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When I published my academic article Witnessing Silence: The Palestinian Genocide, Institutional Complicity, and the Politics of Knowledge in June this year, I shared it on LinkedIn expecting it might quietly circulate among those already engaging with Palestine and decolonial education.
Instead, what followed was an unexpectedly wide response – emails, messages, and private conversations from academics and professional services staff across the sector, expressing that the piece gave language to something they had been living with but unable to name.
Where the original piece offered a theoretically grounded, autoethnographic account of institutional complicity and epistemic violence in UK higher education, this is a direct reflection on what that silence means in practice: for those of us who work within universities, support students, write policy, and try to teach with integrity in times of crisis.
This is not a neutral topic. Nor, I believe, should it be. But it is one that demands clarity, care, and honesty about what our sector chooses to say – or not say – when faced with the mass killing of civilians, including thousands of children. It also demands that we reckon with how our silences function, who they serve, and who they leave behind.
Since October 2023, higher education institutions in the UK have issued few, if any, direct statements on the situation in Gaza. Where communications have been made, they have been strikingly general: references to “ongoing events in the Middle East,” or “the situation in Israel and Gaza.” In many cases, even the word “Palestine” is omitted altogether.
This is not simply a matter of tone. Language signals recognition, and its absence is felt. In the same period, UK universities have published clear and immediate statements on the war in Ukraine, the Christchurch mosque attacks, and the murder of George Floyd. These responses were swift and specific, naming both the nature of the violence and the communities affected.
By contrast, when it comes to Gaza, where, as of April 2025, the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics reported that 17,954 children killed, 39,384 children orphaned, and 7,065 children injured, many with life-changing disabilities most institutions have chosen vagueness or silence.
The use of the term “genocide” is not a personal flourish. It has been raised by international human rights organisations such as Amnesty International, by UN experts, and by legal scholars. It is also under formal consideration at the International Court of Justice, which in January 2024 issued provisional measures recognising a plausible risk of genocide in Gaza. To avoid naming this, or to replace it with neutral euphemisms, is not caution. It is abandonment.
I do not assume that this silence stems from indifference. In many cases, it reflects complex pressures: reputational risk, external scrutiny, internal disagreement, legal advice. But intention does not cancel out impact. And the cumulative impact of this silence is a deepening sense that Palestinian suffering is institutionally unrecognisable: too controversial to name, too politically fraught to mourn, too inconvenient to address.
The consequences of silence are not theoretical; they are lived. For many Muslim, Arab, and pro-Palestinian staff and students, the ongoing refusal to acknowledge what is happening in Gaza has created a climate of anxiety, exhaustion, and quiet despair. What I describe in my research as “moral injury” – the psychological toll of witnessing profound injustice while being expected to remain silent – has become, for many, a defining feature of daily academic life.
I’ve heard this from colleagues across roles and disciplines: early career researchers who self-censor in lectures and grant proposals, students too afraid to name Palestine in their dissertations, and professional services staff torn between personal conviction and institutional messaging. Some have received formal warnings; others speak only in private, fearful of reputational damage or being labelled as disruptive. The burden of caution is not equally distributed.
These are not isolated feelings. For many colleagues and friends, this silence also carries an unbearable weight: the knowledge that our lives are treated as less valuable and more easily dispensable. Conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Gaza, and Syria have taken millions of lives, yet they rarely provoke the same sustained outrage or mobilisation that far smaller losses elsewhere receive – a phenomenon documented by Kearns et al. (2019). To live with that awareness is haunting. And when universities, too, remain vague or silent, the omission feels less like caution and more like confirmation, that even here, in institutions that speak of justice and care, some lives – our lives – and losses are considered harder to name.
I want to be clear: I am not accusing individuals of deliberate harm. But when institutions fail to name atrocities, when they issue statements that sidestep historical context, and when they offer wellbeing support without acknowledging what that support is for, they deepen a sense of abandonment that many minoritised staff already carry. It becomes harder to feel safe, heard, or morally aligned with the institutions we work in.
Silence in our universities is not just absence. It often comes with a cost for anyone who dares to speak. What looks like neutral restraint can be revealed, in practice, as institutional censorship.
Since October 2023, disciplinary investigations have spread across UK campuses. A joint investigation found that at least 28 universities launched formal proceedings against students and staff over pro-Palestinian activism, involving more than a hundred people. Other reporting suggests that as many as 250 to 300 employees across the sector have been investigated or threatened with dismissal simply for expressing pro-Palestinian views.
A HEPI report documents how encampments across UK universities, including many Russell Group members, were met with heavy institutional responses. Emails obtained by journalists also show that university security teams adopted “US-style” surveillance tactics during protests, often under pressure from their own professional networks.
These are not isolated anecdotes. The pattern is clear. Silence is not neutral. It is often enforced. When colleagues or students raise their voices, they risk being investigated, disciplined, or even expelled. That cost is real and immediate, and it must be named.
What makes the silence so disorienting is not just the absence of language, it’s the dissonance between that silence and the values our sector claims to uphold. We talk about decolonisation, inclusive pedagogy, and trauma-informed practice. We encourage students to “critically engage with systems of power,” and we celebrate academic freedom as foundational to our purpose. Yet when faced with a case of genocide – documented by international bodies, witnessed daily in the media, and devastating in its scale – many universities fall silent.
This is not simply a question of public statements. It is a deeper ethical contradiction that permeates the day-to-day environment of higher education institutions. When staff are encouraged to design anti-racist curricula but discouraged from naming colonial violence in Palestine, the message is clear: some histories are welcome, others are not. When mental health services are promoted but cannot address the context of collective grief, the care offered feels hollow.
None of this is new. As my article argues, the logic of institutional silence is historically patterned. Higher education has long been selective in its expressions of solidarity – often willing to speak when the political stakes are low, but cautious when they risk reputational or legal exposure. What we are seeing now is the cumulative effect of that selectivity: a moral framework that is uneven, inconsistent, and, for many, increasingly untenable.
If silence has consequences, then breaking it must be an intentional act. This doesn’t mean rushing to issue statements for every global tragedy. But it does require universities to reflect on the ethical frameworks guiding their public responses, especially when those responses (or omissions) disproportionately impact already marginalised groups.
First, naming matters. Even if a university does not take a political position, it can acknowledge the reality of civilian death and collective grief. It can refer explicitly to Palestinians as a people, not just as part of a geography. It can recognise that some communities in our institutions are disproportionately affected by what is unfolding, and that they are looking to us not just for pastoral care, but for moral clarity.
Second, policy protections must catch up with practice. Staff who speak out within the bounds of academic freedom should not face disproportionate scrutiny or reputational risk. Nor should students be penalised for engaging critically with the politics of occupation, war, or settler colonialism. Institutional support must be consistent, not selectively applied based on the political palatability of the cause.
Finally, universities must reckon with the unequal distribution of emotional labour. Many of us who are called upon to “lead conversations” on inclusion or belonging are also the ones absorbing the silence around Palestine. That dissonance is unsustainable – and addressing it requires more than a line in a strategy document. It requires courage, consistency, and care.
There is no perfect statement, no risk-free position. But neither is neutrality ever neutral. If we expect students and staff to bring their whole selves into our classrooms, then we must be prepared to name the losses and injustices that shape those selves—and to respond with more than silence.
The idea that universities must remain neutral in the face of political crisis may feel institutionally safe, but it is ethically brittle. Neutrality, when applied unevenly, is not neutrality at all. It becomes complicity, dressed up as caution.
What makes this moment so painful for many in the sector is not just the lack of solidarity, but the sense that even the language of care has become selective. If we are truly committed to fostering inclusive, trauma-informed institutions, then we cannot exclude entire communities from the scope of our empathy. We cannot preach justice in our classrooms while avoiding it in our corridors.
In the weeks following the article’s publication, I received messages from colleagues across the country – many from minoritised backgrounds – who described feeling both moved and afraid: seen, perhaps for the first time, but still unsure whether it was safe to speak.
There is still time for institutions to act, not by offering perfect words, but by showing they are listening. By naming what is happening. By protecting those who speak. And by recognising that silence is not safety. For many of us, it is precisely the thing we are trying to survive.
FIRE staff also take your questions on Charlie Kirk’s
assassination, President Trump’s lawsuit against The New York
Times, cancel culture, and more.
Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
01:42 Attorney General Pam Bondi’s comments that “hate speech”
is distinct from “free speech”
02:23 Is it OK for the Department of Justice to target people
for “hate speech”?
05:42 How have “hate speech” laws played out overseas?
07:19 President Trump’s response to Pam Bondi’s “hate speech”
remarks
08:50 Are “fighting words,” “incitement,” and “true threats”
free speech?
11:22 What about doxxing?
15:15 Is it free speech to celebrate or condone the
assassination of Charlie Kirk?
21:52 The termination of k-12 and university faculty in response
to their commentary on Kirk’s assassination
28:40 Is there a law that might implicate the Discord users who
had reason to be aware of malicious intentions the shooter had
towards Kirk ahead of the assassination?
30:05 The agency of speakers and those hearing their speech
under the incitement standard
31:14 What are the differences between the free speech rights of
citizens and non-citizens?
36:20 Does a court filing by President Trump as an individual in
the New York Times lawsuit open him up to being deposed about a
wide range of behaviors and actions?
37:40 What is the Trump’s administration’s legal strategy with
the New York Times lawsuit?
39:24 What is FIRE doing about private employees being fired for
their political commentary?
46:50 What is Charlie Kirk’s legacy on free speech?
50:04 What is the difference between the academic protections
enjoyed by tenured and non-tenured faculty members?
52:05 Does FIRE trust the Supreme Court to protect free
speech?
56:12 How can we prevent capitulation from The New York
Times?
59:20 How can ordinary people safely express their opinions on
social media and promote civil discourse?
Joining us:
Ronnie London, general counsel
Sarah McLaughlin, senior scholar, global expression
Aaron Terr, director of public advocacy
FIRE staff also take your questions on Charlie Kirk’s
assassination, President Trump’s lawsuit against The New York
Times, cancel culture, and more. Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 01:42
Attorney General Pam Bondi’s comments that “hate speech” is
distinct…
FIRE staff also take your questions on Charlie Kirk’s
assassination, President Trump’s lawsuit against The New York
Times, cancel culture, and more. Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
01:42 Attorney General Pam Bondi’s comments that “hate speech”
is distinct from “free speech”
02:23 Is it OK for the Department of Justice to target people
for “hate speech”?
05:42 How have “hate speech” laws played out overseas?
07:19 President Trump’s response to Pam Bondi’s “hate speech”
remarks
08:50 Are “fighting words,” “incitement,” and “true threats”
free speech?
11:22 What about doxxing?
15:15 Is it free speech to celebrate or condone the
assassination of Charlie Kirk?
21:52 The termination of k-12 and university faculty in response
to their commentary on Kirk’s assassination
28:40 Is there a law that might implicate the Discord users who
had reason to be aware of malicious intentions the shooter had
towards Kirk ahead of the assassination?
30:05 The agency of speakers and those hearing their speech
under the incitement standard
31:14 What are the differences between the free speech rights of
citizens and non-citizens?
36:20 Does a court filing by President Trump as an individual in
the New York Times lawsuit open him up to being deposed about a
wide range of behaviors and actions?
37:40 What is the Trump’s administration’s legal strategy with
the New York Times lawsuit?
39:24 What is FIRE doing about private employees being fired for
their political commentary?
46:50 What is Charlie Kirk’s legacy on free speech?
50:04 What is the difference between the academic protections
enjoyed by tenured and non-tenured faculty members?
52:05 Does FIRE trust the Supreme Court to protect free
speech?
56:12 How can we prevent capitulation from The New York
Times?
59:20 How can ordinary people safely express their opinions on
social media and promote civil discourse?
Joining us:
Ronnie London, general counsel
Sarah McLaughlin, senior scholar, global expression
Aaron Terr, director of public advocacy
The Higher Education Inquirer has crossed another milestone, reaching more than 600,000 views over the past quarter. For a niche publication without corporate backing, this is a significant achievement. But the real measure of success is not in page views—it is in the stories that matter, the investigations that refuse to die even when the higher education establishment would rather they disappear.
Since its inception, HEI has taken the long view on the crises and contradictions shaping U.S. colleges and universities. We continue to probe the issues that mainstream media outlets often skim or ignore. These are not passing headlines; they are structural problems, many of them decades in the making, that affect millions of students, faculty, staff, and communities.
Among the stories we continue to pursue:
Charlie Kirk and Neofascism on Campus: Tracing how right-wing movements use higher education as a recruiting ground, and how student martyrdom narratives fuel a dangerous cycle.
Academic Labor and Adjunctification: Investigating the systemic exploitation of contingent faculty, who now make up the majority of the academic workforce.
Higher Education and Underemployment: Examining how rising tuition, debt, and credentials collide with a labor market that cannot absorb the graduates it produces.
EdTech, Robocolleges, and the University of Phoenix: Following the money as education technology corporations replace faculty with algorithms and marketing schemes.
Student Loan Debt and Borrower Defense to Repayment: Tracking litigation, regulatory shifts, and the human toll of a $1.7 trillion debt system.
U.S. Department of Education Oversight: Analyzing how federal enforcement waxes and wanes with political cycles, often leaving students exposed.
Online Program Managers and Higher Ed Privatization: Investigating the outsourcing of core academic functions to companies driven by profit, not pedagogy.
Edugrift and Bad Actors in Higher Education: Naming the profiteers who siphon billions from public trust.
Medugrift and University Medicine Oligopolies: Connecting elite medical centers to systemic inequality in U.S. healthcare.
Student Protests: Documenting student resistance to injustice on campus and beyond.
University Endowments and Opaque Funding Sources: Pulling back the curtain on how universities build wealth while raising tuition.
Universities and Gentrification: Exposing the displacement of working-class communities in the name of “campus expansion.”
Ambow Education as a Potential National Security Threat: Tracking foreign-controlled for-profit education companies and their entanglements.
Accreditation: Examining the gatekeepers of legitimacy and their failure to protect students.
International Students: Covering the precarity of students navigating U.S. immigration and education systems.
Student Health and Welfare: Looking at how universities fail to provide adequate physical and mental health support.
Hypercredentialism: Interrogating the endless inflation of degrees and certificates that drain students’ time and money.
Veritas: Pursuing truth in higher education, no matter how uncomfortable.
These are the stories that make HEI more than just a blog—they make it a watchdog. As higher education drifts deeper into corporatization and inequality, we will keep asking difficult questions, exposing contradictions, and documenting resistance.
The numbers are gratifying. But the truth is what matters.
Nearly two years ago, the Hamas-led October 7 attacks on Israel and Israel’s subsequent invasion of Gaza sparked intense debate and demonstrations on American campuses.
Many schools responded by attempting to censor controversial but protected speech in the name of combating antisemitism. But in testimony before Congress on Dec. 5, 2023, University of Pennsylvania’s then-President Liz Magill initially declined to follow suit. She explained that “calling for genocide” does not always violate Penn’s rules. Instead, she correctly labeled this a “context-dependent decision,” recognizing that rhetoric some find deeply offensive can still be protected speech. This assertion was in line with Penn’s longstanding — but often ignored — commitment to tracking the First Amendment in its own policies.
Unfortunately, Magill quickly backtracked in the face of public criticism, including from Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro. The governor said publicly that Magill needed to “give a one-word answer” and that her testimony demonstrated a “failure of leadership.”
As it turns out, the governor’s response was not limited to his public comments. Recent reporting by The Chronicle of Higher Education reveals how Gov. Shapiro’s office enmeshed itself in this controversy and in Penn’s response to antisemitism on campus in the months and semester that followed October 7.
Seizing on a rarely used provision of the Penn Statutes of the Trustees that establishes the governor as a trustee ex officio, Gov. Shapiro appointed Philadelphia lawyer Robb Fox as his observer to the board of trustees. Gov. Shapiro’s director of external affairs Amanda Warren explained in a then-private email that Fox would be “integrated into all future board meetings, as well as ongoing antisemitism work, on behalf of the Governor.” Fox was previously part of the governor’s transition team in 2022 and serves as his appointee on the board of SEPTA, Philadelphia’s transit authority.
Per the Chronicle, Fox “quickly immersed himself in Penn’s affairs — arguing technicalities of the board of trustee’s rules, liaising with students, faculty, and administrators, and contributing to Penn’s task force on antisemitism.” He began corresponding with Marc Rowan, who serves as chair of the Penn Wharton School’s board of advisors and was an early critic of both Magill and Bok. And in one early email regarding a proposed statement from the board, Fox said he would tell them “enough with the statements” and that they needed “a vote on board chair [Scott Bok] and president remaining.”
Days later, Magill and Bok resigned. A member of Penn’s School of Arts and Sciences’ board later thanked Fox for this early engagement, saying the trustees were able to oust Magill and Bok “with the governor’s nudge and with his support.”
All of this broke with precedent. Historically, Penn did not allow designees to attend board meetings in the governor’s place. The university only broke with this tradition after “many conversations between the Governor, President Magill, Board leadership, and staff.”
Fox’s influence reportedly expanded in the months that followed. Penn’s then-interim President Larry Jameson intervened to add Fox to the university’s antisemitism task force. One member of the task force told the Chronicle that Fox frequently said he was trying to represent the governor’s position. And when Fox got the impression that the task force was trying to treat him as a mere spectator, he reached out to Warren and declared that he would “not be an observer.”
Throughout all this, Fox and Warren frequently acted as a team. She connected him with Rowan in the early days of his appointment, and later connected him with the Penn Israel Public Affairs Committee. Fox and Warren were both part of an email exchange with Penn’s new board chair that sought information about the burgeoning encampment. And when Fox considered bypassing the task force on antisemitism and going directly to President Jameson to address an Instagram post by a pro-Palestine student organization, he first emailed Warren to discuss the issue with her.
Neither Penn nor Gov. Shapiro’s office deny any of this involvement. Indeed, both parties acknowledged their relationship in comments to the Chronicle, with Gov. Shapiro’s spokesperson explaining that they and Fox intervened in order to combat hate and antisemitism.
Combating unlawful antisemitic harassment is a noble goal, but when powerful public officials wield their influence to regulate speech at private universities, they’re playing a dangerous game. We saw this play out recently at Columbia University, where university leaders responded to the Trump administration’s unlawful funding freeze (purportedly a response to campus antisemitism) by capitulating to demands that will chill protected speech.
Columbia incorporated the International Holocaust Remembrance Association’s overbroad definition of antisemitism, which the Trump administration had earlier demanded, into its own definition. Later, in a settlement agreement it signed to restore government funding, Columbia required students to commit to vague goals like “equality and respect” that leave far too much room for abuse, much like the DEI statements, civility oaths, and other types of compelled speech FIRE has long opposed.
Gov. Shapiro’s intervention here is not nearly as heavy-handed, but it is still cause for concern. If the Chronicle’s reporting is accurate, then he and his office must act with greater restraint given the state’s influence over Penn, a private institution, and the potential for overreach.
The Chronicle notes that when President Jameson took office, Penn was working to reclaim $31 million in funding for its veterinary school and $1.8 million designated for the Penn Medicine Division of Infectious Diseases that had been withheld by the Pennsylvania legislature over antisemitism concerns. When faced with the loss of so much funding, many institutions, even those as wealthy as Penn, will be quick to fall in line with the state’s demands.
This backdoor approach to regulating speech, known as jawboning, is both incredibly powerful and uniquely dangerous. The First Amendment only protects against state censorship, not private regulation of speech, so when the state pressures private institutions into censoring disfavored speech, it blurs the legal line between unconstitutional state action and protected private conduct. The Supreme Court unanimously condemned this practice in NRA v. Vullo, reaffirming its 60-year-old ruling that governments cannot use third parties to censor speech they disfavor. The Court explained that this practice would allow a government official to “do indirectly what she is barred from doing directly.”
Jawboning’s chilling effects go beyond the pressured institution itself. For example, Gov. Shapiro’s close involvement at Penn incentivizes campus leaders to over-enforce their anti-discrimination and harassment policies in ways that prohibit or chill what would otherwise be lawful speech. Rather than risk state interference, many institutions will censor first and ask questions later.
None of this is to say that Penn has a sterling history when it comes to managing speech controversies on its own. In fact, Penn finished second to last in FIRE’s 2023 campus free speech rankings. But the situation is likely to get worse, not better, when the government amplifies the impulse to censor.
Private universities are not subject to open-records laws like many public universities. At a public university, it is often possible to obtain records that reveal how or why the school changed a speech policy or engaged in censorship. By contrast, at a private university there is no formal way (besides the costly process of litigation) to request records that reveal the basis for such actions, including the extent to which they were the result of state pressure.
For example, after Penn’s tumultuous 2024 spring semester, the university adopted a vague and overbroad events and demonstrations policy. This policy prohibits “advocat[ing] violence” in all circumstances, even when it doesn’t cross the line into unprotected and unlawful conduct or speech, like incitement or true threats. Moreover, the policy fails to define “advocat[ing] violence.” This leaves students guessing and will lead to administrative abuse and uneven enforcement. Is the common but controversial slogan “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” a call for violence in Israel or a call for political change? Calling for U.S. bombing of terrorist groups like ISIS or Al-Qaeda is explicitly advocating violence. Is that prohibited? Under Penn’s new policy, that’s left to administrators to decide.
FIRE criticized this policy at the time and expressed concern that it was driven in part by viewpoint discrimination. But at a private university like Penn, there is no public records mechanism for the public to scrutinize how or why the policy was adopted. And although private universities are generally well within their rights to keep these decisions private, this arrangement becomes more troublesome when the state gets involved.
Private universities themselves have free speech rights. A federal district court recently reiterated as much, explaining that the Trump administration violated the First Amendment when it conditioned funding to Harvard on the university “realigning its campus to better reflect a viewpoint favored by the government.”
Harvard, like Columbia and many other institutions, has been the target of a federal pressure campaign purportedly aimed at combatting antisemitism. But unlike Columbia, Harvard chose to defend its rights in court. This stand is praiseworthy, and the district court’s decision shows that private institutions stand on solid legal ground when they resist unlawful government pressure. Unfortunately, not every institution will be bold enough, or sufficiently well resourced, to fight the state in court.
Given these dangers, Gov. Shapiro and other government actors seeking to combat discrimination must act through the proper legal channels. In the federal context, this means following the procedures laid out by Title VI and binding federal regulations. In its ruling for Harvard, the district court explained that this process is designed to ensure that recipients of federal funding “are shielded against being labeled with the ‘irreversible stigma’ of ‘discriminator’ until a certain level of agency process has determined that there was misconduct that warranted termination.” In other words, this process is a check on government overreach and all the harms that entails. The same principle applies to states trying to combat discrimination within their borders.
Enforcing valid anti-discrimination laws is important. But there’s a significant danger when state actors attempt to use the rationale of anti-discrimination to regulate speech at private universities. If left unchecked, this backdoor regulation risks turning private universities into de facto extensions of the state — undermining both academic freedom and the First Amendment itself.
We get it: not everyone is a free speech expert. A huge part of our job at FIRE is educating the public about their First Amendment rights, the scope of free speech law, and the foundational principles that make free expression so important.
Most people don’t have the time to get in the weeds like we do, so it’s understandable for the average American to sometimes get things wrong about free speech. But when you’re the attorney general of the United States, like Pam Bondi, you really should know better.
While discussing the assassination of Charlie Kirk and campus antisemitism on The Katie Miller Podcast, Bondi said the Justice Department would investigate and prosecute incidents of “hate speech.” While she’s trying to go into damage control mode and walk back some of her mistakes, it’s important to correct our nation’s chief law enforcement officer on what is and isn’t protected expression.
There’s free speech, and then there’s hate speech. And there is no place — especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie — [for that] in our society.
This is, to put it bluntly, absolutely false — so-called “hate speech” is free speech.
The idea that “hate speech” is a separate and unprotected category of expression is one that we, unfortunately, have had to debunk time and time again. The fact is there is no “hate speech” exception to the First Amendment, and there can’t be. The Supreme Court has rejected the notion on multiple occasions, and the reasons for this should be obvious to someone in Bondi’s position.
What constitutes “hate speech” is inherently subjective, so it’s impossible to narrowly define it in a way that passes constitutional muster — let alone in a way that doesn’t empower the government to target speech it disfavors.
As Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan II wrote in 1971’s Cohen v. California, “one man’s vulgarity is another man’s lyric.” Or as Justice Samuel Alito wrote in Matal v. Tam almost four decades later, “the proudest boast of our free speech jurisprudence is that we protect the freedom to express ‘the thought that we hate.’” In that case, the Court unanimously found that the government couldn’t deny a trademark to an Asian-American band called the Slants because it found the name disparaging.
Some consider criticism of Israel or Black Lives Matter to be hate speech. Others believe criticizing LGBTQ+ advocacy or Christian conservatism fits the description. And some, like President Trump, want to push the idea that even critical news coverage of an elected official — namely, him — can be a form of hate speech.
Apart from the inescapably subjective sentiment that “hate speech is any speech I hate,” the only thing on which proponents of treating hate speech as unprotected agree is the desire to punish it. This apparently includes Pam Bondi:
We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.
This is absolutely chilling. It’s why carving out a “hate speech” exception to the First Amendment is so dangerous. It grants the government the power not only to decide what constitutes hateful speech, but to punish it. And that dual empowerment inevitably facilitates attacks on the right to dissent, criticize, and hold accountable whoever is in power. Nothing is more antithetical to what America stands for than enabling federal speech police.
Early this morning, Bondi published a post on X, attempting to clarify her comments after a wave of negative response. Unfortunately, she only introduced more confusion:
Hate speech that crosses the line into threats of violence is NOT protected by the First Amendment. It’s a crime. For far too long, we’ve watched the radical left normalize threats, call for assassinations, and cheer on political violence. That era is over.
While Bondi is correct that speech satisfying the stringent standard for what constitutes a true threat of violence is not protected by the First Amendment, she seems to effectively equate it with so-called “hate speech.” She goes on:
Under 18 U.S.C. § 875(c), it is a federal crime to transmit “any communication containing any threat to kidnap any person or any threat to injure the person of another.” Likewise, 18 U.S.C. § 876 and 18 U.S.C. § 115 make it a felony to threaten public officials, members of Congress, or their families.
Bondi is narrowly correct here. In 2003’s Virginia v. Black, the Supreme Court defined true threats as “those statements where the speaker means to communicate a serious expression of an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence to a particular individual or group of individuals.”
However, Bondi quickly shows that she doesn’t understand this narrow exception, which doesn’t cover abstract advocacy of violence or “cheering on” political violence — speech that is, in fact, protected:
You cannot call for someone’s murder. You cannot swat a Member of Congress. You cannot dox a conservative family and think it will be brushed off as “free speech.” These acts are punishable crimes, and every single threat will be met with the full force of the law.
Actually, you can call for someone’s murder as long as you’re not inciting it. In the landmark Supreme Court case Brandenburg v. Ohio, the Court established that there is a difference between speech promoting unlawful action and the unlawful action itself. That speech only loses First Amendment protection when it is “directed to and likely to produce imminent lawless action.” The reason for this is to protect our ability to engage in sharp, critical, and even incendiary language — because political speech, as the Supreme Court noted in 1969’s Watts v. United States, “is often vituperative, abusive, and inexact,” and we don’t want a particular politician or administration deciding for everyone when it’s too hateful or offensive.
Is hate speech protected by the First Amendment? The First Amendment makes no general exception for offensive, repugnant, or hateful expression.
Like hate speech, Bondi also fails to define “doxxing.” It often refers to the intentional release of an individual’s personal identifying information without their permission — though many use the term more liberally, for example, to refer to posting video of ICE agents performing their duties in public. Disclosing truthful information about others is generally protected unless done in a way that amounts to a true threat or incitement.
Mercifully, Bondi ended her tweet with something to which we don’t object:
Free speech protects ideas, debate, even dissent but it does NOT and will NEVER protect violence.
You’ll get no argument from us there. Words are words, and violence is violence. And the distinction makes all the difference: Protect speech. Punish violence.
What Bondi fails to recognize is the critical importance of protecting ideas, debate, and dissent is why there is no First Amendment exception for so-called “hate speech” — and why there never should be.
Charlie Kirk himself would have agreed:
Elon University and Queens University of Charlotte, private institutions roughly two hours apart, announced Tuesday that they plan to merge, with more details to come in the next few months.
Although the “formal structure of the proposed merger” still needs to be finalized, Elon officials said in a university announcement that “the vision is clear: to create a stronger, more sustainable model of higher education in Charlotte that expands access, enhances opportunity, prepares a future-ready workforce and honors the storied legacies of both institutions.”
Language in the announcement suggests that Elon will absorb Queens as part of the merger.
“At the conclusion of the merger, which is anticipated in the summer of 2026, Elon will operate Queens in partnership with existing and legacy leaders,” Elon officials wrote in a news release.
Elon is the larger of the two institutions and appears to be more financially stable.
Elon enrolled more than 7,230 students last fall, according to its Common Data Set. The head count at Queens came in at 1,599 students last fall, its Common Data Set shows. Elon has an endowment valued at more than $361 million, compared to nearly $162 million at Queens, which has operated at a deficit in recent years, public financial records show.
Queens also laid off employees last year after it missed its enrollment goal by about 100 students, which it blamed on the flawed rollout of the new Free Application for Federal Student Aid.
Officials expect the merger, which will require regulatory approval, to be finalized next summer.
