Free speech has become a hot issue in the past year. For example, many students debate and protest who their college allows to speak on campus. Should just anyone be allowed to speak on campus? Is allowing a person to speak on campus an endorsement of that person and their beliefs? In the wake of hateful rallies many people asked, should hate speech be tolerated at all? These are issues that are debated across the nation, and even around the world.

My personal stance on free speech is the near totality of free speech, with few exceptions, and only when absolutely necessary. I do believe that even hate speech and speech not supported by facts are protected and should be protected. I think this is important because if we begin to create laws that prohibit "untrue" speech or "hateful" speech, those in power may abuse those same laws to take away the freedom of speech from those who are speaking truth and not speaking hate. Can we always trust those in power to know what is and isn't okay?

I also believe this even in the case of college campuses. If we ban speakers due to controversial views, can't other schools do the same? For example, if a liberal group on campus protested a speaker for having anti-gay views, and successfully prevented that speaker from using campus facilities, another conservative group could potentially use that same policy to prevent a queer speaker from coming to their campus, which would undermine the goals of the liberal group in the first place.

Freedom of speech is not meant to protect speech which is popular or even necessarily correct. It's meant to protect voices that we don't want to hear. If we begin to limit this speech in dangerous ways, we are opening the door for our freedom of speech to be taken away in the future. Rather than taking away others' right to speech, we should use our right to have conversations with them, and open them to different perspectives. Simply turning away these voices only makes their views and opinions more extreme.