Free speech applies to all viewpoints

The right to freedom of expression, good Americans agree, applies equally to goose and gander. You can't demand free speech or a free press for what you like and then insist on squelching it for what you don't.

By that standard, Siena College absolutely did the right thing this week in making space available on its campus for some right-wing speakers who are notorious for their hostility to the sort of fact-based journalism that this newspaper practices. You won't find many people in my line of work who will criticize efforts to bring diverse voices to college and university campuses, no matter what those voices may say about us.

But that doesn't mean I'm not disappointed that the Siena students who chose Roger Stone and James O'Keefe to headline their "free speech conference" didn't instead invite more thoughtful and constructive conservatives. These guys have every right to a platform at an institution of higher learning. They just don't deserve one.

Stone - who responded to the death of Barbara Bush this week with characteristic sensitivity, labeling her on Instagram "a nasty drunk" - has admitted to practicing political "black arts" since the 1972 campaign of Richard M. Nixon. He's candid about his lies long after telling them and his dirty tricks long after pulling them, if not contemporaneously. His behavior may distort democracy, but dirty tricks often work, so he gets political consulting jobs, which lead to speaking gigs like last weekend's at Siena. But he is often fired for offensive behavior, such as when he labeled a CNN anchor a "stupid negro." He created an anti-Hillary Clinton political committee called Citizens United Not Timid. Think about it.

Just the kind of a guy you want your college-aged kid to grow up to be like, right?

James O'Keefe is a more serious type, but his specialty is distortion of reality. He has become famous for hidden-camera videos, starting with a series that blew up ACORN, an advocacy group for low-income Americans, in 2009. O'Keefe calls himself an investigative journalist, but views of his uncut videos typically reveal selective editing that misleads viewers about what they're seeing. Strong advocacy is admirable, but the moral task of journalism is truth-telling, which makes O'Keefe a propagandist, not a journalist.

All that being said, and with due respect to people who either agree or disagree with the political stances of Stone and O'Keefe, I can't abide the idea of closing campuses to them or their ilk. At colleges and universities more than anywhere else, perhaps, we have to encourage a robust exchange of views. It's there that we are obligated to embrace what's sometimes called the marketplace theory of free speech.

That notion is derived from a famous 1919 dissent of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, who wrote that "the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market."

Holmes was arguing, essentially, that restrictions on free speech ultimately threaten its survival, because "time has upset many fighting faiths," meaning that the speech we find intolerable today may be the norm tomorrow. So, he wrote, "the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas."

Never a semester passes these days without several highly visible controversies over free expression at a university somewhere - students rallying to stop one speaker or another. Last month, for example, students at City University of New York Law School heckled a conservative law professor from Texas who, ironically, had been invited to talk on free speech.

Students objected to his support of President Donald Trump's effort to end the current program protecting so-called Dreamers - undocumented immigrants brought to this country as children. You may agree that ending DACA is detestable, but it is unhealthy to fight the disease of hate speech with the supposed cure of censorship, because that is a toxic medicine.

At a time when lies are amplified by partisans in both politics and the media, when they delegitimize verifiable facts as "fake news," there's a temptation to do whatever we can to promote truth-telling, even if it involves squelching seemingly valueless speech. We mustn't do that.

It was heartening to note, in a Gallup-Knight Foundation survey released a month ago, that U.S. college students strongly support the First Amendment. But they voiced an emerging pessimism about its durability: The share of students who believe our press freedom is secure has fallen by a quarter in the past two years, and the share who believe free speech is impregnable has dropped by one-eighth. It's unsurprising; they are front-line witnesses to the challenge facing our fundamental freedom.

Two-thirds of American high school graduates now go on to college. You could argue, then, that nowhere is it more important to stand up for the principles that our society cherishes than on college and university campuses. So it is there that the contest of ideas must be joined, freely and fairly. If you're not a fan of the cut of Stone, offer your own, but let him be.

Rex Smith is editor of the Times Union. Share your thoughts at http://timesunion.com/rex_smith.