Free Speech Hour @ UMass Amherst

The free speech policy at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst brings to mine an axiom of the late, great author M. Stanton Evans, which he dubbed “Evans Law of Inadequate Paranoia.” As he frequently described it, it went like this: “No matter how bad you think things are, when you look into them, you find they are a lot worse.”

“For the system’s flagship campus at Amherst, the officials have decreed a policy that places student First Amendment rights in a straightjacket,” George Leef writes in Forbes. “Free speech and rallies may only be held on a small plot of land (less than one percent of the total campus area of 1,400 acres), and only between noon and 1PM daily.”

“Moreover, use of that space is not exactly free, since students must first ask permission to use it.” And think about who they are asking it from.

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