.

00:08:42.420 Now, who knows what's a racist book?

00:08:44.120 There's that book always cited The Bell Curve, which in one line says there might be racial

00:08:49.080 differences in IQ, and this has no bearing on public policy.

00:08:52.840 The one line, no, few people have even read the book.

00:08:55.600 Most people have just read summaries of it.

00:08:57.400 Would that book be banned?

00:08:58.620 What else would be banned?

00:09:00.060 Would other polemical books from conservatives, social scientific books that disagree with leftist

00:09:06.200 orthodoxy, would those all be banned?

00:09:07.580 From 1976 to 2015, there has been a 60% increase in Americans who think that racist books or allegedly

00:09:17.060 racist books should be banned from libraries.

00:09:20.060 That is a terrifying increase.

00:09:22.880 According to a YouGov survey, 58% of students don't want to be exposed to intolerant and offensive

00:09:30.480 ideas on campus.

00:09:31.740 The majority of students who go to college do not want to be exposed to offensive ideas.

00:09:38.200 The entire purpose of college is to be exposed to offensive ideas.

00:09:42.120 That is why you go.

00:09:43.700 You want to be exposed to ideas that you've never heard of before that might offend your

00:09:47.460 prejudices or the things that are familiar to you, and then you get to figure out what

00:09:51.060 you actually think.

00:09:52.520 Now, the majority, a strong majority of students don't want that.

00:09:56.260 That same YouGov survey shows that 48% of students believe that the First Amendment should not

00:10:02.140 protect hate speech.

00:10:04.280 And you know, that's all we do on this program is we just spew hate facts.

00:10:07.900 We cite hate statistics.

00:10:10.160 We read hate philosophy and theology and hate history, you know.

00:10:15.020 Almost half of students think that the First Amendment, which explicitly protects unpopular

00:10:20.840 speech, should not protect unpopular speech.

00:10:23.860 A terrifying change.

00:10:24.900 A Cato Institute study found that over half of college students, 51%, think that disrespectful

00:10:31.360 people should be stripped of their free speech rights, which looking around these colleges,

00:10:37.120 I don't think anyone would be able to speak anymore.

00:10:39.200 All of the students would be rendered mute, which would be perfectly fine.

00:10:44.080 There's a lot more to talk about with this, some more evidence to smack around Matt Iglesias

00:10:48.800 and all those lefties at Vox and the Washington Post where democracy dies in darkness.

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00:12:50.020 All right, back to the other, the safe, the unsafe spaces at colleges.

00:12:53.760 Katie Herzog at Writing at the Stranger points out that there is a survey from the Knight Foundation

00:12:59.160 and Gallup that shows that two-thirds of students believe the Constitution should not protect

00:13:04.820 hate speech.

00:13:05.800 So that's another, that's a survey from Gallup.

00:13:07.900 Two-thirds of students no longer believe in the First Amendment.

00:13:11.940 They want to gut it.

00:13:12.660 They want to repeal it.

00:13:13.620 They think that it should not protect hate speech, which really just means speech that

00:13:17.380 I don't agree with.

00:13:18.560 That's the actual definition of it.

00:13:20.260 John Villaseñor at Brookings, I'm sure I'm butchering that name.

00:13:24.920 It sounds very nice and exotic, Villaseñor, but there's no squiggly on the name.

00:13:29.600 But in any case, from Brookings Institution, they conducted a survey showing that one-fifth

00:13:35.700 of undergrads say that it is okay to use physical force to silence speakers who make offensive

00:13:42.740 and hurtful statements.

00:13:44.400 One in five undergrads are Antifa thugs, in their own thought at least.

00:13:48.780 They think it's perfectly fine to punch somebody in the face if they say something that you

00:13:53.060 disagree with.

00:13:54.440 Fifty percent of students think that it's okay to silence speakers by shouting over them.

00:13:59.840 The hecklers veto.

00:14:00.800 I've seen this at campus talks all over the place.

00:14:04.320 They'll start yelling at you.

00:14:05.460 They don't want to, they don't want you to say what you want to say because they're afraid

00:14:10.120 of these thoughts.

00:14:11.460 They don't believe that there is an objective truth and that we're just debating over what

00:14:15.920 the nature of that is.

00:14:16.820 They believe that we're just competing in a senseless world and I'm going to yell louder

00:14:22.560 than you and that's how I'm going to win.

00:14:24.780 As far as, those are the broad statistics.

00:14:27.140 As far as particular campuses go, take a look at Clemson.

00:14:30.340 As Stanley Kurtz outlines at National Review, in 2006, when the redefinition of marriage was

00:14:36.400 being debated, gay marriage was being debated, Clemson conservatives wanted to hold a rally

00:14:40.980 to defend traditional marriage.

00:14:42.380 They were told that they couldn't do that by the administration because the auditorium was

00:14:47.260 outside of the free speech zones.

00:14:49.840 The auditorium on the college campus was not a free speech zone, so they were not allowed

00:14:55.540 to do that.

00:14:57.080 In 2010, faculty were told that they needed administration approval before they could speak

00:15:02.340 with their own public officials.

00:15:04.040 They had to get administration approval to talk to their own politicians and elected officials.

00:15:08.800 In 2012, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education fought with Clemson, again, over

00:15:15.340 these speech code policies, speech zones where people were allowed to say what they thought

00:15:20.980 on a college campus and ask questions.

00:15:23.320 In 2014, a faculty member called for publicly shaming every single student who attended an allegedly

00:15:30.840 racist party.

00:15:32.360 Now, I say allegedly racist because the party was a gangster-themed party.

00:15:36.960 You know, there are all these different parties on campus.

00:15:39.500 There are some pretty funny ones.

00:15:41.060 Usually, the whole point of these parties is to get girls to dress up in skimpy outfits. 1.00

00:15:45.580 So, you know, they'll have it like tennis bros and sorority, and then there will be words

00:15:52.160 that I probably shouldn't say on the program.

00:15:53.680 But, you know, they always kind of rhyme or something.

00:15:55.780 There was one called Dinosaurs and Prostitutes or something was one of the parties. 0.73

00:16:00.680 So, anyway, that's the idea for these things.

00:16:03.320 And what's so awful about this, though, is that the lefties here who are accusing people

00:16:08.420 of racism and trying to shame students, they are conflating gangsters and black people.

00:16:14.300 They are the ones doing it.

00:16:15.640 It isn't the people who are saying, we're going to have a party of gangsters, and they

00:16:19.520 say, oh, you must mean black people.

00:16:21.720 When did I say that?

00:16:22.980 When did I?

00:16:23.360 You're the one who's saying black people are gangsters.

00:16:25.040 The lefties who say that Republicans use dog whistles.

00:16:30.240 So, you Republicans, you're using secret dog whistles to aggress against black people

00:16:37.040 or ethnic minorities.

00:16:38.560 And one of the examples they cite is law and order.

00:16:41.520 They say if you support law and order, that's a dog whistle against black people.

00:16:45.000 If you talk about getting tough on criminals, that's a dog whistle against black people.

00:16:49.260 You say, I don't think black people are criminals.

00:16:52.120 I don't think those are synonymous at all.

00:16:54.080 You think that, that's deeply offensive that you think that.

00:16:57.340 Perhaps you should go into a room and think about what you've done and analyze the basis

00:17:01.220 of your own thoughts.

00:17:02.220 That's not nice, you know.

00:17:03.820 In 2015, back to Clemson, that was a side note on usage.

00:17:07.660 In 2015, campus activists under the group See the Stripes, you know, see the Confederate

00:17:13.280 stripes.

00:17:14.320 They basically say that America is an awful racist place.

00:17:17.760 This campus activist group demanded that attendees of that party, that aforementioned gangster party,

00:17:23.240 be criminally prosecuted.

00:17:25.940 You go to some stupid party so you can see girls in skimpy clothing, then you should, then you have 1.00

00:17:30.300 to be criminally prosecuted.

00:17:31.860 That was their suggestion.

00:17:33.500 Later that month, 110 professors signed a full page ad in the Clemson student newspaper endorsing

00:17:40.260 demands for prosecution.

00:17:42.640 It's not, look, students are always idiots.

00:17:44.460 That's almost the definition of being a student.

00:17:46.180 110 of their professors, whom Roger Kimball calls them tenured radicals, those people

00:17:53.560 signed the petition saying, yes, we should prosecute people for trying to see girls in skimpy

00:17:58.660 clothing at a party and being allegedly racist.

00:18:01.680 There were three faculty members who defended the First Amendment.

00:18:05.320 110 opposed it.

00:18:06.740 Three supported it.

00:18:08.260 In 2016, bananas were found near a banner honoring black history on campus.

00:18:12.880 Activists called for criminal prosecution.

00:18:15.120 They found a banana.

00:18:15.920 They said, this is an aggression against black people.

00:18:17.960 It was later discovered that the bananas were not racially motivated at all.

00:18:21.980 Occasionally, you just need to throw away a banana peel or something.

00:18:24.920 This was known, by the way, by the administration, that it was not racially motivated, even as they

00:18:29.620 kept silent.

00:18:30.780 In 2016, a Clemson RA, a resident advisor, tried to ban displays of Harambe the gorilla, the

00:18:39.660 gorilla who was shot at the zoo and became an internet meme.

00:18:42.440 Again, I would like to point out, it is not the conservatives here who are saying that

00:18:46.940 black people are like gorillas. 1.00

00:18:48.700 It's the lefties who are saying this horribly offensive thing.

00:18:52.220 So they're the ones who put it up and you say, hey, guys, you know, that comparison didn't

00:18:57.580 even occur to us.

00:18:58.720 Who's the one who's thinking of the world in racial and derogatory and defamatory terms?

00:19:05.200 It would be the left.

00:19:06.740 You could go on and on.

00:19:08.020 There's not even enough time to go over all of the examples at Clemson.

00:19:11.180 Then, of course, there's dear old Yale.

00:19:13.480 We've all seen shrieking girl. 0.96

00:19:15.220 You know, the girl, this is not an intellectual space.

00:19:17.620 Wah, wah, wah.

00:19:18.560 A lot of people haven't seen what was said by the professor just before that little girl

00:19:24.540 screamed.

00:19:25.420 And in the couple hours of debating before that, here is a former Yale professor, Christakis.

00:19:31.680 Well, then that sorry doesn't mean anything to us.

00:19:34.220 Even when it's offensive, especially when it's offensive.

00:19:36.140 Even when it denigrates me.

00:19:37.560 Even when it denigrates you, even though I don't agree with the content of the speech,

00:19:41.940 I have the same objections to the speech that you do.

00:19:44.520 The same ones.

00:19:46.380 But it doesn't right.

00:19:46.980 But I defend the right of people to speak their mind.

00:19:49.860 So who gets to decide what's offensive?

00:19:53.860 Who gets to decide, guys?

00:19:55.320 How about who?

00:19:56.000 What if everybody says, I am hurt?

00:19:58.580 Does that mean everyone else has to stop speaking?

00:20:00.540 But that's not what was happening.

00:20:01.780 No, because you don't.

00:20:02.480 That's not what was happening.

00:20:03.180 So I agree with the content of your speech.

00:20:06.140 Shrieking girl standing right there, by the way, as you'll see in a second. 1.00

00:20:10.700 That is liberal Democrat professor, Nicholas Christakis, explaining what free speech means.

00:20:17.140 Doesn't mean I agree with the content of your speech.

00:20:19.740 It means I agree with your right to say what you would like to say.

00:20:23.340 And then, like civilized people, we'll debate these things.

00:20:26.460 And ideally, my ideas will win because they're more correct.

00:20:30.520 These students, like, they'd never heard of this before.

00:20:32.840 Like, this were a totally foreign concept to them because it is a foreign concept to them.

00:20:37.340 How was that totally reasonable explanation met?

00:20:39.960 Here is shrieking girl. 1.00

00:20:42.160 Job, to create a place of comfort and home for the students that live in Silliman.

00:20:47.260 You have not done that.

00:20:48.720 By sending out that email, that goes against your position as master.

00:20:52.460 Do you understand that?

00:20:53.940 No, I don't agree with that.

00:20:55.360 Then why the f*** did you accept the position?

00:20:58.280 Who the f*** hired you?

00:21:00.100 I have a different vision.

00:21:00.960 You should step down.

00:21:02.100 If that is what you think about being a master, you should step down.

00:21:05.680 It is not about creating an intellectual space.

00:21:08.080 It is not.

00:21:09.080 Do you understand that?

00:21:10.600 It's about creating a home here.

00:21:12.800 You are not doing that.

00:21:14.600 You're supposed to be our advocate.

00:21:17.300 Now, as you all know, this show also is not about creating an intellectual space most of the time.

00:21:23.320 But today, we have a wonderful guest to talk about the free speech crisis on campus.

00:21:28.080 And so I guess we'll create an intellectual space for just a little bit.

00:21:31.740 And then we'll go back to just babbling and incoherence.

00:21:34.520 Here to join us to tell us what to do about this crisis is North Carolina Lieutenant Governor Dan Forrest,

00:21:41.360 who is the driving force behind the Restore Campus Free Speech Act.

00:21:46.780 Your Honor, thank you for being here.

00:21:48.400 I'm not a judge, Michael, but thank you very much.

00:21:53.420 It's great to be with you.

00:21:54.840 Thanks for having me on.

00:21:56.220 I certainly enjoyed the lead-in to this.

00:21:59.260 I think it was pretty apropos.

00:22:00.780 And we don't always have the time to set these things up like you just did.

00:22:04.600 So we can jump right in.

00:22:06.680 Well, thank you very much.

00:22:07.700 And I must tell you, I'll apologize for the greeting.

00:22:10.920 It's very difficult to figure out the title for Lieutenant Governor.

00:22:14.180 I obviously would prefer to call you Governor already.

00:22:17.560 I'd even be happy to call you President because of all of your excellent leadership on this issue.

00:22:23.900 Just quickly, you know, I think we've knocked down all of this ridiculous argument that there isn't a crisis.

00:22:31.300 You have been a leader on this issue.

00:22:33.400 What does this bill do?

00:22:35.380 What does this law do, rather?

00:22:37.480 Well, I mean, you know, let's take a step back, right?

00:22:40.040 I mean, I think what we have to do is a lot of times is get to the heart of these matters.

00:22:43.880 I think you set it up appropriately.

00:22:45.920 The professor in that last clip you were playing there set it up appropriately, too.

00:22:50.500 You know, the real question is who gets to decide these things?

00:22:54.100 That's what needs to be emblesened in the minds of these students who are saying,

00:22:58.400 let's control all this speech.

00:22:59.860 Let's create all these safe spaces against us haters and bigots and phobes of all different kinds.

00:23:06.420 Who gets to decide what is appropriate speech and what is not?

00:23:11.960 Well, to the left, it's the left that gets to decide what is appropriate speech.

00:23:15.620 And so we've seen all over the country, as you mentioned earlier, the heckler's veto.

00:23:19.940 It has become the new way to tell people what they can and can't say on college campuses.

00:23:25.200 So we've had students all over the country and faculty members and so forth, the faculty or the administration themselves,

00:23:31.260 that invite speakers to come to a campus and speak about whatever the topic may be.

00:23:36.540 And then you have the heckler's veto shut them down.

00:23:39.180 And you and I would both agree that the shutting down of free speech does not equal free speech.

00:23:46.420 And that's what we've really seen all over the country is these people think they're operating under their First Amendment rights when they do this,

00:23:53.020 but this is really not what the First Amendment was created to do.

00:23:57.280 So we want to protect the First Amendment.

00:23:59.280 We want to protect free speech.

00:24:00.800 And I'm not a big fan of just creating policy for the sake of creating policy.

00:24:05.020 But what we've seen is that our colleges and universities across the country and even here in North Carolina had run amok on this.

00:24:11.680 And I personally believe that we don't need safe spaces on college campuses.

00:24:15.960 I believe America is a free speech zone.

00:24:19.000 It should be a safe space.

00:24:21.260 And we need to make sure that all of our campuses abide by the same kind of laws that we do, you know, everywhere else in America.

00:24:28.060 So we saw this happening.

00:24:30.220 We said we need to nip this in the bud in North Carolina.

00:24:32.840 We need to make sure that what happened at Berkeley and other places doesn't happen here.

00:24:36.600 So we started to craft policy along with Stanley Kurtz, Goldwater Institute, and others that did just that.

00:24:42.020 And the way that we went about that was just trying to be very reasonable and really try to assign this policy to protect the First Amendment for all students on the campus.

00:24:55.060 And so we put together what we believe is a kind of a uniform standard policy that we would like to see rolled out across the country.

00:25:03.760 But you mentioned FIRE earlier as well, and I'll hit on them.

00:25:07.520 FIRE is this nonpartisan foundation that ranks universities and colleges across the country on their access to free speech.

00:25:16.960 So they have, as you know, a green light, yellow light, red light rating system.

00:25:20.900 And if you're green, you're good for free speech.

00:25:23.600 And if you're yellow, you're not as good. 1.00

00:25:25.020 And if you're red, that's just bad.

00:25:26.500 Well, when we started this process, we had, of our 17 public institutions, higher education institutions, we had one green light university in North Carolina.

00:25:36.360 That was the University of Chapel Hill.

00:25:38.160 We started talking about that.

00:25:39.680 Just talking about this, the policy had not been enacted yet.

00:25:42.800 Prior to the policy being enacted, just because we were bringing it to people's attention and letting them know we were paying attention, we moved from one to six institutions pretty much overnight.

00:25:52.600 And I'll give the campuses credit for this as they stepped up and said, we want to be a green light institution.

00:25:58.320 So we saw just the fact that the political environment was paying attention, we saw the universities pay attention as well.

00:26:06.200 So I'll just hit the highlights and you can ask questions, but the highlights of the policy are real simple.

00:26:11.060 It just said you can't shut down somebody's free speech.

00:26:13.300 If they're invited to the campus, there has to be a time, place, and manner for them to be able to speak freely without the heckler's veto.

00:26:19.840 There still has to be a time, place, and manner for demonstrations to take place or even spontaneous demonstrations.

00:26:25.580 But you can't shut down somebody else's free speech and call it free speech.

00:26:29.560 And if you do that again and again and again, then there are repercussions for doing that.

00:26:33.820 With due process, due process should always take place, but we put our board of governors who oversees our university system in charge of this.

00:26:42.000 And we said, you know what, we're not going to shut down professors' free speech.

00:26:44.900 We're not going to tell them what to say.

00:26:46.340 We're not going to control the environment on the university in any way other than to say the university campus is a free speech zone.

00:26:53.160 And so we really opened up our universities to make sure we protected our students, make sure that our university system and the individual campuses didn't get involved, didn't involve their students in the process of policy at the general assembly, telling them, requiring them of how they needed to act in regard to those kind of policies being created.

00:27:14.560 And that the point of that heckler's veto, that's such an important point to drive home, that there are repercussions for this, that it is not free speech.

00:27:23.300 Chesterton wrote in Orthodoxy, he said, there's a thought that stops thought, and that's the only thought that ought to be stopped.

00:27:30.700 There is speech that stops speech, and you can't have that.

00:27:35.520 There's no moral equivalence there.

00:27:37.060 It's wonderful to hear that the campuses actually stepped up, or at least a lot of the campuses did, and said, no, we want to protect free speech.

00:27:46.620 We didn't realize we weren't doing this, and we want to do it now.

00:27:49.300 And yet, when this passed the legislature in North Carolina, you got 10 yes votes from Democrats.

00:27:55.760 The Senate, however, passed it along strict party lines, and your governor, Democrat Roy Cooper, allowed it to pass into law without vetoing it.

00:28:04.920 That's very good, but also without signing it.

00:28:08.420 What does that say about the momentum for these kind of laws, about the appetite?

00:28:13.000 Why are Democrats still keeping this at arm's length when even many colleges want to embrace it and want to live up to the highest ideals of the university?

00:28:22.680 Well, I think because the left has co-opted the Democrat Party, there's just, you know, that's just the way it is, and they have to appease their base.

00:28:31.200 And so the reason the Senate voted for it unanimously in North Carolina is because all the Democrats walked out of the room.

00:28:37.520 So it was just Republicans actually voting on it.

00:28:39.500 The Democrats decided to get up and leave.

00:28:41.620 They didn't do that in the House.

00:28:43.360 So they played political football with this one.

00:28:46.620 And the governor, again, just kind of ignored it and said, oh, well, I want to play it both ways.

00:28:50.480 I'm not going to sign it.

00:28:51.500 But, you know, they all just kind of pander and say there's a lot of things we don't like about it, but there's some things we do like about it.

00:28:57.340 Listen, we worked very closely with the university system.

00:28:59.620 We wanted the universities and the chancellors to be partners in this.

00:29:03.660 We believe it protects the chancellors.

00:29:05.320 We believe it protects the universities.

00:29:07.200 Why would you pick a side and run headlong with a certain side that could get you in trouble as a university by going out against the First Amendment?

00:29:15.400 So we think that protects chancellors.

00:29:17.340 It keeps chancellors from having to stand up in front of their mob on the university and say we're picking a side on this because you mob want us to pick a side.

00:29:25.900 The chancellors can say we don't get engaged in these things.

00:29:28.720 We don't get engaged in this.

00:29:29.580 Our campus is a free speech zone, and we're going to protect free speech.

00:29:33.020 And we're not going to, you know, spend a whole lot of time worrying about safe spaces and trigger warnings and all these kind of things that we're seeing pop up all over America.

00:29:41.480 You know, you and I get offended every single day.

00:29:43.520 We don't crawl into our hole and start crying about our offense, right?

00:29:47.440 We want to go do something about it.

00:29:48.920 If we're offended, we want to teach people.

00:29:50.400 We want to educate people.

00:29:52.240 The reason students act this way about the First Amendment is because we allowed a whole group of students to pass through 13 grades of school to go on to college without ever learning a single thing about our Constitution.

00:30:04.780 Why our Constitution exists.

00:30:07.040 Why the principles of that Constitution were founded upon our Declaration of Independence.

00:30:11.480 Why did that matter?

00:30:12.540 What were the grievances that our founding fathers had against the king that all came from the foundation of Western civilization and a great history that came before that?

00:30:21.560 We don't teach these things anymore.

00:30:22.940 And so because we don't teach these foundations, we have a whole generation of people now that have no basis for the understanding of these things that they're out espousing and protesting against and anything else.

00:30:34.580 They are the most highly credentialed and least educated generation one could imagine.

00:30:40.160 And you make the excellent point on the chancellors and on the university presidents, which is that the universities that have caved or been unclear about how they're going to deal with free speech issues, they have totally imploded.

00:30:52.660 I remember when Yale was sort of ground zero for this, I wrote a letter to the president of Yale and I said, you think that you're protecting yourself by playing nicely with these kids and trying to accommodate them.

00:31:04.240 This will not work out for you.

00:31:34.220 What is the danger is for this type of laws around the country?

00:31:38.320 Is this going to be a movement across the country or is there a limit to how far these will reach?

00:31:44.600 Well, we'll have to wait and see.

00:31:47.140 I think in North Carolina right now, I may be corrected, but I think we have 10 of our universities out of our 16 large public universities that are green lights now.

00:31:56.960 There were only 32 of them in the country.

00:31:58.860 So we had a third of them right here in North Carolina.

00:32:00.920 So far, it's working here and we haven't had any big incidences yet.

00:32:05.200 But when that incidence happens, the response of the university is going to be really important.

00:32:10.060 The response of our board of governors is going to be really important.

00:32:13.040 The response of the General Assembly is going to be really important.

00:32:16.240 That's what's really going to be the proof in the pudding of this, not that you create a policy, right?

00:32:20.240 You can set the speed limit, but if everybody disobeys the speed limit, it doesn't matter if you have signs all over the interstate.

00:32:26.040 So right now, we place the signs up.

00:32:27.740 You know, if we place the guardrails out there, we'll see how everybody stays between the lines when push comes to shove.

00:32:33.320 But I think it's good model legislation for the whole country.

00:32:36.480 I think we've proved that at least the universities, we have, again, 10 of them working towards 16, but we have 10 of them that want to play this game the right way, just like Mitch Daniels does at Purdue.

00:32:47.600 And so I think if we can keep moving along those tracks, we're going to start to educate the students as well.

00:32:54.240 One of the provisions in this bill was to have freshman orientation classes on free speech, to be able to actually tell these students what free speech means and what the campus free speech policy is.

00:33:05.560 That's a really good first step, and we'll see how it plays out over time.

00:33:09.560 It's so important because someone asked me a question at a talk.

00:33:13.700 They said, how should we treat the left?

00:33:15.760 How should we interact with them when they don't know so much about our civic history and our constitution and our founding documents?

00:33:23.060 I say, you know, in some ways, you should treat them like children, and you don't want to smack a child around.

00:33:28.200 That's no good.

00:33:28.940 You know, no good parent does that.

00:33:30.600 You just want to put information out there and hopefully instruct somebody.

00:33:34.440 And now where there are so many mandatory trainings and classes and this and that, the idea that perhaps you should learn a thing or two about free speech and free expression as an American ideal is just a wonderful way to get in there and lay the foundation for hopefully a generation that can be both educated and credentialed and preserve American liberty, which is only one generation away from extinction at any given time.

00:33:59.060 Lieutenant Governor Dan Forrest, I've taken up a lot of your time, and you have to go get back to work because you were doing excellent work on this issue and others.

00:34:08.020 So thank you so much for being here.

00:34:10.040 Thank you, Michael.

00:34:11.180 I enjoyed it.

00:34:11.700 We'll look forward to the next time.

00:34:14.040 All right.

00:34:14.760 And we're going to go into a little bit of the history of the free speech movement because that is the name of this movement.

00:34:20.780 It's been around for about 50 or 60 years, and it is the most absurdly named movement probably in American history.

00:34:27.040 Well, we can't get into that just yet, can we?

00:34:29.900 It's so terrible because there's some really good stuff coming up.

00:34:32.720 But if you were on Facebook or YouTube, well, we've probably been censored everywhere by now, haven't we?

00:34:38.620 I mean, with all of the Zuckerberg stuff in the news and YouTube has demonetized just about everything I've ever done.

00:34:44.440 They probably demonetized my old acting reels on YouTube.

00:34:47.240 So if you're anywhere, maybe you're listening to this through a tin can and a string or something somewhere, you have to go to dailywire.com right now.

00:34:54.440 We thank all of our current members because you keep the lights on, and that is very important.

00:34:58.920 That is a wonderful thing to do.

00:35:00.380 If you don't do that already, come on and do it.

00:35:02.600 It is only $10 a month or $100 for an annual membership.

00:35:05.960 You get me.

00:35:06.780 You get the Andrew Klavan Show.

00:35:07.680 You get the Ben Shapiro Show.

00:35:08.860 You get to ask questions in the mailbag.

00:35:11.020 Everybody can hear the mailbag answers and can hear the conversation and watch it, but only subscribers get to ask questions.

00:35:18.620 Many are called, but few are chosen.

00:35:19.920 So go over there right now, and again, none of that matters.

00:35:25.400 What you really need is this, because right now the free speech zone on college campuses is about the size of a sheet of paper, and so you can't even fit both feet into it.

00:35:35.140 But because of guys like the Goldwater Institute and Lieutenant Governor Dan Forrest and similar laws across the country, pretty soon we're going to have a whole big university-wide free speech zone.

00:35:46.020 And then the leftist tears, they are going to water the plants for generations and generations to come into the new age.

00:35:53.900 So make sure you go get your leftist tears tumbler, dailywire.com.

00:35:57.580 We'll be right back.

00:35:58.200 We're running late as always, but I'm going to fly through this because it's so important to know where all of this craziness comes from.

00:36:16.140 It didn't just spring out of nowhere.

00:36:17.760 The anti-free speech movement didn't just spring out of the air or out of the ether or something.

00:36:22.880 It actually sprang up out of the free speech movement from the 1960s, which really was the anti-free speech movement.

00:36:30.760 It's not like this just changed magically and it totally reverted and the parties switched names or whatever nonsense they say.

00:36:37.980 This is part of a long-standing left-wing movement.

00:36:40.400 As with so many left-wing movements, the free speech movement is a total misnomer.

00:36:45.360 You see this with Black Lives Matter. 0.99

00:36:47.460 Black Lives Matter says that black lives matter, but they don't care about protecting black lives. 0.97

00:36:51.120 I've always thought black lives matter and black lives matter matters, but black lives don't matter to black lives matter. 1.00

00:36:56.620 The March for Our Lives is a similar one.

00:36:58.820 They don't really care about marching for our lives.

00:37:01.020 Planned Parenthood sends out tweets to support them.

00:37:03.160 Planned Parenthood kills a million babies a year.

00:37:05.240 The Women's March, it was the march for all women except for the women who are Republicans, except for half of the women.

00:37:10.760 Those women weren't allowed to participate. 1.00

00:37:12.620 Those women were shunned from the movement. 1.00

00:37:14.260 Total lies when it comes to the names.

00:37:16.520 The free speech movement was founded in the 1964 to 1965 school year at UC Berkeley under the leadership of someone named Mario Savio.

00:37:27.740 And Berkeley now, by the way, totally embraces the name of the free speech movement.

00:37:32.540 They have renamed the steps in front of the hall where 700 students were arrested during the original free speech movement.

00:37:40.300 They've renamed them the Mario Savio Steps.

00:37:42.620 They have a dining hall now named the Free Speech Movement Café.

00:37:47.100 As you go down, they're really, you know, very bourgeois now.

00:37:50.020 They're taking all the radicals and making it very bourgeois.

00:37:53.180 Freshmen now have to read a biography of the free speech movement leader, Savio.

00:37:57.700 Ironically, every undergrad must now also take a course on theoretical or analytical issues relevant to understanding race, culture, and ethnicity in American society.

00:38:09.680 That is to say, they have to take a course in rigid ideological conformity.

00:38:15.880 The free speech movement begets this.

00:38:18.380 Well, how does the free speech movement beget mandatory ideological conformity?

00:38:23.580 How did it happen?

00:38:24.280 It's because it was a lie the whole time.

00:38:26.240 This was largely aimed at expanding political activity on campuses.

00:38:31.800 So, in the 1960s, or the early 1960s, political activity and fundraising on college campuses was basically limited to the GOP and the Democrat clubs, the college Republicans, the college Democrats.

00:38:44.400 Those were the only people who could do it.

00:38:46.540 The free speech movement, which were basically useful idiots for communists, for the Soviet Union, for people who didn't like America very much,

00:38:55.500 they viewed America as an evil imperialistic empire.

00:38:58.340 They largely supported the Soviet Union and the Cold War.

00:39:01.960 They opposed the Cold War liberal consensus.

00:39:04.960 They wanted to clear political barriers for using campuses as a base for radical political activity.

00:39:10.500 They largely supported the Cuban Revolution.

00:39:12.960 There was a ton of radical leftist student activism at the time.

00:39:17.800 The Students for a Democratic Society, which gave way to a terrorist group called the Weather Underground,

00:39:22.560 one of whose leaders, by the way, ended up mentoring Barack Obama.

00:39:25.860 That's a separate story.

00:39:26.760 Savio knew this.

00:39:28.600 The head of the free speech movement knew this, too.

00:39:30.680 Years after the movement, in the 1980s, he said that nothing but good had come from FSM.

00:39:37.560 Nothing but good had come from it.

00:39:40.000 Sol Stern outlines this very well at a city journal.

00:39:44.520 This has largely been the case.

00:39:46.160 Our enemies in the 20th century, and especially in the 1960s, backed a lot of radical anti-American organizations to weaken the resolve of the United States and to sow division of the United States.

00:39:57.520 We know this happened.

00:39:58.960 They have admitted it.

00:40:00.200 This was clear to many people at the time and to many more people now.

00:40:03.160 Fortunately, there are organizations and there are politicians that are fighting back.

00:40:08.160 You know, everyone now is so upset that Russia took out some Facebook ads.

00:40:11.720 They took out a handful of Facebook ads in 2016 that wouldn't move the needle at all.

00:40:16.520 They were doing far, far worse than the alleged Russia collusion in the 1960s.

00:40:21.720 And the very people now who are so shocked by Russian collusion were the ones participating in it in the 1960s.

00:40:27.680 There are organizations, there are politicians fighting back.

00:40:30.600 Dan Forrest is a good example.

00:40:32.240 We should not be gaslit by this.

00:40:34.280 This is obviously happening.

00:40:36.180 We need to fight back every step of the way.

00:40:38.220 Don't believe it for a second.

00:40:39.520 When the Washington Post, where democracy dies in darkness, tells you this is a myth, where Matthew Iglesias says,

00:40:44.560 Oh, don't look there.

00:40:45.260 No, no, nothing to see here.

00:40:46.320 Move along, folks.

00:40:46.940 Move along.

00:40:47.500 You know it's happening.

00:40:48.520 And I'll use this as a good time to plug the Bill Buckley program at Yale.

00:40:53.820 I was, I think, the first fellow for them in the first year of student fellows.

00:40:58.540 And the Buckley program at Yale is one of these groups, one of the few groups that's bringing intellectual diversity to campus.

00:41:04.340 They're having their fourth annual disinvitation dinner coming up on April 18th.

00:41:09.480 They do this dinner every year where they take one of the people who has been disinvited from speaking at a campus

00:41:16.260 because the lefties shout them down or threaten to kill them or something.

00:41:20.660 They take one of those speakers and they invite them to give a talk in New York.

00:41:24.640 This year it's Dr. Charles Murray, a very interesting guy.

00:41:28.360 That will be at the Metropolitan Club on East 60th Street in New York, New York.

00:41:32.700 The city's so nice they named it twice.

00:41:34.720 It's black tie optional, very fancy, swanky gala.

00:41:37.860 For additional information, email lauren at buckleyprogram.com.

00:41:42.800 I'm going to try to make it if I can.

00:41:44.140 I'm not sure if I'll be back east by then, but I'm certainly going to try to.

00:41:47.720 And that is another way to fight back and also, of course, to support the efforts and the legislative efforts of guys like Dan Forrest.

00:41:55.660 They are doing God's work.

00:41:57.100 It is really a beautiful thing.

00:41:58.600 A good, a nice up note to end on.

00:42:00.740 We will be back tomorrow.

00:42:01.820 We've got more exciting things coming for you, but I won't tell.

00:42:04.640 You should be surprised and get your mailbag questions in because that will be on Thursday.

00:42:10.140 I'm Michael Knowles.

00:42:10.860 This is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:42:12.000 I'll see you tomorrow.

00:42:34.640 The Michael Knowles Show is by Jesua Olvera.

00:42:36.320 Copyright Forward Publishing 2018.

The Michael Knowles Show - April 03, 2018

Ep. 132 - The Fight For Free Speech On Campus ft. Lt. Gov. Dan Forest

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