America chartered by congress to disseminate information about the u. S. Constitution on a nonpartisan basis and the centerpiece of our inspiring Educational Mission is a partnership with two great lawyers organizations the Federalist Society and the american constitutional society. The National Constitution center has brought these two great organizations together to sponsor a series of traveling constitutional debates across america. This is our third time here at the beautiful Chicago Cultural Center and we hosted debates from washington d. C. To dallas to San Francisco illuminating about the central constitutional issues in the news. This phenomenal collaboration has a great online component and i want you all to know if you dont already about this spectacular interactive constitution that we have launched with the federal society and the american constitutional society. You can click on any and see the leading score are hars in america. With a thousand words about what they agree the provision means and statements about what they disagree so when you click on the First Amendment thats the sub topic this evening you can find jeffery stone from university of chicago and from the school of law and then areas of disagreement. Have this remarkable online tool thats lump negotiating citizens across america. This an exciting debate tonight because were here to discuss question which has riveted campuses and citizens across the country. Should public universitieses have the right to define hate speech on campus. We have emphasized public universitieses because those are bound by the First Amendment to the constitution and in the course of tonights important debate i want you to separate your political from constitutional views. Thats the central for all of these educational efforts you might conclude that hate speech is terrible but the First Amendment protects it or you might think hate speech is not bad but the First Amendment allows it so when you vote on that do public universities have the right to ban that. I have to add something else. This is a remarkable topic which the federal society often agree and were going to start that with jeff stone and the federal society that will tell you the su preechl court has prevented the banning of hate speech. They may disagree where the doctrine should go and when you cast your vote you might conclude the First Amendment doctrine be changed to allow for the banning of hate speech but you will see them say so far the court has protected hate speech and then well broaden it to include three other remarkable scholars and susan nominated by others and they have positions youll hear and then at the end you will vote again. Keep your mind open. You will vote at the beginning and then hear the arguments and vote at the end and the winning team has changed most opinions so thats why its a hard question. People are debating it and approaching it with open minds. The other thing before starting todays debate is produced as part of a great series of free speech debates and they are helping us take this across the country. Its now time for us to vote and ill say well talk with eric and jeff so start thinking of the questions youll ask and hand them out as the conversation begins and the question is resolved public universities should be able to ban hate speech on campus you can vote anonymously and well ask you to vote again after the motion so using your device please answer that question. Do you agree with the resolution that public universities should be able to define and ban hate speech on campus if you support press yes if appose press no and then hit send. If theres only a yes that would be a bad debate. Scroll down and then youll find every option. Its an incredible hospitality we have toward all of you. Press the downward clicker and then send now youre about to hear from two of the leading First Amendment scholars both here at the university of chicago that just passed some important principals that well talk on and its my pleasure to introduce them now. Jeffery stone and his most recent book is sex and the constitution from americas origins from the 21st century and contributed to the board that principals about free speech. Eric posen er a scholar of international and constitutional law is the author of the twilight of International Human writes and ladies and gentlemen, join me in welcoming them both. [applause] jeff . You wrote these university of chicagos and one of the leading defenders of the First Amendment. Let us know why the Supreme Court has done this. The Supreme Court has taken ten position that in the realm of restrictions on speech the most problematic are those that forbid the expression of a particular point of view. For the government to decide certain viewpoints are impermissible puts such a that restrictions on the ability to convey a particular point of view are basically per se unconstitutional and perhaps they create a clear and present danger of truly grave harm and thats a general proposition but the court has stated and is a the case in other the Public Discourse at Public University and therefore in the same way cannot for bid and advocates gay rights or apposed abortion it cannot restrict speech that advocates what is regard as hate speech. It doesnt have any acceptable or understandable definition butter theres instances of what we recognize as hate speech like nazi flags for instance. And yet institutions can not prohibit faculty and staff from expressing views from others regarded haight full. Not the the court thinks those are good, bad or indifferent but the court said its not for the government to decide if they can or cannot be expressed. Thank you for that summary. You said they only essentially and likely to cause lawless action and we can be confident that the views are accepted by our friends at the Federalist Society on the interactive constitution endorse the excellent summary youve given. Do you believe the First Amendment should be construed differently. Does the Supreme Court have it right and in addition do you believe private universities not form early bound should have that power . Let me answer the question this way. Ill try to put aside the doctrine and talk about what happens on campuses and what should happen on campus as jeff mentioned its hard to know what hate speech is and sort of occurs in all kinds of different context and depending on the context regulation may be appropriate. The classroom first of all. In the classroom, students dont have any free speech rights or shouldnt and the students speak only if the professor allows them too. I teach Financial Regulation and in that class i would they will them to stop and if they didnt i could kick them out. Its simply not relevant to the mission. Another context is the Living Conditions of the students so students are not like the rest of us that can withdrawal from homes when we feel battered by the political discourse going on and im quite sympathetic that if in that context a black student is constantly hearing racist comments from his white roommate that the university should step in rather than saying this is opportunity for some educational benefit or some useful give and take. Students debating out of class and i think that those are very complicated settings for which a range of approachs can be taken appropriately. Im sympathetic that the university can say we have limited resources and we want students to hear from somebody with something valuable to say so if you want to invite someone thats going to call people names you cannot use university facilities. You can do it online or outside of campus and other universities might take other approaches and theyre free to experiment. Norms are different and as long as different ones are experimenting then students can select among the universities that they attend then overtime maybe well get a better since of the appropriate way to regulate speech so for that reason im not willing to take the position that hate speech should be allowed but my personal view is i like whats happened thanks to jeff at the university of chicago but i wanted to say that whats right for the university is necessary right for yale or burkley or the university of texas. So jeff, do you respond there. First of all tell us what the chicago principals are and would they allow regulation to the kind endorseed in the classroom and the dorm and possibly even with the invitation of controversial speakers and do you believe it should be adopted by all or not . The amendment is understood to mean as applied to public universities i say in Public Discourse so i think that eric is completely right. In the classroom, universities clearly determine what subjects can be discussed and whats appropriate on a given day and similarly in grades exams and the way theyre defended and justified and thats not part of the basic concept of free speech so its the public aspect thats directly controlled by the First Amendment. The dorm situation is a complicated one. I agree and then talking about the First Amendment issue for a moment. The dorm situation is interesting. The argument could be made as eric does make and the captive audience is there and the question is can the resident or some other official decide which messages are permissible and not. The point about what is hate speech . It is hate speech to have a swastika or a nuice or assign that says people of abortions are baby killers and you can go down that line and nobody know wheres to end that and to put resident heads in charge of decided which are okay and not. Trump should be impeached is that hate speech . What about the Trump Supporters . So you need content neutral rules saying you cant put signs and thats how the government does to relate this conundrum. I agree that private universities have the right to desite side what speech they will allow and not allow and promote in their own facilities. Thats the right of those institutions and theyre not restricted or governed by that. So chicago like the university of chicago thats long and pretty extraordinary tradition. The president of the university being a wared of institutions around the country these have begun to percolate 7 faculty members in charge of a statement or principal for the university and the statement that we drafted is committed the robust expression of peoples points of view that it should be to encourage and debate to teach people how to deal with ideas in a fearless way. Not for the university to decide. What ideas should or should not be permitted. If people dont like ideas they should challenge them and explain why theyre wrong and argue with why they should be rejected and develop those skills and thats the center of what the university is about and that our motivations to enter real world where they will not be protected from speech they find haight full to train them to deal with that speech in a powerful and effective way the basic idea is to celebrate that. Theres speech thats illegal and those that constitutes and so on but in the realm of ideas the university is not to be intrusive and its up for the faculty. What i said eric is right. Institutions are free legally to decide what they want to do about this issue. And in the same way upon ideas and their viewpoints. We will have our university and only allow people that are dedicated to support donald trump or abortion and not prepared say that. Theyre allowed to do that and thats their right. My view is thats not a university. That what makes it a university is its open to challenging all ideas and it should not play the role of censoring in that manner but its the legal right of them to do that. My own view is when they do that i think they sacrifice a core part to test ideas in fairsiest way possible. Eric. Jeff, basically says that these principals are not only right for chicago but they get to the essence of what universities are about and our audience and debate in voting on this question is deciding how they think the First Amendment should be construe and not how the Supreme Court has done it. Can you make a case why you believe if the process was done properly . Notre dame. Byu. Their universitys with speech codes and they have theological commitments of the sort that i dont agree but they engage in its possible to have those that is committed to research and teaching that they dont let people cross. Now i find it hard to believe that this approach will do better scholarship but id like to have competition. And you can take the view that if we have those debating within their pages and that may be true but it also may be better if we have it across universities and theres also this point that jeff makes about the difficulty of drawing lines and i actually dont think its that difficult to draw lines. Lets take another analogy of the private employers. They have the same problem universities do. All have various rules they use. Sometimes theyll say no politics or have extremely vague guidelines and people get upset there will be Human Resources address it in a way one hopes would be capable and i think they were doing this for a long time until this issue became polarized and i think they were going along fine until all the attention was directed upon them. Im more sympathetic that public universities should not engage in this because i dont trust state to do this but i do think that the First Amendment should be interpreted flexably in the case to allow them to while at the same time the experimentation should be much more allowed to flourish and the last point is jeff says that its important for students to learn how to criticize people and defend idea but i think the important part of what it teaches is stability. You need to defend your ideas in away that doesnt offend other people. When people get angry we see this in lots of institutions the most successful including universities and they encourage stability and they people who get emotional and call people names theyre not usually successful scholars and in legislatures its the same thing. Theyre strong in norms because its necessary for people that disagree with each other to cooperate and what the students need to learn is that actually they have to choose words carefully and they learn that well theyll be well prepared after they graduate. Please respond to the excellent points eric says public universities are not the same and they are capable of drawing the distinctions and in the course of your thoughts the bills proposed that would require public universities to remain neutral and prevent them from imposing penalties for students and others that interfere with speakers. So i emphatically agree with eric about the responsibility to teach their students about mutual respect. One of the themes i forgot to mention. Thats part of what a university should do as students and with respect to questions i agree that notre dame and others can define what they want to be. But any student that defends roe v. Wade is out of here. Thats not my way to define university. I think they should be able to say that and you should argue and thats what university is about. That doesnt mean its the Legal Definition but its the aspiration. With respect to legislation i find it troubling even in the public realm. For the legislature to get too involved with universities and leadership by dictating what the rules should be that worries me because i trust much more the leaders of the universities public universities as well as private to make those judgments because of their experience and the depth of understanding much more than politicians whos motivations are often highly collared by disadvantage and even though the laws that might be imposed are ones on the face that i dont necessarily disagree with as a matter of principle in the absence of a real crisis i prefer legislatures keep their hands off. And the other thing that makes me uncomfortable about it to be honest and this is quite candid is that i think that what you have is an odd distribution of views to traditional liberals and conservatives and liberals are divide now. Some see themselves as most committed issues of equality and what they see as justice and feel that should be override and unto there and you see those with the commitment by people in positions of power that do not trust anyone including themselves to have the power to decide what points of view can beest spoused and not. On the conservative side on those in history efforts of suppression of speech have been driven by political conservatives whether in the early 19th century or about religious moralism or opposition to darwinism or turn of the century with world war i anyone to criticize the war or the draft can be throne out or during the mccarthy era. Its always been conservatives on the side of restricting speech. And for the most part its been conservatives much more restrictive so i find it a bit annoy together be honest that all these republican legislatures are suddenly championing free speech in a situation that the people silences are ann colter and others and what its about for them is not so much the principal of free speech as it is the particular thing being done. It is a matter of principal in terms of what this about. One more thought from eric and well invite colleagues so jeff has been taking shots against conservatives. Whats wrong with these bills that are drafted largely by the Goldwater Institute a libertarian think tank. Would require university to remain neutral and would you support those and you think universitys can define and bend hate speech if you defined hate speech how would you define it . I cant help jumping in. Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt went after father mack coughlin, the right wing populist got the f. C. C. To withdrawal the Radio License he was operating under and threatened to do so. This law you know, gosh. These public,