Free speech is absolutely one of the most fundamental and necessary rights we have as Americans. Individuals must be free to express views on any subject, no matter who might be offended by those views, without fear of censorship or reprisal from the government at the local, state or federal level. Individuals must also be free to express views on any subject, no matter who might be offended, without fear of being assassinated in public, especially at a university campus, after finding out that administrative staff at the university condone the assassination of people who hold views that differ from their own. State Representative Herman Quirmbach’s Opinion article last week in the Iowa State Daily, “Punishing free speech,” seemed to purposefully evade this fact.
Firing a state employee at ISU for publicly condoning the assassination of a speaker on a college campus because she disliked the speaker’s message is not “punishing” someone for her speech or violating her First Amendment right to free speech. It’s the university supporting free speech and a non-violent campus environment by ensuring that its staff is composed of people who are committed to respecting the free exchange of ideas, not to mention staff who do not support political or any other violence on campus. Firing such individuals keeps the students, staff and any guest speaker safe from a campus environment where their right to free speech, not to mention life, is threatened by a university administrative culture which approves of violence as a response to those they disagree with.
Does Quirmbach not see the irony in his argument? He accused members of the Board of Regents of hypocrisy for demanding the firing of university employees, who by definition work for the government, who publicly supported Kirk’s murder on a campus because Kirk himself advocated for free speech. Yet, Quirmbach fails to see how government employees publicly condoning or supporting the murder of a campus speaker to silence their message is itself a direct threat to free speech. He then attempts to hide such employees’ public support for politically motivated violent suppression of speech under the very same protections of the First Amendment that such support undermines.
As I understand it, this employee wasn’t fired for exercising her right to free speech. She wasn’t fired for having a terrible opinion the government doesn’t like, or for using a pseudonym and stating that same opinion nobody could tie back to ISU. She was fired for being a known government employee of a university and choosing to publicly condone the assassination of someone exercising their free speech on a university campus. That goes against the very support of free speech (not to mention opposition to murder) we as Americans require of our government, which includes state employees.
An Iowa State employee does not have a right under any part of the U.S. or Iowa Constitution to publicly support the on-campus murder, or violent termination of any other right, of people they don’t like and continue to be an Iowa State employee. They have, as we all do, the right not to be prosecuted by the government for their opinions, but they have no right to continue to be employed by the state when they publicly voice opinions that directly conflict with the ethics of their state employer.
Self-written bio: David Jackson is a 2003 graduate of Iowa State, U.S. Army veteran and family man.
