Guest View: President Trump's executive order on free speech is all politics

Last Thursday, President Donald Trump signed his long-promised Executive Order concerning free speech on campus. Entitled "Improving Free Inquiry, Transparency and Accountability at Colleges and Universities," the order states that all colleges and universities that are recipients of federal funding, research grants in particular, must support "free inquiry" - a loose synonym for free speech.

Specifically, this order directs federal agencies "to take appropriate steps, in a manner consistent with applicable law, including the First Amendment, to ensure institutions that receive federal research or education grants promote free inquiry, including through compliance with all applicable federal laws, regulations and policies."

Despite all the hype, this executive order is little more than a carbon copy of existing law. Public universities, as government entities, are bound by the Constitution and already mandated to comply with the First Amendment.

Not so at private universities. Although afforded flexibility in crafting policies that may limit speech, private colleges must adhere to their delineated institutional policies.

While a seemingly laudatory act, the President's executive order is not actually about the free exchange of ideas on college campuses but rather politics, plain and simple.

Trump's order comes at the heels of several highly politicized collegiate protests of controversial "conservative speakers" (a term I use lightly), many which devolved into campus violence (largely at the hands of groups of non-students.)

"The biggest worry," according to Reason's Ken Wittington, "is that the executive order will set the conditions for a White House to score some easy political points by taking aggressive action against a university because an incident on that campus has gone viral. The possibility of such politically motivated thunderbolts from above will not foster a better university environment for intellectual debate on difficult and controversial issues." Admittedly, it is difficult to take seriously First Amendment considerations from a President who devalues free speech at every turn, deriding the free press as "the enemy of the people."

However, this EO misses the point: the First Amendment is a restraint against government interference. Yet, this EO would achieve the opposite - injecting the government into every aspect of campus free speech ... antithetical to original constitutional intent.

But, most importantly, THIS is not the proper way to stress the importance of First Amendment ideals. The understanding of the importance of free speech begins at home, or at least in grade school civics classes.

This is not something that can be easily instilled in college students who have near-fully developed personal conceptions, right or wrong, about the true meaning of a free exchange of ideas, including those students may find abhorrent.

Education of this magnitude must begin during youth, where young Americans can gain an understanding of the democratic importance of a marketplace of ideas. An EO from the Executive will certainly come across as coercive and be met with resistance.

Eighty-two years ago, in the landmark case of Palko v. Connecticut, Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Cardozo penned, "of that freedom one may say that it is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom."

It follows that without a proper understanding of the First Amendment, other rights and freedoms cannot be properly understood.

While "It would be nice if colleges were to take this opportunity to revisit their policies on the books relating to academic freedom and free speech," such hope is likely wishful thinking, according to Whittington.

• Joseph C. Alfe of Chicago and Grant D. Talabay of Woodstock are members of the board of directors of the Chicago Lawyer Chapter of the American Constitution Society.