This early 1990s supporter of a “hostile climate” speech code declared that college students would be engaged in protected speech, and would not run afoul of hostile climate laws, if they formed a White Supremacy Council, held meetings on the campus lawn where they displayed a swastika, and used racial epithets to protest the presence of nonwhite students on campus. That is disgusting behavior.

I’d certainly be out protesting those students.

But Professor Gale argued that because their acts weren’t targeted at an individual, and didn’t occur in a place, like a classroom, where students were a captive audience, it wouldn’t run afoul of hostile climate laws. Some of you might have noticed that she deliberately crafted that example as a campus analog of the famous case of Nazis who wanted to march through a town with many Holocaust survivors.

The ACLU successfully defended their rights to do so.

Why would a group that so frequently champions the rights of marginalized people defend a bigot’s right to behave so abhorrently?

The ACLU argued that “restricting the speech of one group or individual jeopardizes everyone’s rights. The same laws or regulations used to silence bigots can be used to silence you. And laws that defend free speech for bigots can be used to defend the rights of civil rights workers, anti-war protesters, lesbian and gay activists and others fighting for justice. In 1949, the ACLU defended an ex-priest who had delivered a racist and anti-semitic speech. The legal precedent in that case became the basis for the ACLU’s successful defense of civil rights demonstrators.” I have never yet seen a critic of the ACLU persuasively respond to that example.

Why are bygone battles over free speech worth our time today? One reason is that some erroneously believe that anyone raising free speech concerns is hostile to marginalized students. Often, the exact opposite is true, and history helps shows why many reasonably believe that expansive free speech norms are especially vital for marginalized groups. Another mistaken impression is that groups that are underrepresented on college campuses are alone in being asked to tolerate free speech that offends them.

In fact, the First Amendment has protected lampooning a member of the religious right by portraying him as having sex with his drunken mother in an outhouse. It has protected putting a crucifix in a jar of urine. It has protected burning an American flag outside a Veteran’s hospital. It would protect a sign that says, “Donald Trump is a fascist asshole,” or “white people are evil and should be shunned.” And, of course, the First Amendment protected the right of Nazis to march in Skokie.

With that case in mind, consider how different today’s free-speech conflicts are. There are a lot of thorny debates about the outer limits of the First Amendment. But today's campus speech debates aren’t about neo-Nazis or hooded klansmen, any more than America’s torture debate was about a terrorist in Times Square with a ticking timebomb and Jack Bauer on the way with brass knuckles and pliers. Some students and administrators at public universities are flagrantly violating the First Amendment over costume parties and student journalists photographing protesters. At private colleges, they are trying to target, suppress, or punish speech that’s neither “fighting words” nor “hate speech” nor “group libel” nor targeted at individuals nor likely to produce serious psychological harm.

20 years ago, opponents of speech codes warned that those with the impulse to suppress any speech were putting us on a slippery slope; that core, protected speech would inevitably be punished or chilled. Today’s campus-speech battles suggest they were correct.