Whoever drafted the EO for the president did his best to make it viable.

It is the policy of the Federal Government to:

(a) encourage institutions to foster environments that promote open, intellectually engaging, and diverse debate, including through compliance with the First Amendment for public institutions and compliance with stated institutional policies regarding freedom of speech for private institutions;

To the extent there’s any point to this, it’s to direct the Department of Education to get off its butt and do something. It’s not as if the First Amendment wasn’t there before for all to see. And the reaction from FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, was a grimace and a shrug.

Today’s executive order directs federal agencies to “take appropriate steps” to “promote free inquiry” at institutions that receive federal research and education grants, including through compliance with the First Amendment or fulfillment of their institutional promises. To the extent that today’s executive order asks colleges and universities to meet their existing legal obligations, it should be uncontroversial.

Enforce the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment would seem, on its face, to be about as uncontroversial as could be. But rarely is a move by the feds without its potential for mischief, and this is no different.

Notwithstanding the insipid assertion of Jeffrey Sachs, that there is no longer a free speech problem on campus. the cowbell says otherwise. Not even a talk about free speech can manage without free speech. So whose free speech prevails?

Doesn’t the guy with the cowbell get to exercise his right to free speech? Just because someone else was invited to speak, people were there to hear what he had to say, and it was rendered impossible by one brave woke soul with a cowbell saving the ignorant masses from the violence of words? There were campus officers present. There were administrators present. No one lifted a finger to deal with cowbell-boy, lest they be accused of silencing his truth.

If colleges are handed a mandate from on high to protect free speech at all costs, which speech gets their love?

Hey, we would have done something about cowbell boy, but the president says we can’t silence his expression. Sorry, not sorry.

Are there rules that could be put in place to control the far more facile uninvited disruption of speech rather than the invited speech itself? Possibly, but then, why would they possibly want to do so?

Yet, there are more games to be played here.

Now for the bad news. Particularly troublesome is that given the number of schools (4300 as of 2017/18), the task of monitoring possible violations is far beyond what a few Department of Justice lawyers or FBI investigators can reasonably tackle and schools will resist.  F.I.R.E (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) has defended campus free speech for 20 years, and their efforts can resemble a Whack-A-Mole game. By the time a school finally agrees to eliminate its (illegal) minuscule “free speech zone,” the school has created a network of “bias response teams” to monitor and punish “offensiveness.” F.I.R.E. estimates that nearly 90% of private institution fail in one way or another to fully protect free speech.

Policing “free speech zones” is, at least, an ongoing issue, and easier to remedy by post hoc demand. How does one police one speaker’s individual presentation after the fact? But we’re not done.

Further, add multiple legal and administrative complexities that must all be settled prior to enforcement. How should strict Christian schools be treated if they bar speakers promoting abortion on the grounds that abortion violates Church doctrine? Does “free speech” extend the use of inflammatory terms such as the notorious “N-word”? What if students themselves suppress free speech despite contrary administrative efforts or a comic is canceled for being “offensive”? What if these campus disruptors are non-students or have only tenuous links to the university? Also, would schools be obligated to protect controversial speech with free adequate venues, free publicity, and free police protection if other campus groups receive similar benefits or does administrative non-interference suffice?

When someone who isn’t a student decides to attack with a bike lock, what’s a college to do about it? And there’s plenty more, including the particularly nefarious deliberate violation for the purpose of having funds refused, as the funds tend to go to scientific research rather than gender studies.

Draconian threats will not impact the university’s most PC departments, the very ones who energetically stifle the open exchange of ideas. Few Black Studies professors dread losing NSF grants if they shut down the campus over a Heather Mac Donald talk. Matters can quickly become bizarre. Will science or engineering faculty defend Heather’s invitation by pointing out that their work (which is undoubtedly in the public interest) absolutely depends on continued NSF funding?

But the most egregious gaming of the new world order is that the social justice minded will do what the fragile “survivors” did, and flood the Department of Education with complaints about their deprivation of free speech, with problems ranging from mansplaining to being interrupted. What is the DoE to do with tens of thousands of complaints about colleges failing to protect their right to speak without suffering the violence of disapproval?

Will the DoE create an entirely new sphere of campus inquisitors to try allegations of silencing? Will there be a new, huge and monstrously costly bureaucracy to watch over the woke and assure their right to speak without fear or disagreement? Remember, the birth of the Cyber Civil Rights movement was that women’s voices were silenced because, whenever they said something dumb on the internet, someone would be so horrible as to tell them it was dumb, coercing them back to silence for lack of validation.

And yet, the EO has been issued and the agencies of the Executive Branch of government will do as they will. Let the games begin!