Most people believe the First Amendment promotes the exchange of free speech.
But Stanley Fish, new dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, says the First Amendment is used to protect one person's point of view and squash others. Constraint of expression comes first, freedom of speech comes next. The baseball fans who were escorted from a game for yelling racial slurs about Jose Conseco's mother are one example, he said. Fish admitted that many of his beliefs are neither popular nor easily accepted. But he left the audience laughing at the end of his speech.