“If the opinion is right, [we] are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth; if wrong, [we] lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth produced by its collision with error.”
—John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
We at The Tufts Tribune believe in the sacrosanctity of free and fair information and its necessity in a free civil state. The informed citizen, the informed public, the informed statesman. None of these are possible without the freedom of speech. In America, this freedom stands on two pillars, the fundamental legal protection of speech by the state and the exercising of such speech among its private individuals.
Charlie Kirk’s murder, on September 10th, 2025, was both a recognizable atrocity and an assault on freedom of speech. Kirk was best known for engaging in political discourse on college campuses and for political advocacy through his organization Turning Point USA. His discourse may have been polarizing, but nonetheless, he was practicing open dialogue, the cornerstone of our country’s fundamental freedoms, when he was silenced. This reactionary violence evinces our failure as private individuals to do our part in protecting these ideals.
Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension, too, was a flagrant attack on freedom of speech. FCC chair Brendan Carr’s threat of investigation into The Walt Disney Company, which owns ABC, Kimmel’s broadcast network, was a stark example of state overreach into private expression of speech. This sentiment can be traced directly to the executive. In an interview aboard Air Force 1, while referencing networks like ABC, President Trump suggested that “maybe their license should be taken away…that would be up to Brendan Carr.” This despotic overreach into private speech threatens the other pillar of our freedom, the state’s duty to defend our liberty.
When fear or violence threaten the people’s ability or willingness to speak, the state defends their rights. In American society, this pillar is the most self-evident. Enshrined in our laws, protected by our government across executive, legislative, and judicial branches, these are the encoded values we strive for.
When the state fails or appears to fail, though, we lean on the private sphere. When governmental authority seems to encroach on our freedoms, we rely on a well-informed public to be able to investigate its leaders, present a cogent accusation of wrong-doing, and organize in protest, litigation, or any other check against their oppression.
Socrates, the paragon of speech, was put to death for his criticism of politicians and for his interrogation of divine things. Contrast this to contemporary life. Season 27, Episode 1 of the television series South Park is no small feat. The critique of those in power, particularly the nation’s highest elected official, is an enshrined American tradition, proof of an unprecedented liberty in history. The freedom of the press, too, makes clear the historical significance of our political position, allowing information and opinion to proliferate at scale. But they are not alone in this endeavor.
It is in the incubators of information, our universities, that fact and opinion are developed, discovered, and distributed in their most concentrated forms. We make no preclusion of the fact and opinion that derive from extra-scholastic life, but one must acknowledge that the mission and infrastructure of a university is expressly focused on these pursuits. In protection against the overreaching hand of censorship and the erosion of rigor in discourse, we laud Tufts University’s commitment to institutional plurality, a policy that allows students and faculty to deliberate freely. This is not a complete solution, though. The philosophical must be met with the practical, and active institutions must develop our community into an effective guard of freedom. Institutions like the Center for Expanding Viewpoints in Higher Education (CEVIHE) can serve as such a support, formalizing the attention to speech that grounds us. This attention requires intellectual diligence. It necessitates humility in our own ideals, and earnestness in engaging with those of others. Without this, the opportunity presented by institutions like CEVIHE cannot come to fruition.
We hope, by now, that it is clear to the reader that this must not be construed as a partisan issue. It is a fundamental philosophical issue of our way of life. We hope that this is evident not simply in this letter, but in the fear of censorship that may be kindled in our chests, today. It is not enough to speak. We must learn the rigor of developing attention in a formal setting, and we must strengthen our pillars of freedom when we notice their disrepair. Our institutions should understand this, and our forums should reflect it. Education in the freedom of speech, the freedom of the press, the systems we possess to actualize them, and the continual exercising of these principles are not matters of debate. They are inextricably bound to our safety and our flourishing.
Sincerely,
The Tufts Tribune Editors