In the United States, this supposed land of the free, there’s hardly anything we cherish more than our right to freedom of speech — our right, within reason, to say whatever we want, whenever we want, without fear of government retaliation or repression. That constitutional right is, after all, enshrined in the very first amendment to our founding document.
But in Tennessee, the notion of free speech has been warped into the opposite: just another tool, wielded by a de facto one-party state, to force its preferred ideology onto the public and stifle any semblance of dissent.
There’s the banning of books containing any LGBTQ+ themes; the continued threats against cities like Memphis for daring to voice opposition to the state’s inaction on gun violence; and the imposition of debunked right-wing Christian ideology into the public school classroom.
And now, through the Charlie Kirk Act, passed by state lawmakers and on its way to Gov. Bill Lee’s desk, the GOP supermajority in Nashville is forcing its exclusive worldview onto the college campus, under its distorted definition of free speech.
The legislation would require Tennessee’s public colleges and universities to adopt the University of Chicago’s freedom of expression policy — a set of guidelines concerning guest speakers on campus that, among other things, prohibits the school community from obstructing “the freedom of others to express views they reject or even loathe” and assigns the university “a solemn responsibility not only to promote a lively and fearless freedom of debate and deliberation, but also to protect that freedom when others attempt to restrict it.”