Why should we restrict free speech?

While we do have freedom of speech in the United States, there should be a limit on it. One key example of how words are so powerful is the Constitution itself. Words are subjective. For example, if we recognize that our speech is becoming slanderous or harmful to another person, it should be frowned upon.

Is free speech really free speech?

The First Amendment of the United States Constitution guarantees that the government cannot “abridge the freedom of speech.” The courts, however, have consistently found that this guarantee is not without limit. …

Why is there value in having free speech on campus?

Free speech on a college campus means that any opinion can be voiced and evaluated on its own merits. The most important function of free speech is to protect the voices of those with unpopular opinions, or those with opinions disliked by people with power.

What government committee did Berkeley Students Protest in 1960 for suppressing political freedom?

Joseph McCarthy’s death in 1957, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) continued its high-profile hunt for “subversives.” In 1960, when HUAC announced it would be holding hearings at San Francisco’s City Hall, SLATE members, along with civil rights groups and labor leaders, started planning protests months …

What free speech is not protected?

Categories of speech that are given lesser or no protection by the First Amendment (and therefore may be restricted) include obscenity, fraud, child pornography, speech integral to illegal conduct, speech that incites imminent lawless action, speech that violates intellectual property law, true threats, and commercial …

Why free speech should not be limited on college campuses?

However, it ties enforcement to federal funding as a way to incentivize institutions to end policies restricting speech. Opponents worry that this executive order could be used to target colleges on a political basis or stifle freedom of expression.

What is the Berkeley effect?

To students across the country — or at least to that bright, neurotic tenth of them who make themselves visible — the effect of six months of tumult at Berkeley has been to show, as Yale Student Bruce Payne expresses it, that “students have become somebody in being able to act together.” …

Why did students protest in the 60s?

The student movement of the 1960s rested on the notion of change. Students wanted to end the consensus culture that formed following the Second World War, eliminate racial discrimination and free themselves from the authoritarian rule of the establishment.

Why is some speech unprotected?

Under the Miller test (which takes its name from Miller v. California (1973)), speech is unprotected if “the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the [subject or work in question], taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest”, “the work depicts or describes, in a patently …