Transcripts For CSPAN2 Free Speech On College Campuses 20170601

[applause] about free speech issues on campus. I will give a very brief introduction before introducing my colleagues i will then ask them some questions and throw it open to you. There are mic symbol files for that time. First of all just a few introductory marks about free speech on campus when is this issue is not new era its gotten more attention this year than in many years in the past but there are fairly constantly debate over controversial speakers and whatnot at a do think that context has been missing sometimes. Likewise for reasons that are somewhat hard to predict, the press jumped on some incidents much more than others. And so as you look at these issues as they come up, thats important to remember. I also think its very important to remember that when youre talking about controversial speakers on campus, most of them speak relatively without incidents. Even some of the speakers that will be talked about today that it been very controversial have appeared far more times without incident than they had been canceled. Doesnt anyway negate the seriousness of the issue of the cancellations or the disruptions but but i think thats important contacts. Whats happened this year thats made this got more attention . First you had the middlebury incident where you had Charles Murray a very controversial social scientist. Most of the controversy about in concerns a book he wrote, he cowrote many years ago, although some often concerns his more recent writing. At middlebury, students stood and turned their backs and chanted and stomped to prevent him from speaking. When middle barry then took him to another location to speak via live cast, he did that but as he was leaving along with the professor who was a question or of him, not a supporter, they were pretty much attack by a crowd and the crowd attacked the car trying to take him away. At berkeley there been a series of incidents. First involving a very popular campus speaker until he became actually too controversial for the conservatives who are bringing into campus with his comments about underage sex. Then with ann coulter who was scheduled to appear and then called off her appearance amid exchanges of charges over who was responsible for that. A few other key bits of context of what is the First Amendment which we all know about as journalist. It is important to note the First Amendment is legally enforceable at public institutions. At private institutions is also worth noting that many claim or say that they follow First Amendment principles. So with covering this disputes at private institutions, it may be more endorsement of principles rather than the letter of the law. Thereve also been several instances this year and it came up of both middlebury and a berkeley where outside groups or parody of said groups because you dont really know because they wore masks, were involved in disruptive protests trying to prevent speakers from appearing. This is important because i think theres been a lot of journalistic miss coverage stating for instance, Berkeley Students engage in activities of vandalism and disruption that were actually the work of the outside groups. There are some who believe there were Berkeley Students wearing masks. I dont know but there hasnt been much evidence of that. This is added an issue of safety that has come up in several of these incidents that complicates things up a little if youre a Public University that says you recognize right of all to speak but then all of a sudden youre facing a safety issue. Issues whether you plan adequate, made the right call, that has complicated things in much of the discussion. We are jointer today and for my left by Greg Lukianoff for the foundation for individual rights in education or fire. If you are writing about these issues, quite likely fire will get involved and issue statements or lawsuits. A good person to know and fire people in my experience are almost always eminently quotable. [laughing] so regardless of whether you agree with them or not, thats an important journalistic quality. Also eminently quotable is to his left judith shapiro. Judith is president of the Teagle Foundation which is an interesting organization to know when your writing for teaching and putting issues all sorts very important issues that may e may be less sexy than freespeech debate, but go to the core of Higher Education. Previous issues the president of Barnard College social openers as these issues from the perspective of a college president. She has said anything shes going to say some contrary things about the way colleges respond when students say they may be feeling hurt. Shes also raise important issues about the educational experience created by certain speakers and trends in speaking. And then to her left, on my side, we have Pranav Jandhyala who is a berkeley student, we have a real life student, is involved with a group in the chest shocking mission of trying to help students who might disagree politically talk civilly to one another. So this is just earth shattering too many, and i think its important to note that there are a lot of students who are not trying to shut down speech but actually trying to encourage speech. So first we are going to go from my left down and up going to ask each of them to just outline their views on these issues briefly. Im going to ask them a few questions and then well get you involved as well. Greg. For my name is Greg Lukianoff. Ive been doing this since about 2001. Im the first an employee. I joined fire when it is a very small organization, legal director of fire. My lifelong passion has been First Amendment law. I teach first and middle classes sometimes, its i write the most about. The thing i would most like to say to people who cover these issues on campus is pretty much exactly what scott said to begin is this is been going on for a long time. Since 2001 i worked at the aclu in northern california. I studied the history of freedom of speech going back literally hundreds of years and i was on the less shock of the kind of things you could get in trouble for on the College Campus in 2001. And all throughout my career. For most of that time the main perpetrators, the main people punishing people for the speech were administrators. For some reason this is not considered that sexy by a lot of journalists and it didnt get in my opinion the coverage it deserves. Then there was, so thats most of my tree. There was a moment around 2011, 2013 when the issue became more with the department of education was giving advice to universities to give a big part of the problem but its amazing to watch how much more interest in this issue popped up when in 2013 2014 the people who are demanding the speech codes were increasingly students. I want to stress prior to that. The most support constituency for free speech on campus was not professors. It was not administrators. It was the students themselves. I do find it interesting to some degree, interest from the press increase when issues on campus looked more like existing conservative stereotypes of what free speech on campus issues look like. So for example, last year a case of the most upset it was Case University of Northern Michigan where students who took advantage of the Counseling Services were then sent scary letter saint listen, if you talk to your friends about thoughts of self harm you will be punished. This is insane. This is some people are either depressed or anxious, they are a burden on the friends and they should isolate themselves. , that does not get the same coverage. I will say when it comes to issue the last couple of months i did it for this. This is scarier. When Allison Stanger wizard at middlebury there were students who were hit in the face with metal flagpoles. I watched a lot of dictates. The berkeley rights were a lot worse than even i thought and they were really lucky nobody got killed. I understand the intense interest but it does come from things that have nothing to do with politics at all on campus. Id like there to be some more coverage of issues that are not necessarily as sexy as quoteunquote pc run amok. Thank you. Judith. Well, first of all i want to appreciate how scott opened in this defensive student because we are about how some of them are behaving badly but more of them are behaving well and we have one such person on our very panel. I strongly believe student should be exposed to a diversity of views including those based on the disagree with. Ive also written sort of condemning these codes, safe spaces, trigger warnings. Some of these writings even approached the level of screen. But at the same time though i want to introduce a new issue that may be difficult to do with, and that is that i believe the clear and present danger is less an absence of freedom of speech and more an absence of quality of speech, or rather what we might call for solid dont think censorship is that easy to achieve in the communication ecology which would lift. But it think were seeing a kind of aggressions lot of speech in which bad speech is driving a good speech. And here then we get into the issue of quality. Both institutions of Higher Education and journalists, enter listen, have professional standards. And im interested in how those professional standards might possibly be applied when we think of the speakers that were going to have on campus. We certainly dont, we dont say standards are professional standard art and mutable and perfect. There are people who burst beyond them in created in wonderful ways, but we also cant do without them. And to that extent i call myself a conservative, a conservative as in someone who cares about tradition, history, values and the institutions that support those values. And whats interesting is the word conservatism has been subjected to its own transgressions of law and they have been thrown around for people have no notion of the tradition of conservatism and probably could recognized either edmund burke or William Buckley and a twoperson lineup. Leave that for the moment. Now, the other issue then is that caring about quality and prioritizing also touches upon the issue of resource allocati allocation. Lets say some controversial speaker is going to involve a lot of money to make a safe and reasonable venue. In my college which was a liberal arts college the major moving parts of the budget Financial Aid and compensation for faculty and staff are financially based on need. Where from will come resources you might need to do with a speaker. And particularly is state legislators are going to lean particularly on institutions while not giving them the money they need to support their basic work, this could be a problem. Now, the first and im not going to get into because there are real experts around the baby during the discussion we can talk about that. What could be a process then for achieving some reasonable way of prioritizing ones speakers . We could think of a Representative Group involving, a Representative Democracy involving students, faculty and administrators who receive request for speakers and actually get together and agree that they want a diversity of views, but that they prioritize them in some evidencebased lets have an interesting conversation about this way. That gets us into a final point and then i will stop, as whether we mainly see our colleges and universities as like marketplaces, a free market place of ideas. The problem being often the invisible left and does not know what the invisible writing is doing and vice versa. Or whether we see them as able to function as democratic participatory community. Thank you. Pranav . I want to thank you all for coming at a just want to say before i get into some of the point is im very excited to be her sitting amongst professionals respective fields of protecting individual rights and youre in a mere college student. Its exciting its exciting for me to be here. So again im the founder of bridge count which is an organization at berkeley that seeks to create spaces where all of views and opinions are welcomed but are going to be challenged the debate and discussion. Rather than trying to protect free speech for free speech is sake, we feel we are an organization that tries to protect free speech for the driving purpose behind free speech. In my opinion the driving opinion, the driving purpose behind free speech is to create a political environment where people can come together and talk about with the disagree with about having to engage in violence. Where political can be ameliorated when the two opposite sides is basically are able to humanize what another, and i think that its important to understand that free speech is all about creating a political environment. Rather than protecting free speech for the sake of free speech itself. So i think i want to give a a little bit of background about how we came to be at berkeley and can of what weve done this past semester give you a bit of insight on the Political Climate before we jump in. We kind of started our organization when we saw the results of this past election, when we saw people at our university, at my university basically saying i cant even fathom how someone would vote for trump, i cant even fathom whats going on inside the heads of these individuals, and political clarity has been increasing and we are at this point in our country, very crucial breaking point in a country, what we need to decide how were going to proceed forward if were going to exist despite our differences. We created our organization last year, and after the riot that happened when milo was planning to speak, i covered those rights as a journalist and i was beaten during the milo writes. I was very front and center of the issue itself and thats when i started writing for the organizations and getting my Organization Front and center in this issue speaking about it. Nationally. And throughout the semester we have been basically creating spaces of discussion and inviting the republicans and democrats to come out on issuebased discussions. Thats when we tried to do this speaker issue at the end of year on illegal immigration. We had, the republicans give us who they wanted to speak, and colder, the democrats give us who they wanted to speak, and our democratic speaker spoke but then you all know what happened when ann coulter wasnt able to speak because of a lot of issues. What im going to say today is that this whole issue about free speech is lot more nuanced than what it appears to be in a single headline or what appears to be on the surface. Its very, very nuanced. You have the university at one end trying to do all they can but as judith mentioned, when they dont even have the resources to legally protect speakers who want to speak, to the call in the National Guard . From the right, you know, you have people trying to push these limits, to try to test these limits of free speech, to try and invite the most provocative speaker or the next provocative speaker. Thats another issue that will be under discussion today. Theres a lot of moving parts, mostly at the end of the day what i would call what happened was a breakout of logistics combined with just inability to protect a speaker because of resources. So i want to ask the panelists about that, some issues you just raised. We follow lots of campus speakers, and milo and ann coulter are not the only voices from the right to appear on campus. And a prominent controversial politicians like rand paul who notably has made a point of going to historically black campuses where he may not have a fan base, or newt gingrich. They are giving speeches about ideas i dont know if theyre converting anybody but a giving speeches about ideas, whereas ann and milo are pretty much insulting people. Regardless of whether you agree with their politics pics im curious, its hard to think of it as giving speeches of ideas. Does it concern you that they are the ones capturing all the attention in terms of the freespeech issue, also in terms of the educational extremes of students . I mean, they wouldnt have got so much attention to if there had not been riots. These are two people who are spoken on campus after campus over the years if people just designed either to protest outside or something not to attend. When it comes to the logistical issue of inviting someone like ann coulter or absolute bomb throwers, both of them, milo happily calls himself a trump. We were fairly easy on berkeley, initially after the big rights on february 1 because it made sense to us that university could feel overwhelmed when youre 1500s to show up and they claim at least one of 50 of which, 1500 protesters of these 150 of course of the universe to engage in violence. I watched the whole thing. I think its hard to distinguish in some cases houthis Peaceful Protesters are identified once i think the distinction is not that easy to make. What we stop being patient with is berkeley promised to do an investigation. They talk about pressing charges against people who, like i said, couldnt easily killed some people by hitting figure we have hato have this discussion about whether these people are students. One reason why we dont know whether or not these people were students and going to some people talk to them even people in the daily cow who say i was there, we are all part of it. The students themselves in some cases saying this. The reason why we dont know is because they never conducted an investigation. The fact that was assault, lease 100,000 worth of damage, thats something weve want to protect the private for free speech on campus and for controversy speakers there has to be consequences to his sponsor and violet. Now that theyre not and has been you create a situation or youre essentially inviting it back. To get back to the question about the various different kinds of folks that involved, i think its been extremely unfortunate that we go from milo and colder and end up with Charles Wright because i see them as rather Different Cases in terms of the issue of quality, who should you be listening to, and should you engage with if you disagree. And my children something from. Because colleges and university and the teaching and learning business. So i think in terms of someone like ann coulter, lets eat it up a prioritizing process going on, some races would like to invite an ann coulter. Some real says i think shes kind of a selfpromoting lightweight who has a dreadful mean streak. This is why and then you bring forth something shes written and said to both to your view but someone else might say no, look, shes had some worthwhile things to say that we can really learn from, and then you have a discussion of ann coulter based on something remotely resembling evidence and reason, which i think should be good things to foster along with freespeech. Back to the question again, the fact that were going from these conservatives like edmund burke and William Buckley to conservatives like milo and ann coulter is a big issue. To shed some light into the issue, a lot of students will invite provocative speakers because they know that journalists will jump on it. They know they will get publicity from it and they know theyre going to elevate themselves in their own organizations by doing that. One tip i would give is make sure you look into the intentions of why speakers being invited. When that happens. Of course we are we ourselves do not want that media frenzy that window. It was the republicans choice on campus and thats why she was a speaker. But amongst the republicans on campus, there are two different factions. Theres a factions want to invite her because they align with the views and a faction that was driving the whole process because they knew the sole media frenzy would arise, and now theyre getting a lot of success from what they did. They planned this whole thing. They understood what they were doing. No small morty or this group actually wanted her to come because they felt that they outlined with her the best out of any other conservative speaker on the issue of illegal immigration, i think its important to understand that some students will want to invite the most far right are the most far left speaker. And if we do not go ahead and allow them to have, you know, an event where they can hear that speakers of use and where they can engage, then i think, then i think that does not go towards protecting free speech or is in line with the mission of having a large spectrum of political opinion on university campuses. I want to ask a question about the issue of the security cost associated with controversial speakers, which has come up a lot in the coverage, particularly of berkeley. A few years ago when Salman Rushdie started to emerge from isolation, he made some campus appearances ever quite a very expensive security arrangements, and he was able to speak without harm as a result. When most people wouldnt put Salman Rushdie and ann coulter and the same group. Is it at the same time people raise the question of the fairness of imposing security costs on Student Groups. If you want, if a Student Group is inviting a speaker, or a cyclic group inviting a speaker, is it legit for cost of security to be a factor in the universities involvement . I actually wanted to start with a clarification about the state of the law in california because i know some of you are reporterreported from californi. California is unique in that it has a law called the limit law that applies fo First Amendment standards even to private universities, a nonsectarian university. Can universities turn the costs on controversial speakers onto students themselves . This has been something the universities have attempted pretty much every single year ive been at fire. This is an old strategy and it was addressed in a similar case called Forsythe National movement with the Supreme Court said a mayor cannot just decide to charge a group that invites come that has a nice moment as a White Nationalist group there more money because they know the people, angry people show up. As the Supreme Court said in the case this would essentially empower bottle throwers. People run piper with bottle throwers would not give a despicable. You had to take a bit of the systemic look because if you create a situation in which, theres an incentive for people to respond violently, theyre going to keep responding violently picky base of the told a bully im going to stop you by giving you everything you want pics i guess, doesnt mean in some cases universities have to shoulder and larger cost to a controversial speakers to send a message that were not, we are not going to tolerate violent response . Because you cant. As soon as you make that effective and weve made that effective in california, you can expect that pattern to be repeated. Thats why the Supreme Court said the National Snow but will not allow this incredibly easy technique where we say this happened at ucla by the way music over to the group the one to have a debate about immigration and this was a proimmigration group by the way, open borders libertarians. They invited what open borders libertarians and one prowall type trump person. There was huge protest on the campus and universe you try to get away with charging them by i think 5000 for securities. In the case we intervene and it ended up getting rid of the security. Flat securities we dont object to is honest and reasonable. I think this very quickly almost instantly becomes a technique for keeping even much tamer speakers o and speaking after campus. I guess i would just go back to the issue of when youre talking about resources, the question that comes to mind is what we getting for your money . So the question really is, if its going to be an expenditure of resources you have the right to say okay, is it worth it . What you think gets back to can we come up with some reasonable acceptable way of talking about quality . Y in institution was a lot of its hard earned money on someone like milo yiannopoulos. So i think the question becomes yes, lets have maybe some controversial speakers, lets invesinvestigate if we have to because we think this is some of it has something really to say that students should know about and then we spend the money. But what do you do, so milo i enlarge is not part of like the campus Speakers Series that is created through the kind of process you describe. Its usually a Student Group getting outside money, because milo and ann dont come cheap to campus, and theyre getting outside money so they dont, they made the decision outside the universities prepared Speakers Series. Do you limit security to those . Do you have different rules for if the speaker was invited through an official sanctioned group or not . Well, maybe we think, we go back to basics okay, how do we bring speakers to campus . We can begin with an individual faculty member, and we get into Academic Freedom. Wanting a particular speaker in the context of the faculty members course who will contribute to that course. Way at the other end we get at commencement where it seems to me we should recognize that we have on her hands a ritual activity, not the time for great debate over something no one agrees about. So we between did you think about what these other kinds of events, and how might some of them, again, not just be off in their own corner but working together around kinds of events and speakers. About the security cost that you asked about, i think they had to pay hefty sigrid cost milo and again for the plant and cold again. They didnt end up paying that but theyre going to have to. You know, the thing is that when you levy such a high security fee on these groups, youre basically saying to them, if you want this speaker to come, heres whats going to happen. You will be a lot of violent protesters and other groups so you basically have two deal with their own mess that they create. When its not even your responsibility to deal with someone elses mess in response to the views you are trying to voice. I do think when they call it a de facto tax on free speech i kind of agree with them. I do agree there being placed in a very tricky position when they can invite the speaker that the want to speak because there will be violence. They are obviously has to be a limit. We are talking actual money. Resources that are not infinite. That is a conversation we should have. The direction we should be pushing towards. To the point, what if we can set up different ways of determining whether or not a speaker would be useful towards admission. Campus groups are basically on their own inviting speakers. To say to a campus group, this is and in line with our academic mission, you cant invite xyz, that is another dangerous precedent that would be set. How do you get to the question of worth . Is it worth it . New jersey just passed a law six years after the star of the jersey shore was on campus as it is known as the snoozey law after snook he banning the use of state funds. It was i believe it is 30,000 which was more than what pierce previously paid for Toni Morrison, arguably a more significant figure in our culture. Snooky is not controversial in the political sense but i am curious what you think college should do to encourage more Toni Morrison and less snooky in terms of actually being educational . This is where it becomes tough and exhausting. I am always in the middle of this and conservatives would argue it is like but you had amy schumer here, kathy griffin, one of mys brief freespeech idols, lenny bruce and george carlin. They are both at campuses all time. Where people saying this person shouldnt be on campus, just a potty mouth terrible person . They were saying that then. As soon as you start trying to evaluate people on the basis of the quality of the discourse they are bringing to campus, that is when biases present themselves. Lenny bruce could stand up to astringent comparison in terms of quality and if we get anyway. I see the problem. People disagree because milo has a combination of conservative humor and bomb throwing and tries to be serious in certain ways, similar to what harlan and bruce would do. To understand why these people are being invited to campus because conservatives specifically a campus like berkeley feel disenfranchised in a lot of ways because of the environment that exists so they are going to make a decision to invite not the best reflection of their views or the most reasonable person but a bomb thrower like and coulter. What we try to do is create an environment at universities where all students feel welcome to voice their opinions and we could have reasonable conversations about political issues. You dont have to say the most vile thing because we have an environment where we have a respectful discussion where you can voice your views in a respectful way that advances the conversation further. It is about creating those environments that universities. That is the way to move forward. Do you the republican Student Group that wanted ann coulter has a sense who might represent their views in a more thought worthy, robust level . I definitely think so. And they wouldnt invite them for what reason . It is hard to go to someone like john mccain and say i like what you say about x wise the issue, it is hard to get these prominent conservatives, less far right or less inflammatory because the speakers have a platform. These inflammatory speakers want to come to berkeley, they want to use berkeley. Milo made an in statement to organize free speech where he would basically a lot of people along this strain of conservatives basically are ready to so willing to come, more conservatives, more prominent conservatives like john boehner should stand up and say im laughing because by accident i got to sit next to him on the flight down to florida and i have never met a man happier to be done with his job and like it is all over for me, i am done with this stuff. I mean maybe i have seen a lot of conservatives who would garner a lot of attention, a lot of audience members and have a big event, should come to campus and say i want to speak because we more people who are willing to come to campus. One more question and open up her audience question so feel free to answer the microphone. We were talking before the panel started that gallup does polls of students and ask do you believe in free speech . Overwhelmingly large majorities of students across political, racial and ethnic groups say yes. Then if you ask do you favor College Policies that been paid speech which is defined as speech that in some way is viewed as denigrating to a group, majorities across racial and political lines say yes and dont apparently see a contradiction between their two answers to the question. And so i am curious from an educational perspective since this is a concern to college leaders, what should colleges be doing about it, what questions should journalists be asking about this sense of free speech that doesnt go with the constitution since of free speech. I have been saying my entire career there should be greater coverage of issues of freedom of speech and principles of Academic Freedom in orientation itself because a lot of times when i talk to students they dont get the larger systemic idea of creation of truth and conflict of ideas and when administrators demand censorship, did you ever explain these principles of freedom of speech . They are not learning these principles in high school so it is much more worse than individual we try to educate students about these ideas tolerating what you despise for example. Since the amendment is part of the constitution, theres also the issue of the level to which students do or dont have a grasp of the nations basic institutions including the constitution and i think we might think about what students encounter in the curriculum of their institutions. Here is where the right and the left can come together although we feel we dont just study what is great about america but what is true about america. The good, the bad and the ugly. I think having not only a sense of what they need to know about freespeech and the First Amendment and Academic Freedom is what do they need to know about the core institutions of their own country. I agree with that as well. What i try to do with my organization, we try to expand to other campuses across the nation but what i try to do is we organize discussions about freespeech itself where we tried to talk about the importance of free speech and difficult questions like whether or not there should be a line you can or cannot cross. That is something we need more conversations on. The reason why so many kids my age in college dont grasp the complete importance of First Amendment ideals is because at least partially because the direction this country is headed in, being driven to different extremes, when you have people saying more inflammatory things now more than ever, someone like milo not to my knowledge exists in 30 or 40 years ago. So i think we are being driven to very very disparate extremes. We are a very divided country and it is disheartening to see that, so many students dont understand the important, education is very important. The universitys mission should in part be like judith mention the education of constitutional ideals for example. And why that is so important to create diversity of ideas and diversity perspective in academic environment. What i am doing is trying to create a Faculty Coalition of faculty across this country who will sign a statement saying they will maintain a commitment to preserve a wide variety of perspectives on any issue they talk about. Trying to do that, initiatives like that would be very important. If you could introduce yourselves. From grand rapids press in grand rapids, michigan, the campus freespeech bill introduced into the state legislature, based on the Goldwater Institute model. A lot of the concerns that have been brought up regarding the mandatory suspension for students responsible for infringing on other peoples freespeech rights, a sense that has this legislation been in place or approved long enough to gauge what impact it has had on free speech especially in campuses where this hasnt bubbled up as a significant issue . It hasnt been and even though we agree with some of the stuff from the goldwater package and some of the stuff we disagree with we are civil libertarians, we dont agree with mandatory sentences for anything but the idea of something as vague as interrupting or interfering with a speech and having a mandatory punishment we dont support that at all. Looks like versions of these laws will get past in a lot of states. Some of them are fine. Others, every time we go this part is good we also have to say this part is not good and might be struck down by a court but it is too early to know what they will mean. Meanwhile, fired got past virginia eliminating a tiny little, prevented public universities of virginia saying here is your 20 foot freespeech zone and that is the only place you can protest on campus. So far that has been the place for years and worked out fine. And in missouri, one of the things in the backdrop of the case, we got it past the summer before but one reason they couldnt tell protesters they had to go to a little tiny zone. Under state laws journalists should be calling out legislators who are pushing these in the name of free speech but are not free speech with any consistency. Tennessee is one of the states with such a law, tennessee loves free speech, people should write about that, the Tennessee Legislature punished the university of tennessee for having a Diversity Office and wisconsin, where they are pushing one of these laws, the same legislators who are trying to cut funds to madison because there is a course on white privilege. Leaving aside the issues regarding the laws i think people are letting legislators pretend that they are freespeech purists when they are anything but. North carolina did something similar. My question is for greg. What i was wondering is somebody could make an argument for any speaker you want to have for any reason, there is some argument you could make even if it is to say by exposing racism, you are the archie bunker thing where you show how absurd it is so you get people talking about race or whatever. Is there any is there any line to cross where you would think it is inappropriate for university to have that speaker . Would david do can come to that point . Any white supremacist known for anything, maybe even somebody who is not known for anything but their hatred . I get this question wildly out of proportion to the number of times i have seen anything like that happen. What about the clan . We are talking about bill maher now. Some people see my lows that way. You are wondering where the line is. For me i have a simple philosophy on freedom of speech. It is valuable to know what people actually think especially when it is bad. Im not saying you should invite 9 11 truthers your campus but a lot of people actually believe the government was behind it. I take a very scientific kind of mentality where it is important to know what people think. We just lived through an election where there was a substantial portion of the country with its fingers and its ears about what people actually thought and we ended up with a strange result that we didnt see coming. I would add the issue of where do people get information in these times. The question is the obligation to have the person physically on your campus giving a speech as opposed to other ways you can expose them to it is something to keep in mind. A lot of press coverage of speaker disinvitations focuses on a speaker speakers to offend the left. There is a larger number of cases of religious colleges bending or does inviting speakers who in some way disagree with religious doctrine. Is that problematic . It is. If you go to the fire website we have a this invitation database where we keep track of that. There is a clear trend. If it is from on campus generally it is coming from the left of the speaker because sometimes if the speaker is on the left, we say from the left but in previous years we have seen plenty of examples like the Cardinal Newman society demanding a speaker not speak on their campus and we called them out for it. In the past two or three years more attempts have come from people on the left partially because of popularity people like milo. In previous years it has been a hodgepodge. It is interesting in terms of press coverage was we covered a a religious institution that inadvertently invite a proabortion rights speaker. That is and even what her claim to fame was but she happened to have supported abortion rights. It got no broad coverage at a time that many pundits are very focused on this issue. I dont know why that is but it is notable. Partially the reason we are on board with inviting ann coulter to campuses we wanted people to not feel isolated. We want people to say my voice is being represented and that was the republican. We wanted to invite her also because if you view her as hateful and inflammatory and nothing of value, why not go ahead and challenge her . We were creating a larger q a event with her that would essentially be liberal Berkeley Students challenging coulter on the issue of illegal immigration so partially the reason we would invite someone so far right or so far beyond the line of what most people would think is reasonable is because we would bring that viewpoint into an environment where it can be challenged by people who disagree. Would it be legit to say we will only host speakers who take you and a . I have never seen that. I think they could do that. I am Linda Flanagan from san francisco. I feel like something that is not being discussed is the role of faculty in all of this. At middlebury, some knowledge of what happened there personally, in the aftermath i know faculty have been divided about the best way to investigate, punish divisions on age lines. The older faculty being more free speech and younger being you shouldnt have been allowed so i wonder if you could address that issue. That is a very important point because faculty members have been missing in action around this whole matter leaving it a student versus Administration Situation and that is profoundly unhealthy. There are some faculty who have engaged and engaged thoughtfully but you made an important point, they should be far more visible because they are the ones doing the teaching for the students to be doing the learning. Even though i share in that, i give the other side of that which is if you look at what happened at yale or evergreen state university, relatively small acts of dissent are treated like major crimes in a way i am not used to seeing. One thing that did shift in the past couple years is we are seeing more faculty saying they are nervous about how easily they can be punished. After this debacle the last semester a lot of faculty reached out to me and this is impetus for the coalition im building but a lot reached out and said we are a large silent majority at berkeley who believe there should not be any line or type of restriction on hate speech or anyone should be allowed to speak. There are a lot of faculty not being covered in the media and that is important to take away. A lot of faculty at a University Like berkeley would present a silent majority who would believe anyone should be allowed to speak and they havent been heard. Wondering whether these were the silent majority. Tenure is a big disappointment. I want to leave in two minutes. Im not making a political statement, just have something i have to do. At middlebury as the questioner referred, prior to the event some faculty members said Charles Murray should not have been invited. Political Science Department at middlebury was asked to cosponsor the Charles Murray appearance and agreed to do so on the grounds that they agreed to cosponsor anything remotely having to do with political science. They have since apologized and said they shouldnt have so faculty are very divided on these issues. I am sarah brown with the chronicle of Higher Education, something you could briefly expand upon, the educational aspect of this and was colleges can do to educate students about free speech if they dont have great knowledge about constitutional values, the kind of things colleges can specifically teach them and how they might do it whether it is through freshman orientation or other approaches. I do think it is funny because universities hire all sorts of consultants about risk management. I think some schools are trying to create orientations and that is the best time to do it. If you frame in peoples mind the idea that being occasionally shocked you are one of those people who voted for trump and handle that, something it is best to get people prepared for that upfront. There are some really wonderful speakers who could be invited to explain that. Incredibly compelling about this. Doing it early and doing it with not legalistic lee, explaining it from a philosophical standpoint. I would agree certainly that some good information presented in an engaging lively way during orientation is a good idea and looking to the curriculum, how these matters are covered in which students are likely to get them i happen to have been involved in a form of teaching based on very elaborate historical gains and a number of them sat at various periods of American History and students take on roles that are at variance with their own beliefs and they argue and debate and have things to do so there are opportunities in the actual curriculum to contribute to that. Scott mentioned a gallup poll and this question would revolve around this idea that millennials are basically this group of politically apathetic people who dont care for free speech that my experience is the contrary. A lot of students my age really, really high of very interesting things to say. Whether they have an argument that is contrary to mine about free speech, they are very intellectually engaged and politically engaged and have a lot to say and in this debate about free speech this whole group of students in the middle have not really been given a platform to have their voice heard by the National Media and a good thing to do when covering freespeech issues would be to try and get as best as you can a large variety of student opinions from the middle as well and not just the people who invited a speaker and the people trying to silence her. Such orientations, being the last academic here, rather famously at the university of chicago sent a letter to students saying you wont find any trigger warnings or cancel any speakers here. It was that. I am not sure that evidence shows the lecturing form may be best suited because a lot of students were insulted by that even many who support free speech. And discussions, the university of chicago hasnt withdrawn any speaking invites, a controversy when they invited a top trump aide and made the event off the record, they banned students from writing about it. Similar to the q a issue. I find it interesting to explore what is truly a free and open event at a campus isnt off the record event, free and open and even at a place that holds itself up as the ultimate champion of free speech, which side . I am a bostonbased journalist and author and i spent many months last school year dealing with classes between the proisrael group and propalestinian group. There was something that seemed like a minor event. Getting to the point where propalestinian Group Disrupted the event, this is another kind of free speech issue i want reporters to think about but also had a question about it. It came up in my reporting for that piece, when is it simply freespeech versus when is it antisemitic what they are doing, the former uc chancellor where they have been writing many many commentaries against what palestinian groups are doing, you get faculty involved in this, judy schapiro, has some issues with protesters or no . The issue when i was there was a tenured case of a palestinian american anthropologist who was given tenure and i got a certain amount of hostile mail from some irritated alums and the tenure process went through, the guardian of the tenure process, there were teaching reviews, scholarship reviews. I was never involved. It was unpleasant to get these, never giving you money again, years that is those people never gave you money in the first place but leaving that aside that was nothing like the sort of thing we see going on now. Any criticism of israel is antisemitic, i dont have any easy solution for it. Should draw the line, what you saw as their policy, they backed off a little bit. Should universities get involved or is it simply freespeech, leave it alone . It is not different from any form. In other words in terms of the behavior appropriate or inappropriate, that would fall under other kind of disagreement. An interesting role for journalists, today there is a commencement speech where the speaker is Linda Sarsour who has been widely attacked. People can debate what they want about her views on the israelipalestinian conflict but much of what has been written about her is factually incorrect. Because she follows much of islamic law the allegation is she wants sharia law in the united states. As people who keeps kosher doesnt expect kashrut to be the law of the land of the united states, everybody who follows islamic tradition doesnt expect it as law. Much more attention than a series of disruption along those lines. They were slightly less youtube friendly and the antiisrael disruption there would be one person shouting, then another, then another so it didnt make compelling youtube, which i fear is a deciding your these days in press coverage of these and its understandable because you like the middlebury thing like wow. Certainly, i do every week i get five to 10 emails proposing articles on either proisrael groups are wretchedly suppressing propalestinian groups or the other. It is a very contentious issue. Time for one more question. In the georgetown faculty member. We think the problem isnt really about the faculty. I is for kids of my own come ages 14 to 20 touring college right now. I wonder if some of the disconnect between what College Students believe is free speech, but billy the kid the restrictions on hate speech that they see that as a conflict comes out of the antibullying program that theyve all come up with in school. I was an eighthgraders classroom and on the wall it says sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will really hurt me. Which is the opposite of what we grew up with. Kids are very clear that if he said something in high school that crosses the line, you could be expelled. They going to college thinking worth of violent behind them. Thats a very interesting point, but somehow we can compare the difference between being eight years old in 18 years old, that would be part of the issue. In one of their meal incident that university of wisconsin lockheed, where there is a big low back, he attacked students by name with a faculty member, putting the persons photo up. He does a lot of video staff in attacking my name. Some have made the case that a university has a responsibility speaker is involved in direct harassment of individual students by name. Or harassment of individual students, most people, even most republicans would call that characterize that as hate speech. I think theres some on the left, especially many student who would call a lot of the expression of political opinion amongst conservative students hate speech as well. Its an interesting question. How do we distinguish between hate speech and political opinion. Many students are conflicted on that. I definitely thought that was a very interesting point. I think its true and i think its also the result of an inability to essentially see where the other side is coming from. So i lied. I actually will allow one more question because great top zero, if you dont know him from is the new president of cwa. Hes the boss here and also in rate educational usa today still a something really good tasks geared stealing my power already. Just a quick question for judith. I wonder if youd help us as journalists just process things like the secretarys commencement address. There are two ways you could look at it. Number one, sort of free speech run amok or students stood up to what they feel is sort of an oppressive system. If you have been on stage, would you have said [inaudible] the background as she spoke a hcb you and students stood up chanting created quite a big row. When i found this interesting than anything is the president at one point in a rut did and said if this keeps up we are going to mail you your diplomas. It is hard for me to ask you to step into his shoes. Do you think that was appropriate . What might your reaction have been . Speenine given that the invitation was already offered and again i will repeat i really dont think commencement is the time to bring someone whom you know will be controversial. Its a ritual theater should be about the families. They do not all aside, it would be one thing if students stood up. If students are interact in a speech in the president has gone on record in biting the person, the president doesnt think its a great thing going on in there should be some consequence. Some important distinctions having watched the entire thing, while they were allowed, they werent so loud as to prevent her from speaking. Thats an important distinction and it doesnt prevent people from criticizing those who respect the speaker. At notre dame and students want done on Vice President pants, they didnt even chant. They just walked out, some of them do. If you read descriptions of them is certain elements of the blogosphere, youd think it was the middlebury situation. I also think for judiths point about commencement, there are issues specifically at an historically black institution. To the extent historically black institutions they come to eyes because we respect you. We love you. We know where you came from. And we know where your parents came from and what they did to produce this experience. I do think theres some interesting questions about why he would invite somebody who had so recently said things so offensive to historically black colleges. Interesting, Texas Southern right after that had invited john cornum, their senator. Students were threatening to do a cookman and the uninvited him. Again, the question is not to come to lecture on campus and take questions and interact, but i think it is not a coincidence that Larry Summers doesnt do a lot of Womens College commencement. At the same time, Larry Summers has lots of opportunities to share his ideas. I do think theres interesting possibilities there. While i see the distinction between what happened at that university versus Something Like notre dame and make sense. One was trying to silence the speaker. The other was im not when you listen to you. They are completely different. Idc major criticism towards notre dame students because its a sign of intolerance when youre not willing to listen when you have things you disagree with or someone you disagree with. Thats why they were criticized. Just something to follow up, the whole purpose behind free speech has been left out of much of the discussion about free speech. Its about creating a multitude of perspectives for your willing to listen to while different days. For me around range of perspectives and line to challenge and debate with others and engage in discussion with the people you disagree with. I really value the free speech we had today. Please join me in thanking our panelists. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] we know the mechanics, mr. Scott, as far as what might happen or when avenida Trump Administration might take. Could you talk about for the Trump Administration is, if its going to stay or go and who is within the white house, you know, at least advocating ideas for staying or going. Guest well, good morning, i think were pretty much where we were if you think about where we were during the campaign fore President Trump pulled the u. S. Out of the paris