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Free speech isn't easy.
It's a balancing act between opposing positions: what can be said, what should be said, and what the consequences are.
It is a tug-of-war Carnegie Mellon University is experiencing in different ways.
The school is investigating posts by a professor that are garnering criticism. Uju Anya is an associate professor of second-language acquisition. It is the study of learning new ways to speak.
Perhaps it is ironic that Anya's words are creating trouble. The words in question are social media posts, some recent and some going back years.
They are easy to see as incendiary. "Die first, white man," she said in one post. This year, she called the first anniversary of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk's assassination "Kirkmas."
It is not the first time Anya's words have caused a stir for the university. In 2022, just before the death of Queen Elizabeth II, she tweeted, "I heard the chief monarch of a thieving raping genocidal empire is finally dying. May her pain be excruciating." In 2024, she voiced her opinion that the Butler Farm Show shooting where Donald Trump and others were injured was staged "like a stupid Tubi movie."
On the other end of the rope, we have the Fence.
It's a barrier on campus that has been painted over and over again for decades, serving as a kind of free-speech billboard for a spectrum of viewpoints.
In 2025, painting the Fence was temporarily off-limits after a critical statement about Trump right before he came to town.
This month, the university announced new guidelines for use of the Fence, limiting speech that goes against Carnegie Mellon policies. It requires a disclosure that the statements are solely the opinion of the students in question -- kind of like the disclaimer on the end of a political ad.
The university is being asked by the College Republicans to fire a professor for her speech on one side. The administration says Anya's social media posts -- years in the making -- are under review and called her statements "hostile and threatening." Anya is on voluntary leave through summer 2027.
Meanwhile, there seem to be no problems placing limits on student speech.
These situations are uniquely Carnegie Mellon's, but they reflect a broader reality on college campuses.
Universities are walking a free-speech tightrope that is being pulled in different directions.