Plain Dealer Takes Bold Stance Against Free Speech

The irony is almost too rich to process.

The editors of the Cleveland Plain Dealer thought they were making a principled stand against ignorance in academia on Thursday’s podcast.

But they did just the opposite.

They went on an impassioned yet delusional tirade against free speech.

And while attacking holocaust deniers they ended up supporting the side that actually practices holocaust denial, the far-left antisemites.

These editors are so blinded by woke slogans they don’t even realize they made the case against themselves.

Here’s how we got here.

Senator Jerry Cirino announced the introduction of Senate Bill 1 this week. The Advance Ohio Higher Education Act is explicitly designed to guarantee the right to free speech on campus for both students and professors. The bill prevents professors from censoring or punishing opposing views expressed by students. 

It also protects the free speech rights of professors who won’t have to express university-approved positions in order to be eligible for hiring and promotions.

The Plain Dealer finds all that free speech far too scary.

What about flat-earthers and holocaust deniers, gasped Editor Chris Quinn. He ranted:

“If any student stands up in a class and says the Holocaust is fiction or the world is flat or any of the other nonsense conspiracy theories ... they’re required to address that. They’re required to have an academic discussion about it. And that’s where you get ridiculous. Colleges are supposed to have rigor. They’re supposed to be about truth and science. And that’s utter nonsense just because some fool wants to say the world is flat shouldn’t require the rest of the people paying good money for an education to sit there and have that debate. That’s what his philosophy is.”

That’s also the philosophy of the Founding Fathers.

It’s also the entire point of free speech and the First Amendment.

It’s why America is exceptional.

Disagree with someone? The fascist solution is to shut him up or lock him up. 

The Founders had a better idea. Educate the ignorant and prove them wrong in the marketplace of ideas.

Cirino agrees and says sunlight is the best disinfectant. The best way to dispel false information is to counter it with the truth. Let all information see the light of day and see what can withstand the scrutiny to emerge as the truth. 

That is the entire purpose of education. Not teaching what to think but how to think.

When asked at his news conference how to handle holocaust deniers, Cirino replied, “Let's educate and talk about the preponderance of facts that are to the contrary.”

“They shouldn’t be shouted down” because “the best argument in the first place is try to educate that person as to why their position might be wrong.”

Why does this simple and timeless truth rub Quinn and his cohorts the wrong way?

Because free speech scares them.

It threatens their shaky beliefs.

They think some ideas should just be forbidden.

Anything they don’t like.

Anything that violates the woke credo.

Anything that suggests:

• Men can’t have babies
• There are only two sexes
• Boys don’t belong in girls’ locker rooms
• Climate change is debatable    
• Natural gas does not pollute
• America is not fundamentally racist
• Parents know better than school boards...
• Etc, etc, etc...

Those ideas drive them crazy.

That’s why woke fascists hate free speech.

They want anyone who disagrees to be censored and cancelled.

They know their own ideas are indefensible.

So they would rather just get rid of free speech.

And that’s how Quinn and Co. end up attacking free speech by pretending to defend academic freedom.

Another great irony...the hill they chose to die upon – holocaust denial – is not even a conservative belief. 

It is widely espoused by the editors’ far-left brethren on campuses all across America.

And that is thanks almost entirely to DEI.

As it happens, Senate Bill 1 will also dismantle the entire DEI apparatus at Ohio’s public institutions of higher education.

President Trump’s executive order this week eliminating all federal DEI programs noted how higher education is among the institutions that have "adopted and actively use dangerous, demeaning, and immoral race- and sex-based preferences under the guise of so-called 'diversity, equity, and inclusion' (DEI) or 'diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility' (DEIA) that can violate the civil-rights laws of this Nation."

Senate Bill 1 will fix those issues at our state’s public universities and colleges.

And that’s what really drives Quinn and Co. totally bonkers.

The bill will eliminate the woke monopoly on accepted ideas and acceptable speech on campus.

It will leave woke ideas subject to the scrutiny of real debate and defenseless against timeless truths, such as there are only two sexes.

Free speech is also the best, and only real, antidote to the pervasive poison of antisemitism and holocaust denial by the left on campus.

It’s the leftist holocaust deniers who don’t want free speech. They’re the ones shouting down Jewish students across the country while trying to intimidate, harass, and even physically harm them.

“‘The Holocaust is a myth’: The link between DEI ideology and antisemitism,” is the headline of a piece written by two University of Kansas Political Science professors last year.

“The rise of Jew hatred on college campuses is the direct result of the authoritative status of diversity, equity and inclusion ideology throughout American educational institutions,” they wrote.

That’s putting it mildly.

Cirino warned us about “The Growing Danger of Kristallnacht on Campus” in the November 10, 2023 edition of On The Record:

The practice of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion has become gospel on campus. It is more like a cancer, according to someone who should know.

Tabia Lee wrote, “As a black woman, I was the perfect person for the job” as director of the DEI department at Silicon Valley’s De Anza College. 

But Lee ran into a brick wall when she tried to address rampant antisemitism on campus. She was called a “dirty Zionist.”

“I was told in no uncertain terms that Jews are ‘white oppressors’ and our job as faculty and staff members was to ‘decenter whiteness.’”

Lee witnessed antisemitism on a weekly basis in her two years as a faculty DEI director. She finally came to an inescapable conclusion – “I can safely say that toxic DEI ideology deliberately stokes hatred toward Israel and the Jewish people.”

“DEI is built on the unshakable belief that the world is divided into two groups of people: the oppressors and the oppressed. Jews are categorically placed in the oppressor category, while Israel is branded a ‘genocidal, settler, colonialist state.”

When she defended Jews and refused to attack them, Lee was accused of “actively abetting racist oppression.”

Lee summed up proponents of DEI on campus: “I have never encountered a more hostile environment toward the members of any racial, ethnic or religious group.”

Lee is convinced, “This outpouring of antisemitic hatred is the direct result of DEI’s insistence that Jews are oppressors.”

She warns, “When you stoke that kind of division and anger, you unleash fires you can’t control.”  

Lee concludes, “Administrators and lawmakers need to get toxic DEI out of higher education. If they don’t, there will be no true diversity and inclusion on campus, but there will be even more shocking hatred toward Jews.”

We don’t need to get rid of free speech on campus. We need to get rid of a toxic and intolerant ideology that foments such hate. It should never have been official policy at our public universities.

Quinn claims certain people (“morons”) should not be allowed to speak.

He believes free speech empowers bad ideas.

Cirino believes free speech is the answer to bad ideas.

Cirino believes the best way to disprove horrible ideas is with the truth, not censorship.

Quinn disagrees:

“I am so sick of this idea that morons should have their say. That’s what you’re saying here. Let’s have morons stand up, spout off stuff that has no basis in fact, and treat it like it’s equal to what we know to be fact.”

Quinn and Co. display the same hubris as all DEI cancel-culture warriors.

They appoint themselves as the arbiters of truth.

They want to decide what language and thoughts are permissible and what are not.

Well, those days are over...thanks to the November election, the U.S. Supreme Court, and legislation such as The Advance Ohio Higher Education Act.

Quinn calls Cirino a buffoon.

But the senator is not the one who ended up defending holocaust deniers.

Or opposing the Constitution.

If Quinn's paper keeps losing readers like last year’s 21-percent drop in circulation, perhaps the time for honoring himself will soon be coming to an end.

Garth Kant is Senior Press Secretary of the Ohio Senate Majority Caucus. He spent 25 years writing and producing television news for CNN, MSNBC, FOX, and local affiliates. He spent five years covering Capitol Hill and the White House as a print reporter. He is the author of the McGraw-Hill textbook "How To Write Television News."