thesis for free speech

123 Freedom of Speech Topics & Essay Examples

Looking for exciting freedom of speech topics to write about? This issue is definitely worth studying!

🔝 Top 10 Freedom of Speech Essay Topics

⁉️ freedom of speech essay: how to write, 🏆 best freedom of speech essay examples & topic ideas, 🔍 simple & easy freedom of speech essay titles, 💡 most interesting freedom of speech topics to write about, ❓ research questions about freedom of speech.

In your freedom of speech essay, you might want to focus on the historical perspective, elaborate on the negative effects of censorship, or even share your personal experience. Whether you will choose to write an argumentative, persuasive, or narrative essay, our article will help! We’ve gathered a list of excellent topics, ideas, and questions, together with A+ freedom of speech essay examples.

• Freedom of speech as an individual and a collective right
• Freedom of speech and its limitations
• Negative effects of censorship
• The origins of freedom of speech
• Freedom of speech as a negative right
• Democracy and freedom of speech
• Freedom of information in the era of Internet
• Freedom of speech and academic freedom
• Liberalism and freedom of speech
• Freedom of speech in the US

Freedom of speech is an important topic because every person has a fundamental right to express their opinions freely. Our ability to express our thoughts allows society to change and develop.

Essays on freedom of speech can raise awareness of the significance of this issue. That is why it is vital to create powerful and well-developed papers on this cause.

You can discuss various topics in your freedom of speech essay. You can search for them online or consult your professor. Here are our suggestions on freedom of speech essay analysis questions:

• The advantages and disadvantages of free speech policies
• The struggle schools face from the perspective of free speech
• The appropriate use of free speech
• The link between the freedom of speech and yellow journalism
• Speech as a personality trait: What the freedom of speech can reveal about people
• Freedom of speech: Pros and cons
• Freedom of speech in the United States (or other countries)

Once you have selected one of the titles for your essay, it is time to start working on the paper. Here are some do’s of writing the essay:

• Select topics that you are most interested in, as your dedication can help you to keep the reader engaged too. You can select one from the freedom of speech essay titles presented above.
• Develop a well-organized freedom of speech essay outline. Think of the main points you want to discuss and decide how you can present them in the paper. For example, you can include one introductory paragraph, three body paragraphs, and one concluding paragraphs.
• Define your freedom of speech essay thesis clearly. You should state it at the end of the introduction. The reader should understand the main point of your paper.
• While working on a persuasive essay, do not forget to include a section with an alternative perspective on the problem you are discussing.
• Remember that a concluding paragraph is vital because it includes a summary of all arguments presented in the paper. Rephrase the main points of the essay and add recommendations, if necessary.
• Check out essay examples online to see how you can structure your paper and organize the information.

Remember that you should avoid certain things while writing your essay. Here are some important don’ts to consider:

• Do not focus on your personal opinion solely while writing your paper. Support your claims with evidence from the literature or credible online sources.
• Do not ignore your professor’s requirements. Stick within the word limit and make sure that your essay meets all the criteria from the grading rubric, if there is one.
• Avoid using personal blogs or Wikipedia as the primary sources of information, unless your professor states it in the instructions. Ask your instructor about the literature you can use for the essay.
• When checking other students’ essays online, avoid copying their ideas. Remember that your paper should be plagiarism-free.
• Make sure that your paper is mistake-free. Grammatical mistakes may make the reader think that your opinion is not credible. It is better to check the essay several times before sending it to your professor.

Don’t hesitate to explore our free samples that can help you to write an outstanding essay!

• Freedom of Speech in Social Media Essay Gelber tries to say that the history of the freedom of speech in Australia consists of the periods of the increasing public debates on the issue of human rights and their protection.
• Freedom of Speech on Campus The primary issue identified by the case study is the extent to which free speech can be used and is protected regarding sensitive social aspects and discussions.
• Freedom of Speech, Religion and Religious Tolerance As stipulated in Article 19 of the Universal Human Rights Declaration, the pastor has the right to share ideas and information of all kinds regardless of the periphery involved and in this case, he should […]
• Balancing Freedom of Speech and Responsibility in Online Commenting The article made me perceive the position of absolute freedom of speech in the Internet media from a dual perspective. This desire for quick attention is the creation of information noise, distracting from the user […]
• Freedom of Speech as a Basic Human Right Restricting or penalizing freedom of expression is thus a negative issue because it confines the population of truth, as well as rationality, questioning, and the ability of people to think independently and express their thoughts.
• Freedom of Speech and Propaganda in School Setting One of the practical solutions to the problem is the development and implementation of a comprehensive policy for balanced free speech in the classroom.
• Twitter and Violations of Freedom of Speech and Censorship The sort of organization that examines restrictions and the opportunities and challenges it encounters in doing so is the center of a widely acknowledged way of thinking about whether it is acceptable to restrict speech.
• Freedom of Speech in Social Networks The recent case of blocking the accounts of former US President Donald Trump on Twitter and Facebook is explained by the violation of the rules and conditions of social platforms.
• Teachers’ Freedom of Speech in Learning Institutions The judiciary system has not clearly defined the limits of the First Amendment in learning institutions, and it’s a public concern, especially from the teachers.
• Freedom of Speech in Shouting Fire: Stories From the Edge of Free Speech Even though the First Amendment explicitly prohibits any laws regarding the freedom of speech, Congress continues to make exceptions from it.
• Freedom of Speech as the Most Appreciated Liberty In the present-day world, the progress of society largely depends on the possibility for people to exercise their fundamental rights. From this perspective, freedom of speech is the key to everyone’s well-being, and, in my […]
• Why Defamation Laws Must Prioritize Freedom of Speech The body of the essay will involve providing information on the nature of defamation laws in the USA and the UK, the implementation of such laws in the two countries, and the reason why the […]
• The Internet and Freedom of Speech: Ethics and Restrictions Because of a lack of security technology, across the board prohibition is justified under the law, a concept that is in itself considered unlawful by a strict definition of the First Amendment of the Constitution […]
• Protesting as a Way of Exercising Freedoms of Speech and Expression However, this department will be very careful in monitoring the behavior of the protestors and engaging in dialogue to solve issues that may lead to conflicts.
• Freedom of Speech: Is Censorship Necessary? One of the greatest achievements of the contemporary democratic society is the freedom of speech. However, it is necessary to realize in what cases the government has the right to abridge the freedom of self-expression.
• Freedom of Speech and the Internet On the one hand, the freedom of expression on the internet allowed the general public to be informed about the true nature of the certain events, regardless of geographical locations and restrictions.
• The Freedom of Speech: Communication Law in US By focusing on the on goings in Guatemala, the NYT may have, no doubt earned the ire of the Bush administration, but it is also necessary that the American people are made aware of the […]
• Freedom of Speech and Expression in Music Musicians are responsible and accountable for fans and their actions because in the modern world music and lyrics become a tool of propaganda that has a great impact on the circulation of ideas and social […]
• Freedom of Speech and International Relations The freedom of speech or the freedom of expression is a civil right legally protected by many constitutions, including that of the United States, in the First Amendment.
• The Importance of Freedom of Speech In a bid to nurture the freedom of speech, the United States provides safety to the ethical considerations of free conversations.
• Canada’s Freedom of Speech and Its Ineffectiveness In the developed societies of the modern world, it is one of the major premises that freedom of expression is the pivotal character of liberal democracy.
• Freedom of Speech in Modern Media At the same time, the bigoted approach to the principles of freedom of speech in the context of the real world, such as killing or silencing journalists, makes the process of promoting the same values […]
• Freedom of Speech: Julian Assange and ‘WikiLeaks’ Case Another significant issue is that the precedent of WikiLeaks questions the power of traditional journalism to articulate the needs of the society and to monitor the governments.
• Advertising and Freedom of Speech According to Liodice, the marketer should provide the best information to the targeted consumer. The duty of the marketer is to educate and inform the consumer about the unique features of his or her product.
• Freedom of Speech and Expression This implies that autonomy is the epitome of the freedom of expression in many ways. Perhaps, this is the point of diversion between autonomy and restriction of the freedom of expression.
• Freedom of speech in the Balkans Freedom of speech in Montenegro In Montenegro, the practice of the freedom of speech and press were restricted to some issues by the law.
• “The Weight of the Word” by Chris Berg From this analysis therefore, we see that, state interference in the wiki leaks saga was unwarranted, and it amounted to a breach of the freedom of the press.
• Freedom of Speech in China and Political Reform Although the constitution of China has the provision of the freedom of speech, association, press and even demonstration, the freedom is not there in reality since the constitution forbids the undertaking of anything that is […]
• Controversies Over Freedom of Speech and Internet Postings It must be noted though that despite the Freedom of Speech being a first Amendment right, subsequent amendments to the constitution as well as various historical acts such as the Sedition Act of 1798 and […]
• Government’s control versus Freedom of Speech and Thoughts One of the most effective measures that oppressive regimes use the world over is the limitation of the freedom of speech and thoughts.
• Freedom of Speech: Exploring Proper Limits In this respect, Downs mentions the philosophy of educational establishments, where “the function of the University is to seek and to transmit knowledge and to train student in the process whereby truth is to be […]
• Why Free Speech Is An Important Freedom Freedom of speech is an important aspect of social life in a civilized and democratic society. Although there has been debate on the justification of freedom of speech, it is important to realize that society […]
• Human Nature and the Freedom of Speech in Different Countries The paper will look at the human nature that necessitates speech and expression, freedom of speech as applied in different countries and limitations that freedom of speech faces.
• The Freedom Of Speech, Press, And Petition
• How The First Amendment Protects Freedom Of Speech
• The Freedom Of Speech, And Gun Ownership Rights
• The Misconception of Hate Speech and Its Connection with the Freedom of Speech in Our First Amendment
• Limitations On Constitutional Rights On Freedom Of Speech
• Teachers’ and Students’ Right to Freedom of Speech and Expression
• Internet Censorship Means No Freedom of Speech
• Freedom of Speech Part of America’s Constitution
• An Examination of the Disadvantage of Freedom of Speech in Slack Activism
• A Description of Freedom of Speech as One of the Most Important Freedoms
• How Censorship In The Media Is Taking AWay Our Freedom Of Speech
• An Analysis of Freedom of Speech and Its Punishments
• The Effects Of Technology On The Right Of Freedom Of Speech
• Freedom of Speech: Missouri Knights of the Ku Klux Klan v. Kansas City
• Problems with Limiting Freedom of Speech
• How The Freedom Of Speech And Its Interpretation Affects
• Giving Up Freedom Of Speech – Censorship On Hate Sites
• Freedom Of Speech, Religion, And The American Dream
• The Freedom Of Speech Across The World Wide Web
• Freedom of Speech: Should There be Restrictions on Speech in the U.S. Democracy
• An Argument in Favor of the Freedom of Speech and Freedom of the Press in Schools
• Freedom Of Speech And Violent Video Games
• The Importance of Freedom of Speech to the Progress of Society
• The Amendment Is Not Protected Under The Freedom Of Speech
• Should There Be Restrictions to Freedom of Speech
• Why Should Myanmar Have Similar Freedom of Speech Protections to United States
• An Analysis of the Freedom of Speech and the Internet in United States of America
• Freedom of Speech and the First Amendment
• Free Speech : The Benefits Of Freedom Of Speech
• Comparison of Freedom of Speech: Malaysia vs China
• The Fine Line between Freedom of Speech or Hate Speech
• Freedom Of Speech : One Of The Core Principles Of A Democracy
• Prevent Internet Censorship, Save Freedom of Speech
• The Importance of the First Amendment in Providing Freedom of Speech in America
• How the Freedom of Speech Is Possible Through the Internet in China
• The Importance of Freedom of Speech in Higher Education
• Hate Mail and the Misuse of the Freedom of Speech on the Internet
• A Comparison of Freedom of Speech and Private Property
• Importance Of Freedom Of Speech In Colleges
• Freedom Of Speech and Its Legal Limits
• Freedom Of Speech As An International And Regional Human Right
• The Importance of Protecting and Preserving the Right to Freedom of Speech
• An Overview of the Importance of the Freedom of Speech in the United States
• The Communication Decency Act: The Fight for Freedom of Speech on the Internet
• Freedom Of Speech On Students’s Rights In School
• How Far Should the Right to Freedom of Speech Extend
• Journalism and Freedom of Speech
• The Constitution and Freedom of Speech on the Internet in U.S
• ‘Freedom of Speech Means the Freedom to Offend.’
• Does the Law Relating to Obscenity Restict Freedom of Speech?
• Does New Zealand Have Freedom of Speech?
• How Far Should the Right to Freedom of Speech Extend?
• Does South Korea Have Freedom of Speech?
• How the First Amendment Protects Freedom of Speech?
• Does Freedom of Speech Mean You Can Say Anything?
• How Do You Violate Freedom of Speech?
• What Are Mill’s Four Main Arguments in Defence of Freedom of Speech?
• What Violates the Freedom of Speech?
• What Are the Disadvantages of Freedom of Speech?
• Does Freedom of Speech Have Limits?
• Why Does Australia Not Have Freedom of Speech?
• What Are the Three Restrictions to Freedom of Speech?
• How Is Freedom of Speech Abused?
• Who Benefits and Loses from Freedom of Speech?
• Is There Freedom of Speech in Media?
• What Are the Limits of Freedom of Speech in Social Media?
• Does Social Media Allow Freedom of Speech?
• How Is Freedom of Speech Negative?
• Where Is Freedom of Speech Not Allowed?
• Is USA the Only Country with Freedom of Speech?
• Does India Have Freedom of Speech?
• Who Made the Freedom of Speech?
• Why Was Freedom of Speech Created?
• Who Fought for Freedom of Speech?
• Women’s Rights Titles
• Censorship Essay Ideas
• Humanism Research Ideas
• Social Justice Essay Ideas
• Cultural Competence Research Topics
• Personal Values Ideas
• Social Democracy Essay Titles
• Constitution Research Ideas
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

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On Thesis Statements

The thesis statement.

This is not an exhaustive list of bad thesis statements, but here're five kinds of problems I've seen most often. Notice that the last two, #4 and #5, are not necessarily incorrect or illegitimate thesis statements, but, rather, inappropriate for the purposes of this course. They may be useful forms for papers on different topics in other courses.

A thesis takes a position on an issue. It is different from a topic sentence in that a thesis statement is not neutral. It announces, in addition to the topic, the argument you want to make or the point you want to prove. This is your own opinion that you intend to back up. This is your reason and motivation for writing.

Bad Thesis 1

Bad Thesis 2 : This paper will consider the advantages and disadvantages of certain restrictions on free speech.

Better Thesis 1 : Stanley Fish's argument that free speech exists more as a political prize than as a legal reality ignores the fact that even as a political prize it still serves the social end of creating a general cultural atmosphere of tolerance that may ultimately promote free speech in our nation just as effectively as any binding law.

Better Thesis 2 : Even though there may be considerable advantages to restricting hate speech, the possibility of chilling open dialogue on crucial racial issues is too great and too high a price to pay.

A thesis should be as specific as possible, and it should be tailored to reflect the scope of the paper. It is not possible, for instance, to write about the history of English literature in a 5 page paper. In addition to choosing simply a smaller topic, strategies to narrow a thesis include specifying a method or perspective or delineating certain limits.

Bad Thesis 2 : The government has the right to limit free speech.

Better Thesis 1 : There should be no restrictions on the 1st amendment if those restrictions are intended merely to protect individuals from unspecified or otherwise unquantifiable or unverifiable "emotional distress."

Better Thesis 2 : The government has the right to limit free speech in cases of overtly racist or sexist language because our failure to address such abuses would effectively suggest that our society condones such ignorant and hateful views.

A thesis must be arguable. And in order for it to be arguable, it must present a view that someone might reasonably contest. Sometimes a thesis ultimately says, "we should be good," or "bad things are bad." Such thesis statements are tautological or so universally accepted that there is no need to prove the point.

Bad Thesis 2 : There are always alternatives to using racist speech.

Better Thesis 1 : If we can accept that emotional injuries can be just as painful as physical ones we should limit speech that may hurt people's feelings in ways similar to the way we limit speech that may lead directly to bodily harm.

Better Thesis 2 : The "fighting words" exception to free speech is not legitimate because it wrongly considers speech as an action.

A good argumentative thesis provides not only a position on an issue, but also suggests the structure of the paper. The thesis should allow the reader to imagine and anticipate the flow of the paper, in which a sequence of points logically prove the essay's main assertion. A list essay provides no such structure, so that different points and paragraphs appear arbitrary with no logical connection to one another.

Bad Thesis 2 : None of the arguments in favor of regulating pornography are persuasive.

Better Thesis 1 : Among the many reasons we need to limit hate speech the most compelling ones all refer to our history of discrimination and prejudice, and it is, ultimately, for the purpose of trying to repair our troubled racial society that we need hate speech legislation.

Better Thesis 2 : None of the arguments in favor of regulating pornography are persuasive because they all base their points on the unverifiable and questionable assumption that the producers of pornography necessarily harbor ill will specifically to women.

In an other course this would not be at all unacceptable, and, in fact, possibly even desirable. But in this kind of course, a thesis statement that makes a factual claim that can be verified only with scientific, sociological, psychological or other kind of experimental evidence is not appropriate. You need to construct a thesis that you are prepared to prove using the tools you have available, without having to consult the world's leading expert on the issue to provide you with a definitive judgment.

Bad Thesis 2 : Hate speech can cause emotional pain and suffering in victims just as intense as physical battery.

Better Thesis 1 : Whether or not the cultural concept of free speech bears any relation to the reality of 1st amendment legislation and jurisprudence, its continuing social function as a promoter of tolerance and intellectual exchange trumps the call for politicization (according to Fish's agenda) of the term.

Better Thesis 2 : The various arguments against the regulation of hate speech depend on the unspoken and unexamined assumption that emotional pain is either trivial.

1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology

Philosophy, One Thousand Words at a Time

Free Speech

Author: Mark Satta Category:  Social and Political Philosophy , Philosophy of Law , Ethics Word Count: 989

Want to criticize your government? Burn a flag? Wear a t-shirt that says f**k the draft?

Thanks to freedom of speech , in many places you can. [1]

But what exactly is freedom of speech? And what does it permit us to say? This essay will review some influential answers to these questions.

1. Protection from Government, Not Private Actors

Freedom of speech, sometimes called freedom of expression , is a legal right to express many beliefs and ideas without government interference or punishment. This freedom does not typically prevent private entities (e.g., ordinary citizens or private organizations) from limiting speech. [2]

If freedom of speech prevented private entities from limiting speech, freedom of speech could not be applied consistently because the freedom of speech includes the ability not to speak. [3] So, e.g., if a newspaper was forced to publish every piece of writing submitted to it, then that newspaper would lose some ability to not speak. Freedom of speech also includes the right not to listen to or receive other people’s messages. [4]  

The fact that freedom of speech only prevents government interference doesn’t entail that freedom of speech is irrelevant to action by private entities. Some argue that certain private entities ought to voluntarily conform to legal standards for speech protection: e.g., that private universities should conform to the free speech standards legally required by public universities. [5]  Freedom of speech is also sometimes understood more broadly as a social value.

2. Limits on Free Speech

Freedom of speech is not an unlimited right. All governments impose some limits on what kinds of speech they will protect. This is because freedom of speech, like all rights, must be balanced against other rights and values.

Common types of speech not protected by freedom of speech include threats of violence, false advertising, and defamation (i.e., false statements that unjustly harm someone’s reputation). [6]

Many democratic nations do not protect hate speech (i.e., speech intended to threaten, degrade, or incite hatred against a group or group member based on group prejudice). But some other nations, including the United States, treat hate speech as protected speech. Whether hate speech should receive free speech protection has been much debated in recent years. [7]

  But even protected speech can be limited to an extent by the government: e.g., freedom of speech does not permit just anyone to enter a military base or a class at a public university and start talking. This is true because, even though military bases and public universities are government-run, these spaces seek to achieve other important goals that justify limiting free speech.

Freedom of speech gives you much greater latitude in a public park, a public sidewalk, or in your own home. But even in public places like parks and sidewalks, freedom of speech allows for content-neutral restrictions on speech: e.g., a town can have a noise ordinance banning playing loud music in parks near residential neighborhoods after midnight.

But it is important that these restrictions be content- and viewpoint-neutral . [8] Thus, a town could not pass an ordinance limiting speech only about certain topics or from certain perspectives in the park. Such a rule would discriminate based on the content or viewpoint of the speech. An important part of freedom of speech is that the government cannot restrict speech just because it doesn’t like the topics or agree with the speaker. Freedom of speech also doesn’t allow for the suppression of ideas simply because those ideas are unpopular.

3. Expressive Conduct

Freedom of speech protects more than just spoken and written expression. It also protects many other activities through which ideas can be expressed: [9] e.g., in the United States, abstract art, non-lyrical music, and marching in a parade are all activities protected under the freedom of speech. [10]

There are controversies concerning which activities ought to be considered expressive conduct: e.g., there is substantial disagreement about whether political spending by corporations ought to be protected as free speech. [11] There are also disagreements about if and when the creation of products like wedding cakes and photographs ought to be considered protected speech. [12]

4. Prior Restraint versus Subsequent Punishment

Freedom of speech protects people against two different types of government interference: prior restraint and subsequent punishment .

A prior restraint prevents you from speaking: it restrains your speech prior to it being made. At one point, many legal scholars thought that freedom of speech meant only freedom from prior restraint. [13] That is no longer true.

Today, most everyone believes that freedom of speech protects people not only from prior restraint, but also from subsequent punishment (i.e., from being legally sanctioned for protected speech). This makes freedom of speech more robust because it protects people not only from having their protected speech restrained, but also from having their protected speech punished by the government.

5. Why is Free Speech Important?

Philosophers and legal scholars have given many different explanations for why free speech is important. Many scholars think there are multiple good reasons why we protect free speech. [14]

Three common rationales for free speech protections are that they help us (1) discover truth, (2) respect human autonomy, and (3) preserve democracy by allowing criticism of government.

Influential advocates of the idea that free speech helps us discover truth include writer John Milton, philosopher John Stuart Mill, and U.S. Supreme Court Justices Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis Brandeis. [15]

One common form of the truth discovery argument is that the best way to overcome false speech is with more speech. [16] Given what we know about how viral misinformation works, such a claim can appear implausible. [17] But even if this version of the truth discovery argument is mistaken, there may be weaker forms of a truth-preservation principle that provide us with good reason to safeguard free speech: e.g., someone might argue that the fallibility of political leaders requires them to avoid suppressing others’ ideas.

6. Conclusion

Freedom of speech is valuable. Protecting it first requires understanding it.

[1] See, e.g., Brandenburg v. Ohio , Texas v. Johnson , and Cohen v. California .

[2] See, e.g., U.S. Const. Amend I .

[3] Gaebler 1982 .

[4] Corbin 2009 .

[5] Chemerinsky and Gillman 2017 .

[6] Maras 2015 , Redish and Voils 2017 , and Post 1986 .

[7] See, e.g., Waldron 2012 and Strossen 2018 .

[8] Jacobs 2003 .

[9] Tushnet, Chen, and Blocher 2017 .

[10] See, e.g., Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Group of Boston .

[11] Hasen 2011 .

[12] Liptak 2017 .

[13] Rabban 1981 , Healy 2013 .

[14] Greenawalt 1989 .

[15] Milton 1644 (reprinted 1918) , Mill 1859 , Abrams v. United States (Holmes, J. dissenting ), Whitney v. California (Brandeis, J. concurring) .

[16] See, e.g., Milton 1644 (reprinted 1918) , Whitney v. California (Brandeis, J. concurring) .

[17] Wu 2018 .

Abrams v. the United States , 250 U.S. 616 (1919).

Brandenburg v. Ohio , 395 U.S. 444 (1969).

Cohen v. California , 403 U.S. 15 (1971).

Hurley v. Irish American Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Group of Boston , 515 U.S. 557 (1995).

Texas v. Johnson , 491 U.S. 397 (1989).

Whitney v. California , 274 U.S. 357 (1927).

Corbin, Caroline Mala. 2009. “The First Amendment right against compelled listening.” Boston University Law Review , 89 (3): 939-1016.

Chemerinsky, Erwin and Howard Gillman. 2017. Free Speech on Campus . Yale University Press.

Gaebler, David. 1982. “First Amendment Protection Against Government Compelled Expression and Association.” Boston College Law Review , 23 (4): 995-1023.

Greenawalt, Kent. 1989. “Free Speech Justifications.” Columbia Law Review 89 (1): 119-155.

Hasen, Richard L. 2011. “Citizens United and the Illusion of Coherence.” Michigan Law Review , 109 (4): 581-623.

Healy, Thomas. 2013. The Great Dissent: How Oliver Wendell Holmes Changed His Mind—and Changed the History of Free Speech in America . Metropolitan Books.

Jacobs, Leslie Gielow. 2003. “Clarifying the Content-Based/Content Neutral and Content/Viewpoint Determinations.” McGeorge Law Review , 34 (3): 595-635 .

Liptak, Adam. 2017. “Where to Draw Line on Free Speech? Wedding Cake Case Vexes Lawyers.” New York Times .

Maras, Marie-Helen. 2015. “Unprotected Speech Communicated via Social Media: What Amounts to a True Threat?” Journal of Internet Law , 19 (3): 3-9.

Mill, John Stuart. 1859. On Liberty . John W. Parker & Son.

Milton, John. 1918. Areopagitica . Cambridge University Press.

Post, Robert C. 1986. “The Social Foundations of Defamation Law: Reputation and the Constitution” California Law Review , 74: 691-742.

Rabban, David M. 1981. “The First Amendment in Its Forgotten Years.” Yale Law Journal , 90 (3): 514-595.

Redish, Martin H. and Kyle Voils. 2017. “False Commercial Speech and the First Amendment: Understanding the Implications of the Equivalency Principle.” William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal , 25: 765-799.

Strossen, Nadine. 2018. Hate: Why We Should Resist it With Free Speech, Not Censorship . Oxford University Press.

Tushnet, Mark V., Alan K. Chen, and Joseph Blocher. 2017. Free Speech Beyond Words: The Surprising Reach of the First Amendment . New York University Press.

Waldron, Jeremy. 2012. The Harm in Hate Speech . Harvard University Press.

Wu, Tim. 2018. “Is the First Amendment Obsolete?” Michigan Law Review , 117 (3): 547-581.

For Further Reading

“Freedom of Expression – Speech and Press.” Cornell Law School’s Legal Information Institute.

van Mill, David, “Freedom of Speech”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2021 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)  

Related Essays

Philosophy of Law: An Overview  by Mark Satta

Is it Wrong to Believe Without Sufficient Evidence? W.K. Clifford’s “The Ethics of Belief”  by Spencer Case

Theories of Punishment by Travis Joseph Rodgers 

Hannah Arendt’s Political Thought by David Antonini

John Rawls’ ‘A Theory of Justice’ by Ben Davies

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About the Author

Mark Satta is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. He received his PhD in Philosophy from Purdue University and his JD from Harvard Law School. Some of his philosophical research interests include philosophy of law, epistemology, bioethics, and philosophy of language. MarkSatta.com

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What is the role of free speech in a democratic society?

Book co-edited by prof. geoffrey stone examines evolution, future of first amendment.

Free speech has been an experiment from the start—or at least that’s what Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes suggested nearly a century ago in his dissent in  Abrams v. United States , one of the first decisions to interpret and shape the doctrine that would come to occupy a nearly sacred place in America’s national identity.

Since then, First Amendment jurisprudence has stirred America in novel ways, forcing deep introspection about democracy, society and human nature and sometimes straddling the political divide in unexpected fashion. In the past 100 years, free speech protections have ebbed and flowed alongside America’s fears and progress, adapting to changing norms but ultimately growing in reach.

And now, this piece of the American experiment faces a new set of challenges presented by the ever-expanding influence of technology as well as sharp debates over the government’s role in shaping the public forum.

That’s why Geoffrey R. Stone, the Edward Levi Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago Law School, and Lee Bollinger, the president of Columbia University, two of the country’s leading First Amendment scholars, brought together some of the nation’s most influential legal scholars in a new book to explore the evolution—and the future—of First Amendment doctrine in America. 

The Free Speech Century  (Oxford University Press) is a collection of 16 essays by Floyd Abrams, the legendary First Amendment lawyer; David Strauss, the University of Chicago’s Gerald Ratner Distinguished Service Professor of Law; Albie Sachs, former justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa; Tom Ginsburg, the University of Chicago’s Leo Spitz Professor of International Law; Laura Weinrib, a University of Chicago Professor of Law; Cass Sunstein, a professor at Harvard Law School; and others.

“Lee and I were law clerks together at the Supreme Court during the 1972 term,” Stone said. “I was with Justice Brennan and Lee was with Chief Justice Burger. We have both been writing, speaking and teaching about the First Amendment now for 45 years. This was a good time, we decided, to mark the 100th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s first decision on the First Amendment with a volume that examines four basic themes: The Nature of First Amendment Jurisprudence, Major Critiques and Controversies over Current Doctrine, The International Impact of our First Amendment Jurisprudence, and the Future of Free Speech in a World of Ever-Changing Technology. Our hope is that this volume will enlighten, inspire and challenge readers to think about the role of free speech in a free and democratic society.”

Stone, JD’71, has spent much of his career examining free speech— a topic he first became passionate about as a University of Law School student.

The University has a long tradition of upholding freedom of expression. UChicago’s influential 2015 report by the Committee on Freedom of Expression, which Stone chaired, became a model for colleges and universities across the country.

The collection takes on pressing issues, such as free expression on university campuses, hate speech, the regulation of political speech and the boundaries of free speech on social media, unpacking the ways in which these issues are shaping the norms of free expression.

One essay, for instance, explores how digital behemoths like Facebook, Twitter and Google became “gatekeepers of free expression”—a shift that contributor Emily Bell, a Columbia University journalism professor, writes “leaves us at a dangerous point in democracy and freedom of the press.” Her article examines foreign interference in the 2016 election and explores some of the questions that have emerged since, such as how to balance traditional ideas of a free press with the rights of citizens to hear accurate information in an information landscape that is now dominated by social media.

Technology, the editors write, has presented some of the most significant questions that courts, legal scholars, and the American public will face in the coming decades.

“While vastly expanding the opportunities to participate in public discourse, contemporary means of communication have also arguably contributed to political polarization, foreign influence in our democracy, and the proliferation of ‘fake’ news,” Stone writes in the introduction. “To what extent do these concerns pose new threats to our understanding of ‘the freedom of speech, and of the press’? To what extent do they call for serious reconsideration of some central doctrines and principles on which our current First Amendment jurisprudence is based?”

In another essay, Strauss, an expert in constitutional law, examines the principles established in the 1971 Pentagon Papers case,  New York Times Co. v. United States.  The landmark ruling blocked an attempt at prior restraint by the Nixon administration, allowing the  New York Times  and  Washington Post  to publish a classified report that reporters had obtained about America’s role in Vietnam. The threat to national security wasn’t sufficiently immediate or specific to warrant infringing on the papers’ right to publish, the Court said at the time.

But today’s world is different, Strauss argues. It is easier to leak large amounts of sensitive information—and publication is no longer limited to a handful of media companies with strict ethical guidelines. What’s more, the ease with which information can be shared—digitally as opposed to carefully sneaking papers in batches from locked cabinets to a photocopier, as military analyst Daniel Ellsberg did when leaking the Pentagon Papers—means that a larger number of people can act as leakers. That can include those who don’t fully understand the information they are sharing, which many have argued was the case when former IT contractor Edward Snowden allegedly leaked millions of documents from the National Security Agency in 2013.

“[T]he stakes are great on both sides,” Strauss writes, “and the world has changed in ways that make it important to rethink the way we deal with the problem.”

Ultimately, the health of the First Amendment will depend on two things, Bollinger writes: a continued understanding that free speech plays a critical role in democratic society—and a recognition that the judicial branch doesn’t claim sole responsibility for achieving that vision. The legislative and executive branches can support free speech as well.

What’s more, modern-day challenges do not have to result in an erosion of protections, Bollinger argues.

“[O]ur most memorable and consequential decisions under the First Amendment have emerged in times of national crises, when passions are at their peak and when human behavior is on full display at its worst and at its best, in times of war and when momentous social movements are on the rise,” he writes. “Freedom of speech and the press taps into the most essential elements of life—how we think, speak, communicate, and live within the polity. It is no wonder that we are drawn again and again into its world.”

—Adapted from an article that first appeared on the University of Chicago Law School website.

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The Free Speech Century

Geoffrey R. Stone, Lee C. Bollinger

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Freedom of Speech

[ Editor’s Note: The following new entry by Jeffrey W. Howard replaces the former entry on this topic by the previous author. ]

Human beings have significant interests in communicating what they think to others, and in listening to what others have to say. These interests make it difficult to justify coercive restrictions on people’s communications, plausibly grounding a moral right to speak (and listen) to others that is properly protected by law. That there ought to be such legal protections for speech is uncontroversial among political and legal philosophers. But disagreement arises when we turn to the details. What are the interests or values that justify this presumption against restricting speech? And what, if anything, counts as an adequate justification for overcoming the presumption? This entry is chiefly concerned with exploring the philosophical literature on these questions.

The entry begins by distinguishing different ideas to which the term “freedom of speech” can refer. It then reviews the variety of concerns taken to justify freedom of speech. Next, the entry considers the proper limits of freedom of speech, cataloging different views on when and why restrictions on communication can be morally justified, and what considerations are relevant when evaluating restrictions. Finally, it considers the role of speech intermediaries in a philosophical analysis of freedom of speech, with special attention to internet platforms.

1. What is Freedom of Speech?

2.1 listener theories, 2.2 speaker theories, 2.3 democracy theories, 2.4 thinker theories, 2.5 toleration theories, 2.6 instrumental theories: political abuse and slippery slopes, 2.7 free speech skepticism, 3.1 absoluteness, coverage, and protection, 3.2 the limits of free speech: external constraints, 3.3 the limits of free speech: internal constraints, 3.4 proportionality: chilling effects and political abuse, 3.5 necessity: the counter-speech alternative, 4. the future of free speech theory: platform ethics, other internet resources, related entries.

In the philosophical literature, the terms “freedom of speech”, “free speech”, “freedom of expression”, and “freedom of communication” are mostly used equivalently. This entry will follow that convention, notwithstanding the fact that these formulations evoke subtly different phenomena. For example, it is widely understood that artistic expressions, such as dancing and painting, fall within the ambit of this freedom, even though they don’t straightforwardly seem to qualify as speech , which intuitively connotes some kind of linguistic utterance (see Tushnet, Chen, & Blocher 2017 for discussion). Still, they plainly qualify as communicative activity, conveying some kind of message, however vague or open to interpretation it may be.

Yet the extension of “free speech” is not fruitfully specified through conceptual analysis alone. The quest to distinguish speech from conduct, for the purpose of excluding the latter from protection, is notoriously thorny (Fish 1994: 106), despite some notable attempts (such as Greenawalt 1989: 58ff). As John Hart Ely writes concerning Vietnam War protesters who incinerated their draft cards, such activity is “100% action and 100% expression” (1975: 1495). It is only once we understand why we should care about free speech in the first place—the values it instantiates or serves—that we can evaluate whether a law banning the burning of draft cards (or whatever else) violates free speech. It is the task of a normative conception of free speech to offer an account of the values at stake, which in turn can illuminate the kinds of activities wherein those values are realized, and the kinds of restrictions that manifest hostility to those values. For example, if free speech is justified by the value of respecting citizens’ prerogative to hear many points of view and to make up their own minds, then banning the burning of draft cards to limit the views to which citizens will be exposed is manifestly incompatible with that purpose. If, in contrast, such activity is banned as part of a generally applied ordinance restricting fires in public, it would likely raise no free-speech concerns. (For a recent analysis of this issue, see Kramer 2021: 25ff).

Accordingly, the next section discusses different conceptions of free speech that arise in the philosophical literature, each oriented to some underlying moral or political value. Before turning to the discussion of those conceptions, some further preliminary distinctions will be useful.

First, we can distinguish between the morality of free speech and the law of free speech. In political philosophy, one standard approach is to theorize free speech as a requirement of morality, tracing the implications of such a theory for law and policy. Note that while this is the order of justification, it need not be the order of investigation; it is perfectly sensible to begin by studying an existing legal protection for speech (such as the First Amendment in the U.S.) and then asking what could justify such a protection (or something like it).

But of course morality and law can diverge. The most obvious way they can diverge is when the law is unjust. Existing legal protections for speech, embodied in the positive law of particular jurisdictions, may be misguided in various ways. In other words, a justified legal right to free speech, and the actual legal right to free speech in the positive law of a particular jurisdiction, can come apart. In some cases, positive legal rights might protect too little speech. For example, some jurisdictions’ speech laws make exceptions for blasphemy, such that criminalizing blasphemy does not breach the legal right to free speech within that legal system. But clearly one could argue that a justified legal right to free speech would not include any such exception. In other cases, positive legal rights might perhaps protect too much speech. Consider the fact that, as a matter of U.S. constitutional precedent, the First Amendment broadly protects speech that expresses or incites racial or religious hatred. Plainly we could agree that this is so as a matter of positive law while disagreeing about whether it ought to be so. (This is most straightforwardly true if we are legal positivists. These distinctions are muddied by moralistic theories of constitutional interpretation, which enjoin us to interpret positive legal rights in a constitutional text partly through the prism of our favorite normative political theory; see Dworkin 1996.)

Second, we can distinguish rights-based theories of free speech from non-rights-based theories. For many liberals, the legal right to free speech is justified by appealing to an underlying moral right to free speech, understood as a natural right held by all persons. (Some use the term human right equivalently—e.g., Alexander 2005—though the appropriate usage of that term is contested.) The operative notion of a moral right here is that of a claim-right (to invoke the influential analysis of Hohfeld 1917); it thereby correlates to moral duties held by others (paradigmatically, the state) to respect or protect the right. Such a right is natural in that it exerts normative force independently of whether anyone thinks it does, and regardless of whether it is codified into the law. A tyrannical state that imprisons dissidents acts unjustly, violating moral rights, even if there is no legal right to freedom of expression in its legal system.

For others, the underlying moral justification for free speech law need not come in the form of a natural moral right. For example, consequentialists might favor a legal right to free speech (on, e.g., welfare-maximizing grounds) without thinking that it tracks any underlying natural right. Or consider democratic theorists who have defended legal protections for free speech as central to democracy. Such theorists may think there is an underlying natural moral right to free speech, but they need not (especially if they hold an instrumental justification for democracy). Or consider deontologists who have argued that free speech functions as a kind of side-constraint on legitimate state action, requiring that the state always justify its decisions in a manner that respects citizens’ autonomy (Scanlon 1972). This theory does not cast free speech as a right, but rather as a principle that forbids the creation of laws that restrict speech on certain grounds. In the Hohfeldian analysis (Hohfeld 1917), such a principle may be understood as an immunity rather than a claim-right (Scanlon 2013: 402). Finally, some “minimalists” (to use a designation in Cohen 1993) favor legal protection for speech principally in response to government malice, corruption, and incompetence (see Schauer 1982; Epstein 1992; Leiter 2016). Such theorists need not recognize any fundamental moral right, either.

Third, among those who do ground free speech in a natural moral right, there is scope for disagreement about how tightly the law should mirror that right (as with any right; see Buchanan 2013). It is an open question what the precise legal codification of the moral right to free speech should involve. A justified legal right to freedom of speech may not mirror the precise contours of the natural moral right to freedom of speech. A raft of instrumental concerns enters the downstream analysis of what any justified legal right should look like; hence a defensible legal right to free speech may protect more speech (or indeed less speech) than the underlying moral right that justifies it. For example, even if the moral right to free speech does not protect so-called hate speech, such speech may still merit legal protection in the final analysis (say, because it would be too risky to entrust states with the power to limit those communications).

2. Justifying Free Speech

I will now examine several of the morally significant considerations taken to justify freedom of expression. Note that while many theorists have built whole conceptions of free speech out of a single interest or value alone, pluralism in this domain remains an option. It may well be that a plurality of interests serves to justify freedom of expression, properly understood (see, influentially, Emerson 1970 and Cohen 1993).

Suppose a state bans certain books on the grounds that it does not want us to hear the messages or arguments contained within them. Such censorship seems to involve some kind of insult or disrespect to citizens—treating us like children instead of adults who have a right to make up our own minds. This insight is fundamental in the free speech tradition. On this view, the state wrongs citizens by arrogating to itself the authority to decide what messages they ought to hear. That is so even if the state thinks that the speech will cause harm. As one author puts it,

the government may not suppress speech on the ground that the speech is likely to persuade people to do something that the government considers harmful. (Strauss 1991: 335)

Why are restrictions on persuasive speech objectionable? For some scholars, the relevant wrong here is a form of disrespect for citizens’ basic capacities (Dworkin 1996: 200; Nagel 2002: 44). For others, the wrong here inheres in a violation of the kind of relationship the state should have with its people: namely, that it should always act from a view of them as autonomous, and so entitled to make up their own minds (Scanlon 1972). It would simply be incompatible with a view of ourselves as autonomous—as authors of our own lives and choices—to grant the state the authority to pre-screen which opinions, arguments, and perspectives we should be allowed to think through, allowing us access only to those of which it approves.

This position is especially well-suited to justify some central doctrines of First Amendment jurisprudence. First, it justifies the claim that freedom of expression especially implicates the purposes with which the state acts. There are all sorts of legitimate reasons why the state might restrict speech (so-called “time, place, and manner” restrictions)—for example, noise curfews in residential neighborhoods, which do not raise serious free speech concerns. Yet when the state restricts speech with the purpose of manipulating the communicative environment and controlling the views to which citizens are exposed, free speech is directly affronted (Rubenfeld 2001; Alexander 2005; Kramer 2021). To be sure, purposes are not all that matter for free speech theory. For example, the chilling effects of otherwise justified speech regulations (discussed below) are seldom intended. But they undoubtedly matter.

Second, this view justifies the related doctrines of content neutrality and viewpoint neutrality (see G. Stone 1983 and 1987) . Content neutrality is violated when the state bans discussion of certain topics (“no discussion of abortion”), whereas viewpoint neutrality is violated when the state bans advocacy of certain views (“no pro-choice views may be expressed”). Both affront free speech, though viewpoint-discrimination is especially egregious and so even harder to justify. While listener autonomy theories are not the only theories that can ground these commitments, they are in a strong position to account for their plausibility. Note that while these doctrines are central to the American approach to free speech, they are less central to other states’ jurisprudence (see A. Stone 2017).

Third, this approach helps us see that free speech is potentially implicated whenever the state seeks to control our thoughts and the processes through which we form beliefs. Consider an attempt to ban Marx’s Capital . As Marx is deceased, he is probably not wronged through such censorship. But even if one held idiosyncratic views about posthumous rights, such that Marx were wronged, it would be curious to think this was the central objection to such censorship. Those with the gravest complaint would be the living adults who have the prerogative to read the book and make up their own minds about it. Indeed free speech may even be implicated if the state banned watching sunsets or playing video games on the grounds that is disapproved of the thoughts to which such experiences might give rise (Alexander 2005: 8–9; Kramer 2021: 22).

These arguments emphasize the noninstrumental imperative of respecting listener autonomy. But there is an instrumental version of the view. Our autonomy interests are not merely respected by free speech; they are promoted by an environment in which we learn what others have to say. Our interests in access to information is served by exposure to a wide range of viewpoints about both empirical and normative issues (Cohen 1993: 229), which help us reflect on what goals to choose and how best to pursue them. These informational interests are monumental. As Raz suggests, if we had to choose whether to express our own views on some question, or listen to the rest of humanity’s views on that question, we would choose the latter; it is our interest as listeners in the public good of a vibrant public discourse that, he thinks, centrally justifies free speech (1991).

Such an interest in acquiring justified beliefs, or in accessing truth, can be defended as part of a fully consequentialist political philosophy. J.S. Mill famously defends free speech instrumentally, appealing to its epistemic benefits in On Liberty . Mill believes that, given our fallibility, we should routinely keep an open mind as to whether a seemingly false view may actually be true, or at least contain some valuable grain of truth. And even where a proposition is manifestly false, there is value in allowing its expression so that we can better apprehend why we take it to be false (1859: chapter 2), enabled through discursive conflict (cf. Simpson 2021). Mill’s argument focuses especially on the benefits to audiences:

It is is not on the impassioned partisan, it is on the calmer and more disinterested bystander, that this collision of opinions works its salutary effect. (1859: chapter 2, p. 94)

These views are sometimes associated with the idea of a “marketplace of ideas”, whereby the open clash of views inevitably leads to the correct ones winning out in debate. Few in the contemporary literature holds such a strong teleological thesis about the consequences of unrestricted debate (e.g., see Brietzke 1997; cf. Volokh 2011). Much evidence from behavioral economics and social psychology, as well as insights about epistemic injustice from feminist epistemology, strongly suggest that human beings’ rational powers are seriously limited. Smug confidence in the marketplace of ideas belies this. Yet it is doubtful that Mill held such a strong teleological thesis (Gordon 1997). Mill’s point was not that unrestricted discussion necessarily leads people to acquire the truth. Rather, it is simply the best mechanism available for ascertaining the truth, relative to alternatives in which some arbiter declares what he sees as true and suppresses what he sees as false (see also Leiter 2016).

Note that Mill’s views on free speech in chapter 2 in On Liberty are not simply the application of the general liberty principle defended in chapter 1 of that work; his view is not that speech is anodyne and therefore seldom runs afoul of the harm principle. The reason a separate argument is necessary in chapter 2 is precisely that he is carving out a partial qualification of the harm principle for speech (on this issue see Jacobson 2000, Schauer 2011b, and Turner 2014). On Mill’s view, plenty of harmful speech should still be allowed. Imminently dangerous speech, where there is no time for discussion before harm eventuates, may be restricted; but where there is time for discussion, it must be allowed. Hence Mill’s famous example that vociferous criticism of corn dealers as

starvers of the poor…ought to be unmolested when simply circulated through the press, but may justly incur punishment when delivered orally to an excited mob assembled before the house of a corn dealer. (1859: chapter 3, p. 100)

The point is not that such speech is harmless; it’s that the instrumental benefits of permitting its expressions—and exposing its falsehood through public argument—justify the (remaining) costs.

Many authors have unsurprisingly argued that free speech is justified by our interests as speakers . This family of arguments emphasizes the role of speech in the development and exercise of our personal autonomy—our capacity to be the reflective authors of our own lives (Baker 1989; Redish 1982; Rawls 2005). Here an emphasis on freedom of expression is apt; we have an “expressive interest” (Cohen 1993: 224) in declaring our views—about the good life, about justice, about our identity, and about other aspects of the truth as we see it.

Our interests in self-expression may not always depend on the availability of a willing audience; we may have interests simply in shouting from the rooftops to declare who we are and what we believe, regardless of who else hears us. Hence communications to oneself—for example, in a diary or journal—are plausibly protected from interference (Redish 1992: 30–1; Shiffrin 2014: 83, 93; Kramer 2021: 23).

Yet we also have distinctive interests in sharing what we think with others. Part of how we develop our conceptions of the good life, forming judgments about how to live, is precisely through talking through the matter with others. This “deliberative interest” in directly served through opportunities to tell others what we think, so that we can learn from their feedback (Cohen 1993). Such encounters also offer opportunities to persuade others to adopt our views, and indeed to learn through such discussions who else already shares our views (Raz 1991).

Speech also seems like a central way in which we develop our capacities. This, too, is central to J.S. Mill’s defense of free speech, enabling people to explore different perspectives and points of view (1859). Hence it seems that when children engage in speech, to figure out what they think and to use their imagination to try out different ways of being in the world, they are directly engaging this interest. That explains the intuition that children, and not just adults, merit at least some protection under a principle of freedom of speech.

Note that while it is common to refer to speaker autonomy , we could simply refer to speakers’ capacities. Some political liberals hold that an emphasis on autonomy is objectionably Kantian or otherwise perfectionist, valorizing autonomy as a comprehensive moral ideal in a manner that is inappropriate for a liberal state (Cohen 1993: 229; Quong 2011). For such theorists, an undue emphasis on autonomy is incompatible with ideals of liberal neutrality toward different comprehensive conceptions of the good life (though cf. Shiffrin 2014: 81).

If free speech is justified by the importance of our interests in expressing ourselves, this justifies negative duties to refrain from interfering with speakers without adequate justification. Just as with listener theories, a strong presumption against content-based restrictions, and especially against viewpoint discrimination, is a clear requirement of the view. For the state to restrict citizens’ speech on the grounds that it disfavors what they have to say would affront the equal freedom of citizens. Imagine the state were to disallow the expression of Muslim or Jewish views, but allow the expression of Christian views. This would plainly transgress the right to freedom of expression, by valuing certain speakers’ interests in expressing themselves over others.

Many arguments for the right to free speech center on its special significance for democracy (Cohen 1993; Heinze 2016: Heyman 2009; Sunstein 1993; Weinstein 2011; Post 1991, 2009, 2011). It is possible to defend free speech on the noninstrumental ground that it is necessary to respect agents as democratic citizens. To restrict citizens’ speech is to disrespect their status as free and equal moral agents, who have a moral right to debate and decide the law for themselves (Rawls 2005).

Alternatively (or additionally), one can defend free speech on the instrumental ground that free speech promotes democracy, or whatever values democracy is meant to serve. So, for example, suppose the purpose of democracy is the republican one of establishing a state of non-domination between relationally egalitarian citizens; free speech can be defended as promoting that relation (Whitten 2022; Bonotti & Seglow 2022). Or suppose that democracy is valuable because of its role in promoting just outcomes (Arneson 2009) or tending to track those outcomes in a manner than is publicly justifiable (Estlund 2008) or is otherwise epistemically valuable (Landemore 2013).

Perhaps free speech doesn’t merely respect or promote democracy; another framing is that it is constitutive of it (Meiklejohn 1948, 1960; Heinze 2016). As Rawls says: “to restrict or suppress free political speech…always implies at least a partial suspension of democracy” (2005: 254). On this view, to be committed to democracy just is , in part, to be committed to free speech. Deliberative democrats famously contend that voting merely punctuates a larger process defined by a commitment to open deliberation among free and equal citizens (Gutmann & Thompson 2008). Such an unrestricted discussion is marked not by considerations of instrumental rationality and market forces, but rather, as Habermas puts it, “the unforced force of the better argument” (1992 [1996: 37]). One crucial way in which free speech might be constitutive of democracy is if it serves as a legitimation condition . On this view, without a process of open public discourse, the outcomes of the democratic decision-making process lack legitimacy (Dworkin 2009, Brettschneider 2012: 75–78, Cohen 1997, and Heinze 2016).

Those who justify free speech on democratic grounds may view this as a special application of a more general insight. For example, Scanlon’s listener theory (discussed above) contends that the state must always respect its citizens as capable of making up their own minds (1972)—a position with clear democratic implications. Likewise, Baker is adamant that both free speech and democracy are justified by the same underlying value of autonomy (2009). And while Rawls sees the democratic role of free speech as worthy of emphasis, he is clear that free speech is one of several basic liberties that enable the development and exercise of our moral powers: our capacities for a sense of justice and for the rational pursuit a lifeplan (2005). In this way, many theorists see the continuity between free speech and our broader interests as moral agents as a virtue, not a drawback (e.g., Kendrick 2017).

Even so, some democracy theorists hold that democracy has a special role in a theory of free speech, such that political speech in particular merits special protection (for an overview, see Barendt 2005: 154ff). One consequence of such views is that contributions to public discourse on political questions merit greater protection under the law (Sunstein 1993; cf. Cohen 1993: 227; Alexander 2005: 137–8). For some scholars, this may reflect instrumental anxieties about the special danger that the state will restrict the political speech of opponents and dissenters. But for others, an emphasis on political speech seems to reflect a normative claim that such speech is genuinely of greater significance, meriting greater protection, than other kinds of speech.

While conventional in the free speech literature, it is artificial to separate out our interests as speakers, listeners, and democratic citizens. Communication, and the thinking that feeds into it and that it enables, invariably engages our interests and activities across all these capacities. This insight is central to Seana Shiffrin’s groundbreaking thinker-based theory of freedom of speech, which seeks to unify the range of considerations that have informed the traditional theories (2014). Like other theories (e.g., Scanlon 1978, Cohen 1993), Shiffrin’s theory is pluralist in the range of interests it appeals to. But it offers a unifying framework that explains why this range of interests merits protection together.

On Shiffrin’s view, freedom of speech is best understood as encompassing both freedom of communication and freedom of thought, which while logically distinct are mutually reinforcing and interdependent (Shiffrin 2014: 79). Shiffrin’s account involves several profound claims about the relation between communication and thought. A central contention is that “free speech is essential to the development, functioning, and operation of thinkers” (2014: 91). This is, in part, because we must often externalize our ideas to articulate them precisely and hold them at a distance where we can evaluate them (p. 89). It is also because we work out what we think largely by talking it through with others. Such communicative processes may be monological, but they are typically dialogical; speaker and listener interests are thereby mutually engaged in an ongoing manner that cannot be neatly disentangled, as ideas are ping-ponged back and forth. Moreover, such discussions may concern democratic politics—engaging our interests as democratic citizens—but of course they need not. Aesthetics, music, local sports, the existence of God—these all are encompassed (2014: 92–93). Pace prevailing democratic theories,

One’s thoughts about political affairs are intrinsically and ex ante no more and no less central to the human self than thoughts about one’s mortality or one’s friends. (Shiffrin 2014: 93)

The other central aspect of Shiffrin’s view appeals to the necessity of communication for successfully exercising our moral agency. Sincere communication enables us

to share needs, emotions, intentions, convictions, ambitions, desires, fantasies, disappointments, and judgments. Thereby, we are enabled to form and execute complex cooperative plans, to understand one another, to appreciate and negotiate around our differences. (2014: 1)

Without clear and precise communication of the sort that only speech can provide, we cannot cooperate to discharge our collective obligations. Nor can we exercise our normative powers (such as consenting, waiving, or promising). Our moral agency thus depends upon protected channels through which we can relay our sincere thoughts to one another. The central role of free speech is to protect those channels, by ensuring agents are free to share what they are thinking without fear of sanction.

The thinker-based view has wide-ranging normative implications. For example, by emphasizing the continuity of speech and thought (a connection also noted in Macklem 2006 and Gilmore 2011), Shiffrin’s view powerfully explains the First Amendment doctrine that compelled speech also constitutes a violation of freedom of expression. Traditional listener- and speaker-focused theories seemingly cannot explain what is fundamentally objectionable with forcing someone to declare a commitment to something, as with children compelled to pledge allegiance to the American flag ( West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette 1943). “What seems most troubling about the compelled pledge”, Shiffrin writes,

is that the motive behind the regulation, and its possible effect, is to interfere with the autonomous thought processes of the compelled speaker. (2014: 94)

Further, Shiffrin’s view explains why a concern for free speech does not merely correlate to negative duties not to interfere with expression; it also supports positive responsibilities on the part of the state to educate citizens, encouraging and supporting their development and exercise as thinking beings (2014: 107).

Consider briefly one final family of free speech theories, which appeal to the role of toleration or self-restraint. On one argument, freedom of speech is important because it develops our character as liberal citizens, helping us tame our illiberal impulses. The underlying idea of Lee Bollinger’s view is that liberalism is difficult; we recurrently face temptation to punish those who hold contrary views. Freedom of speech helps us to practice the general ethos of toleration in a manner than fortifies our liberal convictions (1986). Deeply offensive speech, like pro-Nazi speech, is protected precisely because toleration in these enormously difficult cases promotes “a general social ethic” of toleration more generally (1986: 248), thereby restraining unjust exercises of state power overall. This consequentialist argument treats the protection of offensive speech not as a tricky borderline case, but as “integral to the central functions of the principle of free speech” (1986: 133). It is precisely because tolerating evil speech involves “extraordinary self-restraint” (1986: 10) that it works its salutary effects on society generally.

The idea of self-restraint arises, too, in Matthew Kramer’s recent defense of free speech. Like listener theories, Kramer’s strongly deontological theory condemns censorship aimed at protecting audiences from exposure to misguided views. At the core of his theory is the thesis that the state’s paramount moral responsibility is to furnish the social conditions that serve the development and maintenance of citizens’ self-respect and respect for others. The achievement of such an ethically resilient citizenry, on Kramer’s view, has the effect of neutering the harmfulness of countless harmful communications. “Securely in a position of ethical strength”, the state “can treat the wares of pornographers and the maunderings of bigots as execrable chirps that are to be endured with contempt” (Kramer 2021: 147). In contrast, in a society where the state has failed to do its duty of inculcating a robust liberal-egalitarian ethos, the communication of illiberal creeds may well pose a substantial threat. Yet for the state then to react by banning such speech is

overweening because with them the system’s officials take control of communications that should have been defused (through the system’s fulfillment of its moral obligations) without prohibitory or preventative impositions. (2021: 147)

(One might agree with Kramer that this is so, but diverge by arguing that the state—having failed in its initial duty—ought to take measures to prevent the harms that flow from that failure.)

These theories are striking in that they assume that a chief task of free speech theory is to explain why harmful speech ought to be protected. This is in contrast to those who think that the chief task of free speech theory is to explain our interests in communicating with others, treating the further issue of whether (wrongfully) harmful communications should be protected as an open question, with different reasonable answers available (Kendrick 2017). In this way, toleration theories—alongside a lot of philosophical work on free speech—seem designed to vindicate the demanding American legal position on free speech, one unshared by virtually all other liberal democracies.

One final family of arguments for free speech appeals to the danger of granting the state powers it may abuse. On this view, we protect free speech chiefly because if we didn’t, it would be far easier for the state to silence its political opponents and enact unjust policies. On this view, a state with censorial powers is likely to abuse them. As Richard Epstein notes, focusing on the American case,

the entire structure of federalism, divided government, and the system of checks and balances at the federal level shows that the theme of distrust has worked itself into the warp and woof of our constitutional structure.

“The protection of speech”, he writes, “…should be read in light of these political concerns” (Epstein 1992: 49).

This view is not merely a restatement of the democracy theory; it does not affirm free speech as an element of valuable self-governance. Nor does it reduce to the uncontroversial thought that citizens need freedom of speech to check the behavior of fallible government agents (Blasi 1977). One need not imagine human beings to be particularly sinister to insist (as democracy theorists do) that the decisions of those entrusted with great power be subject to public discussion and scrutiny. The argument under consideration here is more pessimistic about human nature. It is an argument about the slippery slope that we create even when enacting (otherwise justified) speech restrictions; we set an unacceptable precedent for future conduct by the state (see Schauer 1985). While this argument is theoretical, there is clearly historical evidence for it, as in the manifold cases in which bans on dangerous sedition were used to suppress legitimate war protest. (For a sweeping canonical study of the uses and abuses of speech regulations during wartime, with a focus on U.S. history, see G. Stone 2004.)

These instrumental concerns could potentially justify the legal protection for free speech. But they do not to attempt to justify why we should care about free speech as a positive moral ideal (Shiffrin 2014: 83n); they are, in Cohen’s helpful terminology, “minimalist” rather than “maximalist” (Cohen 1993: 210). Accordingly, they cannot explain why free speech is something that even the most trustworthy, morally competent administrations, with little risk of corruption or degeneration, ought to respect. Of course, minimalists will deny that accounting for speech’s positive value is a requirement of a theory of free speech, and that critiquing them for this omission begs the question.

Pluralists may see instrumental concerns as valuably supplementing or qualifying noninstrumental views. For example, instrumental concerns may play a role in justifying deviations between the moral right to free communication, on the one hand, and a properly specified legal right to free communication, on the other. Suppose that there is no moral right to engage in certain forms of harmful expression (such as hate speech), and that there is in fact a moral duty to refrain from such expression. Even so, it does not follow automatically that such a right ought to be legally enforced. Concerns about the dangers of granting the state such power plausibly militate against the enforcement of at least some of our communicative duties—at least in those jurisdictions that lack robust and competently administered liberal-democratic safeguards.

This entry has canvassed a range of views about what justifies freedom of expression, with particular attention to theories that conceive free speech as a natural moral right. Clearly, the proponents of such views believe that they succeed in this justificatory effort. But others dissent, doubting that the case for a bona fide moral right to free speech comes through. Let us briefly note the nature of this challenge from free speech skeptics , exploring a prominent line of reply.

The challenge from skeptics is generally understood as that of showing that free speech is a special right . As Leslie Kendrick notes,

the term “special right” generally requires that a special right be entirely distinct from other rights and activities and that it receive a very high degree of protection. (2017: 90)

(Note that this usage is not to be confused from the alternative usage of “special right”, referring to conditional rights arising out of particular relationships; see Hart 1955.)

Take each aspect in turn. First, to vindicate free speech as a special right, it must serve some distinctive value or interest (Schauer 2015). Suppose free speech were just an implication of a general principle not to interfere in people’s liberty without justification. As Joel Feinberg puts it, “Liberty should be the norm; coercion always needs some special justification” (1984: 9). In such a case, then while there still might be contingent, historical reasons to single speech out in law as worthy of protection (Alexander 2005: 186), such reasons would not track anything especially distinctive about speech as an underlying moral matter. Second, to count as a special right, free speech must be robust in what it protects, such that only a compelling justification can override it (Dworkin 2013: 131). This captures the conviction, prominent among American constitutional theorists, that “any robust free speech principle must protect at least some harmful speech despite the harm it may cause” (Schauer 2011b: 81; see also Schauer 1982).

If the task of justifying a moral right to free speech requires surmounting both hurdles, it is a tall order. Skeptics about a special right to free speech doubt that the order can be met, and so deny that a natural moral right to freedom of expression can be justified (Schauer 2015; Alexander & Horton 1983; Alexander 2005; Husak 1985). But these theorists may be demanding too much (Kendrick 2017). Start with the claim that free speech must be distinctive. We can accept that free speech be more than simply one implication of a general presumption of liberty. But need it be wholly distinctive? Consider the thesis that free speech is justified by our autonomy interests—interests that justify other rights such as freedom of religion and association. Is it a problem if free speech is justified by interests that are continuous with, or overlap with, interests that justify other rights? Pace the free speech skeptics, maybe not. So long as such claims deserve special recognition, and are worth distinguishing by name, this may be enough (Kendrick 2017: 101). Many of the views canvassed above share normative bases with other important rights. For example, Rawls is clear that he thinks all the basic liberties constitute

essential social conditions for the adequate development and full exercise of the two powers of moral personality over a complete life. (Rawls 2005: 293)

The debate, then, is whether such a shared basis is a theoretical virtue (or at least theoretically unproblematic) or whether it is a theoretical vice, as the skeptics avow.

As for the claim that free speech must be robust, protecting harmful speech, “it is not necessary for a free speech right to protect harmful speech in order for it to be called a free speech right” (Kendrick 2017: 102). We do not tend to think that religious liberty must protect harmful religious activities for it to count as a special right. So it would be strange to insist that the right to free speech must meet this burden to count as a special right. Most of the theorists mentioned above take themselves to be offering views that protect quite a lot of harmful speech. Yet we can question whether this feature is a necessary component of their views, or whether we could imagine variations without this result.

3. Justifying Speech Restrictions

When, and why, can restrictions on speech be justified? It is common in public debate on free speech to hear the provocative claim that free speech is absolute . But the plausibility of such a claim depends on what is exactly meant by it. If understood to mean that no communications between humans can ever be restricted, such a view is held by no one in the philosophical debate. When I threaten to kill you unless you hand me your money; when I offer to bribe the security guard to let me access the bank vault; when I disclose insider information that the company in which you’re heavily invested is about to go bust; when I defame you by falsely posting online that you’re a child abuser; when I endanger you by labeling a drug as safe despite its potentially fatal side-effects; when I reveal your whereabouts to assist a murderer intent on killing you—across all these cases, communications may be uncontroversially restricted. But there are different views as to why.

To help organize such views, consider a set of distinctions influentially defended by Schauer (from 1982 onward). The first category involves uncovered speech : speech that does not even presumptively fall within the scope of a principle of free expression. Many of the speech-acts just canvassed, such as the speech involved in making a threat or insider training, plausibly count as uncovered speech. As the U.S. Supreme Court has said of fighting words (e.g., insults calculated to provoke a street fight),

such utterances are no essential part of any exposition of ideas, and are of such slight social value as a step to truth that any benefit that may be derived from them is clearly outweighed by the social interest in order and morality. ( Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire 1942)

The general idea here is that some speech simply has negligible—and often no —value as free speech, in light of its utter disconnection from the values that justify free speech in the first place. (For discussion of so-called “low-value speech” in the U.S. context, see Sunstein 1989 and Lakier 2015.) Accordingly, when such low-value speech is harmful, it is particularly easy to justify its curtailment. Hence the Court’s view that “the prevention and punishment of [this speech] have never been thought to raise any Constitutional problem”. For legislation restricting such speech, the U.S. Supreme Court applies a “rational basis” test, which is very easy to meet, as it simply asks whether the law is rationally related to a legitimate state interest. (Note that it is widely held that it would still be impermissible to selectively ban low-value speech on a viewpoint-discriminatory basis—e.g., if a state only banned fighting words from left-wing activists while allowing them from right-wing activists.)

Schauer’s next category concerns speech that is covered but unprotected . This is speech that engages the values that underpin free speech; yet the countervailing harm of the speech justifies its restriction. In such cases, while there is real value in such expression as free speech, that value is outweighed by competing normative concerns (or even, as we will see below, on behalf of the very values that underpin free speech). In U.S. constitutional jurisprudence, this category encompasses those extremely rare cases in which restrictions on political speech pass the “strict scrutiny” test, whereby narrow restrictions on high-value speech can be justified due to the compelling state interests thereby served. Consider Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project 2010, in which the Court held that an NGO’s legal advice to a terrorist organization on how to pursue peaceful legal channels were legitimately criminalized under a counter-terrorism statute. While such speech had value as free speech (at least on one interpretation of this contested ruling), the imperative of counter-terrorism justified its restriction. (Arguably, commercial speech, while sometimes called low-value speech by scholars, falls into the covered but unprotected category. Under U.S. law, legislation restricting it receives “intermediate scrutiny” by courts—requiring restrictions to be narrowly drawn to advance a substantial government interest. Such a test suggests that commercial speech has bona fide free-speech value, making it harder to justify regulations on it than regulations on genuinely low-value speech like fighting words. It simply doesn’t have as much free-speech value as categories like political speech, religious speech, or press speech, all of which trigger the strict scrutiny test when restricted.)

As a philosophical matter, we can reasonably disagree about what speech qualifies as covered but unprotected (and need not treat the verdicts of the U.S. Supreme Court as philosophically decisive). For example, consider politically-inflected hate speech, which advances repugnant ideas about the inferior status of certain groups. One could concur that there is substantial free-speech value in such expression, just because it involves the sincere expression of views about central questions of politics and justice (however misguided the views doubtlessly are). Yet one could nevertheless hold that such speech should not be protected in virtue of the substantial harms to which it can lead. In such cases, the free-speech value is outweighed. Many scholars who defend the permissibility of legal restrictions on hate speech hold such a view (e.g., Parekh 2012; Waldron 2012). (More radically, one could hold that such speech’s value is corrupted by its evil, such that it qualifies as genuinely low-value; Howard 2019a.)

The final category of speech encompasses expression that is covered and protected . To declare that speech is protected just is to conclude that it is immune from restriction. A preponderance of human communications fall into this category. This does not mean that such speech can never be regulated ; content-neutral time, place, and manner regulations (e.g., prohibiting loud nighttime protests) can certainly be justified (G. Stone 1987). But such regulations must not be viewpoint discriminatory; they must apply even-handedly across all forms of protected speech.

Schauer’s taxonomy offers a useful organizing framework for how we should think about different forms of speech. Where does it leave the claim that free speech is absolute? The possibility of speech that is covered but unprotected suggests that free speech should sometimes be restricted on account of rival normative concerns. Of course, one could contend that such a category, while logically possible, is substantively an empty set; such a position would involve some kind of absoluteness about free speech (holding that where free-speech values are engaged by expression, no countervailing values can ever be weighty enough to override them). Such a position would be absolutist in a certain sense while granting the permissibility of restrictions on speech that do not engage the free-speech values. (For a recent critique of Schauer’s framework, arguing that governmental designation of some speech as low-value is incompatible with the very ideal of free speech, see Kramer 2021: 31.)

In what follows, this entry will focus on Schauer’s second category: speech that is covered by a free speech principle, but is nevertheless unprotected because of the harms it causes. How do we determine what speech falls into this category? How, in other words, do we determine the limits of free speech? Unsurprisingly, this is where most of the controversy lies.

Most legal systems that protect free speech recognize that the right has limits. Consider, for example, international human rights law, which emphatically protects the freedom of speech as a fundamental human right while also affirming specific restrictions on certain seriously harmful speech. Article 19 of the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights declares that “[e]veryone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds”—but then immediately notes that this right “carries with it special duties and responsibilities”. The subsequent ICCPR article proceeds to endorse legal restrictions on “advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence”, as well as speech constituting “propaganda for war” (ICCPR). While such restrictions would plainly be struck down as unconstitutional affronts to free speech in the U.S., this more restrictive approach prevails in most liberal democracies’ treatment of harmful speech.

Set aside the legal issue for now. How should we think about how to determine the limits of the moral right free speech? Those seeking to justify limits on speech tend to appeal to one of two strategies (Howard and Simpson forthcoming). The first strategy appeals to the importance of balancing free speech against other moral values when they come into conflict. This strategy involves external limits on free speech. (The next strategy, discussed below, invokes free speech itself, or the values that justify it, as limit-setting rationales; it thus involves internal limits on free speech.)

A balancing approach recognizes a moral conflict between unfettered communication and external values. Consider again the case of hate speech, understood as expression that attacks members of socially vulnerable groups as inferior or dangerous. On all of the theories canvassed above, there are grounds for thinking that restrictions on hate speech are prima facie in violation of the moral right to free speech. Banning hate speech to prevent people from hearing ideas that might incline them to bigotry plainly seems to disrespect listener autonomy. Further, even when speakers are expressing prejudiced views, they are still engaging their autonomous faculties. Certainly, they are expressing views on questions of public political concern, even false ones. And as thinkers they are engaged in the communication of sincere testimony to others. On many of the leading theories, the values underpinning free speech seem to be militate against bans on hate speech.

Even so, other values matter. Consider, for example, the value of upholding the equal dignity of all citizens. A central insight of critical race theory is that public expressions of white supremacy, for example, attack and undermine that equal dignity (Matsuda, Lawrence, Delgado, & Crenshaw 1993). On Jeremy Waldron’s view (2012), hate speech is best understood as a form of group defamation, launching spurious attacks on others’ reputations and thereby undermining their standing as respected equals in their own community (relatedly, see Beauharnais v. Illinois 1952).

Countries that ban hate speech, accordingly, are plausibly understood not as opposed to free speech, but as recognizing the importance that it be balanced when conflicting with other values. Such balancing can be understood in different ways. In European human rights law, for example, the relevant idea is that the right to free speech is balanced against other rights ; the relevant task, accordingly, is to specify what counts as a proportionate balance between these rights (see Alexy 2003; J. Greene 2021).

For others, the very idea of balancing rights undermines their deontic character. This alternative framing holds that the balancing occurs before we specify what rights are; on this view, we balance interests against each other, and only once we’ve undertaken that balancing do we proceed to define what our rights protect. As Scanlon puts it,

The only balancing is balancing of interests. Rights are not balanced, but are defined, or redefined, in the light of the balance of interests and of empirical facts about how these interests can best be protected. (2008: 78)

This balancing need not come in the form of some crude consequentialism; otherwise it would be acceptable to limit the rights of the few to secure trivial benefits for the many. On a contractualist moral theory such as Scanlon’s, the test is to assess the strength of any given individual’s reason to engage in (or access) the speech, against the strength of any given individual’s reason to oppose it.

Note that those who engage in balancing need not give up on the idea of viewpoint neutrality; they can accept that, as a general principle, the state should not restrict speech on the grounds that it disapproves of its message and dislikes that others will hear it. The point, instead, is that this commitment is defeasible; it is possible to be overridden.

One final comment is apt. Those who are keen to balance free speech against other values tend to be motivated by the concern that speech can cause harm, either directly or indirectly (on this distinction, see Schauer 1993). But to justify restrictions on speech, it is not sufficient (and perhaps not even necessary) to show that such speech imposes or risks imposing harm. The crucial point is that the speech is wrongful (or, perhaps, wrongfully harmful or risky) , breaching a moral duty that speakers owe to others. Yet very few in the free speech literature think that the mere offensiveness of speech is sufficient to justify restrictions on it. Even Joel Feinberg, who thinks offensiveness can sometimes be grounds for restricting conduct, makes a sweeping exception for

[e]xpressions of opinion, especially about matters of public policy, but also about matters of empirical fact, and about historical, scientific, theological, philosophical, political, and moral questions. (1985: 44)

And in many cases, offensive speech may be actively salutary, as when racists are offended by defenses of racial equality (Waldron 1987). Accordingly, despite how large it looms in public debate, discussion of offensive speech will not play a major role in the discussion here.

We saw that one way to justify limits on free speech is to balance it against other values. On that approach, free speech is externally constrained. A second approach, in contrast, is internally constrained. On this approach, the very values that justify free speech themselves determine its own limits. This is a revisionist approach to free speech since, unlike orthodox thinking, it contends that a commitment to free speech values can counterintuitively support the restriction of speech—a surprising inversion of traditional thinking on the topic (see Howard and Simpson forthcoming). This move—justifying restrictions on speech by appealing to the values that underpin free speech—is now prevalent in the philosophical literature (for an overview, see Barendt 2005: 1ff).

Consider, for example, the claim that free speech is justified by concerns of listener autonomy. On such a view, as we saw above, autonomous citizens have interests in exposure to a wide range of viewpoints, so that they can decide for themselves what to believe. But many have pointed out that this is not autonomous citizens’ only interest; they also have interests in not getting murdered by those incited by incendiary speakers (Amdur 1980). Likewise, insofar as being targeted by hate speech undermines the exercise of one’s autonomous capacities, appeal to the underlying value of autonomy could well support restrictions on such speech (Brison 1998; see also Brink 2001). What’s more, if our interests as listeners in acquiring accurate information is undermined by fraudulent information, then restrictions on such information could well be compatible with our status as autonomous; this was one of the insights that led Scanlon to complicate his theory of free speech (1978).

Or consider the theory that free speech is justified because of its role in enabling autonomous speakers to express themselves. But as Japa Pallikkathayil has argued, some speech can intimidate its audiences into staying silent (as with some hate speech), out of fear for what will happen if they speak up (Pallikkathayil 2020). In principle, then, restrictions on hate speech may serve to support the value of speaker expression, rather than undermine it (see also Langton 2018; Maitra 2009; Maitra & McGowan 2007; and Matsuda 1989: 2337). Indeed, among the most prominent claims in feminist critiques of pornography is precisely that it silences women—not merely through its (perlocutionary) effects in inspiring rape, but more insidiously through its (illocutionary) effects in altering the force of the word “no” (see MacKinnon 1984; Langton 1993; and West 204 [2022]; McGowan 2003 and 2019; cf. Kramer 2021, pp. 160ff).

Now consider democracy theories. On the one hand, democracy theorists are adamant that citizens should be free to discuss any proposals, even the destruction of democracy itself (e.g., Meiklejohn 1948: 65–66). On the other hand, it isn’t obvious why citizens’ duties as democratic citizens could not set a limit to their democratic speech rights (Howard 2019a). The Nazi propagandist Goebbels is said to have remarked:

This will always remain one of the best jokes of democracy, that it gave its deadly enemies the means by which it was destroyed. (as quoted in Fox & Nolte 1995: 1)

But it is not clear why this is necessarily so. Why should we insist on a conception of democracy that contains a self-destruct mechanism? Merely stipulating that democracy requires this is not enough (see A. Greene and Simpson 2017).

Finally, consider Shiffrin’s thinker-based theory. Shiffrin’s view is especially well-placed to explain why varieties of harmful communications are protected speech; what the theory values is the sincere transmission of veridical testimony, whereby speakers disclose what they genuinely believe to others, even if what they believe is wrongheaded and dangerous. Yet because the sincere testimony of thinkers is what qualifies some communication for protection, Shiffrin is adamant that lying falls outside the protective ambit of freedom of expression (2014) This, then, sets an internal limit on her own theory (even if she herself disfavors all lies’ outright prohibition for reasons of tolerance). The claim that lying falls outside the protective ambit of free speech is itself a recurrent suggestion in the literature (Strauss 1991: 355; Brown 2023). In an era of rampant disinformation, this internal limit is of substantial practical significance.

Suppose the moral right (or principle) of free speech is limited, as most think, such that not all communications fall within its protective ambit (either for external reasons, internal reasons, or both). Even so, it does not follow that laws banning such unprotected speech can be justified all-things-considered. Further moral tests must be passed before any particular policy restricting speech can be justified. This sub-section focuses on the requirement that speech restrictions be proportionate .

The idea that laws implicating fundamental rights must be proportionate is central in many jurisdictions’ constitutional law, as well as in the international law of human rights. As a representative example, consider the specification of proportionality offered by the Supreme Court of Canada:

First, the measures adopted must be carefully designed to achieve the objective in question. They must not be arbitrary, unfair, or based on irrational considerations. In short, they must be rationally connected to the objective. Second, the means, even if rationally connected to the objective in this first sense, should impair “as little as possible” the right or freedom in question[…] Third, there must be a proportionality between the effects of the measures which are responsible for limiting the Charter right or freedom, and the objective which has been identified as of “sufficient importance” ( R v. Oakes 1986).

It is this third element (often called “proportionality stricto sensu ”) on which we will concentrate here; this is the focused sense of proportionality that roughly tracks how the term is used in the philosophical literatures on defensive harm and war, as well as (with some relevant differences) criminal punishment. (The strict scrutiny and intermediate scrutiny tests of U.S. constitutional law are arguably variations of the proportionality test; but set aside this complication for now as it distracts from the core philosophical issues. For relevant legal discussion, see Tsesis 2020.)

Proportionality, in the strict sense, concerns the relation between the costs or harms imposed by some measure and the benefits that the measure is designed to secure. The organizing distinction in recent philosophical literature (albeit largely missing in the literature on free speech) is one between narrow proportionality and wide proportionality . While there are different ways to cut up the terrain between these terms, let us stipulatively define them as follows. An interference is narrowly proportionate just in case the intended target of the interference is liable to bear the costs of that interference. An interference is widely proportionate just in case the collateral costs that the interference unintentionally imposes on others can be justified. (This distinction largely follows the literature in just war theory and the ethics of defensive force; see McMahan 2009.) While the distinction is historically absent from free speech theory, it has powerful payoffs in helping to structure this chaotic debate (as argued in Howard 2019a).

So start with the idea that restrictions on communication must be narrowly proportionate . For a restriction to be narrowly proportionate, those whose communications are restricted must be liable to bear their costs, such that they are not wronged by their imposition. One standard way to be liable to bear certain costs is to have a moral duty to bear them (Tadros 2012). So, for example, if speakers have a moral duty to refrain from libel, hate speech, or some other form of harmful speech, they are liable to bear at least some costs involved in the enforcement of that duty. Those costs cannot be unlimited; a policy of executing hate speakers could not plausibly be justified. Typically, in both defensive and punitive contexts, wrongdoers’ liability is determined by their culpability, the severity of their wrong, or some combination of the two. While it is difficult to say in the abstract what the precise maximal cost ceiling is for any given restriction, as it depends hugely on the details, the point is simply that there is some ceiling above which a speech restriction (like any restriction) imposes unacceptably high costs, even on wrongdoers.

Second, for a speech restriction to be justified, we must also show that it would be widely proportionate . Suppose a speaker is liable to bear the costs of some policy restricting her communication, such that she is not wronged by its imposition. It may be that the collateral costs of such a policy would render it unacceptable. One set of costs is chilling effects , the “overdeterrence of benign conduct that occurs incidentally to a law’s legitimate purpose or scope” (Kendrick 2013: 1649). The core idea is that laws targeting unprotected, legitimately proscribed expression may nevertheless end up having a deleterious impact on protected expression. This is because laws are often vague, overbroad, and in any case are likely to be misapplied by fallible officials (Schauer 1978: 699).

Note that if a speech restriction produces chilling effects, it does not follow that the restriction should not exist at all. Rather, concern about chilling effects instead suggests that speech restrictions should be under-inclusive—restricting less speech than is actually harmful—in order to create “breathing space”, or “a buffer zone of strategic protection” (Schauer 1978: 710) for legitimate expression and so reduce unwanted self-censorship. For example, some have argued that even though speech can cause harm recklessly or negligently, we should insist on specific intent as the mens rea of speech crimes in order to reduce any chilling effects that could follow (Alexander 1995: 21–128; Schauer 1978: 707; cf. Kendrick 2013).

But chilling effects are not the only sort of collateral effects to which speech restrictions could lead. Earlier we noted the risk that states might abuse their censorial powers. This, too, could militate in favor of underinclusive speech restrictions. Or the implication could be more radical. Consider the problem that it is difficult to author restrictions on hate speech in a tightly specified way; the language involved is open-ended in a manner that enables states to exercise considerable judgment in deciding what speech-acts, in fact, count as violations (see Strossen 2018). Given the danger that the state will misuse or abuse these laws to punish legitimate speech, some might think this renders their enactment widely disproportionate. Indeed, even if the law were well-crafted and would be judiciously applied by current officials, the point is that those in the future may not be so trustworthy.

Those inclined to accept such a position might simply draw the conclusion that legislatures ought to refrain from enacting laws against hate speech. A more radical conclusion is that the legal right to free speech ought to be specified so that hate speech is constitutionally protected. In other words, we ought to give speakers a legal right to violate their moral duties, since enforcing those moral duties through law is simply too risky. By appealing to this logic, it is conceivable that the First Amendment position on hate speech could be justified all-things-considered—not because the underlying moral right to free speech protects hate speech, but because hate speech must be protected for instrumental reasons of preventing future abuses of power (Howard 2019a).

Suppose certain restrictions on harmful speech can be justified as proportionate, in both the narrow and wide senses. This is still not sufficient to justify them all-things-considered. Additionally, they must be justified as necessary . (Note that some conceptions of proportionality in human rights law encompass the necessity requirement, but this entry follows the prevailing philosophical convention by treating them as distinct.)

Why might restrictions on harmful speech be unnecessary? One of the standard claims in the free speech literature is that we should respond to harmful speech not by banning it, but by arguing back against it. Counter-speech—not censorship—is the appropriate solution. This line of reasoning is old. As John Milton put it in 1644: “Let [Truth] and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter?” The insistence on counter-speech as the remedy for harmful speech is similarly found, as noted above, throughout chapter 2 of Mill’s On Liberty .

For many scholars, this line of reply is justified by the fact that they think the harmful speech in question is protected by the moral right to free speech. For such scholars, counter-speech is the right response because censorship is morally off the table. For other scholars, the recourse to counter-speech has a plausible distinct rationale (although it is seldom articulated): its possibility renders legal restrictions unnecessary. And because it is objectionable to use gratuitous coercion, legal restrictions are therefore impermissible (Howard 2019a). Such a view could plausibly justify Mill’s aforementioned analysis in the corn dealer example, whereby censorship is permissible but only when there’s no time for counter-speech—a view that is also endorsed by the U.S. Supreme Court in Brandenburg v. Ohio 395 U.S. 444 (1969).

Whether this argument succeeds depends upon a wide range of further assumptions—about the comparable effectiveness of counter-speech relative to law; about the burdens that counter-speech imposes on prospective counter-speakers. Supposing that the argument succeeds, it invites a range of further normative questions about the ethics of counter-speech. For example, it is important who has the duty to engage in counter-speech, who its intended audience is, and what specific forms the counter-speech ought to take—especially in order to maximize its persuasive effectiveness (Brettschneider 2012; Cepollaro, Lepoutre, & Simpson 2023; Howard 2021b; Lepoutre 2021; Badano & Nuti 2017). It is also important to ask questions about the moral limits of counter-speech. For example, insofar as publicly shaming wrongful speakers has become a prominent form of counter-speech, it is crucial to interrogate its permissibility (e.g., Billingham and Parr 2020).

This final section canvasses the young philosophical debate concerning freedom of speech on the internet. With some important exceptions (e.g., Barendt 2005: 451ff), this issue has only recently accelerated (for an excellent edited collection, see Brison & Gelber 2019). There are many normative questions to be asked about the moral rights and obligations of internet platforms. Here are three. First, do internet platforms have moral duties to respect the free speech of their users? Second, do internet platforms have moral duties to restrict (or at least refrain from amplifying) harmful speech posted by their users? And finally, if platforms do indeed have moral duties to restrict harmful speech, should those duties be legally enforced?

The reference to internet platforms , is a deliberate focus on large-scale social media platforms, through which people can discover and publicly share user-generated content. We set aside other entities such as search engines (Whitney & Simpson 2019), important though they are. That is simply because the central political controversies, on which philosophical input is most urgent, concern the large social-media platforms.

Consider the question of whether internet platforms have moral duties to respect the free speech of their users. One dominant view in the public discourse holds that the answer is no . On this view, platforms are private entities, and as such enjoy the prerogative to host whatever speech they like. This would arguably be a function of them having free speech rights themselves. Just as the free speech rights of the New York Times give it the authority to publish whatever op-eds it sees fit, the free speech rights of platforms give them the authority to exercise editorial or curatorial judgment about what speech to allow. On this view, if Facebook were to decide to become a Buddhist forum, amplifying the speech of Buddhist users and promoting Buddhist perspectives and ideas, and banning speech promoting other religions, it would be entirely within its moral (and thus proper legal) rights to do so. So, too, if it were to decide to become an atheist forum.

A radical alternative view holds that internet platforms constitute a public forum , a term of art from U.S. free speech jurisprudence used to designate spaces “designed for and dedicated to expressive activities” ( Southeastern Promotions Ltd., v. Conrad 1975). As Kramer has argued:

social-media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter and YouTube have become public fora. Although the companies that create and run those platforms are not morally obligated to sustain them in existence at all, the role of controlling a public forum morally obligates each such company to comply with the principle of freedom of expression while performing that role. No constraints that deviate from the kinds of neutrality required under that principle are morally legitimate. (Kramer 2021: 58–59)

On this demanding view, platforms’ duties to respect speech are (roughly) identical to the duties of states. Accordingly, if efforts by the state to restrict hate speech, pornography, and public health misinformation (for example) are objectionable affronts to free speech, so too are platforms’ content moderation rules for such content. A more moderate view does not hold that platforms are public forums as such, but holds that government channels or pages qualify as public forums (the claim at issue in Knight First Amendment Institute v. Trump (2019).)

Even if we deny that platforms constitute public forums, it is plausible that they engage in a governance function of some kind (Klonick 2018). As Jack Balkin has argued, the traditional model of free speech, which sees it as a relation between speakers and the state, is today plausibly supplanted by a triadic model, involving a more complex relation between speakers, governments, and intermediaries (2004, 2009, 2018, 2021). If platforms do indeed have some kind of governance function, it may well trigger responsibilities for transparency and accountability (as with new legislation such as the EU’s Digital Services Act and the UK’s Online Safety Act).

Second, consider the question of whether platforms have a duty to remove harmful content posted by users. Even those who regard them as public forums could agree that platforms may have a moral responsibility to remove illegal unprotected speech. Yet a dominant view in the public debate has historically defended platforms’ place as mere conduits for others’ speech. This is the current position under U.S. law (as with 47 U.S. Code §230), which broadly exempts platforms from liability for much illegal speech, such as defamation. On this view, we should view platforms as akin to bulletin boards: blame whoever posts wrongful content, but don’t hold the owner of the board responsible.

This view is under strain. Even under current U.S. law, platforms are liable for removing some content, such as child sexual abuse material and copyright infringements, suggesting that it is appropriate to demand some accountability for the wrongful content posted by others. An increasing body of philosophical work explores the idea that platforms are indeed morally responsible for removing extreme content. For example, some have argued that platforms have a special responsibility to prevent the radicalization that occurs on their networks, given the ways in which extreme content is amplified to susceptible users (Barnes 2022). Without engaging in moderation (i.e., removal) of harmful content, platforms are plausibly complicit with the wrongful harms perpetrated by users (Howard forthcoming).

Yet it remains an open question what a responsible content moderation policy ought to involve. Many are tempted by a juridical model, whereby platforms remove speech in accordance with clearly announced rules, with user appeals mechanisms in place for individual speech decisions to ensure they are correctly made (critiqued in Douek 2022b). Yet platforms have billions of users and remove millions of pieces of content per week. Accordingly, perfection is not possible. Moving quickly to remove harmful content during a crisis—e.g., Covid misinformation—will inevitably increase the number of false positives (i.e., legitimate speech taken down as collateral damage). It is plausible that the individualistic model of speech decisions adopted by courts is decidedly implausible to help us govern online content moderation; as noted in Douek 2021 and 2022a, what is needed is analysis of how the overall system should operate at scale, with a focus on achieving proportionality between benefits and costs. Alternatively, one might double down and insist that the juridical model is appropriate, given the normative significance of speech. And if it is infeasible for social-media companies to meet its demands given their size, then all the worse for social-media companies. On this view, it is they who must bend to meet the moral demands of free speech theory, not the other way around.

Substantial philosophical work needs to be done to deliver on this goal. The work is complicated by the fact that artificial intelligence (AI) is central to the processes of content moderation; human moderators, themselves subjected to terrible working conditions at long hours, work in conjunction with machine learning tools to identify and remove content that platforms have restricted. Yet AI systems notoriously are as biased as their training data. Further, their “black box” decisions are cryptic and cannot be easily understood. Given that countless speech decisions will necessarily be made without human involvement, it is right to ask whether it is reasonable to expect users to accept the deliverances of machines (e.g., see Vredenburgh 2022; Lazar forthcoming a). Note that machine intelligence is used not merely for content moderation, narrowly understood as the enforcement of rules about what speech is allowed. It is also deployed for the broader practice of content curation, determining what speech gets amplified — raising the question of what normative principles should govern such amplification; see Lazar forthcoming b).

Finally, there is the question of legal enforcement. Showing that platforms have the moral responsibility to engage in content moderation is necessary to justifying its codification into a legal responsibility. Yet it is not sufficient; one could accept that platforms have moral duties to moderate (some) harmful speech while also denying that those moral duties ought to be legally enforced. A strong, noninstrumental version of such a view would hold that while speakers have moral duties to refrain from wrongful speech, and platforms have duties not to platform or amplify it, the coercive enforcement of such duties would violate the moral right to freedom of expression. A more contingent, instrumental version of the view would hold that legal enforcement is not in principle impermissible; but in practice, it is simply too risky to grant the state the authority to enforce platforms’ and speakers’ moral duties, given the potential for abuse and overreach.

Liberals who champion the orthodox interpretation of the First Amendment, yet insist on robust content moderation, likely hold one or both of these views. Yet globally such views seem to be in the minority. Serious legislation is imminent that will subject social-media companies to burdensome regulation, in the form of such laws as the Digital Services Act in the European Union and the Online Safety Bill in the UK. Normatively evaluating such legislation is a pressing task. So, too, is the task of designing normative theories to guide the design of content moderation systems, and the wider governance of the digital public sphere. On both fronts, political philosophers should get back to work.

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• Tushnet, Mark, Alan Chen, and Joseph Blocher, 2017, Free Speech beyond Words: The Surprising Reach of the First Amendment , New York: New York University Press.
• Volokh, Eugene, 2011, “In Defense of the Marketplace of Ideas/Search for Truth as a Theory of Free Speech Protection Responses”, Virginia Law Review , 97(3): 595–602.
• Vredenburgh, Kate, 2022, “The Right to Explanation”, Journal of Political Philosophy , 30(2): 209–229. doi:10.1111/jopp.12262
• Waldron, Jeremy, 1987, “Mill and the Value of Moral Distress”, Political Studies , 35(3): 410–423. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9248.1987.tb00197.x
• –––, 2012, The Harm in Hate Speech (The Oliver Wendell Holmes Lectures, 2009), Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Weinstein, James, 2011, “Participatory Democracy as the Central Value of American Free Speech Doctrine”, Virginia Law Review , 97(3): 491–514.
• West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette 319 U.S. 624 (1943).
• Whitten, Suzanne, 2022, A Republican Theory of Free Speech: Critical Civility , Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-78631-1
• Whitney, Heather M. and Robert Mark Simpson, 2019, “Search Engines and Free Speech Coverage”, in Free Speech in the Digital Age , Susan J. Brison and Katharine Gelber (eds), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 33–51 (ch. 2). doi:10.1093/oso/9780190883591.003.0003
• West, Caroline, 2004 [2022], “Pornography and Censorship”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2022 edition), Edward N. Zalta and Uri Nodelman (eds.), URL = < https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2022/entries/pornography-censorship/ >.

How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

• International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) , adopted: 16 December 1966; Entry into force: 23 March 1976.
• Free Speech Debate
• Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University
• van Mill, David, “Freedom of Speech”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2023 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.), URL = < https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2023/entries/freedom-speech/ >. [This was the previous entry on this topic in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy – see the version history .]

ethics: search engines and | hate speech | legal rights | liberalism | Mill, John Stuart | Mill, John Stuart: moral and political philosophy | pornography: and censorship | rights | social networking and ethics | toleration

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to the editors and anonymous referees of this Encyclopedia for helpful feedback. I am greatly indebted to Robert Mark Simpson for many incisive suggestions, which substantially improved the entry. This entry was written while on a fellowship funded by UK Research & Innovation (grant reference MR/V025600/1); I am thankful to UKRI for the support.

Copyright © 2024 by Jeffrey W. Howard < jeffrey . howard @ ucl . ac . uk >

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What the First Amendment really says – 4 basic principles of free speech in the US

Associate Professor of Communication and Rhetorical Studies, Syracuse University

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Lynn Greenky does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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Elon Musk has claimed he believes in free speech no matter what. He calls it a bulwark against tyranny in America and promises to reconstruct Twitter, which he now owns, so that its policy on free expression “ matches the law .” Yet his grasp of the First Amendment – the law that governs free speech in the U.S. – appears to be quite limited. And he’s not alone.

I am a lawyer and a professor who has taught constitutional concepts to undergraduate students for over 15 years and has written a book for the uninitiated about the freedom of speech ; it strikes me that not many people educated in American schools, whether public or private – including lawyers, teachers, talking heads and school board members – appear to have a working knowledge about the right to free speech embedded in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution .

But that doesn’t have to be the case.

In short, the First Amendment enshrines the freedom to speak one’s mind. It’s not written in code and does not require an advanced degree to understand. It simply states: “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech.” The liberties embraced by that phrase belong to all of us who live in the United States, and we can all become knowledgeable about their breadth and limitations.

There are just four essential principles.

1. It’s only about the government

The Bill of Rights – the other name for the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution – like the Constitution itself and all the other amendments, sets limits only on the relationship between the U.S. government and its people.

It does not apply to interactions in other nations, nor interactions between people in the U.S. or companies. If the government is not involved, the First Amendment does not apply.

The First Amendment ensures that Twitter is, in fact, free of government restrictions against spreading misinformation and disinformation or virtually anything else. The company is similarly free to expel any users who offend Musk’s personal sensibilities. They can be booted off Twitter and any charges of “Censorship!” don’t apply.

2. For decades, speech has faced very few limits

Freedom of expression was understood by the nation’s founders to be a natural, unalienable right that belongs to every human being.

Over the course of the first 120-plus years of the country’s democratic experiment, judicial interpretation of that right slowly evolved from a limited to an expansive view. In the middle of the 20th century, the Supreme Court ultimately concluded that because the right to speak freely is so fundamental, it is subject to restriction only in limited circumstances .

It is now an accepted doctrine that tolerance for discord is built into the very fabric of the First Amendment. In the words of one of the most revered Supreme Court justices, Louis D. Brandeis, “ it is hazardous to discourage thought, hope and imagination ; … fear breeds repression; … repression breeds hate; … hate menaces stable government.”

Opinions, viewpoints and beliefs – which are sometimes based on provable fact, other times on hypothetical theories and occasionally on lies and conspiracies – all contribute to what constitutional scholars and lawyers refer to as the “ marketplace of ideas .” Similar to the commercial marketplace, the marketplace of ideas subjects all products to competition. The hope is that only the best will survive.

Therefore, members of the Westboro Baptist Church can picket the funerals of fallen soldiers with signs disparaging the LGBTQ+ community, Nazi hate groups can hold rallies and civil rights groups can participate in lunch-counter protests . The ideas expressed by each of these groups represent one perspective in the public debate about rights and privileges, government responsibility and religion. Other people and groups may disagree, but their perspectives are also protected from government censorship and repression.

Messages communicated by means other than speech or writing are generally protected by the First Amendment, too. A jean jacket bearing the Vietnam-era anti-war slogan “ F*ck the Draft ” is protected, as is the act of burning a United States flag in front of a crowd. These were potentially more emotionally powerful than politely worded statements opposing government policies.

3. But not all speech is protected

The government does, in fact, have the power to regulate some speech. When the rights and liberties of others are in serious jeopardy, speakers who provoke others into violence , wrongfully and recklessly injure reputations or incite others to engage in illegal activity may be silenced or punished.

People whose words cause actual harm to others can be held liable for that damage. Right-wing commentator Alex Jones found that out when courts ordered him to pay more than US$1 billion in damages for his statements about, and treatment of, parents of children who were killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.

So, abortion opponents can say what they wish but can’t threaten or terrorize abortion providers . And the white supremacists who rallied in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 can shout to the rafters that Jews will not replace them, but they can be held liable for the intimidation, harassment and violence they used to amplify their words.

Rules about incitement to illegal action are part of the U.S. Department of Justice’s investigation into whether former President Donald Trump is at all responsible for the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. On that day, citing unproven, even disproved, events , Trump delivered a speech insisting the 2020 presidential election was rife with fraud.

However, the First Amendment doesn’t protect only true statements . Trump has a constitutional right to advocate for his perspective. Even his references to violence might be considered shielded from criminal prosecution by the superpower of the First Amendment. That superpower would evaporate only if a court finds that, when he spoke the words that day, “And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” his intent was to incite the violence that followed .

4. What’s legal isn’t always morally correct

Finally, and perhaps most importantly: Moral boundaries to acceptable speech are different, and often much narrower, than constitutional boundaries. They should not be conflated or confused.

The First Amendment right to speak freely as an exercise of people’s natural rights does not mean everything anyone says anywhere is morally acceptable. Constitutionally speaking, ignorant, demeaning and vitriolic speech – including hate speech – are all protected from government repression, even though they may be morally offensive to the majority.

Still, some people insist that malicious and emotionally hurtful speech adds no value to society . That is one reason used by people who seek to cancel or ban controversial speakers from college campuses .

Indeed, virulent speech may even weaken the democratic exchange of ideas , by discouraging some people from participating in public discussion and debate, to avoid potential harassment and scorn.

Nonetheless, that sort of speech remains firmly under the umbrella of First Amendment defenses. Each person must decide how their own humanity and morality allows them to speak for themselves.

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On freedom of expression and campus speech codes.

The statement that follows was approved by the Association’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure in June 1992 and adopted by the Association’s Council in November 1994.

Freedom of thought and expression is essential to any institution of higher learning. Universities and colleges exist not only to transmit knowledge. Equally, they interpret, explore, and expand that knowledge by testing the old and proposing the new. This mission guides learning outside the classroom quite as much as in class, and often inspires vigorous debate on those social, economic, and political issues that arouse the strongest passions. In the process, views will be expressed that may seem to many wrong, distasteful, or offensive. Such is the nature of freedom to sift and winnow ideas.

On a campus that is free and open, no idea can be banned or forbidden. No viewpoint or message may be deemed so hateful or disturbing that it may not be expressed.

Universities and colleges are also communities, often of a residential character. Most campuses have recently sought to become more diverse, and more reflective of the larger community,by attracting students, faculty, and staff from groups that were historically excluded or underrepresented. Such gains as they have made are recent, modest, and tenuous. The campus climate can profoundly affect an institution’s continued diversity. Hostility or intolerance to persons who differ from the majority (especially if seemingly condoned by the institution) may undermine the confidence of new members of the community. Civility is always fragile and can easily be destroyed.

In response to verbal assaults and use of hateful language, some campuses have felt it necessary to forbid the expression of racist, sexist, homophobic, or ethnically demeaning speech, along with conduct or behavior that harasses. Several reasons are offered in support of banning such expression. Individuals and groups that have been victims of such expression feel an understandable outrage. They claim that the academic progress of minority and majority alike may suffer if fears, tensions, and conflicts spawned by slurs and insults create an environment inimical to learning.

These arguments, grounded in the need to foster an atmosphere respectful of and welcoming to all persons, strike a deeply responsive chord in the academy. But, while we can acknowledge both the weight of these concerns and the thoughtfulness of those persuaded of the need for regulation, rules that ban or punish speech based upon its content cannot be justified. An institution of higher learning fails to fulfill its mission if it asserts the power to proscribe ideas—and racial or ethnic slurs, sexist epithets, or homophobic insults almost always express ideas, however repugnant. Indeed, by proscribing any ideas, a university sets an example that profoundly disserves its academic mission.

Some may seek to defend a distinction between the regulation of the content of speech and the regulation of the manner (or style) of speech. We find this distinction untenable in practice because offensive style or opprobrious phrases may in fact have been chosen precisely for their expressive power. As the United States Supreme Court has said in the course of rejecting criminal sanctions for offensive words:

[W]ords are often chosen as much for their emotive as their cognitive force. We cannot sanction the view that the Constitution, while solicitous of the cognitive content of individual speech, has little or no regard for that emotive function which, practically speaking, may often be the more important element of the overall message sought to be communicated.

The line between substance and style is thus too uncertain to sustain the pressure that will inevitably be brought to bear upon disciplinary rules that attempt to regulate speech.

Proponents of speech codes sometimes reply that the value of emotive language of this type is of such a low order that, on balance, suppression is justified by the harm suffered by those who are directly affected, and by the general damage done to the learning environment. Yet a college or university sets a perilous course if it seeks to differentiate between high-value and low-value speech, or to choose which groups are to be protected by curbing the speech of others. A speech code unavoidably implies an institutional competence to distinguish permissible expression of hateful thought from what is proscribed as thoughtless hate.

Institutions would also have to justify shielding some, but not other, targets of offensive language—proscribing uncomplimentary references to sexual but not to political preference, to religious but not to philosophical creed, or perhaps even to some but not to other religious affiliations. Starting down this path creates an even greater risk that groups not originally protected may later demand similar solicitude—demands the institution that began the process of banning some speech is ill equipped to resist.

Distinctions of this type are neither practicable nor principled; their very fragility underscores why institutions devoted to freedom of thought and expression ought not adopt an institutionalized coercion of silence.

Moreover, banning speech often avoids consideration of means more compatible with the mission of an academic institution by which to deal with incivility, intolerance, offensive speech, and harassing behavior:

• Institutions should adopt and invoke a range of measures that penalize conduct and behavior, rather than speech—such as rules against defacing property, physical intimidation or harassment, or disruption of campus activities. All members of the campus community should be made aware of such rules, and administrators should be ready to use them in preference to speech-directed sanctions.
• Colleges and universities should stress the means they use best—to educate—including the development of courses and other curricular and co-curricular experiences designed to increase student understanding and to deter offensive or intolerant speech or conduct. These institutions should, of course, be free (indeed encouraged) to condemn manifestations of intolerance and discrimination, whether physical or verbal.
• The governing board and the administration have a special duty not only to set an outstanding example of tolerance, but also to challenge boldly and condemn immediately serious breaches of civility.
• Members of the faculty, too, have a major role; their voices may be critical in condemning intolerance, and their actions may set examples for understanding, making clear to their students that civility and tolerance are hallmarks of educated men and women.
• Student-personnel administrators have in some ways the most demanding role of all, for hate speech occurs most often in dormitories, locker rooms, cafeterias, and student centers. Persons who guide this part of campus life should set high standards of their own for tolerance and should make unmistakably clear the harm that uncivil or intolerant speech inflicts.

To some persons who support speech codes, measures like these—relying as they do on suasion rather than sanctions—may seem inadequate. But freedom of expression requires toleration of “ideas we hate,” as Justice Holmes put it. The underlying principle does not change because the demand is to silence a hateful speaker, or because it comes from within the academy. Free speech is not simply an aspect of the educational enterprise to be weighed against other desirable ends. It is the very precondition of the academic enterprise itself.

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Freedom of Speech

By: History.com Editors

Updated: July 27, 2023 | Original: December 4, 2017

Freedom of speech—the right to express opinions without government restraint—is a democratic ideal that dates back to ancient Greece. In the United States, the First Amendment guarantees free speech, though the United States, like all modern democracies, places limits on this freedom. In a series of landmark cases, the U.S. Supreme Court over the years has helped to define what types of speech are—and aren’t—protected under U.S. law.

The ancient Greeks pioneered free speech as a democratic principle. The ancient Greek word “parrhesia” means “free speech,” or “to speak candidly.” The term first appeared in Greek literature around the end of the fifth century B.C.

During the classical period, parrhesia became a fundamental part of the democracy of Athens. Leaders, philosophers, playwrights and everyday Athenians were free to openly discuss politics and religion and to criticize the government in some settings.

First Amendment

In the United States, the First Amendment protects freedom of speech.

The First Amendment was adopted on December 15, 1791 as part of the Bill of Rights—the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution . The Bill of Rights provides constitutional protection for certain individual liberties, including freedoms of speech, assembly and worship.

The First Amendment doesn’t specify what exactly is meant by freedom of speech. Defining what types of speech should and shouldn’t be protected by law has fallen largely to the courts.

In general, the First Amendment guarantees the right to express ideas and information. On a basic level, it means that people can express an opinion (even an unpopular or unsavory one) without fear of government censorship.

It protects all forms of communication, from speeches to art and other media.

Flag Burning

While freedom of speech pertains mostly to the spoken or written word, it also protects some forms of symbolic speech. Symbolic speech is an action that expresses an idea.

Flag burning is an example of symbolic speech that is protected under the First Amendment. Gregory Lee Johnson, a youth communist, burned a flag during the 1984 Republican National Convention in Dallas, Texas to protest the Reagan administration.

The U.S. Supreme Court , in 1990, reversed a Texas court’s conviction that Johnson broke the law by desecrating the flag. Texas v. Johnson invalidated statutes in Texas and 47 other states prohibiting flag burning.

When Isn’t Speech Protected?

Not all speech is protected under the First Amendment.

Forms of speech that aren’t protected include:

• Obscene material such as child pornography
• Plagiarism of copyrighted material
• Defamation (libel and slander)
• True threats

Speech inciting illegal actions or soliciting others to commit crimes aren’t protected under the First Amendment, either.

The Supreme Court decided a series of cases in 1919 that helped to define the limitations of free speech. Congress passed the Espionage Act of 1917, shortly after the United States entered into World War I . The law prohibited interference in military operations or recruitment.

Socialist Party activist Charles Schenck was arrested under the Espionage Act after he distributed fliers urging young men to dodge the draft. The Supreme Court upheld his conviction by creating the “clear and present danger” standard, explaining when the government is allowed to limit free speech. In this case, they viewed draft resistant as dangerous to national security.

American labor leader and Socialist Party activist Eugene Debs also was arrested under the Espionage Act after giving a speech in 1918 encouraging others not to join the military. Debs argued that he was exercising his right to free speech and that the Espionage Act of 1917 was unconstitutional. In Debs v. United States the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Espionage Act.

Freedom of Expression

The Supreme Court has interpreted artistic freedom broadly as a form of free speech.

In most cases, freedom of expression may be restricted only if it will cause direct and imminent harm. Shouting “fire!” in a crowded theater and causing a stampede would be an example of direct and imminent harm.

In deciding cases involving artistic freedom of expression the Supreme Court leans on a principle called “content neutrality.” Content neutrality means the government can’t censor or restrict expression just because some segment of the population finds the content offensive.

Free Speech in Schools

In 1965, students at a public high school in Des Moines, Iowa , organized a silent protest against the Vietnam War by wearing black armbands to protest the fighting. The students were suspended from school. The principal argued that the armbands were a distraction and could possibly lead to danger for the students.

The Supreme Court didn’t bite—they ruled in favor of the students’ right to wear the armbands as a form of free speech in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent School District . The case set the standard for free speech in schools. However, First Amendment rights typically don’t apply in private schools.

What does free speech mean?; United States Courts . Tinker v. Des Moines; United States Courts . Freedom of expression in the arts and entertainment; ACLU .

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Home — Essay Samples — Social Issues — Human Rights — Freedom of Speech

Argumentative Essays on Freedom of Speech

Freedom of speech essay topic examples, argumentative essays.

Argumentative essays on freedom of speech require you to take a stance on a specific aspect of this topic and provide evidence to support your viewpoint. Consider these topic examples:

• 1. Argue for the importance of protecting hate speech as a form of free expression, emphasizing the principles of free speech and the potential consequences of limiting it.
• 2. Debate the ethical implications of social media platforms censoring or moderating content, exploring the balance between maintaining a safe online environment and upholding free speech rights.

Example Introduction Paragraph for an Argumentative Freedom of Speech Essay: Freedom of speech is a cornerstone of democratic societies, but it often challenges our notions of what should be protected. In this argumentative essay, we will examine the importance of safeguarding hate speech as a form of free expression, exploring the principles of free speech and the potential ramifications of its restriction.

Example Conclusion Paragraph for an Argumentative Freedom of Speech Essay: In conclusion, the argument for protecting hate speech within the bounds of free expression highlights the enduring principles of democracy and free speech. As we navigate these complex debates, we must remain committed to preserving the foundations of our democratic society.

Compare and Contrast Essays

Compare and contrast essays on freedom of speech involve analyzing the similarities and differences between various aspects of free speech laws, practices, or the historical development of free speech rights in different countries. Consider these topics:

• 1. Compare and contrast the approach to freedom of speech in the United States and European Union, examining the legal frameworks, historical context, and key differences in their protection of free expression.
• 2. Analyze the evolution of freedom of speech in the digital age, comparing the challenges and opportunities presented by online platforms and the traditional forms of free expression.

Example Introduction Paragraph for a Compare and Contrast Freedom of Speech Essay: Freedom of speech varies across different countries and contexts, raising questions about the boundaries of this fundamental right. In this compare and contrast essay, we will explore the approaches to freedom of speech in the United States and the European Union, shedding light on their legal frameworks, historical backgrounds, and notable distinctions.

Example Conclusion Paragraph for a Compare and Contrast Freedom of Speech Essay: In conclusion, the comparison and contrast of freedom of speech in the United States and the European Union reveal the multifaceted nature of this fundamental right. As we examine these diverse perspectives, we gain a deeper appreciation for the complexities surrounding free expression in our globalized world.

Descriptive Essays

Descriptive essays on freedom of speech allow you to provide detailed accounts and analysis of specific instances, historical events, or contemporary debates related to free speech. Here are some topic ideas:

• 1. Describe a landmark Supreme Court case related to freedom of speech, such as the "Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District" case, and its significance in shaping free speech rights for students.
• 2. Paint a vivid picture of a recent protest or demonstration where freedom of speech played a central role, discussing the motivations of the protesters, the public's response, and the outcomes of the event.

Example Introduction Paragraph for a Descriptive Freedom of Speech Essay: Freedom of speech is often tested and defined in the courtroom and in the streets. In this descriptive essay, we will delve into the landmark Supreme Court case "Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District" and its profound impact on the free speech rights of students within the educational system.

Example Conclusion Paragraph for a Descriptive Freedom of Speech Essay: In conclusion, the descriptive exploration of the "Tinker" case illustrates the enduring struggle to balance students' free speech rights with the need for a productive educational environment. As we reflect on this historical event, we are reminded of the ongoing challenges in preserving and defining freedom of speech in schools.

Persuasive Essays

Persuasive essays on freedom of speech involve advocating for specific actions, policies, or changes related to the protection or limitations of free speech rights. Consider these persuasive topics:

• 1. Persuade your audience of the importance of enacting legislation to combat "cancel culture" and protect individuals' right to express unpopular opinions without fear of social or professional consequences.
• 2. Advocate for greater transparency and accountability in social media content moderation practices, highlighting the potential impact on free speech and the public's right to access diverse information.

Example Introduction Paragraph for a Persuasive Freedom of Speech Essay: The boundaries of free speech are continually tested in our rapidly changing society. In this persuasive essay, I will make a compelling case for the necessity of legislation to combat "cancel culture" and preserve individuals' right to express dissenting views without facing severe social or professional repercussions.

Example Conclusion Paragraph for a Persuasive Freedom of Speech Essay: In conclusion, the persuasive argument for legislation against "cancel culture" underscores the importance of safeguarding free speech in the face of societal pressures. As we advocate for change, we contribute to the preservation of a diverse and inclusive marketplace of ideas.

Narrative Essays

Narrative essays on freedom of speech allow you to share personal stories, experiences, or observations related to free speech, your encounters with debates or controversies, or the impact of free expression on your life. Explore these narrative essay topics:

• 1. Narrate a personal experience where you exercised your right to free speech, detailing the circumstances, motivations, and reactions from others, and reflecting on the significance of your actions.
• 2. Share a story of your involvement in a community or online discussion where freedom of speech played a central role, emphasizing the challenges and rewards of engaging in open dialogue.

Example Introduction Paragraph for a Narrative Freedom of Speech Essay: Freedom of speech is not just an abstract concept; it is a lived experience. In this narrative essay, I will take you through a personal journey where I exercised my right to free speech, recounting the circumstances, motivations, and the impact of my actions on those around me.

Example Conclusion Paragraph for a Narrative Freedom of Speech Essay: In conclusion, the narrative of my personal experience with free speech highlights the transformative power of open dialogue and individual expression. As we share our stories, we contribute to the rich tapestry of voices that define our commitment to this essential democratic principle.

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Freedom of speech is the right to express one’s opinions and ideas without fear of government retaliation or censorship. This fundamental human right is protected under various laws and constitutions worldwide, including the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

• The right to seek information and ideas.
• The right to receive information and ideas.
• The right to impart information and ideas.

The concept of freedom of speech has deep historical roots, originating in ancient civilizations like Greece and Rome, where free expression was valued for democratic governance. During the Enlightenment, thinkers like John Locke and Voltaire advocated for free speech, influencing modern democratic societies. Key historical moments, such as the American and French Revolutions, further solidified free speech protections. Today, it is enshrined in documents like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment.

• Thomas Jefferson: As one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, Jefferson was a staunch advocate for freedom of speech. He believed that a free exchange of ideas was vital for a democratic society and emphasized its protection in the First Amendment.
• Voltaire: A French philosopher and writer, Voltaire championed the principles of free expression and tolerance. His writings challenged oppressive regimes and promoted the idea that individuals should have the right to speak their minds without fear of persecution.
• Martin Luther King Jr.: Known for his leadership in the American civil rights movement, King passionately defended free speech as a means to advocate for social justice. His powerful speeches and peaceful protests were instrumental in promoting equality and challenging systemic racism.
• John Stuart Mill: An influential philosopher and political economist, Mill articulated the concept of the "marketplace of ideas" and argued for unrestricted freedom of speech. He believed that through open and robust debate, society could discover the truth and prevent the suppression of minority viewpoints.

Public opinion on freedom of speech varies widely due to diverse cultural, societal, and legal factors. While many uphold free speech as a fundamental right, others worry about its boundaries and consequences. Cultural norms and historical experiences shape these perspectives, influencing the balance between individual freedoms and collective well-being. Technological advancements and social media have further complicated views, raising concerns about online harassment, misinformation, and the regulation of speech. These dynamics highlight the ongoing debate over the responsible use of free speech in the digital age.

• Protection of democratic principles
• Advancement of knowledge and progress
• Promotion of individual autonomy
• Protection of minority rights
• Defense against tyranny
• Harmful and hateful speech
• Protection of vulnerable groups
• Misinformation and propaganda
• Privacy and dignity
• Societal stability and public safety
• The recognition of speech protection can be traced back to the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215, marking an early milestone in safeguarding the freedom of expression.
• In 399 BC, the renowned Greek philosopher Socrates faced persecution for his advocacy of unrestricted speech, showcasing the historical roots of the ongoing struggle for free speech rights.
• A significant majority, approximately 70% of Americans, believe in the importance of granting individuals the right to free speech, even if their words are deemed highly offensive or controversial.
• A pivotal moment for student rights came in 1969 with the Supreme Court case Tinker v. Des Moines, which affirmed that students maintain their right to free speech even within the confines of school hours.

The topic of freedom of speech is crucial because it underpins democratic societies, allowing for open dialogue, dissent, and the exchange of ideas. Exploring freedom of speech essay topics helps understand its role in promoting individual rights and societal progress. These topics encourage critical thinking about the balance between free expression and protecting against harm, highlighting the importance of preserving this fundamental right in diverse contexts.

1. Sullivan, K. M. (2010). Two concepts of freedom of speech. Harvard Law Review, 124(1), 143-177. (https://www.jstor.org/stable/20788316) 2. Van Mill, D. (2002). Freedom of speech. (https://plato.stanford.edu/ENTRIES/freedom-speech/) 3. Bogen, D. (1983). The origins of freedom of speech and press. Md. L. Rev., 42, 429. (https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/mllr42&div=20&id=&page=) 4. Yong, C. (2011). Does freedom of speech include hate speech?. Res Publica, 17, 385-403. (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11158-011-9158-y) 5. McHugh, M. R. (2004). Historiography and freedom of speech: the case of Cremutius Cordus. In Free Speech in Classical Antiquity (pp. 391-408). Brill. (https://brill.com/display/book/edcoll/9789047405689/B9789047405689-s018.xml) 6. Milo, D. (2008). Defamation and freedom of speech. (https://academic.oup.com/book/2591) 7. Helwig, C. C. (1998). Children's conceptions of fair government and freedom of speech. Child Development, 69(2), 518-531. (https://srcd.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-8624.1998.tb06205.x) 8. Cheung, A. S. (2011). Exercising freedom of speech behind the great firewall: A study of judges’ and lawyers’ blogs in China. Harvard International Law Journal Online. (https://harvardilj.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/15/2011/04/HILJ-Online_52_Cheung1.pdf) 9. Nieuwenhuis, A. (2000). Freedom of speech: USA vs Germany and Europe. Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights, 18(2), 195-214. (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/092405190001800203)

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Free Speech and Justified True Belief

• Joseph Blocher
• December 2019
• See full issue

Law often prioritizes justified true beliefs. Evidence, even if probative and correct, must have a proper foundation. Expert witness testimony must be the product of reliable principles and methods. Prosecutors are not permitted to trick juries into convicting a defendant, even if that defendant is truly guilty. Judges’ reasons, and not just the correctness of their holdings, are the engines of precedent .

Lawyers are, in short, familiar with the notion that one must be right for the right reasons. And yet the standard epistemic theory of the First Amendment — that the marketplace of ideas is the “best test of truth” — has generally focused on truth alone, as if all true beliefs must be treated equally. This thin account leaves the epistemic theory vulnerable to withering criticism, especially in a “post-truth” era .

This Article suggests that the epistemic theory of the First Amendment might be reframed around a different value: not truth alone, but knowledge, roughly defined as justified true belief. Philosophers from Plato until the present day have explored what makes knowledge distinct and distinctly valuable; echoes of those efforts can be heard in First Amendment theory and doctrine as well. A knowledge-based account need not limit the protections of free speech to justified true belief, any more than the marketplace model covers only truth, and may even help resolve thorny First Amendment issues like those involving professional speech and institutional deference. The goal of this Article is to provide a richer epistemic account of the First Amendment at a time when it is sorely needed .

Introduction

A century ago, Justice Holmes’s dissent in Abrams v. United States 1 helped lay the foundations of U.S. free speech law and theory. Though he was hardly writing on a blank slate, Justice Holmes captured something powerful when he wrote that “the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and . . . truth is the only ground upon which [people’s] wishes safely can be carried out.” 2 This marketplace of ideas model was “virtually canonized” for generations 3 and has shaped First Amendment doctrine in significant ways. 4 But it was and is, to repurpose Justice Holmes’s own words, “an experiment, as all life is an experiment.” 5

Many people seem ready to conclude that the experiment has failed. Developments in psychology, economics, history, sociology, and other scholarly fields have drawn attention to the host of problems — cognitive limitations, motivated reasoning, racism, sexism, resource inequalities, and the like — that make it impossible for the marketplace of ideas to reliably deliver on its promise of identifying “truth.” 6 Abrams ’s own legacy provides an example, since the influence of the case undoubtedly owes a great deal to the power and beauty of Justice Holmes’s prose, rather than the “truth” of the ideas it expresses. 7

Such critiques are, for the most part, internal to the epistemic theory: they accept truth as the end goal of the First Amendment but doubt the ability of unregulated speech to deliver it. Another set consists of external challenges — those suggesting that the First Amendment’s lodestar is not truth, but democracy, personal autonomy, or some other value. 8

But scholarly debates are not the most serious threat to the marketplace model. A robust system of free speech depends fundamentally on widely shared social, political, and cultural commitments, 9 and it would be putting it mildly to say that there is widespread anxiety about truth and the ability of speech — especially but not exclusively online speech — to counter falsehoods and lies. Every day, headlines deliver discouraging answers to John Milton’s rhetorical question, “Let [Truth] and falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter?” 10 The undoubted prevalence of free and accessible true information — one promise of the information age — seems to have done little to stem the tide. 11

Against this tide, a retreat from the epistemic theory of the First Amendment, or perhaps from free speech altogether, might seem attractive or even necessary. After all, if it is to model its own purported virtues, the marketplace theory must recognize that it, too, can go the way of other “fighting faiths.” 12 If we are living in a “post-truth” era, 13 then perhaps we need a post-truth First Amendment.

And yet such a capitulation could worsen the crisis. The epistemological problem of the “post-truth” era is not simply that some people no longer value truth, but that so many believe falsehoods. When people act on outlandish but truly held beliefs they often demonstrate a strong — even perversely courageous — commitment to what they believe to be factual truths. 14

One therefore cannot combat the phenomenon simply by insisting on the value of truth. Nor is it possible to fully sidestep the problem by making democracy, autonomy, or some other value the central goal of the First Amendment. Those theories, too, frequently depend in part on the epistemic function of free speech. A well-functioning democracy relies on expert knowledge. 15 Lies and misinformation can interfere with personal autonomy. 16

The challenge, therefore, is to conceptualize the First Amendment in a way that recognizes the power of the critiques but also safeguards the necessary epistemic values of free speech, above and beyond an unrealistic faith that free speech will deliver “truth.” And because freedom of speech is an actual (albeit normative) practice, 17 and not just a matter of theory, any account of free speech values should be built using the materials of that practice, including but not limited to legal doctrine. 18 Those materials should not be expected to point squarely in favor of a single, overarching free speech principle, 19 but they can still clarify our existing commitments and help shape new ones.

The search for free speech principles has also regularly drawn on insights from other disciplines — from the marketplace of ideas as a whole. Indeed, the basic insight of the marketplace metaphor itself had earlier been articulated by Milton, Mill, and others, and its announcement in Abrams owes more to economics, political philosophy, and history than to precedent. 20 And because the value of free speech is partly an epistemological question, 21 it is worth considering that for generations of epistemologists, the most common lodestar is not truth — the central concern of the Holmesian approach to free speech 22 — but knowledge . 23 And although there are deep divisions and ongoing debates about the definition and value of knowledge (these are the basic questions of epistemology, after all 24 ), philosophers since Plato have often taken as their starting point a tripartite definition of knowledge as justified true belief (JTB), 25 and this Article will use the labels interchangeably.

Although JTB has been subject to searching examinations and criticisms far beyond the scope of this Article, 26 it remains central in the epistemological debates. The second and third parts of the tripartite definition are, generally speaking, less controversial than the first: One cannot “know” something that is false, 27 or that one does not believe. But, and somewhat more controversially, even a true belief will not constitute knowledge if it is not properly justified. A lucky guess that is borne out, for example, or an accurate belief generated by lying or manipulation, is not “knowledge.”

Broadening the First Amendment’s frame to focus on justifications of belief, and not just on truth alone, provides a richer epistemic defense of the goal of free speech — not just as a means of identifying particular factual or political truths, but as a means of strengthening our mechanisms of belief. 28 Standard accounts focus on the maximization of truth but give no particular attention to the justifications for true belief — the individual habits of mind 29 and social practices 30 that support the acquisition and belief of truths. This keeps cognition at the center of the First Amendment, while accepting the thrust of the internal critiques (which are focused on truth, not justifications) and incorporating some elements of the external critiques (including the relevance of social practices). 31

A knowledge-based approach to free speech can also do better than the marketplace model in directly addressing the broader epistemological crisis in free speech. People have access to more information — more truth propositions — than ever before, and may continue to believe passionately in the importance of truth. There are, of course, bitter disagreements about whether certain ideas are true. But the more fundamental disagreement and doubt is about which sources, practices, and institutions provide reliable or otherwise desirable information. 32 This is a debate about valid justifications , not about whether particular beliefs are true, or for that matter whether truth is important.

In order to be successful, a knowledge-based approach must not only address these challenges; it must also account for existing practices and legal rules. Fortunately, what works in theory in this case also works in practice. Many legal rules (and, in some respects, the basic rules of legal argumentation) are predicated on a commitment to establishing proper justifications. 33 If a prosecutor lies to secure the conviction of a guilty criminal, he or she will have created a true belief in the minds of the jury — but that belief will not be justified , and might not be permitted to stand. 34

Of course, the rules of the courtroom do not apply mutatis mutandis to public discourse, 35 so one must ask whether the First Amendment can prioritize certain justifications for belief without violating core doctrinal and theoretical commitments. Perhaps most importantly, there is a crucial difference between treating justifications as necessary and treating them as aspirational. The JTB approach defended here is of the latter variety: it makes knowledge the goal of the First Amendment, not a prerequisite for constitutional coverage, just as the marketplace model has truth as a lodestar but covers falsehoods as well. The point in either case (or, for that matter, under other theories like those prioritizing democracy) is to focus on the goals of free speech, not to conflate that end with a particular means.

This is not a purely normative, theoretical mission — it is intertwined with current doctrinal and scholarly controversies regarding professional and expert speech, institutionalism, and a general focus on social practices in First Amendment doctrine. 36 From an epistemic perspective, these debates look different through the JTB lens. There might, for example, be a significant difference between a doctor and a palm reader describing the outcome of a surgery, even if they say the same thing and therefore have identical truth values. By privileging justifications for true belief, the JTB lens could better account for the constitutional status of professional speech and knowledge communities like universities, and for the attention given to the mental states — for example, internal justifications — of speakers and listeners.

Part I investigates the strengths and weaknesses of the standard epistemic theory of free speech — the marketplace model — and the ways in which a thicker epistemology might preserve its core while incorporating many of the insights of alternative theories rooted in democracy and individual autonomy. Part II attempts to situate the concept of “knowledge” in the First Amendment, first by providing an account of its constitutional value and then by considering various ways in which courts could identify and protect proper justifications for beliefs without running afoul of other First Amendment principles. It uses the Supreme Court’s recent decision in National Institute of Family & Life Advocates (NIFLA) v. Becerra 37 to illustrate how the knowledge-based approach might have done a better job than the marketplace model in evaluating the constitutional status of professional speech.

It is important at the outset to clarify the scope of the argument. Making justified true belief the central epistemic value of the First Amendment could potentially help solve these and other problems of doctrine and theory, but it would not necessarily involve a radical revision, nor would it be applicable in all free speech scenarios. Like the theory it seeks to amend — the marketplace of ideas — the JTB approach is most relevant in situations where the epistemic values of free speech are in play, and that is not always the case. Art, political opinion, and other important forms of free speech — or, for that matter, epistemic claims made in public discourse 38 — may be protected for reasons not grounded in their “truth.”

The goal of this Article is not to solve the First Amendment’s epistemic crisis, but to suggest a new way to think about it. The Article’s ultimate end is to convince readers that epistemic approaches to the First Amendment should — subject to constraints — treat justified true belief, rather than truth alone, as the lodestar of free speech values. Doing so would help address some of the deficiencies in the marketplace of ideas model, while providing a richer account of the First Amendment’s epistemic goals.

* Lanty L. Smith ’67 Professor of Law, Duke Law School. Many thanks to Rebecca Aviel, Vince Blasi, Alan Chen, Claudia Haupt, Paul Horwitz, Sam Kamin, Andy Koppelman, Go-vind Persad, Fred Schauer, Alex Tsesis, and the faculty of University of Denver Sturm College of Law for helpful comments, and to Izaak Earnhardt for excellent research assistance.

^ 250 U.S. 616 (1919).

^ Id. at 630 (Holmes, J., dissenting).

^ William P. Marshall, In Defense of the Search for Truth as a First Amendment Justification , 30 Ga. L. Rev. 1, 1 (1995) (“The most influential argument supporting the constitutional commitment to freedom of speech is the contention that speech is valuable because it leads to the discovery of truth.”); see also Kent Greenawalt, Free Speech Justifications , 89 Colum. L. Rev. 119, 130 (1989) (“The most familiar argument for freedom of speech is that speech promotes the discovery of truth.”).

^ See Joseph Blocher, Institutions in the Marketplace of Ideas , 57 Duke L.J. 821, 825 n.7 (2008) (collecting cases invoking the marketplace model).

^ Abrams , 250 U.S. at 630 (Holmes, J., dissenting).

^ See infra section I.B.1, pp. 451–55.

^ Cf. Richard A. Posner, Introduction , in The Essential Holmes xvii (Richard A. Posner ed., 1992) (arguing that some of Justice Holmes’s opinions “owe their distinction to their rhetorical skill rather than to the qualities of their reasoning”).

^ See infra section I.B.2, pp. 455–59; see also Frederick Schauer, Facts and the First Amendment , 57 UCLA L. Rev. 897, 909–10 (2010) (noting that “the free speech literature appears increasingly to have detached itself from the empirical and instrumental epistemic arguments” largely in favor of those based on democracy and autonomy).

^ If a citation is necessary, one could do worse than Judge Learned Hand: “Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court even can do much to help it.” Learned Hand , The Spirit of Liberty (1944), reprinted in The Spirit of Liberty: Papers and Addresses of Learned Hand 189, 190 (Irving Dilliard ed., 1952); John M. Harlan, The Bill of Rights and the Constitution: An Excerpt from an Address , 64 Colum. L. Rev. 1175, 1176 (1964) (quoting same).

^ John Milton, Areopagitica: A Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing 45 (H.B. Cotterill ed., MacMillan & Co. 1961) (1644); see also Vincent Blasi, A Reader’s Guide to John Milton’s Areopagitica , the Foundational Essay of the First Amendment Tradition , 2017 Sup. Ct. Rev. 273, 310.

^ See generally Yochai Benkler et al., Network Propaganda: Manipulation, Disinformation, and Radicalization in American Politics passim (2018).

^ Abrams v. United States, 250 U.S. 616, 630 (1919) (Holmes, J., dissenting). Justice Holmes himself suggested as much: “If in the long run the beliefs expressed in proletarian dictatorship are destined to be accepted by the dominant forces of the community, the only meaning of free speech is that they should be given their chance and have their way.” Gitlow v. New York, 268 U.S. 652, 673 (1925) (Holmes, J., dissenting).

^ Amy B. Wang, “ Post-Truth” Named 2016 Word of the Year by Oxford Dictionaries , Wash. Post (Nov. 16, 2016), https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/11/16/post-truth-named-2016-word-of-the-year-by-oxford-dictionaries/ [ https://perma.cc/WV5N-ECAZ ] (“It’s official: Truth is dead. Facts are passe.”).

^ This is not universally true, of course — some are simply trolling, manipulating, or otherwise engaged in expression that is indifferent to truth. Neither the marketplace model nor my knowledge-based alternative is well suited to address situations where truth itself is irrelevant. From the perspective of an epistemic theory, and at risk of slight overstatement, “these men are nihilists. There’s nothing to be afraid of.” The Big Lebowski (PolyGram Filmed Entertainment & Working Title Films 1998).

^ Robert C. Post , Democracy, Expertise, and Academic Freedom: A First Amendment Jurisprudence for the Modern State , at ix (2012) (“Any modern society needs expert knowledge in order to survive and prosper.”); see also Tom Nichols, The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters 216 (2017) (“[T]he collapse of the relationship between experts and citizens is a dysfunction of democracy itself.”).

^ See, e.g. , Steven H. Shiffrin, The First Amendment, Democracy, and Romance 116–17 (1990); David A. Strauss, Persuasion, Autonomy, and Freedom of Expression , 91 Colum. L. Rev. 334, 354 (1991) (“Lying creates a kind of mental slavery that is an offense against the victim’s humanity for many of the reasons that physical slavery is.”); Jonathan D. Varat, Deception and the First Amendment: A Central, Complex, and Somewhat Curious Relationship , 53 UCLA L. Rev. 1107, 1113 (2006) (noting argument that manipulative lies “are incompatible with the respect for human autonomy underlying the First Amendment”); see also Immanuel Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals 48 (Lewis White Beck trans., The Bobbs-Merrill Co. 1959) (1785) (arguing that lies violate human autonomy by treating people as means rather than ends).

^ It might be more accurate to say “set of practices,” given the many distinct activities that reside under the header: freedoms of the press, artistic creation, scientific research, political debate, and so on. See Frederick Schauer, Free Speech: A Philosophical Enquiry 14 (1982).

^ See Post , supra note 15, at 5 (“To determine the purposes of the First Amendment, therefore, we must consult the actual shape of entrenched First Amendment jurisprudence.”); Robert Post, Replies, Participatory Democracy as a Theory of Free Speech: A Reply , 97 Va. L. Rev. 617, 618 (2011) (“Because law typically acquires authority from the commitments and principles of those whom it seeks to govern, I have sought to identify this fundamental purpose by inquiring into our historical commitments and principles.” (citing Robert C. Post & Neil S. Siegel, Theorizing the Law/Politics Distinction: Neutral Principles, Affirmative Action, and the Enduring Legacy of Paul Mishkin , 95 Calif. L. Rev. 1473, 1474 (2007))).

^ See, e.g. , Robert Post, Essay, Recuperating First Amendment Doctrine , 47 Stan. L. Rev. 1249, 1271 (1995) (“There is in fact no general free speech principle . . . .”); Steven Shiffrin, Dissent, Democratic Participation, and First Amendment Methodology , 97 Va. L. Rev. 559, 559 (2011) (“Too many values interact in too many complicated ways to expect that a single, or small set of values, would emerge as the transcendent master value in resolving freedom of speech questions. Because of this, an eclectic approach is both the most descriptive and the best normative methodology with which to approach free speech issues.” (footnote omitted)).

^ See infra notes 45–52 and accompanying text.

^ Cf. Paul Horwitz, The First Amendment’s Epistemological Problem , 87 U. Wash. L. Rev. 445, 447 (2012) (“[T]he First Amendment faces what I call an epistemological problem: specifically, the problem of figuring out just how knowledge fits within the First Amendment.”).

^ Even to call it “Holmesian” is to raise questions, for Justice Holmes’s own view of truth was complex and debatable. See Alexander Tsesis, Free Speech Constitutionalism , 2015 U. Ill. L. Rev. 1015, 1039, 1056–57; infra note 135 and accompanying text.

^ Matthias Steup, Epistemology , Stan. Encyclopedia of Phil . (Dec. 14, 2005), https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology [ https://perma.cc/4W4T-8BUZ ] (“[E]pistemology is the study of knowledge and justified belief.”).

^ Douglas N. Husak & Craig A. Callender, Willful Ignorance, Knowledge, and the “Equal Culpability” Thesis: A Study of the Deeper Significance of the Principle of Legality , 1994 Wis. L. Rev. 29, 44 (“[There are] enormous theoretical difficulties in understanding and applying the concept of knowledge. Epistemologists have sought to elucidate the concept of knowledge and have found this project no small task.”).

^ See Roderick M. Chisholm , The Foundations of Knowing 43 (1982); Stewart Cohen, Justification and Truth , 46 Phil. Stud. 279 (1984) (discussing schools of thought relating to justification and truth). For more classic sources, see Robert Nozick, Philosophical Explanations 172–78 (1981); Plato, Theaetetus 201b–201d, at 80 (M.J. Levett trans., 1992). See generally Bertrand Russell, Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits passim (1948).

^ To take the most obvious example, Edmund Gettier effectively proved that JTB alone cannot provide a satisfactory account of knowledge. See Edmund L. Gettier, Is Justified True Belief Knowledge? , 23 Analysis 121 (1963).

^ Whether someone can “know” something that is not false, but which has no standard propositional truth value, is a harder question. See, e.g. , Martha C. Nussbaum, Love’s Knowledge , in Love’s Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature 261, 262 (1990) (“Knowledge of the heart must come from the heart . . . .”).

^ See, e.g. , Ashley Messenger, Essay, The Epistemic and Moral Dimensions of Fake News and the First Amendment , 16 First Amend. L. Rev. 328, 337 (2017) (“If ‘knowledge’ is ‘true, justified belief,’ then one who wishes to have knowledge must care about whether that belief is justified.”).

^ See infra section II.B.1, pp. 477–82

^ See infra section II.B.2, pp. 482–86.

^ See infra section I.C, pp. 459–64.

^ American Views: Trust, Media, and Democracy , Knight Found . (Jan. 16, 2018), https://knightfoundation.org/reports/american-views-trust-media-and-democracy [ https://perma.cc/TL7E-JNW8 ] (“[M]ost Americans believe it is now harder to be well-informed and to determine which news is accurate. They increasingly perceive the media as biased and struggle to identify objective news sources. They believe the media continue to have a critical role in our democracy but are not very positive about how the media are fulfilling that role.”).

^ See John Chipman Gray , The Nature and Sources of the Law  100–01 (Roland Gray comp., The MacMillan Co. 1921); Frederick Schauer, Giving Reasons , 47 Stan. L. Rev. 633, 633 (1995) (noting that, in “[t]he conventional picture of legal decisionmaking, . . . giving reasons is both the norm and the ideal”). Admittedly, faced with the challenge of legal realism, even defenders of the concept of ratio decidendi and precedential reasoning were forced to confront the limits of the method. See Arthur L. Goodhart,  Determining the Ratio Decidendi of a Case , 40 Yale L.J. 161, 182–83 (1930) (criticizing prevailing wisdom as to which part of a case’s reasoning is actually precedential).

^ See Berger v. United States, 295 U.S. 78, 88–89 (1935). The same is basically true of the exclusionary rule. Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 654–55 (1961). For further discussion of this principle, see Augustine, To Consentius: Against Lying (H. Browne trans.), in 3 A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church 481–500 (Philip Schaff ed., 1887), which argues categorically against lying, even if it is to “unearth [heretics] out of their hiding places,” id. at 481.

^ For an exploration of their relationship, see Lisa Kern Griffin, Honesty Without Truth: Lies, Accuracy, and the Criminal Justice Process , 104 Cornell L. Rev. Online 22, 23–25 (2018).

^ 138 S. Ct. 2361 (2018).

^ See Post , supra note 15, at 29–31, 43–47.

• Constitutional Law
• First Amendment
• First Amendment: Speech
• Jurisprudence

December 10, 2019

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Writing a Thesis Statement – Template & Examples

Amanda Green was born in a small town in the west of Scotland, where everyone knows everyone. I joined the Toastmasters 15 years ago, and I served in nearly every office in the club since then. I love helping others gain confidence and skills they can apply in every day life.

The thesis statement aims to inform your readers what your essay or speech will cover. It provides contexts and limitations on your topic.

Your thesis statement can make or break your essay. Even though it’s only one to two sentences short, it’s still the most challenging part of your paper to write. Follow these templates and examples when writing your thesis statement.

What Is a Thesis Statement?

Whether in high school or college, you’ve probably heard of the term thesis statement when writing school essays. A thesis statement is a single idea found in the introductory paragraph of every piece.

As the secret to a strong essay outline, this statement sums up the central idea of your essay. It informs the reader how you will analyze, argue, or describe a subject matter. It also directly answers the question, “What is your paper all about?”

A weak thesis statement won’t be able to tell the reader what to expect from your paper. The thesis statement is also different from the topic sentence, which is a sentence summing up every body paragraph.

Why Your Essay Needs a Thesis Statement

It would help if you spent extra time writing an effective thesis statement in your essays so that the readers will know its scope. The thesis also informs the readers of your ideas on your paper, especially if you’re writing academic papers like analytical or argumentative essays.

A clear thesis statement will make the audience understand your stance if you’re writing about a debatable topic. It will ensure that your relevant evidence is related to the paper and that your ideas can be tested.

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Where to Put the Thesis Statement

Thesis statements usually appear at the end of the essay introduction and before the body paragraphs.

Thesis statements are usually generated once you’ve decided on the type of essay you’re making, whether it’s an informative or argumentative essay. It would help if you also decided on the topic of your entire paper before writing the direct statement.

Tips for Writing a Thesis Statement

Consider these tips and examples when writing a thesis statement for your essay.

Determine the Type of Paper You’re Writing

Different types of papers require different methods for writing a thesis statement. Once you understand the formula, you’ll develop a strong thesis that can be supported by substantial evidence.

An argumentative thesis statement should state the position you argue for or against with all the key points. Here are some argumentative thesis statement examples.

• The war on drugs has more disadvantages than advantages because it leads to the criminalization of drug users, mandatory sentencing, and excessive imprisonment levels that directly impact the poor.
• The federal government should regulate the size of chips and sodas because of the health effects of junk food.

Meanwhile, an expository paper aims to explain. That means there should be no opinion or persuasion in this sentence. Take a look at these expository thesis statement examples.

• The government allots most of its budget to the military rather than the education system or food security.
• The rate of suicide is higher among men than women.

An analytical essay focuses on exploring a concept in-depth. That means the thesis statement may serve as a summary of your analysis. Here are some analytical thesis statement examples.

• The implications of Olivia Wilde’s movie, Don’t Worry Darling, contributes to notions of liberal feminism.
• In modern times, Korean music is heavily influencing the consumption of Filipinos.

Ask a Question

Don’t forget to ask a question whenever you write a thesis statement for your paper. If the professor assigns a topic to you, the assignment question may serve as a guide to your thesis. But if they haven’t assigned a topic, you should think about what you want to discuss and turn it into an interrogative statement.

Here are a few quick sample questions based on the types of thesis statements you will produce.

• Argumentative thesis question: Should cigarettes and other tobacco products be outlawed?
• Expository thesis question: What are the health effects of a lack of sleep?
• Analytical thesis question: How are Virginia Woolf’s works relevant to modern times?

Below is a sample thesis statement for the analytical thesis question.

• Virginia Woolf’s novels and essays have shaped women’s writing, artistic theory, and the politics of power.

As you can see, a single sentence could answer the question and produce a thesis statement. However, this answer may still be tentative. It should only guide your research process first. Along the way, your analysis and writing structure may still change.

Decide on an Answer You Can Defend or Explain

After conducting enough research on your thesis statement, it’s time to finalize your answer. Will your strong thesis statement be supported by richer ideas and evidence throughout the paper?

Importantly, your statement should definitely be something that a reader could disagree with, even if it’s an expository essay.

For example, it’s not enough to say that “Access to foreign countries has a huge effect on our culture” since the statement is too obvious. Instead, ask yourself why or how it has a huge effect. Think of a position that your readers could rationally disagree with or dispute.

Here is an example to show you what I mean.

“Access to foreign countries has enabled cultural changes by bringing people of different backgrounds and traditions together.”

Here are other examples of argumentative and analytical thesis statements.

• Argumentative: COVID-19 vaccinations should be mandatory.
• Analytical: A Little Life by Hanya Yanaghihara is an unrealistic representation of mental health struggles.

Refine Your Thesis Statement

Thesis statements are clear and concise, at most two sentences. However, they should be specific enough to summarize the key arguments of your paper and answer the essay question.

From your initial answer, you need to make some expansions that will include every point in your body paragraphs. Below is an example of an incomplete argumentative thesis statement with main points.

• COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective.
• COVID-19 vaccines will reduce hospitalizations and deaths.

Once everything is set, it’s time to refine your thesis statement. Your goal is to write your main point and supporting details in one to two sentences. Below is an example.

• COVID-19 vaccinations should be mandatory because they are safe and effective and can help reduce hospitalizations and deaths caused by COVID-19.

Here’s another example of a complete thesis statement.

• The benefits of internet use among adolescents outweigh the downsides: It allows them to easily access information, develop their identities through self-expression, and hone critical thinking skills.

If you find this step challenging, you can hire professional essay writers to generate a thesis statement and outline for your essay needs.

Check if Your Thesis Statement Is Strong

Whether you’re writing an essay about politics or cinema, you need to maintain a solid thesis statement. Here are some questions to ask when checking your thesis.

Was I Able to Answer the Question?

As you already know, the question depends on the type of paper you’re writing. Your answer should be a clear and concise 1-2 sentence statement. Try changing the wording if the question prompt isn’t phrased as a question.

Have I Shared an Opinion That Others Might Oppose?

Your argumentative thesis statement should not merely state facts that people already know. Remember that you’re not writing a summary, so make your thesis as opinionated as possible.

Beyond being debatable, you should also have a convincing thesis statement. This is especially important if you’re writing persuasive essays.

Is It Specific Enough?

Being specific is critical to producing a solid statement. Make sure it does not contain general words like good or successful . Once your argument is strong, the process of writing essays will be much easier.

Does the Entire Essay Support the Thesis?

An ineffective thesis statement does not support the next couple of paragraphs of the entire essay. Therefore, if you say that low-income students and student-athletes should receive more assistance in terms of their crippling student debt, then your empirical evidence should support it in your argumentative paper.

The Backbone of Your Essay Is Your Thesis Statement

A thesis statement is a declarative statement that expresses your paper’s position or main topic. It fulfills the several roles of your paper, whether it’s a research paper, an essay for coursework, or a speech.

Make sure to place your thesis statement at the end of your introduction before your first body paragraph.

More Thesis Statement Examples

• Incorrect: People should eat healthily.
• Correct: Americans should start eating a balanced diet because it keeps their body healthy and prevents the risk of stroke.
• Incorrect: Everyone should stop smoking because it is bad for our health.
• Correct: Individuals must stop smoking because it causes cancer, lung disease, and diabetes.
• Incorrect: Listening to music can make people feel relaxed.
• Correct: Listening to music relieves stress as the brain synchronizes to the beat and causes alpha brainwaves.

Thesis Statement Template

Use these templates for your essays when writing a thesis statement.

Comparison/Contrast Thesis Statement Templates

• The similarities between ____________ and ____________ are [striking, pronounced], and they ____________ [deserve, merit] [thorough, rigorous, meticulous] [investigation, scrutiny, examination].
• [Despite, despite bearing, although they bear] some [superficial, minor] similarities, the differences between ____________ and ____________ are [clear, striking, remarkable, pronounced].
• While some differences between ____________ and ____________ are [evident, obvious, noticeable], the similarities are ____________.

Proposition Thesis Statement Templates

• The [belief, thought, notion, idea, proposition] that ____________ is ____________ is [an interesting, a fascinating, a thought-provoking, a provocative] one, and one that I believe in.
• ____________ is true because of ____________.

Informative Thesis Statement Template

• The ____________ is characterized by ____________, ____________, and ____________.
• An analysis of ____________ reveals that ____________.

How to Write the Best Commencement Speech – Tips & Examples

Persuasive Essay Outline – Examples, Templates & Structure

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Writing In Defense of Free Speech in Universities

This guest post is by Amy Lai, author of In Defense of Free Speech in Universities: A Study of Three Jurisdictions , which is now available in hardcover, paperback, and open access. Choice  wrote that the book is “A valuable read for graduate and law students and general readers.” You can read more by Amy Lai on  her blog . 

The idea of this book took root in the summer of 2018, a few months after the Lindsay Shepherd incident in Canada. I became increasingly aware that Canada, where I was then living, was witnessing a free speech crisis in its universities. Nonetheless, the situation was far worse than I thought it was. In early October of the same year, I travelled to a Canadian university to interview for a teaching job. The interviewers expressed a very keen interest in my book project and inquired about its contents and arguments (an act which seemed innocent and which I, in hindsight, would deem very “sneaky”). My strong conviction got the better of me, and I became very candid about my belief that deplatforming speakers is generally not a good policy. That very night, I read from the news that my interviewers were among those in the faculty who had been desperately trying to disinvite speakers whom they considered to harbor the “wrong” views and they had done it multiple times. It therefore hardly came as a surprise when I was notified—two days after the interview—that I did not get the job (any guilt on my part for not having delivered the perfect performance also disappeared).

The free speech crisis no doubt is not unique to Canadian academia. The last ten years has seen a rising number of free speech disputes in western academia, including the United States and the United Kingdom. During this same period, numerous books on campus free speech have appeared on the market. However, they mainly focus on the U.S. They also use academic freedom and free speech interchangeably, offering neither a philosophical analysis nor a historical study of either of them. In addition, they do not provide an in-depth analysis of critical concepts including microaggression, trigger warning, and concept creep, let alone contextualize the analysis with examples and case studies.

My book is divided into three parts. The first part explores the history and philosophical foundations of free speech as well as the importance of free speech in Western universities. It also differentiates free speech from academic freedom and examines their interrelationship.

The second part examines a variety of concepts, including political correctness, trigger warning, microaggression, deplatforming, and safe space. It explains why political correctness, if taken to the extreme, jeopardizes the freedom of inquiry. It also affirms the harmfulness of microaggression, while encouraging targets to assert their agency to resist microaggressive acts and reclaim their dignity. It further examines how deplatforming hurts freedom of inquiry, and why turning the campus into a safe space might justify the use of pre-emptive violence against those unfairly perceived as threatening the safety of the bubble.

The third part contextualizes all the concepts in Part two in its discussion of numerous case studies in the U.S., the United Kingdom, and Canada. Whereas the U.S. has done a fair job in safeguarding free speech in its university campuses, largely due to robust protection offered by its First Amendment tradition, the U.K.’s free speech bill holds some promise in improving the dire situation. Canada, however, lags far behind these two countries, due to the uncertainty as to whether its constitution (the “Charter”) applies to universities as well as the lack of courage of many university presidents and employees.

Finally, what distinguishes In Defense of Free Speech in Universities from other books is its emphasis on the rising threat posed by hostile foreign governments to Western academia, and its urgent call for protecting free discourse despite rampant attempts to suppress narratives critical of such governments (e.g. China) on many Western university campuses. The book emphasizes that even if “every man has a price,” universities in democratic countries must set the price as high as possible, resist temptations to bargain away its most fundamental liberties, and safeguard the university as a bastion of free speech.

Getting this book manuscript accepted and publishing it have been some of the proudest moments of my life. Admittedly, I was rather emotionally overwhelmed by what happened in my city of birth (Hong Kong) as I wrote and revised the manuscript from 2019 through 2022. I always feel saddened by the fact that many young people in Western countries, who never have had to fight for their freedom of speech, take it for granted and so readily give it up. I hope that my readers will heed the warning in the book and help protect this fundamental freedom.

Books Mentioned In This Post

In Defense of Free Speech in Universities

Celebrate Black History Month with the University of Michigan Press!

Q&A with Madison Allums

Speech Thesis Statement

Speech thesis statement generator.

In the realm of effective communication, crafting a well-structured and compelling speech thesis statement is paramount. A speech thesis serves as the bedrock upon which impactful oratory is built, encapsulating the core message, purpose, and direction of the discourse. This exploration delves into diverse speech thesis statement examples, offering insights into the art of formulating them. Moreover, it provides valuable tips to guide you in crafting speeches that resonate powerfully with your audience and leave a lasting impact.

What is a Speech Thesis Statement? – Definition

A speech thesis statement is a succinct and focused declaration that encapsulates the central argument, purpose, or message of a speech. It outlines the primary idea the speaker intends to convey to the audience, serving as a guide for the content and structure of the speech.

What is an Example of Speech Thesis Statement?

“In this speech, I will argue that implementing stricter gun control measures is essential for reducing gun-related violence and ensuring public safety. By examining statistical data, addressing common misconceptions, and advocating for comprehensive background checks, we can take meaningful steps toward a safer society.”

In this example, the speech’s main argument, key points (statistics, misconceptions, background checks), and the intended impact (safer society) are all succinctly conveyed in the thesis statement.

100 Speech Thesis Statement Examples

• “Today, I will convince you that renewable energy sources are the key to a sustainable and cleaner future.”
• “In this speech, I will explore the importance of mental health awareness and advocate for breaking the stigma surrounding it.”
• “My aim is to persuade you that adopting a plant-based diet contributes not only to personal health but also to environmental preservation.”
• “In this speech, I will discuss the benefits of exercise on cognitive function and share practical tips for integrating physical activity into our daily routines.”
• “Today, I’ll argue that access to quality education is a fundamental right for all, and I’ll present strategies to bridge the educational gap.”
• “My speech centers around the significance of arts education in fostering creativity, critical thinking, and overall cognitive development in students.”
• “Through this speech, I’ll shed light on the impact of plastic pollution on marine ecosystems and inspire actionable steps toward plastic reduction.”
• “My aim is to persuade you that stricter regulations on social media platforms are imperative to combat misinformation and protect user privacy.”
• “Today, I’ll discuss the importance of empathy in building strong interpersonal relationships and provide techniques to cultivate empathy in daily interactions.”
• “In this speech, I’ll present the case for implementing universal healthcare, emphasizing its benefits for both individual health and societal well-being.”
• “My speech highlights the urgency of addressing climate change and calls for international collaboration in reducing carbon emissions.”
• “I will argue that the arts play a crucial role in fostering cultural understanding, breaking down stereotypes, and promoting global harmony.”
• “Through this speech, I’ll advocate for the preservation of endangered species and offer strategies to contribute to wildlife conservation efforts.”
• “Today, I’ll discuss the power of effective time management in enhancing productivity and share practical techniques to prioritize tasks.”
• “My aim is to convince you that raising the minimum wage is vital to reducing income inequality and improving the overall quality of life.”
• “In this speech, I’ll explore the societal implications of automation and artificial intelligence and propose strategies for a smooth transition into the future.”
• “Through this speech, I’ll emphasize the significance of volunteering in community development and suggest ways to get involved in meaningful initiatives.”
• “I will argue that stricter regulations on fast food advertising are necessary to address the growing obesity epidemic among children and adolescents.”
• “Today, I’ll discuss the importance of financial literacy in personal empowerment and provide practical advice for making informed financial decisions.”
• “My speech focuses on the value of cultural diversity in enriching society, fostering understanding, and promoting a more inclusive world.”
• “In this speech, I’ll present the case for investing in renewable energy technologies to mitigate the adverse effects of climate change on future generations.”
• “I will argue that embracing failure as a stepping stone to success is crucial for personal growth and achieving one’s fullest potential.”
• “Through this speech, I’ll examine the impact of social media on mental health and offer strategies to maintain a healthy online presence.”
• “Today, I’ll emphasize the importance of effective communication skills in professional success and share tips for honing these skills.”
• “My aim is to persuade you that stricter gun control measures are essential to reduce gun-related violence and ensure public safety.”
• “In this speech, I’ll discuss the significance of cultural preservation and the role of heritage sites in maintaining the identity and history of communities.”
• “I will argue that promoting diversity and inclusion in the workplace leads to enhanced creativity, collaboration, and overall organizational success.”
• “Through this speech, I’ll explore the impact of social media on political engagement and discuss ways to critically evaluate online information sources.”
• “Today, I’ll present the case for investing in public transportation infrastructure to alleviate traffic congestion, reduce pollution, and enhance urban mobility.”
• “My aim is to persuade you that implementing mindfulness practices in schools can improve students’ focus, emotional well-being, and overall academic performance.”
• “In this speech, I’ll discuss the importance of supporting local businesses for economic growth, community vibrancy, and sustainable development.”
• “I will argue that fostering emotional intelligence in children equips them with crucial skills for interpersonal relationships, empathy, and conflict resolution.”
• “Through this speech, I’ll emphasize the need for comprehensive sex education that addresses consent, healthy relationships, and informed decision-making.”
• “Today, I’ll explore the benefits of embracing a minimalist lifestyle for mental clarity, reduced stress, and a more mindful and sustainable way of living.”
• “My aim is to persuade you that sustainable farming practices are essential for preserving ecosystems, ensuring food security, and mitigating climate change.”
• “In this speech, I’ll discuss the importance of civic engagement in democracy and provide strategies for individuals to get involved in their communities.”
• “I will argue that investing in early childhood education not only benefits individual children but also contributes to a stronger and more prosperous society.”
• “Through this speech, I’ll examine the impact of social media on body image dissatisfaction and offer strategies to promote body positivity and self-acceptance.”
• “Today, I’ll present the case for stricter regulations on e-cigarette marketing and sales to curb youth vaping and protect public health.”
• “My aim is to persuade you that exploring nature and spending time outdoors is essential for mental and physical well-being in our technology-driven world.”
• “In this speech, I’ll discuss the implications of automation on employment and suggest strategies for reskilling and preparing for the future of work.”
• “I will argue that embracing failure as a valuable learning experience fosters resilience, innovation, and personal growth, leading to ultimate success.”
• “Through this speech, I’ll emphasize the significance of media literacy in discerning credible information from fake news and ensuring informed decision-making.”
• “Today, I’ll explore the benefits of implementing universal healthcare, focusing on improved access to medical services and enhanced public health outcomes.”
• “My aim is to persuade you that embracing sustainable travel practices can minimize the environmental impact of tourism and promote cultural exchange.”
• “In this speech, I’ll present the case for criminal justice reform, highlighting the importance of alternatives to incarceration for nonviolent offenders.”
• “I will argue that instilling a growth mindset in students enhances their motivation, learning abilities, and willingness to face challenges.”
• “Through this speech, I’ll discuss the implications of artificial intelligence on the job market and propose strategies for adapting to automation-driven changes.”
• “Today, I’ll emphasize the importance of digital privacy awareness and provide practical tips to safeguard personal information online.”
• “My aim is to persuade you that investing in renewable energy sources is crucial not only for environmental sustainability but also for economic growth.”
• “In this speech, I’ll discuss the significance of cultural preservation and the role of heritage sites in maintaining a sense of identity and history.”
• “I will argue that promoting diversity and inclusion in the workplace leads to improved creativity, collaboration, and overall organizational performance.”
• “Through this speech, I’ll explore the impact of social media on political engagement and offer strategies to critically assess online information.”
• “Today, I’ll present the case for investing in public transportation to alleviate traffic congestion, reduce emissions, and enhance urban mobility.”
• “My aim is to persuade you that implementing mindfulness practices in schools can enhance students’ focus, emotional well-being, and academic achievement.”
• “In this speech, I’ll discuss the importance of supporting local businesses for economic growth, community vitality, and sustainable development.”
• “I will argue that fostering emotional intelligence in children equips them with essential skills for healthy relationships, empathy, and conflict resolution.”
• “Through this speech, I’ll emphasize the need for comprehensive sex education that includes consent, healthy relationships, and informed decision-making.”
• “My aim is to persuade you that sustainable farming practices are vital for preserving ecosystems, ensuring food security, and combating climate change.”
• “In this speech, I’ll discuss the importance of civic engagement in democracy and provide strategies for individuals to actively participate in their communities.”
• “I will argue that investing in early childhood education benefits not only individual children but also contributes to a stronger and more prosperous society.”
• “Through this speech, I’ll examine the impact of social media on body image dissatisfaction and suggest strategies to promote body positivity and self-acceptance.”
• “Today, I’ll present the case for stricter regulations on e-cigarette marketing and sales to combat youth vaping and protect public health.”
• “My aim is to persuade you that connecting with nature and spending time outdoors is essential for mental and physical well-being in our technology-driven world.”
• “In this speech, I’ll discuss the implications of automation on employment and suggest strategies for reskilling and adapting to the changing job landscape.”
• “I will argue that embracing failure as a valuable learning experience fosters resilience, innovation, and personal growth, ultimately leading to success.”
• “Through this speech, I’ll emphasize the significance of media literacy in discerning credible information from fake news and making informed decisions.”
• “Today, I’ll explore the benefits of implementing universal healthcare, focusing on improved access to medical services and better public health outcomes.”
• “My aim is to persuade you that adopting sustainable travel practices can minimize the environmental impact of tourism and promote cultural exchange.”
• “I will argue that instilling a growth mindset in students enhances their motivation, learning abilities, and readiness to tackle challenges.”
• “Through this speech, I’ll discuss the implications of artificial intelligence on the job market and propose strategies for adapting to the changing landscape.”
• “Today, I’ll emphasize the importance of digital privacy awareness and provide practical tips to safeguard personal information in the online world.”
• “My aim is to persuade you that investing in renewable energy sources is essential for both environmental sustainability and economic growth.”
• “In this speech, I’ll discuss the transformative power of art therapy in promoting mental well-being and share real-life success stories.”
• “I will argue that promoting gender equality not only empowers women but also contributes to economic growth and social progress.”
• “Through this speech, I’ll explore the impact of technology on interpersonal relationships and offer strategies to maintain meaningful connections.”
• “Today, I’ll present the case for sustainable fashion choices, emphasizing their positive effects on the environment and ethical manufacturing practices.”
• “My aim is to persuade you that investing in early childhood education is an investment in the future, leading to a more educated and equitable society.”
• “In this speech, I’ll discuss the significance of community service in building strong communities and share personal stories of volunteering experiences.”
• “I will argue that fostering emotional intelligence in children lays the foundation for a harmonious and empathetic society.”
• “Through this speech, I’ll emphasize the importance of teaching critical thinking skills in education and how they empower individuals to navigate a complex world.”
• “Today, I’ll explore the benefits of embracing a growth mindset in personal and professional development, leading to continuous learning and improvement.”
• “My aim is to persuade you that conscious consumerism can drive positive change in industries by supporting ethical practices and environmentally friendly products.”
• “In this speech, I’ll present the case for renewable energy as a solution to energy security, reduced carbon emissions, and a cleaner environment.”
• “I will argue that investing in mental health support systems is essential for the well-being of individuals and society as a whole.”
• “Through this speech, I’ll discuss the role of music therapy in enhancing mental health and promoting emotional expression and healing.”
• “Today, I’ll emphasize the importance of embracing cultural diversity to foster global understanding, harmony, and peaceful coexistence.”
• “My aim is to persuade you that incorporating mindfulness practices into daily routines can lead to reduced stress and increased overall well-being.”
• “In this speech, I’ll discuss the implications of genetic engineering and gene editing technologies on ethical considerations and future generations.”
• “I will argue that investing in renewable energy infrastructure not only mitigates climate change but also generates job opportunities and economic growth.”
• “Through this speech, I’ll explore the impact of social media on political polarization and offer strategies for promoting constructive online discourse.”
• “Today, I’ll present the case for embracing experiential learning in education, focusing on hands-on experiences that enhance comprehension and retention.”
• “My aim is to persuade you that practicing gratitude can lead to improved mental health, increased happiness, and a more positive outlook on life.”
• “In this speech, I’ll discuss the importance of teaching financial literacy in schools to equip students with essential money management skills.”
• “I will argue that promoting sustainable agriculture practices is essential to ensure food security, protect ecosystems, and combat climate change.”
• “Through this speech, I’ll emphasize the need for greater awareness of mental health issues in society and the importance of reducing stigma.”
• “Today, I’ll explore the benefits of incorporating arts and creativity into STEM education to foster innovation, critical thinking, and problem-solving.”
• “My aim is to persuade you that practicing mindfulness and meditation can lead to improved focus, reduced anxiety, and enhanced overall well-being.”

Speech Thesis Statement for Introduction

Introductions set the tone for impactful speeches. These thesis statements encapsulate the essence of opening remarks, laying the foundation for engaging discourse.

• “Welcome to an exploration of the power of storytelling and its ability to bridge cultures and foster understanding across diverse backgrounds.”
• “In this introductory speech, we delve into the realm of artificial intelligence, examining its potential to reshape industries and redefine human capabilities.”
• “Join us as we navigate the fascinating world of space exploration and the role of technological advancements in uncovering the mysteries of the universe.”
• “Through this speech, we embark on a journey through history, highlighting pivotal moments that have shaped civilizations and continue to inspire change.”
• “Today, we embark on a discussion about the significance of empathy in our interactions, exploring how it can enrich our connections and drive positive change.”
• “In this opening address, we dive into the realm of sustainable living, exploring practical steps to reduce our environmental footprint and promote eco-consciousness.”
• “Join us as we explore the evolution of communication, from ancient symbols to modern technology, and its impact on how we connect and convey ideas.”
• “Welcome to an exploration of the intricate relationship between art and emotion, uncovering how artistic expression transcends language barriers and unites humanity.”
• “In this opening statement, we examine the changing landscape of work and career, discussing strategies to navigate career transitions and embrace lifelong learning.”
• “Today, we delve into the concept of resilience and its role in facing adversity, offering insights into how resilience can empower us to overcome challenges.”

Speech Thesis Statement for Graduation

Graduation speeches mark significant milestones. These thesis statements encapsulate the achievements, aspirations, and challenges faced by graduates as they move forward.

• “As we stand on the threshold of a new chapter, let’s reflect on our journey, celebrate our achievements, and embrace the uncertainties that lie ahead.”
• “In this graduation address, we celebrate not only our academic accomplishments but also the personal growth, resilience, and friendships that have enriched our years here.”
• “As we step into the world beyond academia, let’s remember that learning is a lifelong journey, and the skills we’ve honed will propel us toward success.”
• “Today, we bid farewell to the familiar and embrace the unknown, armed with the knowledge that every challenge we face is an opportunity for growth.”
• “In this commencement speech, we acknowledge the collective accomplishments of our class and embrace the responsibility to contribute positively to the world.”
• “As we graduate, let’s carry with us the values instilled by our education, applying them not only in our careers but also in shaping a more just and compassionate society.”
• “Join me in celebrating the diversity of talents and perspectives that define our graduating class, and let’s channel our unique strengths to make a meaningful impact.”
• “Today, we honor the culmination of our academic pursuits and embrace the journey of continuous learning that will shape our personal and professional paths.”
• “In this graduation address, we acknowledge the support of our families, educators, and peers, recognizing that our successes are a testament to shared effort.”
• “As we don our caps and gowns, let’s remember that our education equips us not only with knowledge but also with the power to effect positive change in the world.”

Speech Thesis Statement For Acceptance

Acceptance speeches express gratitude and acknowledge achievements. These thesis statements capture the essence of acknowledgment, appreciation, and commitment.

• “I am humbled and honored by this recognition, and I pledge to use this platform to amplify the voices of the marginalized and work toward equity.”
• “As I accept this award, I express my gratitude to those who believed in my potential, and I commit to using my skills to contribute meaningfully to our community.”
• “Receiving this honor is a testament to the collaborative efforts that make achievements possible. I am dedicated to sharing this success with those who supported me.”
• “Accepting this award, I am reminded of the responsibility that accompanies it. I vow to continue striving for excellence and inspiring those around me.”
• “As I receive this recognition, I extend my deepest appreciation to my mentors, colleagues, and family, and I promise to pay it forward by mentoring the next generation.”
• “Accepting this accolade, I recognize that success is a team effort. I commit to fostering a culture of collaboration and innovation in all my endeavors.”
• “Receiving this honor, I am reminded of the privilege I have to effect change. I dedicate myself to leveraging this platform for the betterment of society.”
• “Accepting this award, I am grateful for the opportunities that have shaped my journey. I am committed to using my influence to uplift others and drive positive change.”
• “As I stand here, I am deeply moved by this recognition. I pledge to use this honor as a catalyst for making a meaningful impact on the lives of those I encounter.”
• “Accepting this distinction, I embrace the responsibility it brings. I promise to uphold the values that guided me to this moment and channel my efforts toward progress.”

Speech Thesis Statement in Extemporaneous

Extemporaneous speeches require quick thinking and concise communication. These thesis statements capture the essence of on-the-spot analysis and delivery.

• “On the topic of technological disruption, we explore its effects on job markets, emphasizing the importance of upskilling for the workforce’s evolving demands.”
• “In this impromptu speech, we dissect the complexities of global climate agreements, assessing their impact on environmental sustainability and international cooperation.”
• “Addressing the issue of cyberbullying, we examine its psychological consequences, potential legal remedies, and strategies to create safer online spaces.”
• “Discussing the merits of universal basic income, we weigh its potential to alleviate poverty, stimulate economic growth, and reshape the social safety net.”
• “As we delve into the debate on genetically modified organisms, we consider the benefits of increased crop yields, while also evaluating environmental and health concerns.”
• “On the topic of urbanization, we analyze its benefits in fostering economic growth and cultural exchange, while addressing challenges of infrastructure and inequality.”
• “Delving into the controversy surrounding artificial intelligence, we explore its transformative potential in various sectors, touching on ethical considerations and fears of job displacement.”
• “In this impromptu speech, we examine the impact of social media on political discourse, highlighting the role of echo chambers and the need for critical thinking.”
• “Addressing the issue of mental health stigma, we discuss the societal barriers that prevent seeking help, while advocating for open conversations and destigmatization.”
• “Discussing the concept of ethical consumerism, we weigh the impact of consumer choices on industries, environment, and labor rights, emphasizing the power of informed purchasing.”

Speech Thesis Statement in Argumentative Essay

Argumentative speeches present clear stances on contentious topics. These thesis statements assert positions while indicating the direction of the ensuing debate.

• “In this argumentative speech, we assert that mandatory voting fosters civic participation and strengthens democracy by ensuring diverse voices are heard.”
• “Advocating for stricter gun control, we contend that regulations on firearm access are vital for public safety, reducing gun violence, and preventing tragedies.”
• “Arguing for the benefits of school uniforms, we posit that uniforms promote a focused learning environment, reduce socioeconomic disparities, and enhance school spirit.”
• “In this persuasive speech, we assert that capital punishment should be abolished due to its potential for wrongful executions, lack of deterrence, and ethical concerns.”
• “Taking a stand against standardized testing, we argue that these assessments stifle creativity, promote rote learning, and fail to measure true intellectual potential.”
• “Defending the benefits of renewable energy, we assert that transitioning to sustainable sources will mitigate climate change, create jobs, and reduce dependence on fossil fuels.”
• “Addressing the merits of open borders, we contend that welcoming immigrants bolsters cultural diversity, contributes to economic growth, and upholds humanitarian values.”
• “In this persuasive speech, we argue against the use of animal testing, asserting that modern alternatives exist to ensure scientific progress without unnecessary suffering.”
• “Advocating for comprehensive sex education, we assert that teaching about contraception, consent, and healthy relationships equips students to make informed choices.”
• “Arguing for universal healthcare, we posit that accessible medical services are a basic human right, contributing to improved public health, reduced disparities, and economic stability.”

These examples offer a range of thesis statements for various types of speeches, catering to different contexts and styles of presentation. Tailor them to fit your specific needs and adjust the content as necessary to create impactful speeches.

Is There a Thesis Statement in a Speech?

Yes, a thesis statement is an essential component of a speech. Just like in written essays, a thesis statement in a speech serves as the central point or main idea that the speaker wants to convey to the audience. It provides focus, direction, and a preview of the content that will follow in the speech. A well-crafted thesis statement helps the audience understand the purpose of the speech and what they can expect to learn or gain from listening.

What is the Thesis Structure of a Speech?

The structure of a thesis statement in a speech is similar to that of a thesis statement in an essay, but it’s adapted for the spoken format. A speech thesis generally consists of:

• Topic: Clearly state the topic or subject of your speech. This provides the context for your thesis and gives the audience an idea of the subject matter.
• Main Idea or Argument: Present the main point you want to make or the central argument you’ll be discussing in your speech. This should be a concise and focused statement that encapsulates the essence of your message.
• Supporting Points: Optionally, you can include a brief overview of the main supporting points or arguments that you’ll elaborate on in the body of your speech. This gives the audience an outline of what to expect.

How Do You Write a Speech Thesis Statement? – Step by Step Guide

• Choose Your Topic: Select a topic that is relevant to your audience and aligns with the purpose of your speech.
• Identify Your Main Message: Determine the central message or argument you want to convey. What is the key takeaway you want your audience to remember?
• Craft a Concise Statement: Write a clear and concise sentence that captures the essence of your main message. Make sure it’s specific and avoids vague language.
• Consider Your Audience: Tailor your thesis statement to your audience’s level of understanding and interests. Use language that resonates with them.
• Review and Refine: Read your thesis statement aloud to ensure it sounds natural and engaging. Refine it as needed to make it compelling.

Tips for Writing a Speech Thesis Statement

• Be Specific: A strong thesis statement is specific and focused. Avoid vague or general statements.
• Avoid Jargon: Use language that your audience can easily understand, avoiding complex jargon or technical terms unless you explain them.
• One Main Idea: Stick to one main idea or argument. Multiple ideas can confuse your audience.
• Preview Supporting Points: If applicable, briefly preview the main supporting points you’ll cover in your speech.
• Reflect the Purpose: Your thesis should reflect the purpose of your speech—whether it’s to inform, persuade, entertain, or inspire.
• Keep It Concise: A thesis statement is not a paragraph. Keep it to a single sentence that encapsulates your message.
• Practice Pronunciation: If your thesis statement includes challenging words or terms, practice pronouncing them clearly.
• Test for Clarity: Ask someone to listen to your thesis statement and summarize what they understood from it. This can help you gauge its clarity.
• Revise as Necessary: Don’t be afraid to revise your thesis statement as you refine your speech. It’s important that it accurately represents your content.
• Capture Interest: Craft your thesis statement in a way that captures the audience’s interest and curiosity, encouraging them to listen attentively.

Remember, the thesis statement sets the tone for your entire speech. It should be well-crafted, engaging, and reflective of the main message you want to communicate to your audience.

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• How to Write a Thesis Statement | 4 Steps & Examples

How to Write a Thesis Statement | 4 Steps & Examples

Published on January 11, 2019 by Shona McCombes . Revised on August 15, 2023 by Eoghan Ryan.

A thesis statement is a sentence that sums up the central point of your paper or essay . It usually comes near the end of your introduction .

Your thesis will look a bit different depending on the type of essay you’re writing. But the thesis statement should always clearly state the main idea you want to get across. Everything else in your essay should relate back to this idea.

You can write your thesis statement by following four simple steps:

• Start with a question
• Write your initial answer
• Develop your answer
• Refine your thesis statement

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Table of contents

What is a thesis statement, placement of the thesis statement, step 1: start with a question, step 2: write your initial answer, step 3: develop your answer, step 4: refine your thesis statement, types of thesis statements, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about thesis statements.

A thesis statement summarizes the central points of your essay. It is a signpost telling the reader what the essay will argue and why.

The best thesis statements are:

• Concise: A good thesis statement is short and sweet—don’t use more words than necessary. State your point clearly and directly in one or two sentences.
• Contentious: Your thesis shouldn’t be a simple statement of fact that everyone already knows. A good thesis statement is a claim that requires further evidence or analysis to back it up.
• Coherent: Everything mentioned in your thesis statement must be supported and explained in the rest of your paper.

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The thesis statement generally appears at the end of your essay introduction or research paper introduction .

The spread of the internet has had a world-changing effect, not least on the world of education. The use of the internet in academic contexts and among young people more generally is hotly debated. For many who did not grow up with this technology, its effects seem alarming and potentially harmful. This concern, while understandable, is misguided. The negatives of internet use are outweighed by its many benefits for education: the internet facilitates easier access to information, exposure to different perspectives, and a flexible learning environment for both students and teachers.

You should come up with an initial thesis, sometimes called a working thesis , early in the writing process . As soon as you’ve decided on your essay topic , you need to work out what you want to say about it—a clear thesis will give your essay direction and structure.

You might already have a question in your assignment, but if not, try to come up with your own. What would you like to find out or decide about your topic?

For example, you might ask:

After some initial research, you can formulate a tentative answer to this question. At this stage it can be simple, and it should guide the research process and writing process .

Now you need to consider why this is your answer and how you will convince your reader to agree with you. As you read more about your topic and begin writing, your answer should get more detailed.

In your essay about the internet and education, the thesis states your position and sketches out the key arguments you’ll use to support it.

The negatives of internet use are outweighed by its many benefits for education because it facilitates easier access to information.

In your essay about braille, the thesis statement summarizes the key historical development that you’ll explain.

The invention of braille in the 19th century transformed the lives of blind people, allowing them to participate more actively in public life.

A strong thesis statement should tell the reader:

• Why you hold this position
• What they’ll learn from your essay
• The key points of your argument or narrative

The final thesis statement doesn’t just state your position, but summarizes your overall argument or the entire topic you’re going to explain. To strengthen a weak thesis statement, it can help to consider the broader context of your topic.

These examples are more specific and show that you’ll explore your topic in depth.

Your thesis statement should match the goals of your essay, which vary depending on the type of essay you’re writing:

• In an argumentative essay , your thesis statement should take a strong position. Your aim in the essay is to convince your reader of this thesis based on evidence and logical reasoning.
• In an expository essay , you’ll aim to explain the facts of a topic or process. Your thesis statement doesn’t have to include a strong opinion in this case, but it should clearly state the central point you want to make, and mention the key elements you’ll explain.

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

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A thesis statement is a sentence that sums up the central point of your paper or essay . Everything else you write should relate to this key idea.

The thesis statement is essential in any academic essay or research paper for two main reasons:

• It gives your writing direction and focus.
• It gives the reader a concise summary of your main point.

Without a clear thesis statement, an essay can end up rambling and unfocused, leaving your reader unsure of exactly what you want to say.

Follow these four steps to come up with a thesis statement :

• Ask a question about your topic .
• Write your initial answer.
• Develop your answer by including reasons.
• Refine your answer, adding more detail and nuance.

The thesis statement should be placed at the end of your essay introduction .

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Cass Sunstein Wants to Help Universities Navigate Free Speech Conflicts

The legal scholar presents a wide range of speech-related scenarios that university administrators may have to navigate this fall—and in perpetuity.

By  Johanna Alonso

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Cass R. Sunstein’s new book about free speech on college campuses comes out today.

Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | Harvard University Press

In Campus Free Speech: A Pocket Guide ( Harvard University Press ) , legal scholar and author Cass R. Sunstein presents dozens of contentious free speech case studies in search of answers to what feels like an increasingly complex question: What speech can campuses regulate?

The scenarios often draw on real-life situations, such as the passage of Indiana’s new law mandating that professors provide “intellectual diversity”—which Sunstein describes as “a troubling case, and not a straightforward one”—and the incident last spring in which a pro-Palestinian student protester interrupted a dinner at the home of University of California, Berkeley, law school dean Erwin Chemerinsky and refused to leave when asked (which Sunstein concludes would warrant the student’s suspension on the grounds of trespassing).

His goal was to craft a thorough—and succinct, at just 160 pages—handbook that tackles the free speech nuances that colleges and universities might face going forward. In a phone interview with Inside Higher Ed , he discussed how he wrote the book and the key issues higher ed institutions should consider as they anticipate another fall semester rife with tensions over the Israel-Hamas war.

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The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: What was your goal in writing this, and especially in your choice to use case studies?

A: So, as the controversies were mounting [in the spring], a lot of people were saying, “It’s case by case,” or “Free speech triumphs,” or that universities need to provide safe spaces. I thought that the only way to get clear on this was just to write, for myself, a bunch of examples and to think about how they should be analyzed.

It was really a document that was, at first, just for myself, and I wasn’t sure if I was going to publish it or where I was going to publish it. As the real world proliferated the scenarios—and as history, as I investigated it, produced more scenarios—I thought, “This is the only way to make progress.” If you say that free speech is an absolute, or that we live in a place where dangerous speech is permitted, you may or may not be right. But you’re [being] too abstract to come to terms with the problems universities are actually facing. Or if you said that antisemitism and racism have no place on university campuses, that’s pretty abstract, and that probably doesn’t fit with our free speech principles.

It was really an effort to be a little bit like a plumber or doctor—trying to look at particular cases and see how they should be handled.

Q: One of the topics that you cover that’s especially relevant right now is the topic of incidental rules around free speech—meaning rules focused on an issue other than speech that end up impacting speech nevertheless, like policies against tents being erected on campus. What should people on college campuses know about these types of rules going into another semester of protesting?

A: A category that I think is reasonably well understood are content-neutral restrictions on speech, [such as saying] you can’t engage in extremely loud speech between the hours of 1 a.m. and 5 a.m. That’s directed at speech, and it’s content neutral. It would be subject to a kind of balancing test, meaning, is there a very good reason for it? How extensive is the interference with free speech?

An incidental restriction is a restriction that’s not directed at speech at all. So, if you say you can’t burn your draft card, the reason for that is not to regulate speech; it’s to make sure that people have their draft cards. It’s an incidental restriction on speech, because people might try to burn a draft card in order to express opposition to a war.

The Supreme Court, in a case called O’Brien , was very permissive of incidental restrictions, but it’s not a blank check. If the incidental restriction on speech is not protecting any substantial interest and is significantly impairing free speech rights, then we have a discussion. But in general, the lower courts have been following the Supreme Court’s lead, pretty permissive with respect to incidental restrictions on speech. To evaluate them, we need to know what they are, but the burden would be heavily on the speaker who seeks to get [the restriction] struck down, unlike a viewpoint-based restriction, where the burden is heavy on the person who seeks to defend it.

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Q: Some protesters and free speech advocates are saying, “Yes, we know that tents are not allowed on campus. However, we see that in some historical cases , it wasn’t enforced, but it’s being enforced on us.” What are your thoughts on this? Do students have a good case that they are facing discrimination based on their viewpoints, if these content-neutral restrictions are being applied differently?

A: OK, let’s take two cases, one where there’s a prohibition on tents in some university space, and there have never been any tents in the university space, and there are tents that are favoring one point of view, and then the university starts enforcing the restriction there. That seems OK. There’s no evidence of viewpoint-based enforcement of the restriction.

If we have a university which is very tent-friendly, notwithstanding its formal policy against tents, and it has for the last 30 years, nodded, “Go for it, tent person,” and then it starts enforcing the anti-tent law against Republicans, that would not be acceptable. There you have viewpoint-based enforcement of a viewpoint-neutral [rule], and that would be very difficult to defend. The university would have to say that there’s something about the targeted tents that makes them different from the winked-and-nodded-at tents. Maybe they’re bigger, or maybe there are more people. That would be really a test of viewpoint neutrality.

Q: Another thing you discuss in the book is the Brandenburg test, which says speech that both intends to and is likely to incite lawless action is not protected by the First Amendment. There has been a lot of debate since Oct. 7 about whether specific words and phrases inherently incite violence. Obviously, “from the river to the sea” is a big one .

A: I’m in my backyard right now, my dog is looking at me, and my children could hear me if I spoke loudly. And if I said, “From the river to the sea,” I’m confident no one would engage in violence.

The context of those words could mean it’s directed to inciting and likely to incite imminent lawless action. But there’s nothing intrinsic to those words that necessarily means that, I’m confident. If I said to myself, walking from one space in Harvard Square to another space in Harvard Square, “From the river to the sea,” I would not be intending to incite lawless action and would be very surprised if there were any lawless action. I wouldn’t be vulnerable under the Brandenburg test.

If somebody says, “From the river to the sea” outside, let’s say, a synagogue on campus, with clear intention of storming the place and causing trespass and violence, that would be regulable.

For a university to say, ‘We’re not going to allow speech that makes students feel uncomfortable in their identity’ is in grave tension with [the idea that] academic institutions are places for diversity of view and for learning.”

Q: There’s also this question of hateful speech. There’s been a lot of controversy recently over Title VI protections, with some students and employees saying that hearing rhetoric they view as offensive on campus impedes their ability to get an education, and therefore it violates Title VI. Is that valid?

A: If a professor says, “Only men are allowed in my class,” that’s not protected by the First Amendment. That’s a form of discrimination. If the teacher says in class, “Asians just aren’t good at, let’s say, biology,” that might be a form of discrimination, unprotected by the First Amendment.

If a professor says outside of class something like, “Men handle math better than women,” that might well be protected by the First Amendment. But if a teacher basically makes some students feel unwelcome in the classroom, a university can reasonably say, “That’s a form of discrimination and not allowed.”

We wouldn’t want to say that Title VI broadly forbids members of an educational community from expressing views on the issues of the day. So, for a student to say, “I think Israel shouldn’t have been created,” nothing in a plausible interpretation of Title VI forbids that, and if there were a law that prohibited that statement, that would be inconsistent with the First Amendment.

Q: What about when a student says something like, “If a protest at the center of campus is opposing something that is fundamental to myself and my identity, then that makes me feel like I can’t study on campus and impedes my ability to get an education”?

A: Insofar as we’re talking about a public university, the First Amendment would not allow the breadth of the restriction implied by the idea of, “This speech is inconsistent with my understanding my identity, and it makes me feel unwelcome, and therefore it shouldn’t be allowed.” The First Amendment doesn’t carve out that kind of exception to free speech principles.

Insofar as we’re dealing with a private university, it’s not governed by the First Amendment, so it has a lot of room. But for a university to say, “We’re not going to allow speech that makes students feel uncomfortable in their identity” is in grave tension with [the idea that] academic institutions are places for diversity of view and for learning. So, if a white person hears people on campus say that whites are intrinsically racist, and that’s just how it is, that’s very unpleasant for white people to hear—many people, whatever their skin color, would disagree with that. But it’s allowed under the First Amendment and a private university would do well to allow people to discuss that proposition.

Q: According to your book, students think they’d be a lot more comfortable on campus if their universities regulated things they can’t regulate. Do you have any advice in terms of what universities can do to try to alleviate this tension, to make students feel like they can be comfortable on campus, even while doing everything they need to do to protect First Amendment rights?

A: To remember the words of Justice [Robert H.] Jackson in the 1940s: “Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard.” Post that in large letters and emphasize that our university’s culture is one that welcomes views that are offensive. People used to think the idea that same-sex marriage was OK was profoundly offensive. People used to think the idea that universities should have half women and half men was a very, very disturbing idea. There are a lot of things we now believe that were thought to be horrible.

I confess that writing this book was quite painful for me. Much of my writing I find joyful, and some of this was quite painful, because the speech that I think the Constitution protects and the university should allow, some of it is horrifying, particularly about race, but to turn that distress at pluralism into something like gratitude to live in a country like ours, it turns the aspect of what are they saying to one of, “I’m so glad I live here.”

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Indiana University is the second-worst public university for free speech, says new report

Indiana University is among the lowest-ranked universities for student free speech and open inquiry in the U.S., according to a new survey-based ranking by the free speech advocacy group Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) .

IU placed 243 of 250 colleges and universities across the U.S. in the FIRE ranking based on both student survey responses from more than 58,000 students across all campuses and an analysis of administrative actions. IU fell 18 spots from its ranking in FIRE’s 2024 report (in which it ranked 225 place) and is now the second-lowest scoring public university for free speech, above only University of Texas at Austin (244).

The 2025 report makes clear that administrative responses to pro-Palestinian student encampments last spring played a significant role in IU and UT Austin ranking in the bottom 10. Both IU and UT Austin’s responses to student protests, especially the deployment of state troopers, made national news earlier this year .

“At Indiana University, this [ranking] followed reports of snipers stationed on the roofs of campus buildings after the administration called the police to shut down an encampment protest,” the report reads. “At the University of Texas at Austin, it followed the university preemptively calling the police to campus, presumably to prevent students from establishing an encampment.”

Sean Stevens, chief research advisor at FIRE, said students at the public universities which scored the worst in the rankings, like IU and UT Austin, had particularly negative reactions to their administrations.

“They’ve lost a level of trust in their administration, and that might be hard to get back,” Stevens said.

Why did IU score so low in the FIRE report?

The FIRE report , administered by college survey research and analytics company College Pulse , generated its rankings based on 14 components, seven of which concerned student responses to the speech climate on their campuses. The other seven concerned “behavior by administrators, faculty, and students regarding free expression on campus,” and penalized administrative actions like deplatforming a speaker or sanctioning scholars, students or student groups.

The report counted four instances of IU sanctioning scholars and three cases of sanctioning students between 2019 and 2024, as recorded on FIRE’s “Scholars Under Fire” database . IU’s incidents included administrators asking advocates of the Kinsey Institute to remove their table outside of the Sample Gates in February and the controversial suspension of political science professor Abdulkader Sinno last winter as examples of administrative sanctions from the past year.

FIRE conducts its free speech rankings during the spring semester each year, but during the 2023-2024 academic year, Stevens said, FIRE reopened its surveys for schools that had already received an adequate number of responses to allow students to react to unfolding events related to pro-Palestinian encampments. Stevens said following the events at Dunn Meadow in late April, IU’s numbers further decreased.

“Prior to the encampment, there was the cancellation of an art exhibit by a Palestinian artist, so they were dinged for that,” Stevens said. “And if you look prior to the encampment protest versus after, Indiana’s scores were down on that. The students reacted very poorly to how the administration handled that.”

Between last year and this year, IU’s ranking for “administrative support,” which gauges students’ perceptions of their colleges’ support for free speech, fell from 150 to 231. It is now the fifth lowest-ranked public university for administrative support and the 21st lowest-ranked overall.

Colleges across the country lower scores after last spring's protests

Stevens noted free speech scores fell for most universities across the country in the 2025 report, largely prompted by student encampments and administrative responses to protests.

“Their overall ranking may have not gone down a lot, but the score itself did,” Stevens said.

Between the 2024 and 2025 report, IU's overall score fell from 31.51 to 24.67.

Other Big Ten schools saw significant drops, too; University of Michigan fell from a 55.46 score and 47th place overall to a 41.11 score and 186th overall. Ohio State fell from a 54.54 score and 52nd place to a 42.31 score and 174th place.

Stevens said IU’s survey responses, combined with last semester’s vote of no confidence against President Pamela Whitten and growing faculty unrest demonstrate the need for change in rebuilding trust between students, faculty and administration.

“Students and faculty are both unhappy,” Stevens said. “I do think trust might be hard to restore.”

Reach Brian Rosenzweig at [email protected] . Follow him on Twitter/X at @brianwritesnews .

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Report Indiana University 2nd worst public university for free speech

UCLA aims to rebuild trust after protests with new ‘free speech’ zones, more security, dialogue

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UCLA, riven by violent protests over the Israel-Hamas war last spring, on Thursday unveiled a plan to rebuild campus trust and connections with enhanced safety measures, broader dialogue across differences, free speech guidelines and stronger efforts to support diversity.

In a letter to the Bruins community three weeks before fall classes begin, interim Chancellor Darnell Hunt said the “challenging spring” underscored the pressing need for new initiatives to repair the damage to campus trust and unity.

UCLA drew global attention in April, when video captured a violent nighttime attack on a pro-Palestinian encampment by counterprotesters armed with metal pipes, wooden planks, fists and fireworks. Law enforcement forcibly dismantled the encampment shortly afterward and arrested 231 people, including about 90 students. The security lapses prompted UCLA to reassign the police chief. Faculty members outraged by the police actions held votes to censure and express no confidence in then-Chancellor Gene Block, which failed.

Meanwhile, a congressional committee summoned Block to confront him about his handling of antisemitism, and three Jewish students sued UCLA for failing to protect their access to campus walkways and buildings, which they said Palestinian supporters blocked after asking whether they were Zionists.

In an effort to move forward, Hunt said his four-point plan would aim for a “safer, stronger UCLA” featuring reviews of policing practices, campuswide efforts to build community and updated guidelines on free speech activities.

“As a campus that promotes inclusive excellence, we must protect the ability for Bruins of all backgrounds and identities to feel safe, welcome, respected and able to participate fully in campus life,” Hunt wrote. “We may not always see eye-to-eye on important and topical issues, but if we engage one another with respect and empathy, we can both grow as people and maintain a healthy academic environment for everyone.”

Students kick off fall semester with protests that adhere to UC/CSU zero-tolerance bans

Student protesters at UC Berkeley and San Francisco State stayed in line with regulations being enforced at California’s public universities this school year, but made it clear they intend to keep their concerns about the war in Gaza front and center.

Aug. 29, 2024

UCLA’s new free speech guidelines are in line with strict new University of California guidance on protest management. All UC campuses have been directed by UC President Michael V. Drake to post rules about free speech and notify students about them before the fall term begins, a move to comply with a state legislative mandate. UCLA and six other UC undergraduate campuses begin instruction the week of Sept. 23; UC Berkeley and UC Merced started last month.

UCLA’s policies, issued Wednesday, are effective immediately as interim rules until they are finalized after a 60-day public review process. They specify approved free speech zones, omitting Royce Quad as one of them. The quad was a major conflict zone last spring as the site of both the Palestine Solidarity Encampment and a pro-Israel area featuring a massive jumbotron that projected video loops of the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas militants in southern Israel.

The free speech zones include Bruin Walk and Plaza outside the student union and Pauley Pavilion, along with the east lawn area next to the Janss steps.

The rules prohibit tents, campsites and other temporary structures on UCLA property without prior approval and blocking of access to walkways and buildings. Amplified sound will be banned during marches but otherwise generally allowed with some restrictions. Concealing one’s identity while breaking laws or rules will be prohibited. In addition, the rules detail procedures for holding campus events and reiterate that the campus will be closed from midnight to 6 a.m. for activities with limited exceptions.

In addition to new free speech policies, the plan includes a renewed focus on campus safety and well-being. After the melee overnight on April 30, UCLA created a new Office of Campus Safety , hired former Sacramento Police Chief Rick Braziel to head it and moved all policing and emergency management programs to that office. The office, along with the University of California, is reviewing the safety protocols and police response to the spring protests.

Zero tolerance at UC campuses in new order banning encampments, masking, blocking paths

The University of California will enforce rules against encampments, blocking pathways and wearing some face masks as students begin returning to campus after a protest-filled spring, the system president told the UC community.

Aug. 19, 2024

But Hunt said the office will expand its responsibilities beyond protest management. A 2022 report on campus safety noted that students, faculty and staff expressed concerns not only about campus policing but also mental health, protection from COVID-19, racism and sexism, active-shooter and earthquake preparedness and sexual assault. UCLA will include such broader issues in the expanded charge as it continues with listening sessions, Hunt said.

UCLA will also launch several programs aimed at building understanding between those who disagree. Across the UC system, many students, faculty and administrators say the differences over the Israel-Hamas war have ripped their campuses apart in unparalleled ways. Hunt said a first step in healing those divides is “seeing one another as real people shaped by complex backgrounds and experiences — not as simple stereotypes.”

UCLA will roll out a new speaker series this fall offering “challenging but empathetic conversations” on topical issues. The first event will feature Yasmeen Abu Fraiha, an Israeli Bedouin physician and fellow with the Middle East Initiative at Harvard’s Kennedy School.

“Speaking Across Conflicts” workshops will aim to strengthen skills for constructive conversations across charged political differences. New programs for student internships and teaching fellowships about effective dialogue are also planned. Many of the expanded programs will be housed in the UCLA Bedari Kindness Institute and headed by David Myers, a professor of Jewish history who has long been involved in bridge-building efforts.

“In a diverse community such as ours, part of our learning and growth comes from engagement with viewpoints we may not agree with or readily understand,” Hunt wrote. “While this may be uncomfortable, it is also what helps us deepen our thinking, weigh different approaches and consider new ways of looking at an issue. Ultimately, it advances truth, knowledge and understanding.”

Hunt also said UCLA would continue to look for ways to foster greater support for its diverse community. Its Office of Civil Rights, for instance, is reviewing reports of antisemitism, along with anti-Arab and Islamophobic discrimination, to understand how that affected student experiences.

“UCLA is a spectacular place, but it is by no means perfect,” Hunt said. “A commitment to rigorously studying the challenges we have faced and how we have addressed them — and making changes based on those findings — is essential if UCLA is to best serve its important academic mission and meet the needs of its students, faculty and staff.”

More to Read

As students return to Columbia, the epicenter of a campus protest movement braces for disruption

Sept. 3, 2024

‘It feels like a fortress.’ California students return to college amid tighter security over protests

Aug. 28, 2024

Judge orders UCLA to ensure equal campus access to Jewish students after pro-Palestinian protests

Aug. 13, 2024

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Teresa Watanabe covers education for the Los Angeles Times. Since joining the Times in 1989, she has covered immigration, ethnic communities, religion, Pacific Rim business and served as Tokyo correspondent and bureau chief. She also covered Asia, national affairs and state government for the San Jose Mercury News and wrote editorials for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner. A Seattle native, she graduated from USC in journalism and in East Asian languages and culture.

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