By Faith Harvey
Controversy over how to interpret the First Amendment is alive and well, even at UC Santa Barbara, where the KCSB radio station recently hosted a panel titled “Walking the Throughline,” to explore the way free speech is handled on campus.
In practice, the degree of free speech Americans enjoy depends on race, political views, and state or region, all contexts which can quickly become moving parts of the equation, according to several of the six panelists.
From left, panelists Ansusikha Halder, chair of Trans and Queer Commission UCSB, Jennifer Teymouri, director of Students for Reproductive Justice UCSB, and Communication professor Daniel Linz, conversing during KCSB’s Walking the Throughline event about free speech on campus.
“Free speech depends on who you are,” said Rick Benjamin, a poet and professor in the College of Creative Studies. “We are living in a world where rights are being rolled back everyday, Black people cannot speak freely to white police officers and books are being banned.”
In Florida for example, Gov. Ron DeSantis has banned two books by Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison. “You are saying who can safely express what,” Benjamin said.
Fellow panelist Janna Haider, a Ph.D. candidate in history, called free speech a balancing act. “There is a balance to be had between individual expression and the social good,” she said. “You have the right to have your political opinions known, but you don’t have the right to earn the respect of everyone who hears you.”
Like Benjamin, Haider said marginalized groups experience unfair application of their civil rights, and she specifically cited the Black Panthers in the 1970s.
From left, panelists Janna Haider, a UCSB Ph.D candidate in history, Rick Benjamin, poet and professor in CCS, and Devanshi Tomar, the Daily Nexus newspaper’s chair for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. They spoke during radio station KCSB’s discussion of free speech on campus.
Haider recounted how armed Black Panthers would stop Oakland, California police officers as they pulled over Black motorists. The Panthers would inform motorists of their rights, which outraged then-governor Ronald Reagan, who decided to stop the practice by passing one of the strictest gun ownership laws America had ever seen. Haider said the Black Panthers were such a perceived threat to the white officers, that gun legislation was enacted to prevent certain Black people from exerciing their rights. “The most important thing to consider is context,” she said.
Daniel Linz, a UCSB communication professor who teaches a course on the First Amendment, said freedom of speech is a legal myth. “It is not only a matter of context. There are legal boundaries. Law limits our speech,” Linz said. “It is a myth that we can speak freely, and that myth is enshrined in American lore and is continually bound by the law.”
KCSB co-moderators Jennifer Yoshikoshi, left, and Jackie Sedley, listening to panelist answers during KCSB’s Walking the Throughline discussion on free speech.
KCSB’s internal news director Jackie Sedley, who co-moderated the panel, cited an early March incident on campus when conservative political pundit Charlie Kirk from Turning Point USA held a talk in UCSB’s Campbell Hall. Prior to the event, Kirk and his team set up a tent at the campus Arbor Café to promote his visit, complete with signs that read “Transgenderism is a delusion” and “White privilege is a myth,” inciting fear in students, according to Sedley.
But, student organizations do find ways to voice their opinions when people such as Kirk visit campus. Ansusikha Halder, chair of the Trans and Queer Commission UCSB, favors counter protest, rather than censoring those we disagree with, to better “understand what legally has to happen, align ourselves, and organize differently.”
Julia Teymouri, director of Students for Reproductive Justice at UCSB, said she believes the university has a responsibility to vet speakers and be transparent with the student body about why controversial speakers are allowed to host talks.
Other panelists stressed shared community standards and keeping students safe. They included Devanshi Tomar, chair for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at the Daily Nexus student newspaper, as well as co-moderator and KCSB’s external news director Jennifer Yoshikoshi.
Faculty member Rick Benjamin closed out the discussion by noting that creating a tolerant community is not easy. “Agreeing to live by certain values, and keeping people in line, takes a lot of work,” he said. “It is time to determine what we want the values of our beloved community to be like, and I suggest that is where we should start.”
Faith Harvey is a third-year UCSB student, majoring in Communication and minoring in Professional Writing. She is a Web and Social Media intern for the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts.