The Iowa Board of Regents recently authorized Iowa’s three public universities to investigate employees’ social media posts. Posts that are judged to be “unacceptable” could result in punishment, including termination.
Board of Regents president, Sherry Bates, made clear that some employees’ recent posts about the death of Charlie Kirk are “unacceptable,” adding that “supporting a violent act is as bad as the act itself.”
The Iowa Board of Regents’ free speech training includes a nice example about social media posts. In the example, “a student posts on their personal social media page a statement that all individuals from a particular foreign country should be excluded from campus.”
The training offers a clear verdict:
“While a campus can control the content of its own official and sponsored websites and its own limited public forums, it cannot regulate the content posted on unaffiliated sites, including personal or unaffiliated social media pages. Campuses are also not permitted to censor content (even within their own forums) or punish someone simply because the viewpoints they express may be offensive to others within the campus community, unless the speech falls within one of the categories of unprotected speech, such as harassment or obscenity.”
Well put.
To say that Charlie Kirk deserved what he got is hateful. Perhaps it’s immoral. I think it’s false. But it isn’t harassment. And it isn’t obscene. And it isn’t inciting imminent violence. And it doesn’t meet any other condition that justifies punishment.
Anyone who says otherwise is an enemy of free speech. Even if they demand that others take free speech training.
Rather than investigating social media posts, the Board of Regents should take their own training. They might learn that speech should not be restricted simply because it’s “thought by some or even by the majority of individuals to be illogical, offensive, immoral or hateful.”
Self-written bio: Stephen Biggs is a philosophy professor at Iowa State University. He teaches classes on logic and scientific reasoning, philosophy of language and philosophy of mind. He places a high value on freedom of speech.
