Who is the director of center for constitution, attorney general sessions will speak on free speech and Higher Education. Free speech and Higher Education is at the core of our academic mission. As you can see from the protest outside georgetown law is a place that takes ideas very seriously and where people sharply disagree. I have heard from many faculty and students that they wanted to protest the actions of the administrations and is part of the mission of a great academic that they are able to express their views and engage in civil debate. As an Academic Institution it is also important that we hear the attorney general express his ideas about free speech at the university. I welcome attorney general sessions and i look forward to hearing what you say. [applause] Jeff Sessions is the 84th attorney general of the United States. Born in selma, alabama he received his bachelors of arts from Huntington College in montgomery. His law degree from the university of alabama in 1973. Mr. Sessions served in the United States army reserve from 1973 to 1986, ultimately attaining the rank of captain. He began legal career as a practicing attorney in russellville, alabama and in louisville. Following a twoyear stint as assistant united District Attorney for the alabama he was dominated by reagan in 81 to serve as the us attorney for the seventh district of alabama. He held that position for 12 years. In 1995 selected Alabama Attorney general and serving as the states chief Law Enforcement officer until 1996 when he entered the u. S. Senate where he served until this year. The Georgetown Center for the constitution is a nonpartisan and non ideological program devoted to examining how a written constitution, including the First Amendment, is properly interpreted and enforced. We are very pleased, mr. Attorney general, that you chose us and georgetown law as a venue from which to offer your thoughts on this subject. Thank you. [applause] thank you very much, passer. It is a great honor to be in georgetown law and the Georgetown Center for the constitution where the exchange of ideas is indeed welcome and encouraged. Thank you for hosting me with the students today. I thank you, students, for allowing me to be a part of the National Conversation with you. As you embark on another school year you and hundreds of your peers across the campus, we hope will continue the intellectual journey, that is Higher Education. I love my education experience so much and i suspect you do, too. You will discover new areas of knowledge and engage in debate, great and small, and many of the views you have will be challenged in some of your views may even change. You will, if your institutions follow our nations historic and Cultural Education traditions, pursue truth while growing in mind and spirit. In short, we hope you will take part in the right of every american, free, robust and sometimes Contentious Exchange of ideas. As you exercise these rights realize how precious and rare and how fragile they are. In most societies throughout history and in so many that i have had an opportunity to visit as a member of the Armed Services committee to some of the most difficult places on the globe, such rights do not exist. In these places, openly criticizing the government or expressing unorthodox opinions that land you in jail or worse. Let me tell you about one example that occurred one on them when a few idealistic University Students came together as a group to advocate for a belt political need wanting to recruit others to their cause they staked out some ground on a campus walkway, popular with students, and approached them as they passed. They said things like do you like freedom . Do you like liberty . And then they offered these passerbys a document that they revered and believed represented these ideals. The United States constitution. These young proselytizers for liberty did not walk the walk way, did not disrupt surrounding activities, did not use intimidation or violence to further their cause. Nevertheless, the governor official labeled this behavior as provocative and in violation of government policy and when the young people bravely refuse to stop citing the right to free speech the local official had them arrested, handcuffed and jailed. This incident could have occurred on any number of tyrannies where the bedrock american ideals of freedom and thought and speech have no hope whatsoever. This incident happened right here in the United States, just last year at a Public College in battle creek, michigan. A state official had students jailed for handing out copies of the United States constitution. Freedom of thought and speech on american campus are under attack. The American University was once the center of academic freedom, a place of robust debate, a forum for the competition of ideas but it has transforming into a neck of chamber of Political Correctness and homogeneous thought, a shelter for fragile egos. In 2017 the foundation for individual rights in education surveyed 450 colleges and universities across the country and found that 40 maintain speech codes that substantially infringe on constitutionally protected speech. Of the Public Colleges surveyed, which are bound by the First Amendment, fully one third had written policies banning disfavored speech. For example, at Boise State University in idaho the student code of conduct prohibits quote conduct that a reasonable person would find offensive. At Clemson University the student code of conduct bans any verbal act that creates quote and offensive educational work or living environment. Who decides what is defensive and what is acceptable . The university is about the search for truth not be in the position of truth by a government sensor. Speech incivility codes often violate what the late Justice Anthony scalia called the first action of the First Amendment which is that as a general rule, the state has no power to ban speech on the basis of constant in this great land, the government does not tell you what to think or what to say. In addition to written speech codes many colleges now deign to tolerate the speech. Only in certain geographically limited free speech zones. For example, a student recently filed suit against Pierce College in california, a public school, alleging that it prohibited him from distributing Spanish Language copies of the United States constitution outside the schools freespeech zone. The size of the free speech zone, 616 square feet. Clearly the size of two dorm rooms. These cramped zones are eerily familiar to what the Supreme Court warned against in the seminal 1969 case of tinker versus des moines, a case about free speech. It said freedom of expression would not truly exist if the right to exercise only in an area that a benevolent government has provided as a safe Haven College administrations have also silenced speech by permitting the hecklers veto to control who gets to speak and what messages are conveyed. In these instances administers discourage or prohibit speech if there is a threat that it will be met by protest. In other words, the student favors at hecklers disruptive tactics over the speakers First Amendment rights. These administrators have seem to forget that as the Supreme Court put it in watson versus city of memphis more than 50 years ago Constitutional Rights may not be denied simply because of hostility to the assertion of their exercise. This permissible attitude toward the hecklers veto has spawned a Cottage Industry of protest who have learned that School Administrators often will capitulate to their demands. Protesters are now routinely shutting down speeches and debates across the country in an effort to silence voices that is sufficiently conform to their beliefs. A frightening example occurred at middleberry college, student protesters violently shut down a debate between an invited speaker at one of the schools own professors. As soon as the event began the protesters shouted for 20 minutes preventing the debate from occurring. When the debaters then attempted to move to a private broadcasting location the protesters, many Wearing Masks and a common tactic often used by the kkk surrounded the speakers and began physically assaulting them. They engaged in a violent riot to ensure that neither they nor their fellow students would hear speech that they may have disagreed with. They crackdown on speech. [inaudible] a speech to promote transgender rights was canceled after students protested because a jewish Group Sponsored the election. Virginia tech disinvited an africanamerican speaker because he had written on race issues and they worried about protest disrupting the event. This is not right. It is not the great tradition of america and yet School Administrators have been to this behavior. The offense is to travel and encourage it. Over a week ago, after the anti fascist protesters have successfully shut down numerous campus speaker events in recent months was with violent riots, berkley was reportedly forced to spend 600,000 and have an overwhelming Police Presence to simply prove that the mob was not in control of their campus. The home of free speech. In advance, the school offered counseling in advance of the speech, they offered counseling to any student or faculty who sense of safety or belonging was threatened by a speech from ben shapiro, a 33 yearold harvard trained lawyer who has frequently been targeted by antisemites for his jewish faith and to vigorously condemns hate speech from the left or the right. In the end, mr. Shapiro spoke to a packed house and to my knowledge, no one fainted, no one was unsafe, no one needed counseling, i hope. Yet, after this small victory for free speech a student speaking to a reporter said in reaction i dont think berkley should hold any controversial speakers on both sides. Perhaps that would be the worst lesson. I believe the vast majority of students like you at the Constitution Center made no lecture on the dangers of government imposed but we have seen a rash of incidences often perpetrated by small groups of those students and professors unable or unwilling to defend their own beliefs in the public forum. Unfortunately, these trends have been tolerated by administrators and shrugged off by other students. Let us directly address the question why should we should be worried about the speech that may be in retreat on our universities. Of course, for a publicly run institution the easy answer is of upholding free speech rights is not an option but an unshakable requirement of the First Amendment. As Justice Robert jackson once explains if there is a fixed star in our constellation in our constitutional constellation there is no official i that can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion. Even setting aside the law, the more fundamental issue is that the university is supposed to be in place where we train and where the next generation of americans are equipped to contribute to and live in a diverse and free society filled with many often contrary voices. Our legal heritage upon which the founders drafted the bill of rights thought that reason and knowledge produced a close approximation of truth. From the truth, may hopefully often arises justice but reason requires discourse and frequently argument. That is why the freespeech guarantee is found not just in the First Amendment but permeates in institutions, traditions and constitution in this free, unique, exceptional lands. The jury trial, the right to crossexamine the witness, the speech and debate clause, the very art and practice of lawyering all of these are rooted in the idea that speech reason and confrontation are the very bedrock of the good society. These practices are designed to ascertain what is the truth and from that truth good policies and action can be found in. Federalist first anti federalist, Abraham Lincoln against steven douglas, doctor Martin Luther king against george wallace. Indeed, it was the power of doctor kings words, his speech, that crushed segregation and overcame the violence of segregation. He was unrelenting in making it clear moral arguments that in the end could not be denied. Words over violence. At so many times in our history, as a people, it was indeed speech and still more speech that led americans to a more just in perfect union. The right to freely examine the moral and immoral, the prudence in the foolish, the practical in the inefficient, the right to argue for their marriage or demerit remain indispensable for a healthy republic. It has been known since the beginning of our nation that James Madison knew this when, as part as his protest against the alien sedition act, the speech codes of his day, he said that the freedom of speech is the only effectual guardian of every other right in a quote that i am reminded of daily in this job, Thomas Jefferson knew this when he said in a word now hundred i swear upon the altar of god eternal hostility against any form of tyranny over the mind of man. No little manner they are. Soon, you will be, perhaps, a professor, University President , attorney general of the United States, it may be president of the United States and you will have your own pressing issues to grapple with but i promise you that no issue will be better decided with less debate with indifference from the audience and with voices not listened to it unhurt. There are those who will say that certain speech isnt deserving of protection and they will say that some of speech is hurtful, even hateful and they will point to the very speech and belief that we a poor as americans but they attract the right of free speech does not exist only to protect the ideas upon which most of us agree at a given moment in time, Justice Brandeis outwardly stated in 1927 in the current with whitney versus california if there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies to avert the evil by the process of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence. Let me be clear, protecting free speech does not condone violence like we saw recently in charlottesville. Indeed, i call upon universities and allamerica to stand up against those who would silence Free Expression by violence or other means but a Mature Society can tell the difference between violence and unpopular speech and a truly free Society Stands out, speaks up for cherished rights precisely when it is most difficult to do so. At justice, if there is any principle of the constitution that more imperatively calls for the attachment than any other, it is the principle of free thought, not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thoughts that we hate. We must do so on our campuses, University Officials and faculty must defend Free Expression boldly and unequivocally. That means president s, regions, trustees as well. A national recommitment to free speech on campus is long overdue and an action to ensure First American men. Women rights are overdue. Starting today, the department of justice will do its part in this work. We will enforce federal law, defend free speech and protect students Free Expression from what ever end of the spectrum it may come. To that end we are filing a statement of interest in a campus freespeech case this week and we will be filing more, im sure, in the weeks to come. This month we march the 230th anniversary of our constitution. What a remind remarkable document and the longest existing constitution in the world and it is an extraordinary thing. This month we also mark the 54th anniversary of the 16th street baptistery bombing in birmingham. For little girls died that day as they changed into their choir robes because the clan wanted to silence their voices for civil rights. But their voices were not silenced. Doctor Martin Luther king would call them the martyred heroine of a holy crusade for freedom and human dignity. I urge you, really urge you, to go back and read that eulogy is to consider what it had to say to each of us today. This is the true legacy and power of free speech that has been han