Failure to Safeguard Free Speech Is Always a Problem
Recent crackdowns on free assembly are a reminder that the state will always finish first in deplatforming contests. Parts of Canada’s Online Harms Bill may be a massive overreach that chills speech at the worst time possible.
Pro-Palestine students and activists face police officers at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon, on May 2, 2024. (John Rudoff / AFP via Getty Images)
Campuses throughout the United States and Canada are witnessing a surge of free expression and assembly that is being met with repressive crackdowns. Largely driven by calls for justice in Gaza, for a lasting cease-fire, and for a free Palestine, students have occupied buildings, set up encampments, and held protests.
Responses to the action have varied in intensity, from state monitoring to snipers on rooftops and police violence against students and faculty. But all of it amounts to direct attacks on freedom of assembly and speech.
Free Speech Under Fire
Free speech is fundamental to democratic self-government. In the West, we tend to keep some distance between our democracy and our capacities to direct it, which is to say “self-government” is at best action at distance. Our politics are driven by representatives and state institutions rather than citizens. The former typically chart the course and navigate it. The latter vote every so often in an election.
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