Law professor Jonathan Turley,The Hill, June 23, 2020, sees the toppling of public statues part of the abandonment of “reasoned discourse” in debating issues surrounding the protests. He is alarmed by the threats to free speech in the academic community as professors and students are shunned and punished for questioning aspects of the current protests .
Nathan T. Carrington and Logan Strother, writing in The Washington Post, HeraldNet, June 17, 2020, are dismissive of the free speech claims of those against the removal of statues. They argue that the statues are a form of government speech so that the First Amendment does not apply since the amendment addresses government censorship of citizens’ expression.
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