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Free Speech

4 min read

Part of Free speech and civil liberties.

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Every episode (10)

Who argued it

Jeffrey Singer · Eugene Volokh · Ryan Young · John Samples · Frank Buckley · Jonathan Haidt · Anthony L. Fisher · Jonathan Rauch · Ilya Somin · Harvey Silverglate

First Amendment · Section 230 · Public Choice Theory · Medical Ethics · COVID-19 · Social Media · Big Tech · Antitrust

Background

Modesto Junior College and Constitution Day

In a 2013 episode, Bob Zadek recounts that on September 17, a student at Modesto Junior College named Robert Van Tuinen began handing out pocket-sized versions of the Constitution to students who wished to receive them, in observance of Constitution Day. Campus police approached him and told him he could not do that. When Van Tuinen asked about his free speech rights, he was told he had free speech rights on campus but that under something called the Time, Place, and Manner Rule he could pass out literature only in the “free speech area” — described by Bob as a little cement area about three yards square in front of the student center. Is America Doomed by Voter Ignorance? (2013)

Bob plays a clip of the confrontation between Van Tuinen and administrator Christine Serrano. In the clip, Serrano says it is a Time, Place, and Manner and that the free speech area is over there in front of the student center, in that little cement area; she says anyone coming through her office would need to fill out an application and that she would need a photo of the ID. Van Tuinen asks whether she is telling him he cannot engage in free speech with his fellow students; Serrano responds that she is not telling him anything, only sharing that in order to be in the free speech area he would need to fill out the form. Is America Doomed by Voter Ignorance? (2013)

Bob notes that Congress mandated that all publicly funded educational institutions provide educational programming on the history of the American Constitution on Constitution Day, and that the rule applies to any school receiving federal funds of any kind. He says that FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression) wrote a letter to the school complaining about the abridgment of the student’s First Amendment rights, and that the college backed off to some degree, explaining weakly that it wanted to assure free speech rights and that the student was being disruptive and perhaps it overreacted. Bob states that American colleges have speech codes telling students what they can and cannot say and where they can say it. Is America Doomed by Voter Ignorance? (2013)

The scientific priesthood and AB 2098

A 2022 episode pairs Bob Zadek with Dr. Jeffrey Singer, identified as a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute and a practicing surgeon, to discuss free speech, medical science, and government control. The episode description states that they critique the rise of a “scientific priesthood” that suppresses dissenting views, focusing on the treatment of the Great Barrington Declaration and on California’s AB 2098, which the description says threatens to penalize doctors for providing information that contradicts official government narratives. Free Speech & the Scientific Method (2022)

The excerpt for this episode consists only of the episode’s framing material — a description and a speaker list — with no transcript of the discussion itself. It therefore establishes the topic, the participants and the items named, but records no argument, quotation or holding from Bob or Dr. Singer.

Across episodes

The two episodes touch the topic in unrelated settings — a campus literature-distribution dispute in 2013 and a 2022 discussion of medical dissent and AB 2098 — and the episodes show no development between them.

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