There is no 1st Amendment right to speak on a college campus

[Commentary] First Amendment rights were developed and defined in order to protect the political life of the nation. But life within universities is not a mirror of that life. The cardinal First Amendment rule of viewpoint neutrality has absolutely no relevance to the selection of university speakers. Any court that denies this is living in fantasy, blinded by a mechanical doctrine that has no relevance to the phenomena it is supposed to control.

The root and fiber of the university is not equivalent to the public sphere. If a university believes that its educational mission requires it to prohibit all outside speakers, or to impose stringent tests of professional competence on all speakers allowed to address the campus, it would and should be free to do so.

[Robert C. Post is the Sterling professor of law at Yale Law School. He served as dean of the school from 2009 through spring 2017.]