First Amendment can be invalidated with ‘an angry phone call’
Universities hate to get caught censoring speech that offends powerful constituencies, whether progressive student activists or conservative politicians, so they invent a copout: We did it for safety.
That’s how the University of Kansas justified taking down a defaced American flag that was part of an ongoing flag-art installation, rather than admit it caved to pressure from the Republican governor and a would-be Republican governor.
Now a civil-liberties group is seeking university records that might shed light on the administration’s decision to remove Untitled (Flag 2) from a central outdoor location on campus.
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education told Chancellor Douglas Girod in a letter Monday that it had filed four state open-records requests to “various agencies” so it can evaluate the chancellor’s public claim that it received threats in response to flying the flag:
It did not address the severity of such concerns, the existence of any actual threats, nor the credibility of any such threats. These omissions, together with the proximity of your announcement following demands by [Gov. Jeff Colyer and Secretary of State Kris Kobach] raise suspicion that KU’s course of action was aimed to quell outrage over the exhibit rather than address credible threats in an effective and speech-protective manner.
If the university wants to dispel the notion that it cited public safety as a “pretext for censorship,” it should voluntarily hand over information “to the maximum extent allowed by law,” said the letter, which was also signed by the ACLU of Kansas and National Coalition Against Censorship.
MORE: U. Kansas flies defaced flag as art, removes following criticism
It reminded Girod that the only reported “threat” against KU was a single phone call that a campus police official called “more harassing than threatening.”
The groups gave the chancellor a primer in First Amendment precedent, including the constitutionality of flag “desecration,” and told Girod he has a legal obligation to protect “expressive rights on campus … even and especially when political pressure demands otherwise.”
The censorship demands aren’t going to end with conservative politicians, the groups warned Girod:
[Y]ou have sent a clear message to the KU community and would-be censors that the institution will capitulate to complaints regarding the content and viewpoint of expression on campus.Successful [sic] tactics will be repeated. …
Exercising executive power to determine what art may be viewed on a public university campus is an ugly and arrogant betrayal of First Amendment freedoms.
The groups asked for a response by July 30. Will Creeley, senior vice president for legal and public advocacy at FIRE, wrote in a blog post that opponents of free expression have learned that “an angry phone call might be all it takes to revoke the First Amendment at the University of Kansas.”
Read the letter and FIRE post. FIRE’s grassroots campaign to restore the art is here.
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IMAGE: Victoria Snitsar/Facebook
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