By Antonio D Fazzalari
Peter Lake, a professor at Stetson College of Law and an expert in higher education policy, visited campus Wednesday, to head a forum concerning the First Amendment, campus protests and free speech.
The forum came at a time of rising turbulence as protests continue to mount against “alt-right” speakers on college campuses.
About 50 students and faculty from USF St. Petersburg attended the forum held in Lynn Pippenger Hall.
“If you have a right to speak, you should also have the correlative right not to speak, and even in some cases to not listen,” he said. “I’ve noticed that I’ve been increasingly living in a society where privacy laws are breaking down.”
Lake sought to clarify the role of the First Amendment on campus while exploring the relationship between privacy, the U.S. Constitution and the pursuit of liberty. He spoke for two hours.
“Essentially arguing, not for the right to free speech so much, but the right to be free from speech — to find some space that’s safe for them to go that isn’t being invaded constantly by advertisers or ideas or thoughts that are disruptive or otherwise unwelcome,” he said.
Lake said that as we lose privacy, intimacy becomes a publicly traded commodity. As such, society is more likely to have people turn to the First Amendment to find protection and relief.
“When free speech wars are game on, a lot of times what we’re fighting over is identities,” Lake said. “Whose identity do you have? What’s your identity? What’s mine?”
“One of the things I notice in this society is there’s a lot of folks that want to take other people’s identities and move them to their own in some way,” he said.
Lake argued that this is what is happening on college campuses around the country, where people are contesting one another’s identities.
Faculty asked the majority of questions, covering a range of topics anywhere from race chanting to cross burning. Many of the students left in the middle of the forum.
Lake learned a lot about the First Amendment after his uncle got back from World War II. When he asked his uncle how he felt about all the flag burning in the ‘60s, he said that while it made him upset, he couldn’t imagine taking that right away. That’s what he was putting his life on the line for.
But today’s society is rapidly challenging this narrative.
“The First Amendment is always growing and evolving with the society that it’s in, and as we start to work at it, the ideas that we have today that are not typical become the ideas of tomorrow,” said Lake.
Pictured Above: Protesters outside white nationalist Richard Spencer’s speech Thursday at the University of Florida. Jonah Hinebaugh | The Crow’s Nest
