According to excerpts obtained in advance by Fox News, Attorney General Jeff Sessions plans to take aim at political correctness on college campuses during a speech at the Georgetown University Law Center on Tuesday. Sessions plans to declare that free speech is “under attack,” following the recent clashes of protesters at Berkley and other campuses in response to conservative speakers.
“Freedom of thought and speech on the American campus are under attack,” Sessions plans to say. “Whereas the American University was once the center of academic freedom – a place of robust debate, a forum for the competition of ideas – it is transforming into an echo chamber of political correctness and homogenous thought, a shelter for fragile egos.”
Sessions’ remarks come at a divisive time on college campuses. At Berkley, mass protest erupted surrounding the conservative speakers who were set to lead the campus’s “Free Speech Week.” These speakers included Milo Yiannopoulos, Ann Coulter, and Steve Bannon.
In the prepared remarks, Sessions intends to question who decides what is “offensive” and “acceptable.” He plans to highlight what he believes is the goal of the college education: “the search for truth, not the imposition of truth by a government censor.” Sessions warns that our culture is increasingly shutting down free speech and berating those who actually let it happen.
“This has allowed a cottage industry of protestors to crop up who understand school administrators will capitulate to their demands and are now routinely shutting down speeches and debates across the country in an effort to silence voices that are insufficiently orthodox on their pet issues,” he says in the excerpts.
Sessions has remained fairly neutral in the campus free speech debate up until this point. It is unclear if his remarks will signify any focus by his Department of Justice on similar First Amendment issues. However, it is clear Sessions plans to give a scathing review of state of America’s college campuses. “The right of free speech does not exist to protect the speech we all want to agree on. It exists to protect the very speech that we don’t want to hear,” Sessions plans to say.
