So that means everyone has to speak directly into these microphones. I want to introduce our panelists. We have the president of davidson college. She is a long accomplished administrator, and has spent much of her career in houston, where she was a Vice President of international disciplinary initiatives. To her left is the provost of northwestern university. Until he moved to northwestern last year, he was the dean of yale college, and the edmund s. Morgan professor of African American history and studies at yale. He is working on many interesting projects, and has written an introduction for the new addition of dubbois epic souls of black folk, still used in many universities to address the issues of our time. We have the executive dean of letters and sciences at the university of california, berkeley. She is a professor of history and a prizewinning scholar with 20 years of experience teaching at berkeley. To her right is the president of Wesleyan University in connecticut. He was previously president of the California College of the art and of the Getty Research institute in los angeles. He came to make trouble at wesleyan. One of the most notable things about this panel is that three out of the four got their doctorates at princeton, everybody but jonathan and me. I dont have a doctorate. This is just a sort of side issue, whether princeton training reveals itself in the course of our conversations. Many people are more affected by their undergraduate institutions than graduate ones. We will dispense with opening statements. One of the things i want us to talk about, because i believe since many people will be in attendance this morning and are watching this, our faculty members work at places where there have been quite a few controversies over speech by members of the faculty. Our first topic that we might discuss is the question of the distinction between free speech and Academic Freedom, whether they are in fact identical or subtley different or very different matters to be concerned with at our institutions of higher education. Carol, i wonder if you would like to take that on first. Caroline the question you are asking is about the relationship between the commitment to free speech and the speech of faculty members the way this issue has been framed in public debate focuses on free speech. I am not the most qualified person to speak about the distinction between free speech and Academic Freedom. But i will say that Academic Freedom is largely about inquiry and the freedom to pursue even wildly unpopular lines of research in the interests of arriving at deep insight, with the recognition that many of the most important areas of Research Today were at one time wildly unpopular and dismissed as outrageous or not even academic. When i talk about this issue, i tend to talk about the ways in which we as institutions of education are committed to trading environment that fosters free thinking by everyone, and that free inquiry actually benefits from inclusion and diversity, the ways in which we can pursue knowledge and create insight benefits significantly from heterogeneity from people asking the questions. Rather than thinking about free speech and Academic Freedom, there is a way to frame this so that inclusion is actually a prerequisite for an expanded notion of free inquiry, if we focus on the kinds of questions and issues we want our College Students to be able to ask and pursue. I would frame the academic dimension of your question in that way. Eights institutions, that commitment to diversity and inclusion precisely because the more heterogeneous the population of people asking the questions, the broader the lines of inquiry will be. Sanford i think that is very helpful. Carla, at a large university, berkeley for example, the a lot of the public, not just in california, but in the country generally seems to react quickly and forcefully to anything that happens at berkeley. Does it help clarify some of the controversies you had to deal with to draw distinction between free speech and Academic Freedom . Carla this is a cherished part of our tradition. As the home of the student Free Speech Movement, berkeley is always in the public eye. It is a beacon for that conversation. I think Academic Freedom in general has been more faculty focused, rather than a student focused conversation. We think about the genesis of these concepts, Academic Freedom is a concept that emerged in the early 20th century around 1919, to defend the right and autonomy of the faculty as a space of free inquiry in relationship to political interference by the part of administrations. That idea of selfregulation of the faculty seems to be the thing at the core of Academic Freedom conversation connected to the whole history of tenure in this country and the protection of faculty rights. Free speech is the student version of Academic Freedom. It is the moment at which, and mario was quite eloquent on this sanford the founder of this Free Speech Movement in 1964. Clara freedom of speech comes with responsibility to selfgovernance of the students, of their public conversations. There is a connection, that is where they touch each other, Academic Freedom in some ways engages students, in a kind of responsibility for the curation of their own public conversation and the rights to have that conversation in the same way be faculty had enjoyed it in the the faculty had enjoyed it in the earlier part of the 20th century. They come back together pointedly in an article written by the dean of yale law school, and it has been his question that there should be a defense of freedom of speech on any college campus, Academic Freedom is the higher principle on the college campus. The faculty and the administration do have the right to limit and to judge and i judicate and i dont happen to share that view, i happen to be on the berkeley side of this debate, with the dean of our law school. But to what extent does the faculty and the administration have the right to limit the kind of speech to exercise professional discretion about what kind of speech should be on the campus . It has been brought back into the conversation. I think it can be clearly separated. Sanford jonathan, are there helpful distinctions to be drawn here . Academic freedom is sort of an clara and theas some people describe. Is free speech more the outside issue would be the interface of the college or the university with the public at large. Is that a helpful distinction . Jonathan i have not thought much about it. It wouldnt take much to persuade me that is an effective way of thinking about it. This point does address your question, about public and private and social good. The fact is, we have various types of schools on this panel and one of the most important distinctions is public versus private. Free speech as a constitutional ideal does not apply to the private, which most people dont realize. Any private that i know about embraces the idea of freedom of expression. That would be the more accurate way of talking about it in a private university or college. It helps to understand why public and private have had very different times with interlopers acting in bad faith trying to test free speech on campus. The reason i raise this in light of the question is it talks about the public contract of service, which is what private and public are engaged with. That way, i think the free speech expression of being a public good kind of phenomenon is a nice way of thinking about it. I think that is constructive. Of myyou raise the issue former colleague and his notion of who can adjudicate speech, it is worth thinking about. Universities and colleges are supposed to be marketplace of ideas and Academic Freedom, and we should be testing all kinds of ideas, comfortable and uncomfortable especially. I dont think academics, we shouldnt be ceding our ability to say that is wrong. That is the point of airing out ideas in the first place. This is where notions of Public Safety need to be taken into account, and also, frankly calling beat phenomenon what it is, acts of bad faith, by people not understanding Free Expression on colleges and University Campuses. The publicprivate phenomenon is a real thing. Inward and outward i understand that. I havent thought about it. They all revolve around the fact that we need to be talking about our commitment to improving the quality of the Public Discourse around us everywhere. That happens inside and outside. Carol just from what claire and clara andaid, jonathan said, it seems like we need to make some distinctions, there is a kind of category that takes place in the public debate, which makes it hard to articulate with clarity what it is colleges and universities are trying to do. I do think there is a difference between talking about this in terms of freedom of inquiry and the pursuit of ideas and the constitutional right to free speech. There is a deep commitment to freedom of inquiry on college and University Campuses that is distinctive and special and builds on this notion of constitutional freespeech. You talk about inquiry in that way, but inquiry and speech are different. Selfgovernance and the demand for autonomy brings with it a responsibility for the public sphere that you are creating on your campus. How do we have a conversation about what that means and invite the students and faculty and everyone into helping us figure that out . What kind of public fear or be are we creating, and what kind of public feared we wish to create . Can we make the distinction between an argument and an epithet . I say to my kids, if it is not reputable, it is not an argument. Its name calling. Sanford michael, you have done a lot of thinking and writing on these issues. I appreciate you weighing in on the nexus between Academic Freedom and free speech. Michael i think, as has been said, Academic Freedom is an idea that protects faculty, before the Free Speech Movement of berkeley, there were loyalty oaths to protect the faculty from being fired if they belonged to the communist party. Party or its affiliates. Whether that was a proper use of Academic Freedom are not, people have debated. The idea was certainly that faculty as citizens should have rights to participate in a many in many variety of activities without a detriment to their professional life as academics. I do think the marketplace of ideas metaphor is as faulty for expression as it is for economics. That is, it works a lot of the time and fails as well. That is because we always have managed freedom of expression. No university has unfettered inquiry. It would be disastrous. We dont have unfettered inquiry in history. There were plenty of topics that would not be appropriate for the Orange County chapter of the John Birch Society that wont be on the docket for the american circles association. We manage the freedom of inquiry. The questions for administrators and professors is what kind of things do you what people say, what kind of questions to let people ask, and what kind of questions do you say are offlimits . There is always something offlimits. Asking ourselves what kind of freedom for faculty we think should be protected and what kind of freedom for faculty we think should not be protected, not just speech, expression, which becomes harassment, which becomes many things that we have an easy time saying today is inappropriate or a fireable offense or is inappropriate. Iser things we would say, it less clear. If you Say Something offensive politically as a faculty member, we want to protect your rights to do that. Some things we refuse to protect. On the inquiry side, there are kinds of questions we foster. We actually facilitate certain kinds of questions. And there are other questions we may not outlaw, because we dont have to, because the culture of academia is extraordinarily conservative and in many classes students know there are kinds of questions they are not allowed to ask. Our job is masters of inquiry. We decide what kind of inquiry we want to see fostered. I think all of these schools represented here have admission policies. None of these schools believe in unfettered diversity. We all have extremely selective admission policies, which allows us to say some things we want to pursue and other things we dont. I think if you approach this with the thought that everyone can come to the marketplace, that is a fantasy of american democracy and academia. Carol of course disciplines , have rules. There is analytical rigor. There are better questions than worse questions. I dont think anyone would take the position you have outlined. Michael i think you said unfettered inquiry and diversity is essential for the pursuit of research. Or inquiry. Sure, but its also essential you limit them. I think you just called me an ignorant slut. Carol i said what you was was a caricature. Carol i cop to the fact that i am not clear. There a lot of ways that inquiry takes place. There are good and bad historical questions. What governs whether it is a good question are the rules of history. Michael so where do they come from . Carol so in some sense i am not suggesting that academics that are trained in these disciplines and our training their students in these disciplines the able to be able to pursue, without a litmus test of the appropriateness of the field or topic, the questions they pursue. The foundation of the questions we pursue our the rules of the are the rules of the discipline. Michael maybe another way to clarify that is who would adjudicate . Context depends on the within a campus. What we said earlier about the differences between public and is true,niversities although in california, the law compels private and public universities to extend the same kind of freedoms that public universities are mandated to do. It is correct we have an obligation to keep the campuses open to any Student Organization and the public at large. You are hearing something of a cultural difference, here, but it is limited by law. In the classroom, it is perfectly clear that the professor adjudicates. Sanford a particular professor only . Klara up to a point. Clara up to a point. We do have a policy on Academic Freedom. For the purposes that michael described, there is a distinction between a professors professors public and private activities. In order to protect the right of professors and the freedom of professors to be politically engaged outside of the classroom. Of course, the rubber hits the road when the professor is teaching politics. Those are the places where we see the most challenge in these environments. A professor of the middle east to has a particular position on the middle east might cross the line between instruction and advocacy. That is not a simple line to navigate. Many of the controversies we have seen at berkeley, whether it is one side of the political spectrum or the other, are students who are concerned about or disapprove of the positions that professors may profess in those particular kinds of settings. And i think that is one area where we have seen the most stress, and it has come from both the left and the right and request him settings at berkeley. We had just had, as some people may know, this is a very big controversy where a group of students called a very radical professor a white supremacist because he is white and is teaching a class about struggles of the immigrants on the border. Sanford so that gets to the question of, who is entitled to speak about what . Claire clara correct. He said he would speak to the students out of the class. He said he would speak out of the class. In the theory they were , harassing him. In theory, students could file a complaint for harassment. I think those are where we start to see these tensions between who adjudicates in the classroom. What i was saying about the article is that i dont think outside of the classroom, that is quite clear. It is very clear at berkeley that i think recognize Student Organizations have the right to invite speakers. We, in thenk that state of california at a public university, could apply the post doctrine successfully in a legal sense. This conversation has been directed at how important the distinction might be between what faculty members say in the performance of their teaching and research duties and faculty members and beyond that social , media has complicated this tremendously. Jonathan, i wanted to ask you whether you think it is appropriate. Some people think it is necessary to take into account faculty members socalled extracurricular utterances, what they say online, in various formats that get picked up and , the distinction may not be drawn by the public or the donors or by various authorities between what is in the classroom and what is outside. There are a couple of notorious cases, oberlin and trinity were two places where there were some very difficult controversies. Jonathan this is enormously complicated. Part of it is quite simple. What a professor does in his private time they have the right to be citizens. What i will say on behalf of individuals involved with social media we are in a whole new world right now. The social media veto is far more dangerous and pernicious and lifethreatening. I am not able to sit here and give you an answer except for my First Response what a professor is does outside of the classroom as a citizen is that persons own business. It may become a public nightmare for the college. It may be a board of trustees nightmare, but those are what administrators are paid to deal with frankly, and usually there is no winning side. It is all terrible. But there are a couple of situations where an administrator can fairly ask, and this is not me passi