Frequently Asked Questions

Freedom of speech is the right of a person to articulate opinions and ideas without interference or retaliation from the government. The term “speech” constitutes expression that includes far more than just words, but also what a person wears, reads, performs, protests and more.

In the United States, freedom of speech is strongly protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, as well as many state and federal laws. The United States’ free speech protections are among the strongest of any democracy; the First Amendment protects even speech that many would see as offensive, hateful or harassing.

The Constitution prohibits UC Irvine, as a public institution, from banning or punishing speech based on its content or viewpoint. Because campus policy permits Registered Campus Organizations to invite speakers to campus and provides access to campus venues for that purpose, the university cannot take away that right or withdraw those resources based on the views of the invited speaker. Doing so would violate the First Amendment rights of the student group. Only under extraordinary circumstances, described below in the “Which types of speech are not protected by the First Amendment?” section, can an event featuring a speaker invited this way be cancelled.

Secondly, once a speaker has been invited by a student group, the campus is obligated and committed to acting reasonably to ensure that the speaker is able to safely and effectively address his or her audience, free from violence or disruption.

This all means that, over the next few years, some of your most deeply held views may be challenged. So be prepared for that.

But don’t worry about it. Finding yourself challenged by faculty, fellow students and even outsiders comes with the territory of having made the decision to pursue higher education. It is, in fact, the entire point.

We cannot and should not keep you safe from ideas in society that you don’t like. We are committed to empowering you to engage with ideas, not shielding you from ideas that we think you can’t handle. You are here to learn how to handle all ideas, regardless of how complex or controversial.

As the great University of California President Clark Kerr put it during the free speech debates of the 1960s, “the university is not engaged in making ideas safe for students. It is engaged in making students safe for ideas.”

This is why we cannot and will not censor or punish people merely because they express ideas we do not like. We will not prevent someone from speaking on campus merely because of the views that will be expressed. We will not deny someone access to a campus venue because of the content of their speech.

We will protect members of the campus community and their invited guests and speakers from efforts to silence them through disruptive activities. Of course, no one has a right to be free from criticism, and we will always ensure that members of the campus community can peacefully protest or hold competing events.

Let us commit to learning as much as we can from each other, and beyond that, let us commit to supporting each other as human beings engaged in a common enterprise to generate and transmit knowledge to humanity.

In a world where too many people seek out that which divides us, let us remain united, and let us go that extra mile to deepen our understanding of each other, to build bridges, to talk rather than yell, to debate rather than fight, to love rather than hate, to protect rather than exploit.

Let us model for the world how a diverse community can live and work together, even when we do not always agree.

No, this would violate established law and the rights of student groups to invite whoever they wish to the UC Irvine campus. Only student groups who invite speakers have the authority to disinvite them.

The Supreme Court has said that public entities like UC Irvine have discretion in regulating the “time, place, and manner” of speech. The right to speak on campus is not a right to speak any time, at any place and in any manner that a person wishes. The campus can regulate where, when and how speech occurs to ensure the functioning of the campus and achieve important goals, such as protecting public safety.

When it comes to high-profile speakers, UC Irvine invokes this necessary authority in order to hold events at a time and location that maximizes the chance that an event will proceed successfully and that the campus community will not be made unsafe. The campus heeds its police department’s assessment of how best to hold safe and successful events. The campus might invoke its time, place and manner discretion, for example, to ensure that an event with a high-profile speaker would be held in a venue that the campus police believes to be protectable (e.g. one with an ample number of exits, with the ability to be cordoned off, without floor to ceiling glass, etc.).

The need to consider time, place and manner regulations is the reason that we require students and other groups to work with the administration when setting up their events, as opposed to scheduling and creating the events on their own without campus input.

The Constitution guarantees freedom of speech by default, placing the burden on the government to demonstrate whether there are any circumstances that justify its limitation.

When it comes to controversial speakers delivering remarks on campus, the relevant exceptions to the First Amendment that have been established are:

• Speech that would be deemed a “true threat:” Speech that a person reasonably would perceive as an immediate threat to his or her physical safety is not protected by the First Amendment. For example, if a group of students yelled at a student in a menacing way that would cause the student to fear a physical assault, such speech would not be protected.
• Incitement of illegal activity: There is no right to incite people to break the law, including to commit acts of violence. To constitute incitement, the Supreme Court has said that there must be a substantial likelihood of imminent illegal activity and the speech must be directed to causing imminent illegal activity. For example, a speaker on campus who exhorts the audience to engage in acts of vandalism and destruction of property is not protected by the First Amendment if there is a substantial likelihood of imminent illegal activity.
• Harassment: Speech or other expression in an educational institution aimed at an individual on the basis of a protected characteristic (race, gender, sexual orientation, religion); that is also pervasive and severe; is a direct or implied threat to employment or education; or creates an intimidating, hostile and demeaning atmosphere is not protected. For example, posting racist messages on the dorm room of an African American student would be regarded as harassment and not speech protected by the First Amendment.

The term “hate speech” does not have a legal definition in the United States, but it often refers to speech that insults or demeans a person or group of people on the basis of attributes such as race, religion, ethnic origin, sexual orientation, disability or gender. While the university condemns speech of this kind, there is no “hate speech” exception to the First Amendment; hate speech is only illegal if it falls into one of the categories described above. In fact, on many occasions, the Supreme Court has explicitly held that prohibitions or punishments for hateful speech violate the First Amendment.

The Supreme Court has made it clear that a public institution like UC Irvine cannot prevent speech on the grounds that it is likely to provoke a hostile response. Stopping speech before it occurs is called a “prior restraint,” and prior restraints of speech are almost never allowed.

While the campus is constitutionally required and committed to doing what it can to protect speakers and to prevent disruption or violence, if despite all efforts by the campus there is a serious threat to public safety and no other alternative, a speaker’s event can be cancelled. This is a last resort, and never done based on the views of the speaker. The campus’s paramount need is to protect the safety of its students, staff and faculty.

Absolutely. UC Irvine supports the notion of a “marketplace of ideas,” in which speech that a person disagrees with should be met with more speech that engages and debates it. The First Amendment and the university are founded on the premise that we are all better off if ideas can be expressed and responded to, rather than be subject to an imposed orthodoxy of belief and punished for deviating from it.

Free speech is particularly important to a university like UC Irvine whose goal is the discovery and establishment of truth. Many ideas now fundamental to our understanding of the universe and our place in it – such as evolution or climate change – were initially attacked. Freedom of speech is so important to the university that one of the university’s bedrock principles is academic freedom, which protects faculty in their research and teaching, as well as students in their learning.