Free Speech For Me, But Not For Thee

In the first address before a joint session of Congress of his second term, President Donald Trump boldly declared March 4 he’d “brought back free speech in America.”

Just five days later Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate student who participated in pro-Palestinian protests on the New York campus, was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents with intent to deport Khalil in a clear violation of his status as a permanent resident and green card holder, The Associated Press reported.

Despite being detained far from home in Louisiana where his life hangs in limbo while legal challenges to his deportation play out, just like you, me and any other U.S. resident Khalil has the constitutional right to free speech and assembly — one the president, if you take him at his word, believes in unequivocally. 

ICE detained a second Columbia student, Leqaa Kordia, March 14 for the crime of having participated in a protest, according to the BBC. Activist Rumeysa Ozturk, a PhD student at Tufts University, was surrounded and arrested by plainclothes ICE agents March 25 and is also presently detained in Louisiana, according to CNN.

These individuals have been stripped of not just their legal immigration statuses, but their humanity. In Trump’s America you can be disappeared for participating in peaceful demonstrations the government doesn’t like. 

We held those truths to be self-evident. 

By order of our free speech savior, government — a government which was at one point by the people and for the people — employees are being commanded to avoid the use of words including “activism,” “advocate” and even “political.” Doesn’t seem like Trump wants to hear much from the people. 

Democratic backsliding is bad enough. What makes it aggravating, if you can get a break from being terrified, is for the last decade we’ve all had to sit and listen while conservative commentators and some individuals drone on about how they’re being silenced and how free speech is no longer allowed on college campuses. 

What’s clear now is they were never concerned about everyone’s right to speech, just theirs. You can say whatever you want — so long as it fits within Trump and his administration’s worldview. Universities can teach whatever they want — so long as it isn’t “woke.” 

Perhaps the “absolutist” portion of “free speech absolutist” should’ve been a tell. Whether you’re an editorial writer at The Washington Post or pay $7 a month for a blue check on Elon Musk’s X, it’s clear free speech is reserved just for thee, not me. 

It’s fine to be all about Trump. Wear the hat, do the YMCA even, but I don’t ever want to hear anyone argue the right-wing is fighting for free speech. At the very least have the self-respect not to lie to yourself.