“Free Speech and the Right to Hate”
A Bill Moyers television discussion on this day explored the difficult First Amendment issue of free speech and hateful messages, in a segment called “Hate on Trial.”
Morris Dees, head of the Southern Poverty Law Center, drew the line between speech and action, arguing that “we have a right to hate; we don’t have a right to hurt.” The debate focused on the activities of the White Aryan Resistance group, which reportedly sent a member to Portland, Maine, where he incited local skinheads to murder a 27-year-old Ethiopian student by beating him to death with baseball bats.
Read the latest book: Nadine Strossen, Hate: Why We Should Resist It with Free Speech, Not Censorship (2018)
Learn more about the history of hate speech: Samuel Walker, Hate Speech: The History of an American Controversy (1994)
Learn more about hate speech:http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/hate-speech-campus-speech-codes
Read and learn: Harvey Silverglate, FIRE’s Guide to Free Speech on Campus (2012)
Learn about the 100 Year fight for free speech in America: Lee C. Bollinger and Geoffrey Stone, The Free Speech Century (2018)