Threats of Violence Fail to Stop Free Speech

This past March, the University of Wyoming cancelled a speech by William Ayers amid a storm of protest of the event. Hundreds of students, citizens, and even politicians called and sent letters to the university objecting to the speech. The speaker, Bill Ayers, was a co-founder of the radical anti-was group Weather Underground. Weather Underground was responsible for a series of non-fatal bombings meant to protest the Vietnam War, including bombings of government buildings such as the U.S. Capital and the Pentagon.

Ayers had been invited to speak on Monday, April 5 by the UW Social Justice Research Center on the issues of social justice and education. Following the tremendous criticism of the event, the director of the Social Justice Research Center cancelled the event citing personal and professional reasons as well as safety concerns. The university explained that they had received threats of violence if the event were to occur.

Now a professor at the University of Illinois-Chicago, Ayers occasionally speaks at universities on the issues of education and social justice. After the cancellation by the University of Wyoming, Illinois Wesleyan University announced on April 14 that it had decided to allow Ayres to keep his invitation to speak at the college after being invited by the student groups IWU Peace Fellows and the Global Politics Society. The spokesman for the university maintains that colleges exist to support the discussion of ideas, and the university thus decided not to cancel the speech despite the potential controversy.

A University of Wyoming student Meg Lanker invited Ayers back to campus after the Social Justice Research Center cancelled his speech. However, Lanker was told that the entire campus was unavailable for Ayers to speak. On April 18 it was announced that Bill Ayers and Meg Lanker had decided to sue the university. Ayers and Lanker are suing on the basis that this ban on Ayers speaking at a university venue violates their constitutional rights to free speech and the freedom of assembly. The plaintiffs asked for an injunction from a federal judge to allow the lecture to take place.

In the 1972 Supreme Court case Healy v. James, students at a state-supported college in Texas tried to create a local chapter of Students for a Democratic Society. However, the students were denied recognition by the college as the college feared possible disruption and violence from the group because of its assumed association with the National SDS. The Court ruled that the university may not deny the students the right to assemble on the college grounds, stating that “state colleges and universities are not enclaves immune from the sweep of the First Amendment.”

This Monday, April 26, 2010, Judge William Downes listened to the arguments of the plaintiffs and the defendants. The defendants claimed that the speech was cancelled due to serious safety concerns after threats of violence were received by the university. The plaintiffs argued that the threats were insufficient and were instead a cover for the university to not allow Ayers to speak so as not to upset the schools reputation and dissuade donors from giving to the school. They argued that their rights to freedom of speech and assembly were of foremost concern.

Judge Downes delivered his ruling on Tuesday, April 27 in favor of the plaintiffs and issued an injunction based on the fact that the university had violated the plaintiffs’ first amendment rights. The injunction forced the university to allow Ayers to speak on the campus, and he is scheduled to give his lecture today, Wednesday, April 28.
Downes, a captain in the Marines during Ayers involvement in Weather Underground, declared that in spite of the any offensive of a speaker, every United States citizen has the right to speak. Downes said in his ruling:

"This court is of age to remember the Weather Underground. When his group was bombing the U.S. Capitol in 1971, I was serving in the uniform of my country. Even to this day, when I hear that name, I can scarcely swallow the bile of my contempt for it. But Mr. Ayers is a citizen of the United States who wishes to speak, and he need not offer any more justification than that."

Judge Downes decision follows libertarian principles of freedom of speech. His ruling was both risk-acceptant and in favor of the individual. Downes declared that Ayers must be guaranteed his first amendment rights despite the threat of violence that may occur. Therefore, his ruling also favored the primacy of the individual speaker, Ayers over the potential public concern about violence at the event or violence directed at university employees or administrators.

The pros of this stance are clear in that it upholds the constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. This contributes to the expansion of the marketplace of ideas, a value cherished in by supports of free speech. It supports the idea that every person, even if they are considered offensive by the majority of people, has a fundamental right to speak. A possible con of this decision is that the risk-acceptant nature of the decision could underestimate the chance for violence. If this is true, either the speaker or the general public could be harmed. A second con is the expenses that the university must pay for in order to increase security at the event, which it plans to do. As this case raises the question of the rights of controversial speakers, I think it is important to remember to protect the rights of the least popular to speak, as that is a fundamental value of the American legal system. It seems to me that this right is justifiably said to outweigh the potential negatives that may come with this speech.


1. http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2010/03/university-of-wyoming-cancels-speech-by-william-ayers.html

2. http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2010/04/ayers-sues-after-banned-from-speaking-at-wyoming-university.html

3. http://trib.com/news/state-and-regional/article_01bd1b85-831e-5506-a673-3caf0c25022a.html

4. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/28/us/28brfs-BANONSPEECHI_BRF.html?scp=1&sq=Ayres%20Wyoming&st=cse

5. http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=408&invol=169