Ari’s Angle: Why Trump’s Assault on Free Expression Should Scare You
As some of you may know, I recently finished my second year at Duke University. I began my educational journey there in the fall of 2023, a semester where intense unrest erupted due to Hamas’ attack on a music festival, then followed by Israel’s immediate assault on Gaza. Like most people I knew, this was my introduction to the hefty history of the Israel-Palestine conflict.
As the Israeli government began its blockade and the conditions for Palestinians deteriorated, I joined various demonstrations on and around campus that advocated for an immediate ceasefire and called on the Biden administration to stop arming Israel. In the spring of 2024, I participated in the Triangle Gaza Solidarity Encampment on UNC-Chapel Hill’s campus. While I wasn’t able to stay during the entire duration of the encampment, the community that took shape in this encampment is one I will never forget. Unfortunately, I watched in horror as my peers were suspended, arrested, and beaten the day after I left the encampment.
The time I just described to you happened during the Biden administration, and I was (and continue to be) very vocal about the betrayal a lot of my peers and I felt as the White House condemned our actions and failed to protect us from police brutality and hate groups. However, the Trump administration has only escalated the attacks on free expression we have seen on college campuses and across the country by revoking the visas of college students and threatening to send the national guard to shut down ICE protests. Regardless of if you support the Free Palestine movement or the speech of those exercising their right to protest or not, Trump’s assault on free expression should scare you—no matter if you are a Democrat, Republican, Independent, liberal, conservatives, or libertarian.
The First Amendment’s protection of free speech has long been championed by both major political parties, just in different ways. For Democrats, freedom of speech has been emphasized in social movements, such as the Black Lives Matter movement, whereas Republicans have emphasized freedom of speech in information systems, such as the right to cast doubt on the 2020 election and vaccines. Due to the inherent polarization within these topics, this partisan split tends to advance a “free speech for me, but not thee” mindset. While the Democratic Party fights to protect freedom of speech to march for various social movements, they also are more likely to say that misinformation should be regulated online (which, objectively, opposes a free exchange of ideas that free speech champions). While Republicans are more likely to oppose the idea of regulating misinformation online, they are more likely to oppose someone’s right to kneel during the national anthem.
The reality that we as Americans face is that the right to free speech cannot be exclusive to the ideology we agree with or the speech we are comfortable with. This is a hard reality to accept because speech is incredibly powerful and, at times, harmful. However, infringing on someone’s free speech is also inadvertently infringing on everyone’s right. This is not to say that there are no cases where someone should be held accountable for their speech. Of course there are instances in which hate speech invokes violence, and justice should be brought to the victim of this violence. But that doesn’t negate the fact that protecting one’s right to express their beliefs is a prerequisite for democracy.
What I wish to say to conservatives that are supportive of the crackdown on college protests is this: Any president’s attack on free expression is only an added power to the Oval Office that can be flipped on you and your belief system when someone ideologically opposed to you enters office.
A president’s action is not always a temporary one. In fact, if you think about it, a president’s action is not just a singular decision applicable to one case; it can set a precedent for future presidents. A clear case of this is when a president’s action is challenged and battled all the way up to the Supreme Court. If, for example, Trump were to deport a college student with legal, permanent residency and cite their pro-Palestinian speech, and if the Supreme Court were to rule in favor of his action, that would allow any future U.S. president to deport a college student with legal, permanent residency for their political speech.
Presently, Trump may be deporting students for their pro-Palestinian speech, but if his actions were to be affirmed by the Supreme Court, it would not be only applicable to pro-Palestinian speech. It would mean that a Democratic president could take office and deport a student for posting political speech that challenged the 2020 election results.
Free speech must be protected. My peers do not deserve to be stripped of their degrees or lawful residence in the United States because they support a movement that the President doesn’t. The only way that we can preserve open dialogue and a free market of ideas is through supporting everyone’s right to express their beliefs.
This is the 3rd edition of Ari’s Angle, a summer of 2025 opinion series written by guest columnist Ariona Cook, shared June 2025. CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. The cover image and image below are found at the National Archives in the public domain, https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/downloads. Articles referenced includes those from NBC News, Reuters, and Philanthropy News Digest.
Excerpted image from the original Bill of Rights, as preserved in the National Archives