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“My whole career was in the balance over this badly-phrased tweet, the substance of which something like 76 percent of Americans agree with.”

In early 2022, Ilya Shapiro was about to start a new job as the executive director of the Center for the Constitution at Georgetown University, when he was suspended for a “racist tweet.”

“This is not the Berkeley hippies. In fact, the Berkeley hippies—now boomer professors—are afraid of this illiberal radical left that seems to want to cancel, if not kill them, for having divergent views,” says Mr. Shapiro.

We discuss the limits of free speech, when it veers into misconduct or harassment, and how to balance the 1st amendment with Title VI and other civil rights laws—especially on college campuses.

“A lot of what’s been going on in the last couple of months is not even speech to begin with. You do not escape criminal liability for, say, public urination on a building, just because you’re saying, ‘I’m being expressive in showing my displeasure for the organization that inhabits that building,’ or tearing down posters off private property because ‘I’m expressing my disdain for what those posters are saying.’ No,” says Mr. Shapiro.

He argues that it is not the laws—not criminal, civil, federal, or state—nor is it the university policies at most places that are to blame for what we’re seeing today. Rather, it is their uneven enforcement.

“MIT famously, even after admitting that some students violated their rules on blocking access to buildings, then said, ‘Oh, we’re not going to punish those students, because a lot of them are foreign and they’re here on student visas.’ And it turns out, if you punish them for these kinds of violations, they lose their visas and they have to leave the country. And so, in effect, MIT has created a system where foreign students can harass and intimidate, but American students can’t,” says Mr. Shapiro.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.