This week we’re releasing our new Free Speech Organizing Toolkit. It is available to download from our website here. The toolkit is designed to provide campus leaders and free speech supporters with the tools to work with higher education leaders to remove impediments to a marketplace of ideas on their campus.
As we all know, the very nature of the mission of higher education necessitates as few restrictions on speech as possible, so as to allow the marketplace of ideas to flourish and to allow learning and discovery to proceed. Without the give and take, the vetting of ideas and the chance both to independently draw conclusions and to advocate for them, it is hard, if not impossible, for colleges and universities to teach the critical thinking skills that define a higher education.
Unfortunately, in simply fulfilling this broad mission and exploring new ideas, institutions of higher education are among the places in our country where free speech is most likely to come under attack. Whether as a result of this political and public pressure, genuine misunderstanding of the law or actual desire to restrict speech, too many higher education institutions now restrict more speech than is constitutional or conducive to a higher education.
This toolkit is intended to provide students, faculty and other supporters of free speech the tools to convince campus leaders to remove impediments to free speech on campus.