A free speech event was held at Harvard the other day. It was given the title “Dissent From Minorities Within Minorities,” which provides about as much clarity of purpose as the title of an SJ post. It was about free speech, but the phrase was nowhere to be found in the title.

Because we were warned not to have the phrase “free speech” in naming our event, lest the student union disapprove it.

The rationale? “Free speech” is now a dog whistle to the far-right.

— Melissa Chen (@MsMelChen) April 19, 2018

How was it possible that two words that captured a fundamental right protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution were so “toxic” that it couldn’t be used at a Harvard presentation?

The notion that “free speech” is an alt-right “dog whistle” seems more an alt-left delusion, where the right didn’t so much steal it as the left abandoned it, or worse, used it to rationalize their authoritarian censorship of non-progressive speakers and ideas by characterizing anyone who questions their tactics as violative of free speech as alt-right. Free speech belongs to everyone, right to left, but turning the phrase into an epithet, an alt-right dog whistle, so as to take the merit out of it was a progressive gambit.

In naming her Harvard program, Melissa Chen was constrained to leave those two words, free speech, out of the name because “the student union would disapprove it.” She didn’t do it of choice, but of necessity. Had the phrase been included, the kidz in charge would have dinged the program as surely as calling one’s presentation, “Why White Nationalists Aren’t Bad Guys.”

Free speech is now the right that can’t be named at Harvard.

Melissa Chen’s pinned twit provides her philosophical response to such nonsense:

Ideas have consequences.

But so does silence.

Don’t be afraid to speak up, even as tribes and communities breed conformity of thought.

It’s a good philosophy, and one that co-president of the CUNY law Federalist Society, Justin Kilborn, would do well to heed. Josh Blackman was his invited speaker, there to do a presentation on, dare I say it, free speech. He was met with a protest designed to silence him, calling him the usual -ists. The disruption ended when an admin told the children to shut it down. Afterward, Dean Mary Lu Bilek gave the protest her seal of approval:

This non-violent, limited protest was a reasonable exercise of protected free speech, and it did not violate any university policy.

It did violate university policy. Bilek just lacked the courage to do her job, preferring instead to suck up to the angry children, covering it up with the squishy excuse “free speech.” Curiously, the alt-right dog whistle comes in handy when a lie needs to be told.

But Kilborn, despite being president of the school’s Fed Soc, is still a child as well, and has to live with his other law students, get along with his dean who already showed that she was backing the censors, no matter how absurd their protest, twisted their grasp of reality or disingenuous her excuse. So he sent David Bernstein at Volokh Conspiracy his tepid effort at weaseling his way out of this mess.

To be sure, I am disappointed in my fellow students’ unwillingness to partake in civil debate. I was happy to invite Josh Blackman, professor at South Texas College of Law, to our campus and I was taken aback at the reaction to our flyers. However, I cannot fully condemn my fellow students. The CUNY Chapter of the Federalist Society cannot claim to be advocates of free speech and then get mad* when fellow students use their freedom of speech to protest ideas they dislike. Do I think my fellow students over-stepped their bounds in shouting down Professor Blackman? Yes. But if addressed properly this can be a learning moment for everyone at the school.

A “learning moment,” the preferred excuse of nursery school teachers everywhere? Does Kilborn accept the premise that protesters “shouting down” an invited speaker is an equivalent exercise of free speech? Sure, the terminally insipid will see it that way, and argue that the right to silence an invited speaker is somehow an equivalent exercise of free speech, but it’s nonsense.

I appreciate his patience in dealing with the protesters on campus and, while I was looking forward to hearing his prepared remarks about freedom of speech and having a diversity of ideas on campus, I believe that the conversation had with the students was productive.

That Josh made the best out of the situation does not mean the situation was acceptable. Josh didn’t come from Texas to New York to have his presentation undermined by a CUNY law student’s stroke of genius, “fuck the law.” And since Kilborn invited Josh, the least he could do was fess up to the truth, that his guest’s presentation was damaged by his fellow students.

It’s not that they can’t protest, They can protest to their hearts’ content, but not there, not then, not so that they silence the invited speaker. Censoring, silencing another, of de-platforming as the kidz prefer to call it, isn’t an exercise of speech but the silencing of speech. And despite the efforts to trivialize the protest, it had an impact on what would otherwise have happened.

Professor Blackman does not seem to share Mr. Kilborn’s sanguine perspective, as expressed in the first two paragraphs of Kilborn’s response, that the disruption should be seen as “learning moment” that ultimately worked out okay because Blackman had a “productive” conversation with the students who came to see his lecture. Blackman told Law.com: “It absolutely disrupted what I wanted to do. I wasn’t able to give the speech I wanted. I didn’t have enough time to give it, or the energy to give it because I had to deal with all these other factors. These students were deliberately trying to interfere with my ability to exercise my constitutional rights.”

I get it. Kilborn was put in a position of taking a stand and challenging his fellow students, his dean, and calling them out for what happened and its aftermath. That would take guts, the will to risk confrontation, to be called the names Josh was called. He didn’t want to suffer the slings and arrows, so Kilborn tried to weasel his way through, forsaking principle to not be a pariah at CUNY law school.

Say it, Justin Kilborn. Don’t let the alt-right own it. Don’t let the alt-left kill it. If you want to be a lawyer some day, then you need to stand up. Get off your knees and say it. Free speech.

*From a student at a better law school, the word “angry” would likely have been used.