I understand what you’re saying about free speech. Of course you are right.
But they won’t say “we arrested him for talking”.
They’ll say, “we arrested him for not leaving when we asked him to leave, and this is private property”.
So back to my question:
At USC or a shopping mall, can the owners or their goons ask anyone to leave anytime they want and have the force of law behind them because it’s private property?
I think they can. But as you say, they aren’t taxpayer funded
A mall can deny your 1st Amendment rights.
It is a private business.
A tax-funded institution of higher learning most certainly can not.
If USC is privately funded, then it can.
I went to The Citadel.
I am am quite aware of what rights a person has on a tax-funded campus.
tahDeetz
Most universities have a different, unique culture, within which the law must still be enforced.
Most municipal law enforcement officers prefer not to negotiate the peace within those cultures, as they are immediately identified with outside authority, rather than an authority established by the representatives of the people forming that culture.
I suspect they are a separate security office, with more authority than most security organizations and with memorandums of understanding and agreement with the county sheriff and municipal police departments stipulating the jurisdiction and bounds of authority between the two.
In this particular case, if a film-maker was on private property, even though it serves publicly common accessways, he might fall under regulations imposed by the owner/reps.
In SoCA, where Hollywood attracts many aspiring filmmakers, and anybody who can afford to rent a camera, many municipalities have regulated film-making in public areas by requiring permits for those activities.
It wouldn’t be surprising if USC also had such a regulation for a number of reasons.
The second issue of detaining the person physically might be a separate issue.
I can think of a litany of reasons why making a film in areas perceived as ‘public’ might not be so ‘free’. If this was a School of Communications, the School also has a reputation at stake. It might have a number of vetting procedures for any correspondence originating from its facilities used to represent the School to the public.
The real issue, IMHO, especially amongst those directly involved is to identify legitimate authority and how one’s use of their freedom of speech is not encroaching upon the rights of others.
If somebody sicked the dogs on the filmmaker from the School of Communications, then I suspect they are seasoned and well understand many of the legal issues surrounding such interviews. They probably would even joke about it publicly, because they are in the same profession, but perhaps with different political views and think it funny for a junior peer to endure perhaps what they had to endure decades earlier. Chalk it up as a day of free education from a private institution of higher learning.