Broadcast schedule. Because it is being broadcast will be broadcast, its important that we silence our cell phones. If you wouldnt mind making sure that were really blur in the recording if you dont do that. Silence the cells. Questions and answers, basically the format will be will start off with a brief hesitation, have a brief questionandanswer between our guests then you all be invited to participate. Well pass around this microphone. If you want to ask a question, if you just wait until this microphone is in front of your face so it gets recorded and we dont have a big blank spot. Lastly, if you need to use the restroom during the filming, there is a restroom at here. If you could try not to walk in front of the camera that is ideal. You can squeeze around back that way if you need to. Thats about it. Cool. All right. Welcome everybody. Thank you all so much for coming up to me. Were extremely excited to have p. E. Moskowitz discussing his new book the case against free speech and joining p e will be george ciccariellomaher. He will have a brief conversation venture over to you guys for some questions and answers. P. E. Moskowitz is a author of how to to kill a city, a former staff writer for aljazeera america. Different for publications including the guarding, New York Times, new yorker. Com, the republic, wired them slick, as the temp splinter and vice. A graduate of hampshire college, a livein new orleans. Joining p. E. Is going to be george ciccariellomaher who is a visiting scholar at hachette institute of performance and politics, having cut privacy at drexel university, simply state prison and the venezuela, venezuelan school of planning in caracas. He is coeditor of Duke University press series radical americas and author of three books, we create shabbos, building the commune, and decolonizing dialectics. Please join me in welcoming p. E. And george. [applause] im incredibly glad to be with you all to a lunch and help present p. E. Moskowitz and his book the case against free speech. My pleasure being harassed some aspect of first of course is p. E. Is a wonderful friend, comrade but also because they are one of the most acute observers of our contemporary condition. Writing about the cuts right to the heart of things that many of us have been grappling with for the past few years. This book is the book that people need to read to think through what is happened since 2016, what is happening 2017, 2018, if we if we think about the emergence, proliferation of a powerful and mainstream White Supremacist Movement rally around the presidency of trauma and also essential for reading in 2019, 2020 and thinking about how to fight back, pushback on this emerging and resurgent fascism and had to break it all to my. And so this book is a chocolate thinking about the past. It is a historical analysis and also tool for thinking about what we need to do in the future. I should say that im doubly glad to be here having a conversation about this book because its something that has impacted me on a very personal level. I was a professor once, and came into the crosshairs of the far right in late 2016. 2016. In other words, precisely the moment when the wind was in the sales of the altright, when you are making ambitious claims to political power in the streets but also in the white house, when they had steve bannon as their most steadfast ally in the halls of power, and in which they sought for reasons that p. E. Should very well in this book to target universities in particular for the wrath. When that happens, in the aftermath of being targeted with death threats, thousands of death threats, emails, voice mails as well as administrative measures, i always maintained that what happened to me was not a question of free speech. This is concrete the case again for reasons that in the chapter on the socalled freespeech crisis at middlebury crisis, p. E. Shows well which is speaking at private universities is quite simply not a question of free speech. Its the course of things like Academic Freedom, a complex concept but also question of what it is that we understand to be the role of speech in our society. Many depending on the grounds of free speech. For that i was thankful at the time. Many thin on the times of Academic Freedom even if is not absolute values either. As p. E. Shows again in this chapter on middlebury which is about invitation of charles royko the white supremacist eugenicist pseudoscientists to speak at this prestigious liberal arts college. It was not many things. Its about the years of anxiety, suffering, discrimination suffered by students of color at middlebury in the run up to this event is with the idea of giving a pseudoscientists, eugenicist, his ideas have been thoroughly discredited by even the Scientific Community a platform on the campus to be introduced by faculty come to be introduced by the president of the college. It was not our entire structure of power. And this is what p. E. Does so well. In my case what it always wanted to drive home Company Think when you think of if we are thinking about cases like john eric williams, everything that cases like tommy cooper on naming of you dont know the top faculty who been threatened, harassed, many cases disciplined by the university for engaging in speech but from the First Amendment is no defense. Four oh they claim to speech doesnt answer the difficult question. What this is about is about the materiality of speech. Moskowitz in the very first chapter on charlottesville gets right to the point of this. Maybe exaggerating your naivete. You say i shouldve charlottesville and i thought it would be about free speech and realized when a car struck a body and a person was left killed by what supremacist that this was a very material question. And this is what it is. Before target universities its about the materiality of again something with which is charted very well in this book the inroads made on the far right into universities with dark money, with rightwing foundations. Charles murray when he wrote ae bell curve, eugenics text, that for some reason to celebrate nt only by the right but by the clintons, by the right wing of the democratic party, wrote that book entirely funded by rightwing institution money. It was not an academic book. Its not an academic argument. The question is, whatsapp happened universities on one hand on the basis of his funny that is infiltrated universities . What possibilities does this close off . What students will be criminalized if they stand up and protest . Against the Charles Murrays of the world, against richard spencer, Milo Yiannopoulos of the world. Students that are using of course their speech engaging in rowdy speech, conflicted speech. How do we draw these lines between what is acceptable and what is in question how do we draw lines between what is platforming, in other words, elevating someone to and invited paid platform, and how is it we engage in these questions . But these are fundamentally major questions. Battle in terms of consequence, the material consequences are clear. The Material Impact of what white supremacist speech is a violent spirit we know the purpose of will. Just as the imperial impact of donald trump and the white house is violet and an uptick in white supremacist, arm Training Camps for nazis and fascism in the Pacific Northwest of forces that need to be physically defeated. Its also material in thinking about how these questions emerged. And thinking and diagnosing in a way that this book does powerfully, how it is that liberalism itself is part of the problem. How it is liberalism fetishize is a certain kind of speech, looks away from it, ignores the material construction of White Supremacist Movements, organizations, power. Of course fails to defeated at the polls and leads us in a situation of throwing up our hands i like the aclu defending the right of the claim, defending the rights of nazis to speak, to organize, to continue to physically threaten people of color across the country, on campuses at all campuses. This is this is a book of your o read. I hope there are enough copies of it or because people really a sweetie. You must dig through it. Its a historical account, a contemporary account. It weaves together the history of union organizing, the history of the aclu. Its movement from heavily communist organization that took seriously material reality to one that fetishize is on some level freespeech as the First Amendment above all other things, and it cuts right to the heart of what we need to be thinking about today. And with that, please join in welcoming again p. E. Moskowitz. [applause] thanks, all. So yes, i think we should like in the talk went to because i forgot george is a much better speaker that i am. [laughing] no, so yeah, i mean a b i can talk a little bit about what i wanted to write this book, and to be honest, it was confusing to me. I did would know what i wanted to write when it first started writing it, except i was kind of angry at i was seeing relayed to freespeech. My first book was gentrification, and as writing this book i kept thinking how could i i jump topic so much, e they are not related, right . Then i realized they can came out of the same desire to go deeper than what we are currently present in our world, whether its through the media, academia. Both gentrification and freespeech were given these platitudes, these ways of thinking that turn out to be more propaganda than they are true, internet to be based on these materials, the narratives were given to be based on material histories that influence all of our thinking and prevent us from making change in the world. I want to go beyond the headlines, another cliche, go beyond them and actually find out what freespeech actually means, if anything, i find a wife evelyn seems to be so angry about it right now. 31 from the far right to liberals and some on the left, too. So in order to do that i did a few things. I obvious he did a bunch of research, read the surprisingly little philosophy there is on freespeech, you know, given that something that we think is like the most important thing in this country, oftentimes there are very few critical books written about the concept of free speech or even the legal history of the First Amendment. I wanted to dig into that and analyze it, and then im a a reporter. Thats what i do, as i cant write without reporting. I ended up going to a bunch of flashpoints over free speech in the last few years. I was in charlottesville. I went to Middlebury College where as george mentioned Charles Murray was invited to speak. I went to Evergreen College in oregon and read college, and went to talk to protesters and to Standing Rock and talk to people who would been arrested and put in prison for protesting there. Yeah, i guess to put it bluntly what i found out is free speech means pretty much nothing at all. We think of free speech as this value that we uphold that no matter what our politics are beyond freespeech, that it is the think we can agree on, the classic quote that doesnt actually come from anyone but people district to voltaire. I disagree with what you say but also to my death i will defend your right to say. Thats what 95 of americans think. But as it turns out, thats a lot more complicated, and speech doesnt really mean speech in a society where some are so much more able to speak, and equally as importantly be heard sense of many of the people. What i found is that speech, like Everything Else in this country, falls along the predictable lines of race, class, gender, and every other form of oppression, and that most people really have no significant right to free speech. And i would argue also no significant right to liberatory freedom. The First Amendment in particular but the whole discourse of freespeech, it allows us to allies socially start and scary facts, that we live in a super racist, sexist, classless country. I think this is why people are so attracted to it from the right and liberals is because its much easier to fall back on this concept of freespeech in the supposedly universal is values that is to contend with what is actually happening in this country. And i think College Campuses are a really good place to talk about that. Part of me didnt want to spend too much time on College Campuses in this book because i think that there kind of over focus on in the media because college kids are easy targets and you can kind of like look at them from afar. But i think College Campuses are how we understand freespeech in this country a lot of the times, especially the Mainstream Media has harped on them so much in the last few years. But when you actually go to these campuses, what you find is that the students are not simply protesting, lets say Charles Murray or do not protesting the thing and everything was about this that absence, a day at present when he voluntarily asked white students to leave campus so that students of color could discuss things amongst themselves for a day. And it wasnt, it is not just about that. Thats not what the controversy is about. The word freespeech almost never gets uttered in those conversations. What students are really talking about our lifeanddeath issues of race, gender, of Sexual Assault on campus, of feeling like theyre completely unseen, unheard, feeling like their campuses are hostile environments and that theyre not actually learning the things that will be useful for them in their lives. What ends up happening when you apply freespeech discourse to that is completely erases all of that. I think thats why, again, why we are attracted to it. So, thats for a specific reason. We think of freespeech the way we do because of a specific history of how its been turned into this propaganda tool. It didnt just happen by accident, and freespeech asthma think of it today was not always the same. Obviously, back when the First Amendment was passed, slavery was still the old, black people couldnt go, women couldnt vote. So right there is a a hypocrisn the kind of founding of the supposedly free speech in this country, right . But then all throughout u. S. History we see freespeech being trampled on, especially for people, people of color and leftists in general. Its really only until the 1970s, 1980s and onward that we start to get this very come in my mind, peculiar version of freespeech that means were wt allowed to argue with someone when they speak if it are lets say a campus speaker, or that if we protest someone or use violence to protect ourselves against nazis, that we are somehow becoming a fascist. That its an interesting because people just think this is obvious, this is a free speech has always worked, its a universal value. But it wasnt until the 70s, 80s, 90s until that particular a peculiar definition came into play. Not to blame everything on the Koch Brothers, but its their fault. [laughing] if you go back to the 70s, and they can under the link to my book about justification, basically gentrification, under nixon and then reagan the indices were completely deregulated, tax rates were slashed on the wealthiest americans, and in the case of gentrification that allowed them to kind of push for this horrible real estate grab the lead to gentrification. In the case of freespeech they had a lot of money to do whatever the hell they wanted with, and they came up with a plan. So the Koch Brothers main political advisor at the time, he was their political advisor for 30 years up until 2015. He put together this plan the said if you just tell americans we want lower taxes or deregulation around environmental issues, obviously no one will go for that, right, because those are terrible things and they dont benefit many people. So instead you have to come up with a rhetoric that is more universal, more kind of soothing to your average american. This is where freespeech discourse came into play. Think actually wrote down this theory, actually wrote down the strategy of investing in the Raw Materials of ideas, i. E. Line professorships, buying entire colleges or schools within universities. To quote one conservative from back then, funding grants, grants, and more grants for books, books, and more books. Once they figure out is what you invest in those Raw Materials, you end up kind of generating a discourse that is hard to argue with because, for 20 years youve been creating a scholarship that you can fall back on that no one is aware really exists, and till its, until were in our present moment and what is yelling at each other about free speech. Once this funding stream started, literally hundreds of campus groups were created by the money of the Koch Brothers, the devos family, betsy devos, current secretary of education, and a few other billionaires. And they created hundreds of schools, i think there 313 schools within universities backed by the Koch Brothers currently, and they did the grants, grants and more grants for books, books, and more books. You can see when this funding starts to the pc crisis of the early 1990s. If you go back to the 19 90s, early 19 90s, late 1980s, all these books are coming from people like Dinesh Dsouza or other kind of far right provocateurs. Not only claiming that market freedom, i. E. The freedom of billionaires to do whatever they want is the ultimate freedom, but also claiming that students, liberals and the left and everyone else who disagrees with that is antifreespeech and profascism. And i think 1990 you get the closing of the american mind, a book that claimed College Students were essentially the new fascist and they didnt want anyone on the campus who disagreed with them. You get a liberal education by Dinesh Dsou