Wisconsin legislation: Punish speech that interrupts other speech
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Over the summer, the Wisconsin State Assembly recently passed a bill which lawmakers hope will preserve the rights of students and faculty on college campuses.

In a time where conservative speakers are interrupted during campus visits and protests disrupt college group events, the legislature’s focus was to ensure that students who disrupt free expression on campus would be held accountable.

The bill, entitled the Campus Free Speech Act, is similar to bills that have been passed in other states, and due to its recent passage, it’s having an effect on the current school year, as students return to Wisconsin colleges and universities for the fall semester.

Under the legislation, protests are only allowed on campuses if they do not interrupt an invited speaker or those in the audience. If students choose to protest anyway, they are allowed due process hearings during which their punishment will be determined; guilty students may even be expelled from school.

Professor Howard Schweber, a First Amendment expert at UW-Madison, believes that the bill is affecting campus speech in a dangerous way.

“In the context of a college campus, [free speech and academic freedom] are almost opposites,” Schweber said. “Academic freedom is the freedom of the university to define its course. Not the freedom of the students, not the freedom of the faculty.”

“The government should not make you afraid of exercising your rights,” Schweber said. “The Wisconsin Legislature gives us a good example [of a real threat to free speech].”

His belief is that universities should be granted autonomy from state legislature in order to preserve an academic and educational community.

However, supporters of the bill consider it necessary, in order to ensure that unpopular beliefs on campuses are not being silenced. Ben Shapiro, Milo Yiannopoulos, Ann Coulter, and Gavin McInnes are just some of the conservative speakers who, over the course of the last year, were protested, interrupted, or even violently opposed while addressing students on college campuses.

It is no secret that conservative voices are the most frequently silenced on college campuses, and it is no surprise that lawmakers felt as though protecting the First Amendment is of high priority. The question is, does this “free speech” legislation actually protect free speech or hinder it?

In addition to addressing counter-speech, the legislation also incorporates college “free speech zones” and “bias response protocols” saying that these institutions are demeaning and offensive to the intelligence of college students and to the academic environment as a whole.

If the legislation plays out how it is intended, it will give equal opportunities to peacefully share beliefs while dismantling the hostile environment towards certain ideologies – one snowflake sanctuary at a time.

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Source: Red Alert Politics