STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Many Republicans have campaigned in recent days for people to be fired or prosecuted based on what they said about Charlie Kirk. Vice President Vance said this while hosting Kirk's podcast.
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JD VANCE: So when you see someone celebrating Charlie's murder, call them out. And, hell, call their employer. We don't believe in political violence, but we do believe in civility.
INSKEEP: Attorney General Pam Bondi said on TV that free speech is different from hate speech and said the Department of Justice will, quote, "absolutely target hate speech." Under criticism, she issued a statement saying that she meant incitements to violence. The administration has also talked of a broader crackdown on liberal groups. We're not sure what form that would take. Jonathan Turley has been following all of this. He is a law professor at George Washington University and the author of a book on the First Amendment. Jonathan, welcome back.
JONATHAN TURLEY: Thank you very much.
INSKEEP: And I know that you knew Charlie Kirk, so my regrets to you and to so many others. Kirk said, though, that he was an advocate of free speech. What do you make of the effort to crack down on his critics?
TURLEY: He was an advocate of free speech. He was the victim, not the advocate of cancel campaigns. And the way to honor Charlie's life and legacy is not with hypocrisy and intolerance. That's what he fought against. I mean, he was really roundly disliked by many because he held a mirror to the face of higher education to expose hypocrisy and hate, and he did that by encouraging people to debate him. So he had committed his life to debate, not to limiting speech. Now, that doesn't mean that people cannot cross the line. If you use your official or academic or corporate positions to espouse these hateful messages, you risk termination. But the default here has to be where Charlie left it, which is that, you know, we have to allow that hate speech is protected in the United States, and people are allowed to say any number of stupid insensitive things.
INSKEEP: Meaning that, just to be clear here, the government should not be prosecuting people based on things that they said no matter how noxious we may think they are.
TURLEY: Right. And so if these people are making these comments in their private lives, as long as they're not crossing the line - which is sometimes described as the Brandenburg Line - of imminent violence, of calling for criminal acts that are imminent, then it's generally protected.
INSKEEP: I want to ask about the other category that you mentioned having to do with employers. Now, clearly, the First Amendment is not directly implicated. An employer can associate with somebody or not. They can say you've embarrassed the company. You're fired. But a few years ago, conservatives were very concerned about this and did not want private tech companies, for example, deciding whose tweets should stay up or get amplified. There were a number of court cases. There were laws passed in Texas. There was a great pushback on the idea that employers really should be policing speech so much. Should employers be policing speech now in this case?
TURLEY: The problem with the employer situation is that the pattern it often follows is that the employee is making statements on their private social media account. Then someone researches that person, outs them and then ties it to their companies. And then it becomes a bottom-line cost for the company, and they often will terminate the employee, which they're generally allowed to do. And that obviously presents a serious problem for free speech. These are private actors who are engaging in this, and so it falls in that gray area. It falls outside of the direct application of the First Amendment. You know, employers can be powerful tools for limiting speech, as we've seen, and many conservatives have objected in past years.
INSKEEP: I'm also thinking about Charlie Kirk's own work and legacy. It included - this was one of his early products, a watch list of professors who were supposed to be monitored by students and other people for views that Kirk objected to. You can see that as free speech - calling somebody out. You can see that as his own version of cancel culture.
TURLEY: I'm not sure you would call it a cancel culture. And that listing was designed because conservatives and Republicans have largely been purged from departments. Surveys show many departments now don't have a single Republican left. And the result is that there's a type of captive audience for students who are middle to right, where they find themselves in these proselytizing classrooms. And the listing was supposed to identify those professors to avoid. But it was basically started by students, and these existed in different forms saying, look, this is one you want to stay away from. And, you know, the students actually valued it. Now, you can call that a cancel campaign, or you can call that simply information forcing lists (ph) to allow these students to know what they're getting into.
INSKEEP: The administration has talked of broadly targeting liberal groups. What do you make - in about 20 seconds - of the idea of the government targeting liberal groups because the suspect in Charlie Kirk's killing has made statements that suggest he is sympathetic with ideas in the left?
TURLEY: Well, that's a very dangerous line. I was critical when the Biden administration went down this road with conservative groups. Using ideology as a threshold for investigations is dangerous. I testified on that in Congress during the Biden administration. I - that hasn't changed. If you flip it, using ideology is dangerous as the starting of an investigation.
INSKEEP: Jonathan Turley is at George Washington University and author of "The Indispensable Right: Free Speech In An Age Of Rage." Pleasure talking with you again, sir. Thanks so much.
TURLEY: Thank you, Steve. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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