The Party of Free Speech: A Hollow Lie

For as long as I have been paying attention to politics, the Republican Party has championed free speech. As someone who has long identified with the political left, I understand the compelling nature of this shining ideal. I myself profoundly appreciate the First Amendment and the protections I have received as a perennial critic of institutions I’ve attended. According to one poll prior to the 2024 presidential election, free speech ranked as the second-most important issue, valued by voters from both parties but especially Republicans. Given all this, I was not surprised that, at the beginning of President Donald Trump’s second term, the White House released a memo titled “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship.”

However, under the Trump, Vance, and Rubio regime, the Republican Party’s commitment to free speech has proved to be an outright lie. The detention of Mahmoud Khalil has provided a staggering contrast to the halcyon promises of an era in which anyone could say what they wished without suffering political consequences. Under Trump, this freedom is only permitted for the far-right and those who comply with its dangerous agenda.

Khalil was an activist protesting for divestment from Israel at Columbia University. Born in Syria to a Palestinian family displaced by the Nakba (the mass expulsion of Palestinians in the process of creating the Israeli state), he was a graduate student at the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs who held a green card. For his peaceful, nonviolent activism, Khalil was kidnapped by Department of Homeland Security agents who did not provide a warrant and moved to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facility in Louisiana, hundreds of miles away from his pregnant wife, ultimately blocked from attending the birth of his first son. For his activism, he was not accused of breaking any laws, but simply of undermining American foreign policy, through the use of a rarely-used and incredibly vague law. Everyone in the United States, including green card holders, is supposed to be protected by constitutional rights, but for Khalil, this was evidently not the case. His words from jail resound: “Justice escapes the contours of this nation’s immigration facilities.”

Khalil is a political prisoner, jailed by a country that claims to be a free democracy. He cannot protest the genocide of his own people by American weaponry without his rights being stripped away. Depressingly, other international students such as Rümeysa Öztürk and Mohsen Mahdawi have also been persecuted and detained, seemingly for their political speech. This is deeply dystopian. Fascism has already arrived, and all of us must speak out. If the Republican Party cared at all about their stated values, every self-proclaimed free speech warrior would be out in the streets — but instead, they’re suppressing practitioners of the principle they claim to cherish. The current Republican position is almost entirely characterized by total obsequience to their king. Free speech for me, but not for thee.

The Amherst Student Editorial Board has already written on this issue, expressing concern for the plight of international students whose stays in the U.S. may be threatened by brutal Republican-led crackdowns on open expression. As a domestic student born and raised in the U.S., I feel obligated to use my privilege to sound the alarm on this horrifying repression. It is impossible to muster pride for a country that would so violently censor dissidents.

No international student should feel afraid to speak their mind because of a hostile, fascist administration that’s hell-bent on silencing and imprisoning critics of injustice. Free Mahmoud Khalil and free Palestine.