Sessions: Free speech rights ‘under attack’ at schools
WASHINGTON — Attorney General Jeff Sessions pushed the Justice Department into a roiling culture war on Tuesday with a fierce defense of free speech on college campuses — even as he sided with President Donald Trump in condemning NFL players who protest during the national anthem.
Sessions thus put the administration on both sides of a bitter public debate about where and when it is appropriate for Americans to express their political views.
On universities, some conservative speakers have faced crowds of angry protesters, causing violence and property damage on some campuses. In several NFL stadiums, football players have knelt to protest police killings in black communities, using their prominence as pro athletes to register silent dissent.
In a speech Tuesday at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, Sessions backed the speakers — and condemned the players.
“Freedom of thought and speech on the American campus are under attack,” he said. Universities that once were “a place of robust debate” were becoming “an echo chamber of political correctness and homogenous thought, a shelter for fragile egos.”
Sessions said the Justice Department will begin to intervene in court cases where the government believes colleges are violating the First Amendment by improperly limiting free speech.
As a start, the department filed a “statement of interest” Tuesday to back a lawsuit filed by students at Georgia Gwinnett College in Lawrenceville, Ga. The students say they were barred from distributing Christian literature near the school library and told to stay inside the school’s two designated “free speech zones.”
Sessions said the students were “improperly constricted” and that the Justice Department will seek to “affirm the proper parameters of free speech” at the public college, which is part of Georgia’s state university system.
“Starting today, the Department of Justice will do its part in this struggle,” Sessions said. “We will enforce federal law, defend free speech and protect students’ free expression from whatever end of the political spectrum it may come.”
A crowd of Georgetown students and faculty protested outside before Sessions spoke. Some waved signs denouncing Sessions for his hard-line views on immigration, including his staunch opposition to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
In his speech, Sessions denounced several incidents in which controversial speakers came under fire on college campuses.
He cited conservative radio host Ben Shapiro’s speech at the University of California, Berkeley on Sept. 14. Police in riot gear protected the hall while hundreds of people protested outside, a group that Sessions called “a mob.”
“In the end, Mr. Shapiro spoke to a packed house,” Sessions said. “And to my knowledge, no one fainted, no one was unsafe. No one needed counseling, I hope.”
Berkeley police said there were no reported injuries and no reports of any damage to property from the protest.
Sessions was less charitable to professional football players who exhibited their First Amendment rights by kneeling or linking arms during the national anthem.
He expressed strong support for Trump, who has repeatedly called for the NFL to fire those players, or for the public to boycott their games until they are punished.
Sessions called it “a big mistake to protest in that fashion,” describing the players’ protests a blow to American “unity.”
“If they take a provocative act, they can expect to be condemned, and the president has a right to condemn them and I would condemn them,” he said in response to a question from a student.
He also defended Trump’s harsh comments. “Well, the president has free speech rights too,” Sessions said.
He denied a contradiction with the new policy on student protests. “The freedom of every individual player is paramount in the Constitution,” he said. “It’s protected, and we have to protect it. I think it’s not a contradiction there.”