In late March, President Donald Trump signed an executive order designed to protect free speech on college campuses. The proposal would withhold federal funding from universities that don’t uphold free speech.

We shouldn’t worry.

The order’s details are sparse and there’s little indication that the Trump administration will do much to enforce this proposal. The order likely serves more as a symbolic gesture than a true piece of policy.

Despite what Trump — or any president for that matter — may want, our discourse is in the hands of unaccountable corporations and colleges.

While private institutions such as Syracuse University cannot be compelled to uphold free speech, educational institutions should respect it.

SU is no stranger to free speech controversies and is near the bottom of the list of almost every university free speech index published.

“Both private universities and companies are very problematic from a free speech perspective,” Martha Garcia-Murillo, an SU professor and expert on the intersection of politics and technology.

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Of course, the protections of the First Amendment don’t apply to private entities, and therefore don’t apply to private universities like SU. If private entities don’t support free speech, there’s little anyone can do about it.

In America, freedom of speech is framed as an issue of government censorship. The fear of free speech advocates is an invasive government that limits or outlaws controversial speech.

In modern America, censorship comes not from the government, but from private entities, namely tech companies and universities.

Looking beyond the literal text of the First Amendment, a culture of free expression does not exist in our current moment, and that’s because of the growing power of private actors who don’t value free expression.

We do a tremendous amount of communication through Twitter and Facebook. Beyond how we interact with each other, those corporations are the essential forum for modern political discussion and news consumption. Where the Greeks had the Agora, we have Twitter — a disappointing comparison for us.

Our discourse is filtered and approved by these private companies. University officials and a few thousand employees at Google, Twitter and Facebook ultimately decide what speech belongs in our political discourse and in our classrooms.

The people who hold the most power on this issue are the political actors who are least accountable to us — not the people elected.

Social media companies make editorial decisions on what content belongs on their platform, but they don’t want to accept culpability.

“They want to have no control over content because then they will become editors. They have power over the spread of information, but they are not content generators the way newspapers or news stations are,” Garcia-Murillo said.

Garcia-Murillo’s point belies the problem of modern free speech. Our laws and the way that we view free speech have become outdated.

Although they aren’t the same as The New York Times, social media companies are still perhaps the single most important editorial force in the news landscape.

Freedom of expression is the mechanism by which we sort out our collective problems. To corrupt and interfere with that process is a great loss for our society. For now, defenders of free speech will have to reckon with the climate of censorship on social media and on university campuses, not with the government.

LEARN MORE:

• Free speech should not be a partisan issue
  
• Podcast: You Op To Know | Liberal and conservative columnists discuss free speech following President Trump’s executive order
  

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Michael Furnari is a sophomore broadcast and digital journalism major in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. His column appears bi-weekly. He can be reached at mpfurnar@syr.edu

Published on April 9, 2019 at 11:17 pm