The First: How to Think About Hate Speech, Campus Speech, Religious Speech, Fake News, Post-Truth, and Donald Trump

A bestselling author and humanities professor, Fish (How to Write a Sentence) zeroes in on the First Amendment in this well-constructed analysis, offering his nonpartisan take on what it does and doesn’t protect and what kind of speech it should and shouldn’t regulate. He argues that the amendment’s language, and the jurisprudence that back it up, make it impossible for the United States to ban hate speech as many European countries have done, and that, despite the Amendment containing a religious clause, faith and free speech will always be at odds with one another. Fish declares that universities “don’t have free-speech obligations because freedom of speech is not an academic value”; in his view, schools are not required to host visiting right-wing provocateurs and “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings” are inherently antithetical to the learning process. And he explores Donald Trump’s bombastic “post-truth” discourse as an extension of cultural relativism, in which there is considered to be no such thing as an “objective truth.” The title’s “think about” is accurate: Fish’s well-articulated and substantiated argument offers no ideas about what to do about hate speech, fake news, or political polarization. More than anything else, this is a thought exercise for armchair philosophers and perhaps university administrators. (Oct.)