Conservative Cancel Culture? GOP Turns Tables in Campus Free Speech War

Paul Riverbank, 12/18/2025Campus free speech war intensifies as conservatives adopt cancel culture tactics once used by the left.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression—FIRE, as it’s known—has started ringing the bell. Their latest tally? A record-shattering 273 students have found themselves in the crosshairs over things they said, tweeted, posted, or repeated this year alone. It’s a number that eclipses the so-called “cancel culture” spike of 2020, when social media and campus showdowns made phrases like deplatforming and safe spaces household phrases.

What’s different now is not just the scale, but the players using the levers of power. Logan Dougherty, a lead researcher at FIRE, didn’t mince words: he sees the right—once self-styled as defenders of unfettered inquiry—now pushing back with tactics that not so long ago they’d have called out as authoritarian. The means differ: Executive orders, threatened cutbacks, and calls to ban student groups. But the effect, Dougherty warns, could be a generation raised to believe the safest path is silence.

Consider this: At Oberlin College, a student’s offhand comment about not mourning a slain political figure sent Republican Congressman Derrick Van Orden into motion. His stance? Pull the college’s funding unless school authorities showed the student the door. On other campuses, trucks with LED billboards circled, broadcasting names and faces of pro-Palestinian protestors, stoking outrage from across the ideological divide. Vice President JD Vance, in a move reminiscent of the left’s own “cancel culture” drive, urged the public to call the workplaces of those voicing support for violence. The irony did not go unnoticed. More than one observer has remarked: “When did the right start organizing the very campaigns they once called an existential threat to free discourse?”

It’s not just a matter of campus squabbles. Often, what happens in these microcosms filters up to the highest levels. Federal officials have toyed with the idea of pressuring schools to disband entire departments or, conversely, incentive programs to mute voices deemed too ideologically rigid. Here, critics on both sides detect a troubling symmetry: fighting one kind of censorship by installing another in its place.

Outside academia, this storm is also brewing in media and technology. The chatter about looming mega-mergers in streaming sent up alarms—especially when Michael Glassner, a prominent media commentator, drew a parallel between Silicon Valley’s algorithmic manipulations and the potential cultural influence of a consolidated entertainment giant. His words carried a whiff of warning: “What the social networks did for visibility,” he wrote, “a new mega-studio could do to the imagination—effortlessly, quietly, with the brush of the ‘next episode’ button.”

In Europe, a regulatory squeeze on X (née Twitter) over hidden identities and alleged disinformation rippled across the Atlantic. When EU authorities slapped the platform with heavy fines, American lawmakers such as JD Vance and Marco Rubio fired back, arguing—pointedly—that anonymous speech is a bedrock of American liberty. It wasn’t just rhetoric. Citing the Federalist Papers and the need to protect dissent, they reminded anyone listening that the right to speak anonymously isn’t just a relic but a critical check on power.

These aren’t isolated moments. The government’s past push to censure Tucker Carlson for his guest’s comments—Senator Schumer mobilizing the Senate for condemnation—served as a reminder: politicians of all stripes can be tempted to police speech in the name of civility or security. As any student of the First Amendment can tell you, the founding principle here is intentionally blunt: it is not for government to grant, or retract, the right to free expression; our democracy depends on its citizens’ ability to dissent—even when that dissent makes the majority uncomfortable.

It’s easy to loft platitudes about defending all speech, but harder to practice that discipline when the words sting. The temptation to use newfound influence for payback, or to shield one’s own side from scrutiny, may be as old as the Constitution itself. Yet the moment calls for clear-eyed resolve: persuasion, not punishment, wins minds; tolerance, not retaliation, preserves our best traditions.

If there’s a lesson in this uneasy chapter, it’s that free speech as principle runs deeper than political convenience. It means speaking up for speech you’d rather mute, and defending dialogue when your side loses control of the microphone. The next generation is watching to see if adults can live up to the ideals printed at the nation’s founding—ideals that require real courage to uphold in the face of provocation.

History offers no shortage of reminders: when any party—left or right—sacrifices principle for momentary comfort, it makes the entire system more brittle. If courage is demanded anywhere, it’s here, for the words we most struggle to stomach. In the end, the fate of free speech will depend less on the words of our politicians than on the everyday choices made in classrooms, boardrooms, and online—on whether we can rise to protect not just our own voices, but those we’d rather never have to hear.

Something unusual is taking shape across America’s cultural and political battlegrounds. If you walk the halls of any major college this year, you’ll sense it: a strange tension, not just about *what* gets said, but *who* gets to say it, and at what cost. Across the spectrum, the age-old commitment to free speech is being put to the test, not through subtle academic debates, but through high-profile confrontations and a swapping of tactics that might surprise even the most seasoned observer.The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression—FIRE, as it’s known—has started ringing the bell. Their latest tally? A record-shattering 273 students have found themselves in the crosshairs over things they said, tweeted, posted, or repeated this year alone. It’s a number that eclipses the so-called “cancel culture” spike of 2020, when social media and campus showdowns made phrases like deplatforming and safe spaces household phrases.What’s different now is not just the scale, but the players using the levers of power. Logan Dougherty, a lead researcher at FIRE, didn’t mince words: he sees the right—once self-styled as defenders of unfettered inquiry—now pushing back with tactics that not so long ago they’d have called out as authoritarian. The means differ: Executive orders, threatened cutbacks, and calls to ban student groups. But the effect, Dougherty warns, could be a generation raised to believe the safest path is silence.Consider this: At Oberlin College, a student’s offhand comment about not mourning a slain political figure sent Republican Congressman Derrick Van Orden into motion. His stance? Pull the college’s funding unless school authorities showed the student the door. On other campuses, trucks with LED billboards circled, broadcasting names and faces of pro-Palestinian protestors, stoking outrage from across the ideological divide. Vice President JD Vance, in a move reminiscent of the left’s own “cancel culture” drive, urged the public to call the workplaces of those voicing support for violence. The irony did not go unnoticed. More than one observer has remarked: “When did the right start organizing the very campaigns they once called an existential threat to free discourse?”It’s not just a matter of campus squabbles. Often, what happens in these microcosms filters up to the highest levels. Federal officials have toyed with the idea of pressuring schools to disband entire departments or, conversely, incentive programs to mute voices deemed too ideologically rigid. Here, critics on both sides detect a troubling symmetry: fighting one kind of censorship by installing another in its place.Outside academia, this storm is also brewing in media and technology. The chatter about looming mega-mergers in streaming sent up alarms—especially when Michael Glassner, a prominent media commentator, drew a parallel between Silicon Valley’s algorithmic manipulations and the potential cultural influence of a consolidated entertainment giant. His words carried a whiff of warning: “What the social networks did for visibility,” he wrote, “a new mega-studio could do to the imagination—effortlessly, quietly, with the brush of the ‘next episode’ button.”In Europe, a regulatory squeeze on X (née Twitter) over hidden identities and alleged disinformation rippled across the Atlantic. When EU authorities slapped the platform with heavy fines, American lawmakers such as JD Vance and Marco Rubio fired back, arguing—pointedly—that anonymous speech is a bedrock of American liberty. It wasn’t just rhetoric. Citing the Federalist Papers and the need to protect dissent, they reminded anyone listening that the right to speak anonymously isn’t just a relic but a critical check on power.These aren’t isolated moments. The government’s past push to censure Tucker Carlson for his guest’s comments—Senator Schumer mobilizing the Senate for condemnation—served as a reminder: politicians of all stripes can be tempted to police speech in the name of civility or security. As any student of the First Amendment can tell you, the founding principle here is intentionally blunt: it is not for government to grant, or retract, the right to free expression; our democracy depends on its citizens’ ability to dissent—even when that dissent makes the majority uncomfortable.It’s easy to loft platitudes about defending all speech, but harder to practice that discipline when the words sting. The temptation to use newfound influence for payback, or to shield one’s own side from scrutiny, may be as old as the Constitution itself. Yet the moment calls for clear-eyed resolve: persuasion, not punishment, wins minds; tolerance, not retaliation, preserves our best traditions.If there’s a lesson in this uneasy chapter, it’s that free speech as principle runs deeper than political convenience. It means speaking up for speech you’d rather mute, and defending dialogue when your side loses control of the microphone. The next generation is watching to see if adults can live up to the ideals printed at the nation’s founding—ideals that require real courage to uphold in the face of provocation.History offers no shortage of reminders: when any party—left or right—sacrifices principle for momentary comfort, it makes the entire system more brittle. If courage is demanded anywhere, it’s here, for the words we most struggle to stomach. In the end, the fate of free speech will depend less on the words of our politicians than on the everyday choices made in classrooms, boardrooms, and online—on whether we can rise to protect not just our own voices, but those we’d rather never have to hear.