Why we must protect both Turning Point and Mark Bray

Last week, faculty and students signed a petition to oust the local Turning Point student chapter from Rutgers University. The call followed a separate demand from the group to fire Rutgers Professor Mark Bray, the author of the "Antifa Handbook."

As is often the case, both sides are portraying themselves as defenders of free speech while seeking to silence others.

Free speech is suddenly back in vogue on many campuses. Faculty members are suddenly aghast over threats to free speech after staying entirely silent for years as conservative faculty were purged from departments and conservative speakers were cancelled on campus. Democratic leaders like Hillary Clinton, who supported censorship under the Biden administration, are even declaring themselves free speech champions. 

The Rutgers controversies are a truly teachable moment on how free speech values demand more than supporting speech that you like. The test of principle is supporting the speech of those with whom you disagree, even those whom you despise.

Those of us in the free speech community are rarely called upon to defend popular speech. More often, we support the speech of those who not only hate free speech but hate us as well. Many of those we protect have worked to deny the free speech of others.

Soon after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, I wrote how the way to stand with Charlie is to stand with free speech. Charlie was the target, not the proponent of cancel campaigns. 

I was disappointed, therefore, when the Rutgers TPUSA members called for the firing of Bray. I have long been a critic of Brays. Indeed, I testified about Antifa before Congress, run columns on the organization for over a decade, and wrote a book discussing Antifa. That has included years of criticism of Bray and his book.

Bray has long been a controversial figure in academia. In a 2017 Washington Post article titled, “Who are the Antifa?” Bray wrote, “Antifascists argue that after the horrors of chattel slavery and the Holocaust, physical violence against white supremacists is both ethically justifiable and strategically effective.” 

Bray's writings have rallied extremists to this cause for years.

One petition states that "Dr. Bray has regularly referred to mainstream conservative figures such as Bill O’Reilly as fascist while he calls for militant actions to be taken against these individuals. This is the kind of rhetoric that resulted in Charlie Kirk being assassinated last month."

It also notes that Bray gives half of the proceeds from the “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook” to defending arrested Antifa members.

Despite such criticism, I oppose efforts to fire Bray. There is no evidence that Bray has ever engaged in violence or criminal conduct. He is an academic with clearly extreme views, but to fire him is to become no better than Antifa itself — the most violent and anti-free speech movement in our country. 

In his “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook,” Bray explained how Antifa is made up mainly of "anarchists or antiauthoritarian communists” who believe that "‘free speech’ ... is merely a bourgeois fantasy unworthy of consideration.”

Bray is now on the receiving end of a blind rage exactly like what Antifa has been unleashing against its targets for decades. He fled to Europe due to threats against him and his family. Whether you call it karma or irony, those who would thus intimate him are no better than Antifa. His firing would be an assault on both free speech and academic freedom protections.

In the meantime, other Rutgers faculty and students are seeking to expel Turning Point. Their petition accuses Turning Point of “promoting hate speech and inciting violence against our community.” Professors, including Tia Kolbaba, an associate professor of religion at Rutgers, reportedly signed it.

These faculty members and students are demonstrating the same intolerance that long ago changed higher education into the ideological echo chamber it has become on the left.

Neither side is prepared to tolerate opposing views, and both believe that their rage is righteous, whereas the rage on the other side is dangerous.

Drawing the line on free speech rights is often a difficult one. In my book, "The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” I argue for universities to focus on conduct rather than the content of speech. Occupying buildings, harassing students, destroying property, and shouting down speakers are forms of conduct that should be subject to suspension or expulsion.

Another professor this week has also raised questions over off-campus conduct. Elias Cepeda, a journalist and English Professor at Northeastern Illinois University, was arrested with a loaded firearm and a large amount of ammunition outside of the ICE facility in Broadview, Illinois, the scene of violent protests.

Cepeda is a suspected Antifa member and has social posts calling ICE Nazis and calling for armed resistance. In response to Homeland Security posting about an incident of ICE officers being attacked by a man with a weed whacker, Cepeda responded, "First of all, the video you just posted showed your Nazi asses are lying. Secondly, we’d all be morally justified in taking your Nazi heads off with weed whackers."

He recently declared, "There are things worse than a civil war."

He has called for teachers to come armed to school to defend students from any ICE officers who show up. He then showed up armed at an ICE facility. He was later released.

If Cepeda committed a crime at the facility or made criminal threats, his conduct can and should be the basis for termination by the university. It is not clear what, if any, charges might be brought in the case.

Meanwhile, constitutional protections for speech do not mean that speech should not be condemned. This week, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer supported the "No Kings" protests and declared that people should be “forcefully rising up.” Commentators like former CNN host Don Lemon called on minorities to get guns so that they can defend themselves against federal law enforcement officers. 

This speech is knowingly inflammatory at a time of rising political violence. They are the same voices that we have heard in every "age of rage." But that is the price that we pay for free speech.

The costs of the path chosen by many at Rutgers, however, are far higher. Yielding to our anger will place us on the slippery slope of censorship. We can survive with Bray teaching at Rutgers. We cannot survive without free speech.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of the bestselling book “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”