Lawyers, Guns, and Money directed me to this article about how the University of Chicago’s ostensible commitment to free speech ran aground against online harassment instigated by a conservative student. It includes this statement from one of the authors of Chicago’s relatively famous statement of commitment to free speech (really one committing to not being woke, as LGM says):
Geoffrey R. Stone, a law professor, led the faculty committee that drafted the Chicago statement. He said that back then, the group was not thinking about how online threats could harm free expression — never mind this situation, where Mr. Schmidt simply posted a tweet with publicly available information.
Ah, yes, who could have thought that the internet could be used to harass people into silence back in 2014? What might have been happening online that might have caused someone to take a step back and consider such a possibility? We’ll never know.
One would think that a law professor of all people would understand that no right is absolute, even those in the first amendment, if one wants to preserve all the other rights that they sometimes conflict with.