Argumentative Essay On Freedom Of Speech

Freedom of speech has been the core principle we have fought long and hard for centuries to achieve. It is the fundamental reason why the founders seperated from England and started their own colonies on the idea of becoming free. In recent times the idea of freedom of speech has been put into question as there has been incidents for years of racism, religious differences and discriminatory abuse. What comes into question is what exactly is your freedom of speech rights and what should be and should not be said in the public eye. The problems that we see arising in today’s society is discrimination and abuse against one another for opposing views and what exactly should your freedom of speech rights entail to as many hate crimes have occurred

One instance of free speech controversy was when a fraternity member of the University Of Maryland had an email leaked of which he said very derogatory and racist remarks about women and shaming them on their appearance. When this email was leaked it created a widespread of controversy and anger among the country. The difficult part in this was that by popular opinion many would want to expel the student who wrote that email but lawyers suggest that by doing so would violate the student 's constitutional rights to freedom of expression. The problem with labeling this kind of behavior as hate speech and trying to suppress vulgar language is no matter how vile the language is it is protected under the first amendment of the constitution. Universities have come together in trying to diffuse this kind of behavior by adding codes of conduct that prohibit certain forms of speech from being permitted on campus. These initiatives have been challenged by civil liberty groups who feel that by prohibiting certain forms of speech the universities are restricting students on their first amendment rights and has to be cautious on what they say as one minor joke could be taken the wrong

Before this time period there were restrictions on what was allowed to be taught in schools as the educational system was stuck in old traditional values. German universities played a role in the shift in education as they advocated the fundamental belief that searching for the truth should be the most important when earning a university education. These universities gave their professors freedom to voice and have their own way of teaching and exploring new intellectual concepts. In the United States there was a much different road to academic freedom as conflict with donors to the Universities created issues as they had a lot of power in the direction of the university. An example is at the University of Chicago economics professor Edward Bemis was fired for his support in the railroad strikes in 1895 as the businessmen who donated to the university felt that this was treason against their interests. During this time Universities were under the influence of the wealthy who donated large sums of money and the ability of free thinking and different ideologies were very much limited. In 1949 The New York Feinberg law was passed that banned public schools from employing staff who were members of groups that advocated the overthrowing of the government. This law halted progress on a different kind of thinking as this