Op-Ed: When a Berkeley Law debate on free speech got turned into a social media circus by a Donald Trump supporter who attacked the professor who spoke, Berkeley’s professor of Constitutional law, the late Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, issued a strong statement of support:
“When an event about free speech has become a referendum on one individual, the need for robust and robustly supported debate is essential,” Kagan wrote in an op-ed she shared with the Bay Area, titled “As U.S. University Debate, Free Speech and Free Speech Debate at Berkeley Has Become a Test Case for Free Expression in the United States.”
She continued:
“But when a university debate is turned into a political confrontation with the backdrop of the election campaign, those who exercise their right of free speech have been treated as if they had no right at all.
“What it means to be free depends far more on the way we behave than on the way we think. Our ability to imagine how others feel, and to communicate with them, is fundamental to our very existence as free and equal citizens.
“Today, we ask whether it works, and whether we expect it to work.”
Kagan’s op-ed was published in the Daily Cal, the student-run newspaper of the University of California system.
In the comments section of her article, the Trump supporter who attacked her was “liked” more than 1,100 times.
In the comments section of her article, the Trump supporter who attacked her was “liked” more than 1,100 times.
I’d like everyone to remember the words of the late Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan from her own op-ed:
“I have a message for Donald Trump and those who would demean free speech and the First Amendment: It will not
