Opinion: The N.F.L. is being anti-American

The owners are apparently too insecure about this country’s values to permit free expression. View in [Browser]( | Add nytdirect@nytimes.com to your address book. [The New York Times]( [The New York Times]( Thursday, May 24, 2018 [NYTimes.com/Opinion »]( [David Leonhardt] David Leonhardt Op-Ed Columnist For tactical reasons, I’m not a big fan of kneeling during the national anthem as a form of protest. I worry that kneeling N.F.L. players distract from their important political message — calling out police violence against African-Americans — and needlessly alienate otherwise persuadable people. (I’ve made the full case [here]( and [here]( and discussed the players’ broader protest movement [here]( But if kneeling is problematic because it seems unpatriotic, the N.F.L.’s response is outrageous because it actually is unpatriotic. By instituting a policy yesterday to punish players who exercise their right of free expression by kneeling, the league is rejecting a basic American value. Roger Goodell, the N.F.L. commissioner, and the league’s owners are evidently so insecure about their own patriotism that they have felt the need to bully their employees into a ritual sign of respect. “I am a fan of free speech on college campuses,” [E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post tweeted](. “So I ask my conservative friends who talk about this issue so much if they will also stand up for protesting #NFL players. Or do they think owners can make stadiums conservative ‘safe spaces’ where even silent protest is banned?” The Daily Beast’s Jay Michaelson notes that the N.F.L. is for-profit entertainment that receives huge subsidies from American taxpayers. His piece is headlined, [“]( NFL Can Punish Kneeling Players Because It’s a Private Corporation. Let’s Start Taxing It Like One.”]( [The lawyer J]( Filipovic wrote]( “The NFL will fine you for kneeling, but draft you even if you’ve physically or sexually abused women.” “Standing for the National Anthem is meaningless if it’s mandated, and such a mandate undermines the essential liberty of free speech,” [wr]( the religion columnist Elizabeth Evans]( (while encouraging people to read [David French’s piece in National Review](. Others noted the political implications. “To be clear, the NFL is publicly siding with President Trump by requiring players to now stand during the national anthem and stop protesting police brutality,” [PBS NewsHour’s Yamiche AlcindorÂ](. “The league capitulated to a president who relishes demonizing black athletes,” [The Times’s editorial board wrote](. It’s worth keeping in mind the ways that N.F.L. owners have already engaged in pettiness: by refusing to employ protest leaders. Colin Kaepernick, one of the original kneelers, is good enough to play in the N.F.L., as [Kyle Wagner of FiveThirtyEight has explained](. The fact that teams won’t sign him looks like a case of collusion. Eric Reid, another kneeler, is an even better football player than Kaepernick and is also unsigned. Danny Heifetz of The Ringer [profiles Reid here]( and Reid’s [Times op-ed is here](. College, not just for the affluent. Last week, [I mentioned]( a new study that found a huge financial return on college degrees for poor students. The authors of that study, Tim Bartik and Brad Hershbein, now have a Times op-ed [going into more detail]( on their findings. The full Opinion report follows. Philip Roth: 1933-2018 Op-Ed Columnist [The Liberation in Roth’s American Berserk]( By ROGER COHEN An English Jew’s debt to the author and his exuberant, stubborn Jews. 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