Provost Lee Bollinger last night addressed the three major First Amendment issues Americans are likely to confront as they approach the turn of the century: extremist speech, the government's subsidizing speech and freedom of speech on the Internet.
In a speech titled "Freedom of Speech at the Turn of the Century," Bollinger, a First Amendment scholar, discussed his predictions before a crowd of about 30 students in the Wren Room of Sanborn House.
Bollinger began by speaking about the protections granted by the Constitution for extreme speech. He said during the 1960s, the Supreme Court established most of the freedoms for extreme speech that are taken for granted by citizens today.
"The United States is the only country in the Western world that protects this kind of speech," he said.
Bollinger said despite the vulgarity of racist, sexist and other extreme ideas, "all the efforts to restrict speech have struck the [current] Supreme Court as abhorrent."
Liberal and conservative judges are united on this issue, he said.
He said campus speech codes adopted by American universities in recent years stem from the presence of "the liberal left [population] from the '60s."
"They're implanting their political philosophy under the guise of fighting discrimination," Bollinger said.
Although some factions of "the liberal left" do not support speech codes, such as the American Civil Liberties Union, Bollinger said other factions support the use of speech codes to foster communities of tolerance and political correctness.
Bollinger said he is "vigorously opposed" to implementing such a code at Dartmouth, and he does not foresee the adoption of such a code here in the near future.
He also discussed the extent to which the government can sponsor and subsidize speeches and ideas, which focus on particular opinions .
"One of the great tests of the 21st century," he said would be to clarify the vagueness that currently exists in this area.
For example, Bollinger questioned the constitutionality of the government sponsorship given to Clinton Administration officials, who are currently traveling around the country giving speeches that are quite political in nature.
Bollinger also addressed the role of the First Amendment in the new communication technologies.
The print media faces no freedom of speech restrictions by the judiciary, he said.
But a limited number of broadcast frequencies are available to television broadcasters, he said, which means that the courts have had to regulate the industry to ensure the resources are used in beneficial ways.
Bollinger said he thinks the "print media model will eventually be applied to the Internet," because there are no such limitations.
Following his speech, Bollinger fielded questions from the audience about current judicial issues.
One question involved assisted suicide, which has recently been constitutionally validated by two U.S. Courts of Appeal.
He said to his knowledge Oregon is the only state that has legalized assisted suicide, and that there is not widespread acceptance of such a right in current laws.
He predicted that the Supreme Court would rule that a right to assisted suicide does not exist.
