MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

In October 2017, white supremacist Richard Spencer planned to speak at the University of Florida. Florida governor Rick Scott declared a state of emergency in the university’s county, and university president Kent Fuchs posted a YouTube video denouncing Spencer’s message, urging students to stay away. Student groups also protested. Fortunately, the speech was mostly uneventful (and brief – Spencer cut his talk short because protestors drowned him out).

This is one of many recent situations in which campuses had to choose between allowing distasteful speech – at the expense of pricey security measures – or disinviting the speaker. Such circumstances present a clash between the time-honored First Amendment principle to permit speech, no matter how repugnant, and protests and precautionary measures, which may amount to a heckler’s veto.

Justice Louis Brandeis famously wrote in Whitney v. California (1927), “If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies … the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.” His words ring with liberal idealism, with Warren Court values of open fora and the marketplace of ideas. It is unlikely, though, that Brandeis envisioned the costs of physically securing today’s marketplace. UF’s security fees for Spencer were over $600,000 – paid by this public university from taxpayer and tuition funds. Should the tactic of using tax dollars to subsidize objectionable speech be reined in?

Public universities are generally not permitted to charge speakers fees to try to control listener reactions, due to a 1992 Supreme Court holding (Forsyth Co. v. Nationalist Movement, which limited local governments’ abilities to charge for the use of public places for private activities). We ask whether another approach, given today’s polarized political regime, can help preserve the roles of civic organizations to serve their communities by preventing provocateurs from draining public coffers.