WASHINGTON— Despite a tumultuous conclusion to his tenure as Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, a former energy executive with Exxon, announced this morning that he was heartened by the prospect of a vacant position announced within the Freedom Project at Wellesley.

“Wow,” Tillerson reportedly commented after checking his email from the night before. “The position is open, just like that? I haven’t written a cover letter in ages, but it might be time to figure that out again.”

Leafing through a decades-old file folder of typewritten pages, Tillerson produced a résumé dating back to his days as a civil engineer, pausing periodically to review the Freedom Project’s website.

“‘The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels’? I coulda thought of that,” he murmured, coughing in the cloud of dust generated by the movement of untouched papers. “This gig looks cushy as hell. What, yearly turnover of student fellows and directors? People last a full year there?”

“Well, some of them last a year,” he amended, checking through pertinent social media posts. “Still, I have all the necessary skills — experience being openly reviled for situations that are emphatically the product of my poor judgement and bad faith, half-apologies… oh, I’ll mention the Exxon Valdez response in my interview, I bet they’ll love that… and it’ll be so nice, working in an environment where the only parties attempting to hold me accountable for my actions are overburdened student activists who can easily be dismissed with accusations of ‘immaturity’ and ‘lack of openmindedness’.”

Humming a jaunty tune, Tillerson proceeded to rifle through his closet in search of his lucky interview suit, last worn in 1975.

“It might be a little tight,” he noted, brushing the dust off the dry cleaning bag. “I’m not the spring chicken I was when I got that post at Exxon Neftegas. But I really need to jump on this opportunity. Just imagine the job security!”

“Y’know,” he added, looking himself up and down in a floor length mirror and practicing the diction by which he could most condescendingly bemoan the tragic state of the intolerant left, “getting sacked from the Department of State might just be the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

10. Unite the fellows and advisors for a groundbreaking performance of ‘For the Love of Money’ by the O’Jays at Lipsync, featuring at least one Koch brother in the ensemble

9. Finally release a statement in firm opposition to dissent suppression by ‘The Hunger Games’ despot President Snow, though he’s sort of communist-y, right? It’s kind of an example of an authoritarian left wing government, sort of, with a lot of relevance to the current state of youth socially enforced censorship. If you gave college-aged activists unlimited financial resources, institutional power, entirely different societal context, a legacy of centuries of violent oppression of, specifically, old and widely-published academics, full body armor, and enough firepower to level a large city, then they’d be literally exactly like the Capitol, or maybe Voldemort, and this analogy would be super topical. Katniss would have been a Freedom Project fellow if it was a thing.

8. Invest in R&D for event posters that are physically impossible to remove — sell results to Lockheed Martin. Wait, how do the youths feel about paramilitary contractors again?

7. Recognizing the egregious underrepresentation of young cis men in Wellesley campus discourse, host a speaker series highlighting the unheard voices of frat boys across the nation, particularly their opinions on what constitutes ‘party theme censorship’ and what words they should be allowed to sing in songs.

6. Host a reading group for the lesser-known sociological works of Adam Smith, particularly ‘The Theory of Moral Sentiments’. Upon reaching pt III, chapter 3 — “It is [reason, principle, conscience] who, whenever we are about to act so as to affect the happiness of others, calls to us, with a voice capable of astonishing the most presumptuous of our passions, that we are but one of the multitude, in no respect better than any other in it; and that when we prefer ourselves so shamefully and so blindly to others, we become the proper objects of resentment, abhorrence, and execration” — immediately forget it and resume deflecting any and all criticism and frustration as evidence of the hysteria and irrationality of protesters.

5. Organize a bake sale to raise money and awareness by writing misogynist/transphobic/racist quotes on cookies in icing and forcing the student body to pay exorbitant prices in order to remove the offending baked goods that they did not ask for from their campus, which proves… some point, probably, if you think about it long enough.

4. Altruistically hire a graphic designer with a background in confusing gender-dimorphic restaurant bathroom characters to create a lovable mascot for the project, seeing as they’ll be out of work soon with the rise of cultural marxism.

3. Demonstrate their commitment to meeting student activists halfway by erecting a cardboard cutout of Thomas Cushman in Green Hall that will be capable of withstanding mild criticism without lashing out on Twitter or in person.

2. It’s a little wacky and out-there, but consider building inroads with the groups on campus that have been most outspoken about opposing the way the Freedom Project has gone about actualizing its mission on campus. Conduct small-scale engagements with student leaders and community organizers to better understand the origin of their objections beyond generalizations and holier-than-thou platitudes about what constitutes ‘real problems’. When considering hosting an event with the potential to be highly controversial, ensure that the student body has sufficient time to review their body of work and has a voice in whether or not the invitation is ultimately appropriate based on the speaker’s academic merits on the topic at hand. Crowdsource ideas from the student body about freedom of speech issues they haven’t heard about in every other New York Times opinion piece — access to the internet in Appalachia and other rural communities, suppression of dissent and protest by Native activists, Black rights activists who have gained notoriety and been subject to harassment by institutional and cultural censors alike — as a good start. Recognize that, maybe, the ‘majority viewpoint is actually secretly an oppressed minority once it sets foot on a liberal arts campus!’ angle is a little played out. Collaborate with the community to host events that educate inexperienced student activists in how to ask constructive questions under pressure, identify good faith engagement or lack thereof, and explore when it is valuable to speak or to listen.

Maybe, just maybe, take a long and critical look at your actions and weigh the question… why are we doing what we are doing the way we are doing it?

Who are we trying to help, what are we trying to accomplish? Is the goal of this project to provoke students and set them off balance until they confirm, in their frustration, what we already believe to be true about their intentions and their hearts? Or is the objective here to actually instigate constructive dialogue in good faith on the topic of what it means to exercise free speech, in academia and in social spheres, while honoring freedom to speak as both a right and a responsibility?

Depending on our goal, are we succeeding?

Will we be able to look at the views and the culture we are supporting and the dissenters we are infantilizing and degrading, ten years from now, twenty years from now, without feeling righteous shame?

Think about it. Think, for once, not just about what students and activists, apparently, owe to the project. Think about what the project owes to them.

1. Revise event format while improving infrastructure for the Wellesley campus: invite two controversial speakers at the same time and construct a pit in which they can mud-wrestle it out. Survivor has the opportunity to hawk their latest book for ten minutes.

Responding to protesters of Alice Dreger’s recent lecture at Wellesley College, one man had the courage to confront the organized assembly of students who had gathered at Clapp Library over the course of the event.

“If you’d only spent the past hour and a half doing something constructive, you would have learned something, like the students who exited the event early in visible disgust!” the visiting fellow with the Freedom Project chided the sixty assembled student protesters, who coordinated the demonstration of solidarity — or blatant censorship, depending on who you ask — with less than two day’s notice, providing a variety of food and hot beverages to over a hundred attendees over the course of the evening with the support of the alumnae network and the generosity of donors on campus.

“Look,” he added, raising an open palm — “we’re trying to have a constructive conversation about controversial views, here, and when you don’t engage with them in exactly the way we want you to, that’s symptomatic of a problem with the culture of Wellesley students, not the questionable administrative decisions of an organization with literal millions of dollars in financial backing and near-infinite institutional resources that keeps presenting, essentially, the exact same ‘provocative guest speaker, brief unsatisfying talkback’ model and expecting a different result.”

Silently, the attendees of the protest, side by side with those who invested hours of labor in coordinating the demonstration, continued to hold up intolerant signs that espoused views comparable with that of a regressive and authoritarian government — ‘I dream of trans liberation’ and ‘trans sibs belong.’

“If your response to our activities is not in keeping with our goal of furthering healthy dialogue… I suppose we’ll have to continue doing the exact same thing,” the Freedom Project representative sighed. “But just keep in mind, it’s you all, the students, who are behaving in a manner that is irrational, oppressive, hysterical, and… dare I say it? Actual, literal censorship.”

One attendee of the event, who asked to remain unnamed because the publication of identifying information of student protesters of these events has, in the past, incurred harassment and doxxing, noted that she was discouraged by the interaction that came at the culmination of the nearly two-hour solidarity demonstration.

“Well, I didn’t really learn much about the views of a speaker whose credentials were questionable at best and who chose, as her ‘hill to die on’, the right of researchers to have sex with members of their studies. That was weird, how fast she doubled down on that. It was really hard to think of good questions when I was so furious about some of the things being said, and then getting lectured on how intolerant we all are didn’t exactly give me warm fuzzy feelings, y’know?”

She reaffirmed, though, that the first part of the protest effectively accomplished its objectives.

“Coming together as a community, sharing words of support and solidarity and listening to music while sharing a meal with people I don’t usually spend much time with and learning about them and their experiences … that was great. It was really reassuring, to be able to actually do something, and I learned a lot more about how I can support my friends.”

At press time, the student in question had reached out on three separate occasions to ensure that no personal information would be attached to her intolerant statements.

“Last time I talked to someone about this kind of thing and they published my name [reasonable members of an oppressed and underrepresented minority viewpoint that I have actively repressed and censored, literally exactly like the Polish People’s Republic] threatened my life and that of my family,” she explained.

Luckily, the Freedom Project continues to bravely promulgate the unheard political opinions of the majority of all elected branches of federal government, discredited pseudoscientists, old white men with doctorates in economics who are convinced that the chief problem of our society is the unwillingness of the youth to spoon-feed racists kernels of their humanity in the hope that they will vote for fascists less eagerly, and Facebook great aunts who share pro-Trump minions memes with the other members of their local PTAs.

Three cheers for the brave fellows and their student supporters who continue to stand strong and do exactly the same thing, over and over, in the face of the frustration and derision of the Wellesley community!

It’s those who seek meaningful change who should be ashamed of themselves, never you.

After all, some of those hypocrites participate in the society they claim they wish to improve, using IPhones [to coordinate their authoritarian and repressive community organizing], which is basically supporting slavery.

Thanks for standing up for the little guy, especially when he’s the one wearing a suit that costs more than my Stelara injections and can afford to bankroll a multimillion dollar project to amplify the same views we hear in the comments section on 4Chan.

Bravery comes in many forms, and in this case, the Freedom Project has demonstrated, once again, their tireless commitment to subversively balancing the scales in favor of the overwhelming majority sentiments of the most powerful institutions in the country!

It can’t be put more simply: recent laws written with the intention of protecting free speech on campus represent exactly the institutionally enforced censorship that self-professed ‘free speech advocates’ claim to abhor.

North Carolina’s Restore Campus Free Speech Act, HB527, reinterprets first amendment rights in an appalling subversion of individual liberties — mandating “a range of disciplinary sanctions for anyone under the jurisdiction of a constituent institution who substantially disrupts the functioning of the constituent institution or substantially interferes with the protected free expression rights of others, including protests and demonstrations that infringe upon the rights of others to engage in and listen to expressive activity.”

The question we have to ask ourselves, in light of this and similar forays by state actors into the ‘protection’ of freedom of speech, is — who should determine whether an idea succeeds or fails in the marketplace? Who should determine what speech is acceptable and what is not? North Carolina’s state legislature, and those who support such institutional and state authorities’ efforts to delineate ‘acceptable’ vs. ‘unacceptable’ exercise of the right to speech, have surrendered an essential liberty that belongs to us, as members of a democratic society — that of the people to determine, independent of their legislators and administrators, what they do and do not believe and what they will and will not tolerate.

In opposing laws like HB527 on first amendment grounds, one can easily gesture to their transparent infringement upon the right to organize, the right to freely associate, the right to speak, and the right to protest. Ideologically, though, we need only look at the truth of the situation — that when we acquiesce to a government’s determination of what is and is not acceptable speech, we surrender a piece of our humanity. The advocates of free speech who so often rally beneath the banner of individual rights yet champion, at the same time, legislation that defers the decision of what is and is not appropriate speech to a governing body, are suffering from naked hypocrisy and shortsightedness. They support that state’s authority to determine what ‘free speech’ should be protected because, at the moment, the state seems to agree with them.

Relying on the state to silence protestors, though, should be seen as what it truly is — cowardice. An admission that the voices of controversial speakers, which cannot be heard over the sounds of protests, are too weak to stand on their own.

That said, the fact that there is such abundant institutional support for these speakers only reaffirms that the ‘threatened voices’ being defended are not speaking truth to power — they are entirely in keeping with the status quo.

Advocates for laws like HB527 seem to have had the wool pulled thoroughly over their eyes — if they believe that the best way to oppose institutional injustice is to give political institutions more power and defend the state’s ability to suppress dissent.

Laws that limit speech on an institution’s terms — the terms of the political status quo — do nothing but preserve the existing dynamics of power. Unless one believes that we are already living in the best possible world, that our society is the best possible version of itself, the suppression of the right to protest should be understood as a tremendous blow to our capacity to improve the world we live in and to hold ourselves and our leaders accountable for what they say.

The dog-whistle of the right, ‘personal accountability’, is exactly what they have demonstrated a willingness to forgo in their support for a self-proclaimed ‘Free Speech Act’ that does nothing but surrender the responsibilities of controversial speakers to defend their speech to the muscle of the increasingly powerful state. These speakers would rather be coddled by the state, defended from the horror that is the reality that, when human beings are violently provoked, are questioned in their personhood, they will organize, they will protest, and they will bring the truth with them to their demonstrations.

Many self-proclaimed advocates of free speech have made a deal with the devil in their support of HB527, which facilitates nothing less than state suppression of challenges to the status quo. They have relinquished their defense of free speech in favor of the defending their comfort when speaking as a mouthpiece of the state and the status quo — and as we know, “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”