When to Suppress Speech

Here, I address when private agents should try to suppress undesirable speech.*

[ *Based on: “When to Suppress Speech,” Georgetown Journal of Law and Public Policy 20 (2022): 825-43. ]

1. The Question of Private Suppression

My question: When is it desirable for a private agent to suppress speech due to disagreement with the content of that speech?

Examples:

• Google firing James Damore for suggesting that men and women might choose different occupations due to different preferences, and that Google had an ideological echo chamber that prevented open discussion of the issue.

• College students shouting down Charles Murray when he is invited to speak on campus.

• Georgetown University firing adjunct professor Sandra Sellers for mentioning to another professor that black students often do poorly in class.

• Twitter and Facebook banning President Trump from their platforms in January, 2021.

Not my question: when the government should suppress speech; when private parties are or should be legally allowed to suppress speech.

2. The Case for Suppression

Two reasons why you might want to suppress speech:

A. Psychological Harm

Some people today claim that words are “violence” and that people are harmed by hearing the wrong political views. One theory is that certain kinds of bad political speech cause stress, and stress causes actual medical harms; hence, bad political speech is kind of violence.

This would be a convenient rationale for suppressing dissent. Naturally, my political views wouldn’t cause any stress since they’re all true and beneficial, and nobody would be stressed out by hearing such wonderful, sensible ideas. But other people’s political ideas, if they disagree with me, are obviously wrong, and a sensible person could easily get stressed out by hearing such horrible, oppressive ideas. So people who disagree with me should probably be silenced. What could possibly go wrong? There’s no way that dogmatic ideologues would abuse this rationale by claiming to be stressed out every time an opponent makes arguments that they have no good answer to.

In response: There is indeed evidence of medical harms from severe stress, such as that caused by child abuse or other serious trauma. However, there is no evidence of any harms resulting from hearing political views that one disagrees with. That’s just complete bullshit. In fact, hearing views you disagree with is probably good for you. It probably makes you more tolerant and resilient and helps you better hone your own views.