Much of the proposed legislation is based on a model bill published in January by the Goldwater Institute
By Douglas Belkin | The Wall Street Journal
Demonstrators have chased away conservative speakers over the past few months at the University of California, Berkeley, and Middlebury College in Vermont.
Taking action to avoid similar scenes, universities in Illinois and Texas rescinded speaking invitations earlier this month to a Republican senator and a Nobel Prize-winning scientist before they even showed up.
Now, state legislatures, most led by Republicans, are advancing bills they say are intended to support free speech. The laws include measures to suspend students who interfere with the free-speech rights of others, remove free-speech zones that limit protests to small areas on campus and cut off money to schools that don’t protect the First Amendment.
