UMASS LOWELL BANS STUDENTS FROM VIEWING ‘OFFENSIVE’ MATERIAL:

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) highlighted UMass Lowell’s “acceptable use” policy for its monthly series spotlighting egregious free speech violations on campuses. This policy applies to all school-provided computers, but also any networks and/or services connected to the university, such as email or campus wifi. It provides the use of any such technologies to transmit or access “offensive material.”

This is deeply problematic and constitutionally suspect. After all, what, exactly, constitutes “offensive?”

For example, is a student who receives right-wing news sources in their email inbox violating it? It’s safe to say that many of the views commonly expressed in conservative media are considered “hate speech” by many woke campus administrators—but they’re also protected expression under the First Amendment.

“The Supreme Court has explicitly held, time and time again, that speech cannot be restricted by the government merely because it offends others,” FIRE points out. “In spite of such clear precedent, colleges and universities routinely ban offensive speech in campus speech codes, especially in IT policies. Whether a person is burning a flag at a protest or advocating for (or against) flag burning on Twitter, a ban on ‘offensive’ speech calls for impermissible viewpoint discrimination.”

Like Randi Weingarten, I blame Ron DeSantis.