On The Front Lines
New to OldSpeak: First Amendment Scholar David Hudson Discusses the Suppression of Student Expression in Our Nation’s Public Schools
“When I speak to public school students, the number one complaint they have is that they are not allowed to dress and express themselves as they like. Young people need to have the right to express their preferences for music, sports, political sayings and so on. When you trample that, you take away an important avenue to assert beliefs.”—David Hudson
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — New to OldSpeak, an online publication of The Rutherford Institute: First Amendment scholar David Hudson sheds light on his experiences defending students on the receiving end of harsh, authoritarian treatment by teachers and administrators for expressing their sincerely held personal beliefs. In the OldSpeak interview, Hudson talks about his book, Let the Students Speak!: A History of the Fight For Free Expression in American Schools, which documents the trajectory of students’ First Amendment rights, from the landmark Supreme Court decision in Tinker v. Des Moines to the present-day overreaction of zero tolerance policies which prevent students from speaking their minds.
“If we simply delegate everything to school officials, then constitutional rights will shrink. School officials don’t want the courts being super-personnel managers, but the reality is without the courts we would not have fundamental protections for students, or public employees,” stated Hudson. “Unless we have a fundamental recommitment to civic education and a move away from this censorship mentality, I am afraid we are going to stay where we are or perhaps get worse.”
David L. Hudson, Jr., is a First Amendment scholar with the First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University, where he writes for the Center’s website, speaks to the media and lectures on a variety of First Amendment issues. As Adjunct Professor of Law, he teaches First Amendment and Professional Responsibility classes at Vanderbilt Law School. He also teaches classes at Middle Tennessee State University and the Nashville School of Law. He is the author, co-author or co-editor of more than 30 books, and has written several books devoted to student-speech issues and others areas of student rights, including Let the Students Speak! (Beacon Press, 2011). In Let the Students Speak!, he gives a detailed history of student free speech, beginning with the earliest cases from the 19th century and documenting the struggle for student speech rights up through the present day. With the complex task of providing a safe environment for students in this post-Columbine era, many school officials, Hudson believes, do not consider First Amendment rights a high priority. Hudson works to remind students that they must continue the fight for free speech. “The battle for student free speech rights rages on in a dizzying array of contexts,” writes Hudson. But Hudson is hopeful that soon all students will go to schools “where debate and discussion triumph over control and censorship.”
