The public universities in Tennessee certainly warrant attention from the Tennessee General Assembly. However, with the recent passage of what they’re calling the “Charlie Kirk Act,” my Republican colleagues in the legislature continue to abuse their supermajority. This latest bill of theirs, which would punish students who signal their displeasure to guest speakers, does nothing to help those struggling with the rising cost of tuition. Nor does it do anything to address a job market that looks increasingly bleak for recent graduates.
Instead the bill, named for the Turning Point USA founder who was assassinated while speaking on a Utah campus in September, is the latest item on a conservative legislative agenda that has stifled free expression in our institutions of higher learning.
Their extremist bill should terrify us all.
My colleagues have already criminalized “divisive concepts,” which has emboldened students to record and report their professors for teaching about topics such as racial and social justice. Not to be outdone by their previous bad ideas and bigotry, those same Republicans have advanced the Charlie Kirk Act to more thoroughly eviscerate the First Amendment by severely restricting the ability of college students to demonstrate and to register their dissent.
These legislators’ extremist bill, which passed both chambers and has been sent to Gov. Bill Lee’s desk, should terrify us all. In part, it mandates suspensions for coordinated walkouts by students and banners they might display in protest of a speaker. This law does nothing to promote dialogue, nor does it make our campuses better spaces for tough conversations. Instead, it tilts power in protecting certain acceptable forms of “free speech” against others and weaponizes state authority to silence those who wish to demonstrate an alternative to the views being platformed.
Even though the Republicans behind this measure proclaim what they call Kirk’s love of debate and differing opinions, this bill would make it harder to engage in constructive difference through protest and dissent, despite such protest being a time-honored tradition of American student movements. But let’s be honest, Kirk was not someone “who encouraged everyone to love others,” as Rep. Gino Bulso, my Republican colleague who sponsored the bill, would have you believe. Kirk proudly trumpeted racist views that included calling the Civil Rights Act a mistake, calling Martin Luther King Jr. an “awful” person and questioning Black people’s qualifications and achievements, particularly those of Black women in elevated positions such as Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. Nothing about how Kirk lived his life was “civil” or “neutral” or aligned with the values of democracy and justice for all.
As I told my Republican colleagues on the floor, “It’s ironic that this body is talking about free speech when we had professors in Tennessee schools expelled and suspended when they did not mourn the death of Charlie Kirk, when they said that his statements were problematic, and that the way he died did not redeem the way he lived.” This bill is hypocrisy at its worst. It would punish those who engage in speech that challenges power and uplifts moral courage in the face of pressure. At the same time, it would protect state-sanctioned discrimination.
Students who engage in protests are a vital part of American history, especially here in Tennessee.
Free speech is not just the right to engage in favored speech, it is also the unobstructed right to engage in moral dissent. This is what my Republican colleagues are so terrified of, and what they want to silence. Students who engage in protests are a vital part of American history, especially here in Tennessee. In the 1960s, students sat down as a way of standing up to Jim Crow, and through continued disruption made our state capital, Nashville, the first Southern city to desegregate its lunch counters. College students in Nashville — including the late Rep. John Lewis, Bernard Lafayette, who died last month, and Diane Nash — are the model of what standing up for free speech, democracy and dissent looks like.
Their legacy is one of many reasons we should be promoting nonviolent protest at our colleges and universities, not discouraging it. Hopefully, this blatantly unconstitutional law will be struck down by the courts and serve as a warning to all government officials promoting censorship that protesters will not be silent and that those demanding racial and social justice will not be dragged backward in history.
Rep. Justin Jones is the youngest Black lawmaker in Tennessee and represents the people of House District 52 in Nashville, one of the most diverse districts in state