Greg Lukianoff on ‘Threatening’ Speech in ‘The Wall Street Journal’

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Greg Lukianoff on ‘Threatening’ Speech in ‘The Wall Street Journal’

Samantha Harris

May 20, 2008

FIRE President Greg Lukianoff is quoted in today's edition of The Wall Street Journal in about the challenges universities face distinguishing true threats from protected expression. Greg explains that the problem on campus is that "Right now, if a university administrator claims that someone is a threat, even if that threat is virtually unsupportable and completely unreasonable, they have carte blanche to do what they want." This is precisely what happened to T. Hayden Barnes at Valdosta State University, whose story is featured in the article. For even more on Valdosta State, see FIRE's short film highlighting both the university's outrageous treatment of Hayden Barnes and its unconstitutional free speech zone policy.