Two University of Oklahoma students were expelled for leading their fraternity brothers in singing a racist chant. A ten-second video of the chant went onto Twitter where it was widely viewed and condemned. In justifying the expulsions, the university’s president said the chant created “a hostile learning environment” on campus. (Bloomberg News, March 10, 2015, by Akane Otani)
Eugene Volokh of The Volokh Conspiracy, Washington Post, March 10, 2015, wrote that in expelling the students, the university president was running afoul of the First Amendment. Volokh cited court cases that held that student could not be disciplined for racist speech or for fraternity racist speech. If the speech could be taken as a “true threat ” of violence, it could then be an exception to the First Amendment, wrote Volokh.