Source: https://www.thefire.org/fire-letter-to-university-of-north-carolina-president-erskine-b-bowles/
Timestamp: 2019-04-18 16:22:29+00:00

Document:
As you can see from the list of our Directors and Board of Advisors, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) unites leaders in the fields of civil rights and civil liberties, scholars, journalists, and public intellectuals across the political and ideological spectrum on behalf of liberty, legal equality, freedom of religion, academic freedom, due process and, in this case, freedom of expression on America’s college campuses. Our website, www.thefire.org, will give you a greater sense of our identity and activities.
I write today to formally register FIRE’s concerns about the possibility of the implementation of a System-wide policy addressing hate crimes and acts of violence and intimidation. It is our strong belief that existing law already substantively addresses the problems the UNC Study Commission to Review Student Codes of Conduct as They Relate to Hate Crimes may seek to remedy. FIRE is gravely concerned that establishing further prohibitions regarding "hate speech" on campus may unlawfully abridge the First Amendment rights of UNC students and simultaneously sabotage UNC’s admirable mission to "discover, create, transmit, and apply knowledge to address the needs of individuals and society."
Our concerns are both legal and moral in nature.
[T]he precedents of this Court leave no room for the view that, because of the acknowledged need for order, First Amendment protections should apply with less force on college campuses than in the community at large. Quite to the contrary, "the vigilant protection of constitutional freedoms is nowhere more vital than in the community of American schools."
In light of the Court’s robust and unstinting support for full expressive rights on public campuses, it is next necessary to remember that there is no First Amendment exception for "hate speech," nor has there ever been. To the contrary, the right to free speech includes the right to say things that are deeply offensive to many people. As the Court has plainly stated, "[i]t is firmly settled that under our Constitution the public expression of ideas may not be prohibited merely because the ideas are themselves offensive to some of their hearers." Street v. New York, 394 U.S. 576, 592 (1969). The Court has specifically applied this rationale to the university setting, ruling that "the mere dissemination of ideas—no matter how offensive to good taste—on a state university campus may not be shut off in the name alone of ‘conventions of decency.’" Papish v. Board of Curators of the University of Missouri, 410 U.S. 667, 670 (1973) (internal citation omitted).
Given the state of the law, it is extremely unlikely that any restriction on hate speech on campus would pass constitutional muster. We urge you to spare UNC the embarrassment of fighting against the Bill of Rights in court.
However, it is also important to note that the evils UNC presumably seeks to combat by enacting a hate speech policy—for example, racial harassment and threats of violence—may already be prohibited through existing exceptions to the First Amendment. For example, true harassment is not protected under the First Amendment. In the educational setting, the Supreme Court has defined true "hostile environment" sexual harassment as behavior that is so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive that it effectively limits or denies access to the benefits of school. Davis v. Monroe County Bd. of Educ., 526 U.S. 629, 652 (1999).
Similarly, "true threats" do not enjoy First Amendment protection. The Supreme Court has defined "true threats" as "those statements where the speaker means to communicate a serious expression of an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence to a particular individual or group of individuals." Virginia v. Black, 538 U.S. 343, 359 (2003). Likewise, Virginia v. Black states that "[i]ntimidation in the constitutionally proscribable sense of the word is a type of true threat, where a speaker directs a threat to a person or group of persons with the intent of placing the victim in fear of bodily harm or death." The threat must actually be intended to place the victim in fear of bodily harm or death, rather than simply being "political hyperbole." For example, the Supreme Court held that a statement by an opponent of the draft that "[i]f they ever make me carry a rifle the first man I want to get in my sights is L.B.J." was not a true threat on the President’s life, but rather was a constitutionally protected yet "very crude offensive method of stating a political opposition to the President." Watts v. United States, 394 U.S. 705, 707 (1969). The racist messages recently found in North Carolina State University’s Free Expression Tunnel may be similarly classified: ugly yet protected speech.
In addition, the extensive legal precedent documented above makes clear that the First Amendment is designed in part to protect precisely that speech which a community finds most disagreeable, most offensive, and most antithetical to that community’s values. This protection stems directly from a deep, abiding respect for the intelligence of the American citizen. Rather than allow government censors to decide which ideas, no matter how hateful, reach our ears, the First Amendment entrusts adult citizens with the power to judge the merit of speech for themselves, answering only to the dictates of their own conscience. In his seminal treatise On Liberty, political philosopher John Stuart Mill noted that in the marketplace of ideas, it is through exposure to falsehoods that we learn what is true. Once people no longer have to defend their beliefs and values, those ideas lose their vitality, becoming merely rote formulas instead of deep, living, and creative convictions.
Rather than prove the need for hate speech codes, then, the reaction to the ugly, racist speech discovered in North Carolina State University’s Free Expression Tunnel demonstrates just the opposite. Confronted with speech with which they strongly disagreed, most students and administrators answered not with unthinking censorship but with more speech. This is as it should be: students must be trusted with the ability to evaluate and respond to ideas on their own. Instituting a policy that simply silences reprehensible speech through censorship and punishment would deprive UNC students of the opportunity to learn from the many lessons offered by directly confronting hate and ignorance—and the opportunity to change minds via dialogue. Further, teaching students to reflexively rely on official censorship when dealing with deeply offensive speech is infantilizing and misleading. In the world outside of UNC, students will not enjoy the false luxury of freedom from offense.
We urge UNC to honor its legal and moral obligation to its students. Instead of violating the First Amendment by choosing simple, corrupting censorship in the form of a hate speech code, teach your students the power of principle and dialogue. Be true to the noble aspiration of your mission: to "communicate the knowledge and values and impart the skills necessary for individuals to lead responsible, productive, and personally satisfying lives."
Please notify FIRE regarding your eventual decision, and thank you for your attention to our concerns.

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