Students Rise Against Trump’s Free Speech Crackdown
What you will learn from this article:
How student voices at Columbia College Chicago are redefining activism in response to political attacks on free speech.
Why the next generation views media censorship as a threat to both democracy and creative expression.
What communicators can learn from students’ resolve to speak out, organize, and defend the First Amendment in polarized times.
“I am angry.” “My friends are angry.” “My peers are angry.”
Those sentiments are commonly expressed by students majoring in communications at Columbia College Chicago, one of the nation’s top media arts schools, in response to President Donald Trump’s attacks on free speech.
“As a student, it isn’t just frightening to see him dole out punishments to those who oppose him, it is also infuriating,” said Jayla Griggs, an illustration major at Columbia who hails from Mount Carmel, Illinois, a small town in the southern part of the state with just under 7,000 residents.
Born into a military family, she said she is embarrassed, ashamed and disappointed by her country.
Griggs said Trump’s “slaughter” of the First Amendment right to freedom of speech has been utterly appalling.
“Donald Trump very clearly does not want bipartisan media, but instead a band of reporters who are willing to bend over backwards to stroke his ego,” she said. “His censorship hasn’t just been limited to bashing, threatening and dismissing news sources such as CNN, The Associated Press, The Wall Street Journal and more, but has also gone as far as completely cutting funding from PBS.”
Griggs also cited the recent suspension of Trump critic Jimmy Kimmel as another example, but said she was relieved he was reinstated following an outburst of public support.
She said seeing journalists fight back oppression only to be muzzled, fired or silenced has sparked new energy among young people like herself.
“We don’t want to have to worry that in the future we may be sued for simply reporting the truth, making a joke or using our freedom of speech like what happened with ABC and Paramount,” she said.
In response, Griggs is fighting back.
“I have been making my opinion known, straying from my majority Republican hometown, joining protests, signing petitions and letting my voice be heard against a sea of red where I am from,” she said.
Griggs also encouraged others to fight, even if they are scared, just as she has been.
“I strongly urge them to unite, fight and vote for your future!”
Bryce Kruljac, an honors student from the Pittsburgh area, said Trump’s attacks on Jimmy Kimmel and his lawsuits against major media outlets are not surprising given that the right, while posing as “the guardian” of the amendments, including free speech, is in reality all too willing to bend the law to justify going after political opponents.
“This is just another of the multitude of hypocrisies that arise from the Republican ideology,” he said, citing the Second Amendment as an example.
“The left wants to heavily regulate weapons to prevent mass shootings and unnecessary deaths from happening, while the right opposes such action.”
Zeroing in on the rash of school shootings across the U.S., Kruljac pointed out that Charlie Kirk himself was quoted as saying those deaths are a small price to pay to ensure the protection of the Second Amendment.
“However, Kirk, Trump and others on the right have no problem with stripping the gun rights of the trans community and other groups they disagree with,” he said.
In addition, Kruljac said there is irony in Trump’s lawsuits regarding hate speech and libel, noting that the right often dismisses such litigation from the left as an “overreaction to a joke.”
Another honors student, Montana native Marina Bradley, said Republicans like Trump have long criticized “cancel culture” as an attack on traditional American values and institutions.
“Now we see Republicans literally canceling Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert and others who they perceive as opponents,” she said.
To Bradley, this shift has made today’s Republicans completely unrecognizable from those of the past.
“Gone are the days of protecting civil liberties and opposing big government,” she said. “Instead, they’ve taken a full 180 into a totalitarian nightmare,” adding that it has been a dizzying change to watch Republicans suddenly change their values to fit whatever was said by their leader that day.
“The Republican Party has been preaching individual freedoms for decades, and it seems as if now, they’ve finally decided to show their true intolerant colors.”
