Lexie Shadix, Campus Carrier deputy news editor

According to The New York Times, agencies under the Trump administration have begun flagging words to limit or avoid in a series of government documents. These include words such as “bias” and “Gulf of Mexico.” Furthermore, the presence of certain terms has been used to flag grant proposals and contracts for review if they could conflict with Trump’s executive orders. Many news sources and citizens are viewing this as censorship.

“Strictly speaking, censorship is any attempt to silence of prevent someone from saying anything or expressing anything,” Professor of Philosophy Michael Papazian said. 

Some have said that Trump’s recent actions, such as the executive orders and the flagging of grant proposals, are a form of soft censorship.

“For me, the bigger picture is [that] this is policing expression,” Brian Carroll, professor of communication, said.

However, while this issue can be seen as one regarding freedom of speech, it can also be seen as one meant to crack down on past administration’s policies.

“My own sense is that this is a kind of act of retribution against policies that came out of the Obama and Biden administration,” Associate Professor of Political Science Michael Bailey said. 

Bailey said this censorship is a way for Trump to strengthen control by reducing opposition.

“I think this is a shorthand way of communicating policy and shaping policy, and I think it’s an absurd way of doing it,” Bailey said. “It’s a way of clamping down on the people he has to manage. I think you can make a case that Trump is trying to consolidate power and he’s trying to reduce the ability of people to push back against him.” 

While the administration may be removing websites and limiting the press’s access to the White House, their actions are shaping what professions or programs will be funded through government-issued grants.

“My concern is he, or his people, will scour different grant programs for the use of [some] word and then eliminate the grant,” Bailey said. “It shapes what people can pursue, and it shapes what people can do scholarship on and spend grant money on.”

Ultimately, the Constitution provides Americans freedom of speech. While it has been ruled in various Supreme Court cases that this freedom can be limited, the Court has set broad protections for speech in America. This, of course, applies to the president as well. He is allowed, to a certain degree, to use the kind of language he wants to, and the people who fill that office have done that.  

“I think that there’s a tendency for all human beings to want to censor others,” Papazian said. “I think you’ll see that in almost any administration. They want their views to be expressed and propounded, [and] they tend to not be happy when opposition views are expressed. I don’t think that this is something new.” 

Censorship is nothing new, only now the Trump administration is passing policies that directly restrict what people can say.

“I think it’s being taken to a higher level now, and it’s more our in the open and it’s more shameless,” Papazian said. “In the past, people have tried to censor, but they were kind of trying to hide it.” 

It becomes even more concerning when measures are taken to encourage people to use similar speech. This was seen when the Associated Press was banned from the White House press pool for refusing to call the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.”

“If you’re now going to use punitive measures to coerce news services and teachers to use your preferred geographic terms or names, then I think government is going beyond what it should be allowed to do,” Papazian said. 

Furthermore, when governments begin censoring speech, it also leads to people self-censoring. 

“I think the danger is that it prevents or scares people away from expressing their true political views and allowing this kind of free flow of ideas and information, which I think is really crucial for a democratic society,” Papazian said. “In part, it’s because allowing ideas and arguments to be expressed allows us to debate them and to come to some rational conclusions about the validity of those ideas.” 

Trump seems to be continuing to find legal loopholes to subvert the requirements outlined in the Constitution.

“The Constitution doesn’t dictate a set of policies, it determines the process by which those policies are chosen,” Bailey said. “And subverting those processes in the name of getting your policies is not acceptable. Whether it is Obama and there are examples of Obama having done this – or Biden, arguably, or Trump.” 

Ultimately, the Trump administration targeting words may make it more difficult to have discussions with members of the government, as they will be under the impres sion there are certain things they cannot say.

 In the meantime, people should continue to use their right to speak freely. There are many non-partisan organizations that work to educate people and fight for the right of free speech. One of these is the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), whose mission is “to defend and sustain the individual rights of all Americans to free speech and free thought.”  

“[People] should exercise their First Amendment rights, even if they know they’re going to get pushback,” Papazian said. “I think people should understand what an important right this is, and that people have died for it and continue to [do so, even] to this day.” 

The founding fathers, as well as many philosophers, recognized how essential the right to free speech and expression is.

“If you can’t freely speak, you can’t freely think; and if you can’t freely think you’re not free,” Carroll said.