Here's my response to this article by the president of Edelman, PR, Richard Edelman (which is a response to University of Chicago President Robert Zimmer's recent comments on free speech):
It would be "time for academics to shine" if they all had as great an understanding of free speech as Robert Zimmer. His University is one of the few that still tolerates simple, person-to-person unamplified speech on campus. (And this is important, because this is the form that political speech most often takes. It is the final means by which legally-binding candidate petitions are circulated, giving means of complying with onerous "ballot access petitioning requirements". Without such speech, there is not even the suffrage aspect of democracy, much less proper jury trial.)
...If only all Illinois campuses followed the University of Chicago!
Sadly, they do not. The wonderful book "The Shadow University" by Kors & Silverglate ( http://amzn.to/2xljhBR ) describes how Marcuseanism (Marxist post-modernism) has supplanted the First Amendment on most college campuses, ...especially in IL. Illinois universities are the campuses least tolerant of speech in the entire Nation, and if you dare to circulate a nominating petition at one of them, thugs will arrest you, and likely handcuff you to a table for several hours. (And maybe worse --especially if they profile you as having little money or power.)
I myself was assaulted and caged for 24 hours for daring to circulate a nominating petition on Northwestern University's campus. Then I was released with no charge: gee, shucks, ...their mistake! (I was singled out for arrest while there were kids playing frisbee, listening to boomboxes, and petitioning to save the whales. The whale people had a permit from the "office of student affairs" ...it is only political speech that threatens the status quo that is not tolerated. ...And as the self-educated understand, speech that needs a permit is not "free." All of the prior disruptions were equally benign, but more disruptive than my speech was. ...but I was circulating a petition to place the Libertarian Party on the ballot. ...Ballot access petitioning windows in most states are 90 days, weather is unpredictable, and the ability to unconstitutionally restrict "time place and manner" is ALWAYS used to "run the clock out" on minor parties and independent candidates seeking ballot access.)
Totalitarianism has come to America. Prosecutors and police profile everyone they assault, and if you don't have money, they treat you as though you have no valid legal claims. ("Valid legal claims" are rights.) As an individual who has been often harrassed and threatened and bullied while standing up for my right to free speech, I understand very well that "collective rights" are meaningless when harm is being done to your actual person and personal belongings.
...As the rising police state (and its docile, uneducated, sheeplike electorate) fully intends. The incumbent state is incapable of violating the rights of the 2.3 million people in its prison system without the ability to silence critical speech.
As Silverglate points out, unpopular minorities have lacked speech protections since the 1950s. As time progresses and sociopathic prosecutors, police, and petty bureaucrats chip away at our basic freedoms, America proceeds further down the well-trodden path toward true dictatorship. As Ayn Rand pointed out: "The smallest minority on Earth is the individual."
Without the protection of the individual right to due process (and long-lost proper, random, jury trial), those who trample the right to free speech need fear no repercussions. ...And that is precisely the emboldened bullying that well-intentioned people receive on college campuses all around the USA. It's true that not all of them are equally bad, although they all have "offices of student affairs" that can decide to take totalitarian action at any time, and many universities that were not bad in 2003 are completely intolerant of any speech in 2017.
Should anyone wish to restore our lost right to jury trial, they should read the book "Jury Nullification: The Evolution of a Doctrine" by Clay Conrad ( available here: http://amzn.to/2w6B7tU ). With no understanding of the mechanisms by which government power can be limited, government power will continue to be exercised arbitrarily.
As Germany in the 1920s clearly showed, arbitrary power is the real problem. Hitler was sentenced to 5 years in prison for an offense that carried a life-sentence. Like former Sheriff Joe Arpaio (recently pardoned by our praetorian president), Hitler received something like a "smack on the wrist." ...Like Germany in the 1920s, being a political minority in the USA is now quite dangerous. ...How dangerous will we allow it to get?
In typical form, those who criticize the superficial (negligible harms to the environment, offensive statues, etc.) are given financing (Soros, Koch) and championed as "heroes." ...Those who actually dare to strike at the root of the rising police state are arrested, deported, bankrupted (often by automated ticket cameras with zero due process of law, by companies that are illegal in the states where their corporate headquarters reside), and sometimes imprisoned or murdered (as in the case of Philando Castile, Eric Garner, Sandra Bland, and many others, named here: http://killedbypolice.net/ ). Police now actively steal more property than all robbers do.
When it finally becomes too dangerous to speak, our society will enter a recursive downward spiral. Perhaps it already has. (Of course, it will never be too dangerous to speak about the inconsequential. Inconsequential speech is always pointed to by those in power as an example of "free and unfettered speech." It is only speech that is dangerous to the establishment that is squashed by armed police power.)
A quaint and harmless-sounding university office on most campuses is leading the way toward a totalitarian future: "The office of student affairs." ...They probably help kids move into their dorm rooms, right? Nope. They exist to protect the interests of the prison profiteers, the Federal Reserve, and the military industrial complex, (not to mention the programs that directly incentivize them, the Federal Student Loan Programs). They exist to shut down the free speech of individuals in the name of "protecting minorities." (But, of course, that doesn't include individuals who dare to oppose government power. Those individuals, the smallest minority, can receive a nightstick across the back of the head!) They exist to silence the voices critical of the prison profiteers(the most illegitimately-privileged of whites!), while decrying "white privilege." So, while it sounds like they're the ones doing harmless things like "approving" posters on campus billboards(a part of what they do), the OSA also calls the campus police to attack, handcuff, and arrest those who dare to oppose the status quo.
...Or sometimes not. Like most creeping totalitarianism, it's totally arbitrary. They often choose to ignore violence, or, actively encourage it! (As we saw in Berkeley, in 2016). ...They get to choose. Their power is arbitrary. ...And if you dare to question it, you just might get maced, attacked, and arrested (by the overtly status quo cybernetic system) or maced and attacked (by a cybernetic system that covertly serves the status quo, but overtly claims to fight it).