Professor’s Firing Opens Debate on Free Speech and Safe Spaces on College Campuses

, and designated public spaces as does the federal Constitution. Fortunately, for creating a policy, a federal court has already established two types of spaces: public and limited public. In the IUPUI system, public spaces have already been designated as places that are necessarily and public, like sidewalks, streets, and similar common park-like areas. A policy for safe spaces would need to decide what to do with the rest of the spaces. Non-public spaces would be those that the government has not opened for members of the public, like math class during class or a concert hall during a concert.

At IUPUI, parks, sidewalks, streets, and other common spaces would be considered public, but all other areas could be regulated in a reasonable way. Finally, students as well as third parties who are not university students, staff or faculty apparently may use the open or public fora areas, but may be subject to time, place and manner permitting restrictions. Outsiders to the college may be barred entirely from free speech/expressive use of the limited public spaces. In short, when removing the public spaces, the rest of an IUPUI campus is apparently subject only to reasonableness scrutiny of its free speech restrictions and is either a limited or nonpublic space.