This letter is responding to the column “SINGH: Free speech must protect views not worth hearing.” Read it here.

To the Editors of the Yale Daily News:

I am compelled to respond to Milan Singh’s article in the Yale Daily News criticizing a column I wrote. He is certainly right that we should double down our efforts to protect free speech for all Yale students. I might suggest, however, that in the future, Singh take more time to read the articles he critiques.

I oppose censorship. In my piece, I argued that when students publicly reject American values by doing things like tearing down the American flag at the center of campus, taxpayers may question their generosity toward those institutions. If Singh had read my piece more carefully, he might have noticed I cited Texas v. Johnson precisely to affirm protesters’ constitutional right to desecrate the flag, while still criticizing the students who did so on Yale’s campus last year.

This nuance should not be hard to understand. One can appreciate the right to free speech and criticize certain speech as harmful. Rights protect actions; they do not shield those actions from moral scrutiny.

Ultimately, I am most disappointed that Singh’s response misses my central point. My column wasn’t a legal brief; it was a cultural critique. I certainly agree with Singh; the right to speech and protest must be preserved. But that doesn’t absolve us from asking: protest what, and for what purpose? When the American flag becomes the enemy, perhaps it is not America that needs rethinking, but a worldview that sees virtue in its fall.

Read Danziger’s original column here.

JOSHUA DANZIGER is a first year in Trumbull College. His monthly column “Power” explores geography, demography and the state. He can be reached at joshua.danziger@yale.edu.