During a town hall on Wednesday, Rep. Mark DeSaulnier (D-CA) was asked about protecting the First Amendment rights of students amid President Trump's increasing attacks on universities.
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00:00Second question is from Maid. Maid asks, what is your plan to protect the First Amendment rights of students to speak their mind without fear of retribution from the government?
00:11Again, we're going to have to go to the courts and we're going to have to win elections.
00:14I am a senior member of the Educational Labor Committee and I'm a senior member of the Higher Education and Workforce Subcommittee.
00:22I think I'm a second senior on that now.
00:25So all of these things that's happening in higher education, we've got to push back.
00:30Since I just teased you about where you're going to school, I'm proud of Harvard for standing up.
00:36We've got to have more higher institutions to stand up.
00:42The whole point, since we're in a middle school of education, is open people up to let people be able to think for themselves.
00:50And you can be a conservative, a progressive, but let people make that choice by being open to things.
00:56And if there are biases, people should be aware of them.
01:00Either in teachers or administrators.
01:02But I think sometimes people think, some of my conservative friends, I mean you can go to James Madison University, for instance.
01:09That's very well known for being funded by the Koch Network folks.
01:14I've had a colleague who was a teacher there.
01:17So you know what the biases are when you go in, if there are.
01:21But the essential need for higher education and education is to open young people's minds so they're curious and they can problem solve.
01:30And when it works, America has a, we struggle.
01:34But historically, I mean, Benjamin Franklin said that the best investment at the Constitutional Convention, the best investment America can ever make is in education.
01:47And that's still true.
01:48Whether it's organized education, private or public, or just a local library, we've got to protect that.
01:54So having young people go to a higher education school and be able to be open and speak their mind and make mistakes sometimes, as long as they're legal and don't hurt people, that's part of education.
02:04So we're going to fight with this, too.
02:06We're fighting on all of these things.
02:08But the way to fight in an environment like this is for us in the Congress, even though we're in the minority, is not to say, oh, we're in the minority.
02:17We put pressure on the majority to get them to get on the record and say, well, why wouldn't you do this?
02:22We have to work with partners in the courts who are being successful.
02:25And then we have to get out on the streets, like I do regularly, every weekend almost, to peacefully, lawfully work with law enforcement to demonstrate our public opinion.
02:37So all of those things is what Americans are required to do.
02:43And most importantly, we've got to get young people and everybody registered to vote and vote.
02:51A third of the country didn't vote in the last presidential election.
02:54So that's not a functioning democracy.
02:58Our numbers were going the other way.
03:00And when you look at other democracies, they have higher participation rates.
03:04And I've done a lot of work on this.
03:06The U.K. does a really good job of, not surprisingly, the research they have shows that when kids understand civic engagement,
03:13there are three branches of government, why we have the government they want.
03:16The likelihood of them being frequent voters and reading their voters' pamphlet and being knowledgeable is significantly higher.
03:23We need to do more of that in this country.
03:26I just had a wonderful meeting with a bunch of AP students at Doherty Valley High School.
03:32Oh, my God, those kids are so smart.
03:34But the principal and the teachers and I were talking about afterwards, let's create a model here in Contra Costa about how do you get young people more engaged in government
03:43so that they know when they turn 18 what their responsibilities are.
03:47I mean, people have died for the right to vote.
03:50People have gotten beaten up for the right to vote.
03:52We need to make sure that people, if they really respect this country and want it to be a good place,
04:00irrespective of their party affiliation, they need to raid the voters' pamphlet and vote readily.
04:06And the fact that a third of Americans didn't vote in a presidential election is a very sad statement on all of us, myself included.