Clay Calvert, director of the Marion B. Brechner First Amendment Project and Brechner Eminent Scholar in Mass Communication at the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications, is quoted in “Free Speech, Hate and Penn State: What First Amendment Experts Say About Milo Yiannopoulos Controversy” published in Center Daily Times on Oct. 31.

The article focuses on the controversy over far-right commentator Milo Yiannopoulos’ planned speech, “Pray the Gay Away,” at Penn State University this week.

According to Calvert, “The First Amendment generally prohibits what we call viewpoint-based discrimination. And that means that the government — in this case, Penn State — cannot take sides and ban somebody because they don’t like the individual speech.”

“We’re not protecting his speech because it has any value,” Calvert said. “If anything, it is a very low value or no-value speech. But we protect it because we don’t want the government to make choices about what speech has value and what speech doesn’t have value. You’ve got to have three things: I intend my words to produce violence, the violence has to be imminent, and it also has to be likely. But none of those arguments meet the legal definitions of threats or violence, nor permit disallowing the speech.”

He adds, “Yiannopoulos’ comments may be hateful. They may offend the senses of the majority, and they may be of little value. I can see how people could be offended by that, but the remedy in this case is just to state your counter-protest to him.”

Posted: November 1, 2021
Category: College News, Marion B. Brechner First Amendment Project News
Tagged as: Clay Clavert, First Amendment, Marion B. Brechner First Amendment Project