Most of us are familiar with famous freedom of speech supreme court cases such as Tinker v. Des Moines. The Supreme court is very clear what is and is not protected under the first amendment. All politicasl speech is protected. Even if the polictical speech is offensive. For example, in the supreme court case Brandenburg v. Ohio, a member made rasict remarks about different ethnic groups in the US. After being arrested, Clarence Brandenburg appealed his case until it got to the supreme court. The supremem court ruled that even though the speech was offensive, he had the right to express his views. The main reason that this type of speech is protected under law is because it does not threaten anyone or incite any type of illegal activity.
A recent twitter post by Rutgers professor Deepa Kumar could be seen as very offensive. While Ms. Kumar has a history of nutty Tweets and Facebook posts, this Tweet raised some eyebrows. Here’s the tweet:
“Yes, ISIS is brutal, but U.S. is more so, 1.3 million killed in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan #NoToWar @democracynow”
This is a shocking statement for sure. How does the United States even come close to the same level as ISIS?? Even though Ms. Kumar’s tweet is perfectly protected under the first amendment, it received a lot of outrage. Fox News covered this tweet and made a few obvious comparisons between ISIS and the United States to discredit the professor. Between brutal beheadings and burning people alive, ISIS is pure evil. They supress/murder non-radicals and treat women worse than animals. Max Abrahms, a political science professor at Northeastern University who specializes in terrorist studies was outraged after hearing of the twitter post. Mr. Abrahms sarcastically wrote to FoxNews.com saying, “Our government isn’t in the habit of rounding up thousands of young girls to have them raped dozens of times… or throwing homosexuals off rooftops.” It’s sickening to hear about what is happening in the middle east and to compare terrorists over there to the United States government is ridiculous. Although it is such an ignorant statement, it is still her right to express her own political views however she chooses.
cpe5047 says
Good analysis of the article. While I most certainly do not agree with the professors statements about ISIS she is protected under the first amendment. I think it’s important to remember that freedom of speech protects those ideas that we may not agree with just as much as the ones we do.