Speech First: Free Speech on Campus is Under Attack

A STREET LEVEL RADIO & BELIEVERS COMMUNITY NEWS INTERVIEW

Street Level Radio in conjunction with Believers Community in Menomonie, Wisconsin held an interview with Cherise Trump, executive director of Speech First, an association dedicated to protecting its members from toxic censorship culture, especially on campuses, and the host of the first new live show and podcast called “Well Said,” where she interviews experts, activists, professors, and students about free speech at higher education in American culture.

Street Level Radio: Today on Street Level Radio in conjunction with Believers Community news, we are talking with Cherise Trump, executive director of Speech First, an association dedicated to protecting its members from toxic censorship culture, especially on campuses, and the host of the first new live show and podcast called “Well Said,” where she interviews experts, activists, professors, and students about free speech at higher education in American culture. Thank you so much for joining us.

Cherise Trump: Yeah, great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Street Level Radio:  For our first discussion point, I wanted to ask in general about Speech First. It’s an association, like we said, dedicated to protecting its members from toxic, censorship culture, especially on campus. Can you give some history on the association and its roots?

Cherise Trump:  Yeah, so we’re a nonprofit organization. And as you mentioned, we’re also a membership organization. So, we defend our members’ rights to free speech on college campuses. And in a lot of cases, that means we will litigate against universities that violate those free speech rights of our student members. And that is something that we really pride ourselves on – on our precision and our focus going after these universities and holding them accountable. When students come to us, we’re able to act very quickly. And one thing about being a membership organization, it allows us to keep their identities out of the lawsuits, which is huge for them because right now on campus, students are not only worrying about being censored, but they’re worried about coercion and retaliation for being conservative or having conservative values. So, by being able to keep their name out of the lawsuits, we are able to put the students in a more comfortable situation so that they’ll actually come to us and tell us exactly what’s happening on campus and what they’re concerned about. Additionally, we do educate students. We go around to speak to campus clubs and organizations, go to big conferences, student conferences, and educate students on their legal rights so they know what to look for on campus. We also talk to them about taking ownership of their rights and their responsibilities to defend those rights. Helping them understand, ‘I’m an adult now, and I’m on campus and just because I’m on a college campus doesn’t mean I don’t have rights and responsibilities to uphold those rights of others.’ So, this is something that we try to motivate students with, to be more aware of and take ownership. We also advocate for students’ speech rights by creating model policies and educating the state and federal legislators as well.

Street Level Radio: Speaking of awareness, how would you make a student, who may not be aware, that this is happening to them – that it’s a real thing? And also, just how did you become aware of this? And how did you get involved?

Cherise Trump: Answering your first question, which is relevant to something that I’ve been noticing more and more as students enter campuses. They are usually very misinformed or uninformed about their constitutional rights. It’s just not taught anymore in the public school system, and it’s really unfortunate. So, a lot of times they will just go with the flow because universities have kind of this parental nature about them, right? So students will kind of lean on them when they need something, or when they need protection. But also, when a university administrator tells a student that you should report anyone who commits a microaggression against you, or you should report anyone who says anything offensive or even says a joke that you don’t like, that doesn’t really raise a lot of red flags for students because to them, this is something they’ve been hearing all through kindergarten through senior year of high school. And so, what’s happening now is this is becoming very normalized, this type of behavior: censoring and reporting on each other. And students, again, don’t know about their rights, and they’re not super passionate about them. They’ll just go with the flow. They’ll maintain that mental kind of complacency about it. And so, yeah, the education aspect of what we do is hugely important to our mission. Getting students to understand their rights. Look at your campus policies. Ask yourself if it’s okay to be accused of harassment if you say a funny joke that someone doesn’t like, and whether that is in violation of your free speech rights. We ask students why American free speech rights are so different than other countries. Asking them that question, making them think more critically about the free speech culture in this country, which is hugely different than other countries. When you compare our Constitution to other constitutions and legal systems around the world, even Canada and Western European countries, you’ll see that they always write exceptions into their free speech clauses.

In the United States, our First Amendment says that “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, and it just leaves it there. We do not write an exception to the Free Speech Clause in the Constitution. Additionally, the First Amendment is all about freedom of conscience, which we can talk more about later, but why that freedom of conscience is so important to higher education and that environment if you want to develop yourself intellectually? So, that’s a long answer to your first question about how to get students more educated and knowledgeable about their rights so that they understand when the schools are violating their rights and taking advantage of them.

But to answer your other question, I definitely have been all over the map when it comes to the policy world. I kind of came up through the national security and defense policy world. I studied that in school and worked in that field for a while. And I think a big part of it had to do obviously with being a millennial and coming up during 9/11 through high school. Everyone wanted to be on the frontlines of the issue, and that was not only the literal frontline of some of the big issues when it came to defending American freedoms, but it also was something that was near and dear to my heart because I had a lot of friends who were going overseas. And so, I wanted to work on policy for national defense.  And that is something that I was really passionate about for a while, and then it became very clear as I was working in DC, there was a bit of a disconnect between what was happening internally in this country and the folks in the national security world. They’re very siloed from the domestic policy world and especially when we’re talking about the China security challenge and China as a competitor—a country that is, in my opinion, a very huge threat to the American way of life. There are all sorts of domestic issues that the national security world wasn’t really addressing when it came to China. And there was a huge overlap with foreign influence on campuses, financial influence, not only in the finance sector, but also in campuses and other places. So, this is something I started to notice. I started to find it very concerning and began to study some of the constitutional battles going on in the country. It became clear the frontline had shifted from foreign policy to the culture war. I’m very passionate about these issues and am still passionate about the foreign policy issues. And I do, again, really think there’s a serious overlap that needs to be discussed more in that front. But look, I think what’s happening on these campuses is going to lead to a possible disintegration of our culture to the point where we will no longer be able to defend ourselves against our enemies abroad. And that is a huge concern of mine. And so, we really need to take care of what’s happening on college campuses.

Street Level Radio: That’s great to hear. Kind of circling back to the critical thinking, or the lack of critical thinking, that can be an issue because of the way, like how you said, campuses kind of act like a parent. I’ve never thought of that, and that’s so true. They’re coddling. So, in your blog about “critical thinking is a danger,” quote unquote, we’re speaking of the evil connotation that comes with being a conservative on campus, and the writer mentions a heavy burden. Can you describe some of these examples of these heavy burdens? And I want to know how it might differ from like a liberal student for example.

Cherise Trump:  Well, after speaking with a lot of students across the country, one thing that’s become clear is that obviously conservatives are the minority on campus. They always have been in a way. Just the nature of the institution has always been more liberal leaning and that’s how the academy has been designed. But the big difference here in the last decade or so, especially, has been the lack of debate and the lack of discussion. For everyone who is a conservative, their desire to engage is so high. They want to have these debates. They want to have these discussions, but they know if they engage, they’ll immediately be called racist or bigoted, and what do you do with that? It gives you nothing to work with. So, most stay silent and just kind of go with the flow and keep your head down for four years, which is horrible. That would be a horrible college experience because that’s not what college is all about. It is about taking your ideas and throwing them out there and seeing how people respond to them and then modifying them in order to develop real convictions. And that’s something that is so important to intellectual growth. There, of course, is the option for conservative students to debate one another. But if they decide to try to go into some sort of leadership role, they usually have to be very careful on campus. Like I mentioned before, there’s a reason why we became a membership organization: so students wouldn’t fear retaliation for telling us what was happening on their campuses, because there is a real, genuine fear.

I often hear from folks of different generations saying, “Oh well they just need to suck it up and deal with it and grow a pair—be more courageous.” And I’m like, “Yes, courage is a serious problem in today’s day and age. That is definitely something we can talk about as well. But this is an actual fear. There will be tangible consequences for students in a lot of cases if they come out as conservative or if they’re too vocal about it.” They’ve told me about their concerns; most students have experienced or are aware of incidents where professors will actually grade on a curve based on whether or not you try to propagate some sort of any kind of conservative viewpoint in your papers. But there’s also a number of students who have told us that they have not received the recommendation letter specifically because those faculty members told them they did not agree with their political position. There have been students that have missed out on study abroad opportunities because of that, or scholarship opportunities. We saw, I think it was Virginia Tech, a soccer player — and this is not the first case where this has happened — didn’t want to take a knee for the National Anthem, so she was peer pressured so heavily to get off the team. She was on a soccer scholarship, so she lost that scholarship as she left the team. This is not the first case that has happened. There’s a lot of scenarios like this all around. There are real tangible consequences for these students. Additionally, they are thinking about their careers, it’s so important to them, right? They don’t want to be lambasted all over the Internet. Gen Z who is on campus right now is more aware than any other generation of what is permanent on the Internet and what is possible to make up and say about a person. They know that if you Google their name, all of a sudden it can come up that they’re racist, bigoted, and terrible just because they took a stance on a conservative issue. And so, this is something again, they’re very aware of this, and previous generations did not have to deal with the Internet maintaining a record on you. So, if you are someone who’s willing to speak up, it’s incredibly courageous, especially today because it’s very dangerous when it comes to the consequences that will follow you.

Street Level Radio: And it’s training them for how to behave in their jobs. Because for people who have careers right now, there isn’t like a technical bias reporting maybe at your employer, but there is, you know –

Cherise Trump: There is. Yeah, that’s the concern too. When we talk about the type of students who are either going to be complacent and not engage, or the types of students who are aggressively going to shout you down and tell you to comply with their viewpoints, neither of those scenarios produce great leaders. Where are all the great leaders going to come from in this country? Looking back historically, the character of the founding fathers, what they risked and what they created, you ask yourself, “Where are leaders like that going to come from today?” Because if these students are all going to go become CEOs, (because whether we like it or not, most of these leadership positions you still have to have a four-year degree), they’re all going to work at tech companies, they’re all going to go run for office, local and national. They’re going to go represent us abroad and we have to think, what kind of leaders are they going to be if the beginnings of their intellectual development were clouded with fear or fear mongering? So, it is a concern. You don’t really know where it’s going to go from here, and I’m genuinely concerned for this generation.

Street Level Radio:  Speaking of bias reporting, you came out with this great report, and we actually had a class that we have at our church, and we went over it together, and it was very, very good for us to talk about. In there you mentioned that 80% of college students are self-censoring, and I’d like to talk about the relationship between self-censoring and free speech because I think unless if you think about it really, specifically, a lot of people think bias reporting is giving somebody the ability to speak their opinion freely by reporting what has offended them. And, have you seen that? Are people confused about that, and what is the relationship?

Cherise Trump:  Oh yeah, students are definitely confused about it. The way the universities characterize what a Bias Reporting System is, they state that it’s something that will promote diversity, equity, and inclusion on campus. It is something that will broaden the scope of discussion and debate—they put this real interesting positive spin on it. And it’s super Orwellian when you think about how they talk about this as if it’s good for everyone. But when you read the actual policies and how the universities define a “bias incident”, you’ll see that  an incident of bias is whatever the university wants it to be. And in a lot of cases, they will lay out examples on their websites. They’ll say an “incident of bias” can be “offensive”, “hateful” or “biased” speech, “unwanted speech”, “joking”, “stereotyping”, “microaggressions” etc. Again, these are all constitutionally protected forms of speech. The Supreme Court has held up time and time again that there is no “offensive” or “hateful language” exception to the First Amendment. The Court has done so in part because these terms are too subjective and broad. Who defines what hate is? Who defines what bias is? You know, if you think something is hateful, it might not be something that I think is hateful. So you can’t put a pin on it, and you can’t identify what exactly that language is. And attempting to write policies and laws around it would leave enforcement and discipline up to the discretion of whomever is in power at the time.

I really encourage students to read their campus policies — read your student handbook, read your harassment, bias-incident, and computer policies — because they sneak stuff in there that can be used against you! And a lot of students on the left, and we can get more into this as to why we think this is, they are reading the handbook. They know which policies exist on campus that they can use against their fellow students, they’re talking to the DEI officials and other woke administrators on campus who are writing and pushing these policies that target speech. In many ways, these policies are used as cudgels to go after conservative students. I remember when I was in college that absolutely was not the case. We didn’t read handbooks. We just blindly signed things and just kind of ignored it, and no one ever tried to use the school’s policies against one another. But that is not what’s happening right now. Students and faculty know it’s a weapon they can use.

When universities receive these bias-incident reports on students there is often a path for disciplinary action that begins with calling the students into an administrator’s office to explain their action. We’ve seen that some universities will mandate diversity training or letters of apology for those accused. And pretty much all of the schools keep records on who is reported.

The scarier part, students use the reporting systems! The students will report on each other regularly, and they report on faculty too. And faculty have used it against students even. And when schools talk to students about microaggressions, what’s a microaggression? There are universities that have said it’s something as simple as asking where someone is from, or asking what they’re majoring in, or why they’re majoring in a specific field. Universities tell students they could take offense to that and call that a microaggression and report you to the Bias Reporting System. When students finally do figure out what this is, it’s oftentimes after they’ve been reported a couple of times for various things that they didn’t think were offensive, they start to censor themselves. And so, you mentioned the self-censorship is at an all-time high on campuses — 80% right now, and that was based on last year’s research, and I can only imagine what it’s going to be this year. In addition to the self-censorship issue, students are also thinking that it’s okay to use violence in response to someone’s speech. I think in that same report, 23% of students said that they think it’s okay to use violence if you disagree with the way that someone has spoken about something, or what they’ve said. They are now believing that speech is actual physical violence, and this mindset is really adding to the self-censorship issue that we call ‘chilled speech’. Students are not wanting to speak up. They don’t know what they can talk about or what they can get in trouble for. They’re walking on eggshells all the time. If someone says a joke, for example, we’ve seen incidents where someone said a joke that they thought was funny and another person laughed at it, and the person who laughed got reported in addition to the person who told the joke.

And we’ve talked about the way students use social media, they report on each other all the time for emojis and hashtags — things that they found offensive. Like, have you been online ever and not seen something that has offended you? Do you go on Twitter these days and not see something that doesn’t offend you? So, they are just ready to be offended and the universities are preparing them to have that mindset. “Get ready guys, get ready to be offended, get ready to use the reporting system, and to report on each other every time you’re offended.” There’s so little camaraderie on campus. Everyone’s looking at each other as if they’re an enemy or a potential enemy who’s going to offend them. And that’s a real concern because again, this is getting very normalized, and it’s becoming part of the language they’re using very regularly. So, I’m happy to talk about the lawsuits. A lot of our lawsuits are focused on the Bias Reporting Systems because this is something our student members have alerted us to, and you can see it’s very, very insidious. And it is going to lead to the destruction of the college campus as we know it.

Street Level Radio: We were discussing the Virginia Tech court case that’s a big deal right now. I’d love to hear anything you want to share about what’s going on it with, and for you personally what does that mean for you and your job? Because I think that is an interesting angle where we can see how you personally doing this as a young person, is also a boldening thing that could be very exciting to hear for the students that I know.

Cherise Trump:  Yeah, so there’s a lot of avenues to join the fight in the advocacy and policy world even when you’re young, especially when you’re young. The US specifically has a lot of these great alumni organizations and associations that kind of pave the way if you do want to get involved with your state politics or your national policy world stuff. It’s really easy to just kind of get your foot in the door if you just ask. Feel free to reach out to Speech First and tell us your story. Let me know if you’re looking to move to the area in DC, I’m always happy to grab coffee and chat about your campus experiences.

But on the Bias Reporting System issue with Virginia Tech, (we actually just won earlier this year in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals against the University of Central Florida on a very similar issue). Virginia Tech, of all the schools we’ve sued or interacted with, I think this one is where students use the Bias Reporting System the most. They report on each other for everything on this campus. I don’t know what it is about the campus, but they just love using this Bias Reporting System. And so, you have students who are just terrified to talk to us. I’ve interviewed students for this lawsuit who are like, “Hold on, I have to move to another room because there are students here, and I don’t want them to know my views because I’m afraid they’ll hear and they’ll report me.” She actually used the phrase, “They will report me.” That is what the mentality is right now. Not just that they’ll hate me because I’m a conservative, but that “they will report me”. So, that is something that is deeply concerning for students. They are worried too about when the school receives reports on you, that they’re keeping records. What happens when the school administrators, who are oftentimes very far left, know who all the conservatives on campus are because of this Bias Reporting System? And they know who to target. They know who if there’s a scholarship opportunity comes up, they know who not to email about it, right? So, they have probably like a running list of all the students that they don’t like that they consider bad eggs, right? Just keep in mind what this Bias Reporting System is. It’s not just the disciplinary action, it’s the recordkeeping, the investigatory aspect, and that’s even creepier in its own way.

So, in saying all that, Virginia Tech has a really bad Bias Reporting System, and we sued the school a little while ago, about a year and a half ago, and we just argued in front of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals this last October actually. We’re very excited and eagerly awaiting the Fourth Circuit’s opinion and what their decision is going to be on this. And we currently have a circuit split on the issue of Bias Reporting Systems. I don’t want to get too much into legal jargon on this, but we have won a number of cases before different circuit courts of appeals on the Bias Reporting System issue. So, if the Fourth Circuit rules against us, that really does kind of prime the issue for Supreme Court Review. And that would be huge for us because, again, this is an issue that I think is one of the biggest policy issues on campus that really allows for censorship and coercion of speech. And getting rid of these Bias Reporting Systems would be huge for the campus climate.

And to lay it out, what happens oftentimes when someone gets reported to the bias response team or, you know, schools call it different things, but a Bias Reporting System is kind of the generic term, they will usually get an email that says, “You have to come meet with the Dean,” because these teams are administrative bodies. So oftentimes, they’ll have a Dean or some DEI staff, some counselors, some additional faculty member. Sometimes even the campus police officer will be on this administrative team of this Bias Response Team. And you’ll get an email that says, “You’ve been reported”. Doesn’t tell you what for, or by who. You don’t ever get to face your accuser. You’re called in to go talk to the Dean or another administrator about this incident. So, assuming you don’t know your rights, and you don’t know to ask if that meeting is optional, which I always tell students, always ask if the meeting is optional. When I was 19 if the dean called me into the office, I wasn’t going to question it. You’re first instinct is “Okay I’ll go to the office and see what this is about”. You go, and oftentimes you’ll be told what the incident was, and that you need to either write some kind of apology for the incident, or you have to take some sort of diversity training, or counseling to help you become a “better communicator”.

This is insane when you think about it. It’s not just indoctrination. This is stuff that you’re seeing happening in China with the Uighur community, the re-education camps, right? You’re being told that you offended someone, even if it was just a slight, maybe a puke face emoji or something online,  and now you have to write an apology to someone who’s faceless and nameless because you don’t know who they are. You might not even remember the incident, but now you have to take a diversity training class to re-educate yourself on how to speak properly.

So, these are super creepy policies on campuses, and a lot of folks, especially off campus, do not know that they exist because the schools do a great job keeping them off the public’s radar, and only announcing them to the students through their emails and in freshman orientations. So, check out your school, you can use the tracker on our website that currently looks at over 800 universities, or you can Google your school’s name and search the name with “Bias Reporting System”. Guaranteed, it’s going to come up. We’re going to keep adding schools to our tracker, so be sure to check it out at speechfirst.org. You can go to the Bias Reporting System page and you’ll see that you can see your State and see if your school has a Bias Reporting System. We’ve linked it to the website of your campus so you can actually see what the policy is on the campus. So that’s something that we hope is a great resource for students, faculty, and parents because you should be looking into these things. We can talk more about what the students can do — we should be looking into these things before you even apply to the schools in my opinion.

So, a lot of these schools have these Bias Reporting Systems. We’re the only ones that have sued universities on this issue. And as we mentioned, it’s these anonymous reporting systems where schools will investigate, maintain records, and then eventually discipline students for “bias incidents”.

Street Level Radio: Yeah, it’s interesting what you said: “Not only will they hate me, they’ll report me.” I mean to me that is like, to be super dramatic and I might edit this out, a witch trial.

Cherise Trump: Yeah, it is.

Street Level Radio: You can’t report someone for being Wiccan. You would get murdered for that, but you can report someone for being conservative. So, I’m happy to hear that logic seems to be winning out.

Cherise Trump:  It’s an uphill battle. But part of the reason our organization was founded is because, while it’s helpful in some ways to write letters to the schools letting them know they’re violating the Constitution, at the end of the day, a lot of these schools are bad actors and they won’t correct their policies until you take legal action against them. They have in-house counsel who should tell them that their policies are not constitutionally sound. They’re not dumb. They didn’t get to where they are by being dumb. The leadership didn’t start making $600,000 as a university administrator because they’re dumb. They have a political objective in a lot of cases. They have a political agenda, and they are finding ways to impose that on the campus. These Diversity, Equity, Inclusion Departments that have been popping up are getting millions of dollars of school funding. And oftentimes they’re the ones that house these Bias Reporting Systems because that’s what they were basically assigned to do to, to hunt down the people that are dissidents on campus. And to either beat them into fear with policies, so they won’t speak up, or get them into a position where they start to agree with you; brainwash them and change their minds.

And you know I don’t think you’re being dramatic by saying “witch hunt.” It’s something that is also out of, when you think to a more recent example, it’s something out of East Germany. This is essentially the Stasi asking people to anonymously report on their neighbors, their friends, and their family members. You know, we don’t need Orwell to be the one to tell us that this is bad. We’ve seen it happen in real life before, and this is not going to be limited to the campus for much longer. I just saw an article the other day: New York City has a Bias Reporting System now, and so people can actually report to the police for incidents of “bias”. There’s a weird policing mentality that is really starting to be born out of this. Georgetown University has “bias incidents” listed as a crime you can report on their campus police website. It’s not just being used as an anti-harassment thing; they’re actually thought police now. They’re actually saying that this is a crime to actually disagree or offend someone verbally. It’s concerning to see this will be something that leaves campuses and puts itself into other institutions. So, we really got to nip it in the bud here because it’s really disconcerting.

Street Level Radio: Well I want to circle back. You mentioned administrators and a salary amount that one was making, and you had a report on the Biden loan forgiveness, and I want to talk a little bit about that because I read it, and I was very surprised at the angle that you took. Can you just summarize your opinion piece? It’s on your website speechfirst.org, but just summarize for us.

Cherise Trump: Yeah, because I thought no one was talking about this issue enough. I think I call it there, “With Biden’s Student Loan Forgiveness, the Racketeers Win Again.” Because it’s not hard to find information online how much some of these administrators make. Most of these universities have to report their highest paid salaries on their campuses in their 990s. So, you can look up their 990s online, and you’ll see you have professors and administrators making $400,000, $600,000, even a million dollars a year. It’s insane. And when you look at some of the tuition costs going up every single year, who is to blame right now for the student loan crisis? Yes, certain students are probably irresponsible with their debt, and there’s this mentality that student debt doesn’t really count. That is a problem in itself. But the bigger problem here is the universities. These are huge money makers, and they are just sucking up the money. I always bring up Georgetown because it’s my alma mater, so I feel like I can just say whatever I want about it. And I was on that campus when things were falling apart. There is an actual Instagram page called ‘Georgetown.HotMess.’ where everyone would take videos and pictures of the campus of how it’s falling apart: the gross, disgusting library, flooding, bathrooms just constantly breaking.… And it is $75,000 a year to go to that school. Where is that money going? That’s just in tuition, not even counting the endowments, the hundreds of millions of dollars in endowments that these universities are getting from either foundations, or from the government, or from foreign governments. And so, this is something that is concerning because you’re asking yourself, “Where’s the money going?” And why do they keep increasing tuition costs even when the economy is struggling? And it’s become very clear that students are having a hard time affording this.

The universities are not oblivious to the fact that there’s a student debt crisis, and they’re not even admitting to the role that they’re playing in it because they’re getting away with it. And so, when the government forgives that debt, that’s just more incentive to up the ante, up the prices, keep it going. “Oh, the government will just pay it, we’ll just keep doing it then.” I mean, there’s literally no consequences to what they’re doing. And again, let’s keep in mind, they are so guilty in the fact that they are charging people $75,000 a year for degrees that they know, they know, these students will not graduate making that much money back. People always bring up the underwater basket weaving degree, but there are degrees in dance art, and feminist studies.… You can actually get a degree in these things. You’re paying $75,000 a year to get a degree in dance art, and you’re asking yourself, okay, the university has to know that there is no way that you’re making $80,000 a year with the degree in dance art right after you graduate.

So again, they’re very much the guilty party in my opinion in this case. I think I use a case study with how corrupted it actually can be on the financial side in universities. In that article, I name Pamela Karlan who is a law professor at Stanford University making a million dollars a year. And she actually went to go work for Biden’s Department of Justice while she was still making a million dollars a year from Stanford University. Then, she had her government salary of around $200,000 donated back to Stanford, who was her employer, or who was paying her even though she was working for the DOJ. And while she was working for the DOJ being paid by a university, she wrote legal briefs that would benefit the university’s current policies. So, a lot of corruption, a lot of special interests here, the government is not isolated from it, the universities aren’t isolated from it, and it’s something we should definitely be taking a much harder look at.

Street Level Radio: One other thing I wanted to mention is this model legislation you have surrounding the bias reporting, back to that. Do you want to give a little summary of that? And how somebody could become involved? I know we’ve wanted to touch on that later too. But specifically, with this.

Cherise Trump:  So, I mentioned the government’s role in all of this, and I think it’s time States step up. They have a huge role to play with the public universities. Public universities, which are the ones we primarily litigate against in our lawsuits, are much more beholden to the Constitution than private universities are.  They are taxpayer funded, which means they are extensions of the State. They cannot violate students’ free speech rights, and I think it’s high time States hold them accountable for this. I know legislators have these special attachments oftentimes to their state schools — there’s a lot of state pride attached to them, especially when it comes to the athletics programs. But it is time that they really step up and withhold funding from universities that have anti-speech policies and that are not respecting students’ free speech rights. Speech First created a model policy around the Bias Reporting Systems we’ve seen pop up everywhere, and I got some really great response from States, so we’ll see what they do. I made it clear to them, it’s different than K-12 public schools because actually with universities there’s a lot more flexibility for the state legislation to withhold funding. So they don’t have to go through the rigamarole that you would have to do if you were doing that to K-12. Meaning there is a direct line that they can actually affect serious change on these campuses through just passing a policy that held the universities accountable. Our model policy made the issue really simple to understand. It’s a little over one page, and it states that Bias Reporting Systems are bad for all of these reasons I outlined, schools should not have a reporting system on their campus that solicits anonymous reports that lead to the investigation, discipline, and recordkeeping of students for their constitutionally protected speech. And if a state university has one of these reporting systems, they lose state funding until the policy is eliminated. Very straightforward.

My hope with this is that it will encourage States to also come up with more specific legislation that targets the bad policies on these campuses. Because oftentimes what you’ll see is States say, “Oh, you are required to support free speech and show your support for free speech,” and the schools will say, “Okay, great, we support free speech,” and then they’ll turn around and launch a Bias Reporting System. Or they’ll create “free speech zones” on their campus, or they’ll put out a list of words students aren’t allowed to say. But as long as the universities say they support free speech, they’re following the law of their State, right? A lot of schools you’ll see sign these “Chicago Principles of Free Expression,” and it’s a great statement. The “Chicago Principles” are really great and I encourage everyone to read them because I think it’s well written and well done. The problem is, there’s nothing holding universities accountable to that statement when they sign it. So, you see a lot of universities who’ve signed it that we have either sued or have students on that campus who have told us that their school is absolutely not friendly to free speech and free expression.

So, again, it’s all about holding them accountable and really starting to hit them hard with that concept because universities have not been held accountable for decades for this stuff. We talked about the financial corruption. We’ve talked about these policies that they aren’t even afraid anymore to break the law. They aren’t even afraid to violate the Constitution, whether it’s because they believe the Constitution is racist, or they hate it, or it’s because they just know no one’s going to come after them for it. They know no one’s going to challenge them for it. And so, that’s what we try to encourage students to do: really challenge them and stand up for their rights.

Street Level Radio: That’s great. And so, at a high level, we could, you know, move politically to do something, but for an individual who is just delving into this for the first time maybe after listening to this, maybe they will start thinking critically and analyzing their role. Is their hope for that individual? And I know you work to advocate for these students, which is amazing, but what can they do? What can we do, all of us, to arm ourselves against our own lethargy and outwardly, if needed?

Cherise Trump:  Yeah, I think that’s a great question because there is a lot that the community member can do. There’s a lot the students can do. There’s a lot that faculty can do. I would say on the student level, know your rights, definitely know what those are. Understand the Constitution and recognize and take ownership of the fact that you’re an adult, and it’s your responsibility to defend your rights and to take ownership of them. But also understand your responsibility at the university. You want to have these discussions. Encourage debate on your campus, try to host debates, talk to professors that you think are friendly to that idea because the concept of debate is getting lost. We’re not practiced at it anymore. If you hear people debate and argue with one another they’re not articulate. They’re just shouting, and it actually sounds like a real argument. It doesn’t sound professional. It doesn’t sound mature. And I think we’re just losing that art in society right now. And students have an opportunity to reinvent this, to recreate this debate culture on their campuses. So, I encourage you to start debate clubs or to participate in them. There’s also a bunch of student organizations that are good for this if you’re a conservative student and you need an outlet, or you feel like you can’t really express yourself or your views on campus. There are organizations like the Turning Point Foundation, Young Americans for Liberty, Young Americans for Freedome, Network of Enlightened Women, and the Leadership Institute. A lot of these organizations have alumni programs, so after you graduate, they’ll connect you with people in the network who have similar career paths you want to pursue. They’ll keep you in touch with the folks who have similar views as you as well. But, I do really encourage the debate aspect because it is a lost art, and I’m really concerned for what that means for our country.

For parents, obviously if your kids are college-aged or about to go to college, sit down with them, and look through the harassment policies on your campuses, the schools that your kid wants to apply to. Look and see if they have a Bias Reporting System. You can check out our website like I said, or you can just Google the school’s name and “Bias Reporting System”. I very much encourage you to look up the harassment policies because most universities will hide stuff within those. They will have the Title IX Policy, but then they’ll have something called an “anti-harassment policy” or “anti-discrimination policy” that will say that you can’t use “offensive language” or it’ll be considered harassment. So, read those policies very carefully. The main areas you can look at within those policies is the definition section: how the university is defining harassment and how they are defining bias incidents. They will lay out examples. Oftentimes, that’s where you’ll see the kicker. You’ll see “offensive speech, unwanted language, microaggression, stereotyping” — again, all constitutionally protected forms of speech. So, that is just something to keep in mind, looking in advance. Go to a school that maybe doesn’t have a Bias Reporting System. That might tell you that they’re probably more friendly to speech on that campus.

For community members, there’s so much you can do on the advocacy side. Get your state legislator to pass policies like the ones that we are providing models of, which is this Bias Reporting System policy, or any kind of policy that really holds universities accountable. Bug your state legislators to hold universities financially accountable, and tell them, “Look, we don’t care about the sports team. We care about students having access to free speech rights on campus and developing their intellectual capacities.” And if the school’s not doing that, then they’re not serving their ultimate purpose. They are not ESPN. They’re not there for sports. That’s not what the university is there to do. That’s not what the institution is designed around. So, if they’re not fulfilling their mission, make sure your state legislators know that. Make sure that your congressman, your senators, know that. Definitely reach out. There are all sorts of grassroot movements that I will happily put you in touch within your State if you reach out at speechfirst.org, or you go to info@speechfirst.org. Just send us an email and let us know your story. Obviously, sending tips to us is always helpful as well. This helps us identify where the big problem areas are in the country with campuses, so that’s huge. And just again, stay knowledgeable. Stay aware of what’s going on. Don’t become complacent. I always tell students this, especially the students we interact with. They want to debate and speak up so much. Just get that courage and go write for the school paper, write an op-ed. There are some organizations, like Campus Reform and College Fix, you can become a campus reporter for them, creating an outlet for you. So there’s a lot of organizations out there that are particularly helpful for getting your voice out as a conservative student.

Street Level Radio: That’s great. So, from here, where are you going?

Cherise Trump:  Yeah, so I’m actually about to head to Phoenix for the Turning Point USA America Fest, which is always so fun to see community members and students who are so outspoken and so excited to express themselves and their conservative values. We are hosting a breakout session there on this issue of campus free speech, a little workshop on how you can defend your rights — talking about what the student’s role is, what the community members role is. A lot of the stuff we were just talking about. But it’s always fun to be in a room of a couple hundred students who are really impassioned about bringing the debate back to campus, bringing the issues back to campus, and expressing their ideas and arguing about them. I love to argue and debate, and if you can’t tell I enjoy talking. I think it’s so fun to debate because it really is just this exercise of the mind, and you get a high from it. And it’s something that unfortunately, students don’t get to experience, and I feel so bad for them that they don’t get to have those really, really interesting debates — the ones that will like open your mind and expand the way you think. Those are so vital to intellectual growth and to your education. It’s great to go to these Turning Point events because you get to see students who are right in the frontlines, right on the ground doing that.

Street Level Radio: That’s great. Well, I just want to thank you for joining us. If you’re ever in the Northern Wisconsin area, please stop by. We’re at UW-Stout.

Cherise Trump:  Happy to.

Street Level Radio:  Yeah. Any final words for listeners. I do think step six of your article. Called –

Cherise Trump: Oh, I think I know the article you’re talking about, the one listing out various ways to stay sane on campus.

Street Level Radio: Yeah. You quote Churchill. And I like that you say, “Channel your inner Churchill – never give in, never give in.” I thought that’s very cool, and –

Cherise Trump: Yes. I regularly channel my inner Churchill, and I encourage all students to do it as well. Yes. Never give up. The fight’s not over. It may sometimes feel like there’s just no hope. I mean, when I look at these universities, they’re these huge behemoths of institutions. They have so much money and so many resources. We’re a small organization and we are this constant annoyance to them, and the more we can get people chipping away at those behemoths, the more we’ll be able to finally get somewhere, and that just takes the “never give up” mentality. It takes a lot of effort, it’s going to take a while, but we’ll get there.

Street Level Radio:  That’s awesome. Thank you.

Cherise Trump: Yeah, thank you.