Its good as they are a person its better on the page. Enjoy the book. [inaudible conversation] thats incredibly inspiring because you guys do it too had dan, which is connecting flight to the pursuit of memory and truth in forcing people to confront a history they dont want to confront, including cambodians themselves. Im afraid were about an time. You are welcome to ask your question that way. I want to thank our panelists peter and [applause] as good as they are in person, they are better on the page. Enjoy the book. But [inaudible conversations] good afternoon welcome to the Cato Institute. I am Vice President and publisher and i would heartily like to thank you for coming here, for our viewers on mina being broadcast by cspan. You may not know unexpectedly the washington subway system, the metro was closed today so the people who have joined us here have made great effort to hear something about this book, lessons and censorship, how school is subvert First Amendment right to refinance the the 265th earth day of a man named James Madison. As it happens, James Madison wrote the First Amendment because he wrote the first 10 amendments introduced to the congress. And beyond that, more than just the author of them are the person who wrote them, it was also very heartily in them. I learned today in part of that, privates birthday of the First Amendment center, a valuable institute here in washington has designated his birth a National Freedom of information day, which is we are celebrating here today along with the publication of this book. I cant help however peripheral to what i thought was an interesting and useful comment from madison on this very topic of First Amendment freedoms and freedom of speech. Madison wrote a popular government without popular information or the beams of inquiry and it is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy. Or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives. End quote good we will continue in this faith as we go down through the history of the United States that knowledge will govern ignorance in the First Amendment is an essential means as Katherine Ross just that in the green room to make in a whole system work. Madison designated him as the first person to go in the freedom of information act hall of fame which is interesting. He is kind of hank aaron of freedom of information. That said, i hope we have a person here, the author down the line will be a candidate for the freedom of information act hall of fame. Catherine jay ross, the author is a law professor at George Washington university and during the current Academic Year is a visiting scholar at the Harvard Graduate School of education. This book, lessons and censorship listening 2015th best book by confirming opinions first opinion news. Professor ross specializes in constitutional or with an emphasis as you might guess from the First Amendment but also family law and legal and policy issues concerning children. She is published and lectured widely, has been a beaut and testified with congress. This is not however her first appearance in a cato for impaired she was a commentator in january on a panel we had and she was a participant in cato unbound conversation which i recommend to everyone here both in general and particular month or two ago. You can find it keynote at work. Let me also say that while im discussing that, if you are following us today on twitter, please use the hash tag cato event. On twitter that hashed to cato events. Professor ross has also been on the aba, American Bar AssociationSteering Committee on unmet legal needs of children and presented a report in 1993 on americas children at risk to the white house. She has served in many ways at the highest levels on American Bar Association and the editorial boards of the family courts review and family law quarterly. She is a distinguished advocate of the First Amendment and we are happy to welcome them here at the Cato Institute and talk about her book, lessons in censorship. Catherine. [applause] thank you for the introduction and for raising the streets of washington today and the sunniest equivalent of a snow day we have ever seen. Im going to begin by reading the opening passage for my book. You lose all Constitutional Rights once you enter a School Building a School Official and soulful account in new york claimed in the spring of 2012 year you are not allowed to do this she asserted as she confiscated flyers from indignant student who was protesting her son five day suspension. Larry and censorship upon censorship come at the episode a surreal quality. The student had been punished for voicing her opposition to bullying and away the school deemed inappropriate. The seizure was as clueless as to what a surreal because the First Amendment protects speech rights of Public School students in grades k12 and yeah schools all over the country regularly censor constitutionally speech by children and judges often let them get away with it. When i used the word censorship im talking about stopping the speech before it happened and punishing them afterwards. School silence and punish statements to express their own opinions on every sign of important issues we adults are debating including national and local politics, rights at all gpt students, abortions and more. They suspended a six role to a six world who called a a to call the class made a booboo head. They stopped when elementary schoolgirl from praying before eating her lunch and another from distributing the home and fire that began my name is ambien which she shared her personal experience that finding christ was like finding a lost dog. In the upper grades, school suspended two boys who were political tshirt. One praising im sorry, john p. Mechanical problem here. Maybe you have to do it appear. We should have cracked this i thought this was all set up. Can we pause here . I am so sorry. This is awful. I have a beautiful tshirt to show you. Okay. One was praising the marines and their god and another boy was criticizing president george w. Bush is a substance abusing draft dodging chicken hot and schools are increasingly asserting the authority to punish students for what they say off campus on their own time, a subject i will return to at the end of my comments. The constitution protects all of the expression as well as speech that adults might regard as worthless. That the constitution protects worthless as well as worthwhile speech and when we talk about students, we often talk about adolescent humor simply beyond adult comprehension. Students are especially likely to get in trouble for speaking on someone elses parent or speech controversial which really means they say its good because i disagree with it. Controversial and disagreeable speech is exactly what the speech clauses designed to protect. The power points just dissipate. Students are especially im sorry. I should never use powerpoint. The heart of the problem is too many principals and School Board Members dont know or dont understand the limits the constitution places on their ability to control with statements i bought a simply disregard the law because they dont like it. As i worked on the boat, almost everybody i talked to informally said i have a censorship story. In their own days in school or from their children. Longtime teachers incredulously told me that they had no idea that students had First Amendment rights and they asked where i had come up with such a creative notion. In perceiving i have to begin by giving you a whirlwind tour of First Amendment doctrine as it applies to student and im all turned to some stories that capture some of the particularly contemporary dilemmas. The speech clause of the First Amendment is very can guys. It says Congress Shall make no laws of the freedom of speech. This means that the government and anyone that can on behalf of the government may not silence speech because of its content or viewpoint. School districts and everyone who works from them from principles to School Bus Drivers are the government when we talk about students freedom to speak. My research and comments today are limited to Public Schools because the First Amendment doesnt apply to independent goals whether secular or religious. They are not the government. The Supreme Court first took up the issue of student speech rights in 1943 in one of the earliest cases in which it actually upheld the speech rights of any individual. Garnet versus West Virginia about Elementary Schools defense. They were jehovahs witnesses at risk of expulsion and being sent to a juvenile reformatory because they refuse to say the pledge of allegiance on the ground that it offended their religion. But it was not litigated or interpreted as a religion case. The consequences today of speaking out and being punished can also be dire. Many students enter the school to prison pipeline as a result of being suspended, expelled or sent to an alternative school for public student after they engage in protects speech. Just like the jehovahs witnesses in 1943, the current quinces are stark. People excluding Young Students could not be forced to say what was not in their minds. A concept today called can spell speech. The court emphasized the constitutional limits on the states coercive powers whether exercised by village tyrants or by the federal government and underscored the First Amendment was designed to protect nonconformists of all stripes. The core particularly focused on schools because the case involved two elementary schoolgirls. Because schools are educating the young for citizenship, they must rigorously protect individual rights prefer not to strangle the free mind at its source and to teach you to discount important principles of government as mere platitudes. Decades later the core return to student speech and began to carve out a special way of claims that schools had illegally censored student expression. The first iconic Supreme Court case in modern times and im just listing the cases i dont expect you to retain all of them so you dont wonder when i see the names. The first modern cases tinker versus des moines decided in 1969 at the head of the vietnam war and held it violated the First Amendment by suspended due to wear black armbands to school in order to protest the war. The court took into account all the things society exposed to accomplish, especially importance of educating young citizenship and crafted a special test that schools more leeway to restrain speech than the government has in the world at large. And as schools could not censor student expression unless authorities had a reason to anticipate the speech could lead to material disruption of the schools function or collide with the rights of others and none were for two this is the material disruption test. As the court became more conservative under review chief justice it originally carved out exception to material disruption test in threeliter cases. These give schools more and more power to censor student speech but did not extinguish student speech rights. Two of the exceptions give schools the discretion of or advocates the use of illegal substances which you may reckon is ive been hits for jesus case. The most important exceptions stems from hazelwood in 1988 decision that created a special category of speech the court labels School Sponsored. If speech is School Sponsored, and it is treated as if the school is speaking and the student is not even know the speech originate with the student in such places as High School Papers are literary magazines but also much further. To be school sponsors come in the speech must bear the schools and premature for and Justice Alitos words, to be the schools own speech said any reasonable person would think the school had approved it. This feature is all expressions of student applications, performances, extracurricular committees and more catastrophe students of their voices. Schools try their best to avoid the material disruption standard because it is hard to satisfy. They claim that all cursing is fluid and can therefore be punished even when students read aloud from classical literature or mutter to themselves thinking no one can hear them. Some schools have begun to assert that students in the classroom and in written homework assignments handed him only to the teacher is School Sponsored expression though no one in their right mind could think the school had a chance to understand and approve it before the students submitted a bar saturday. The person really limits the range of viewpoints in our classrooms especially since teachers in many jurisdictions are not allowed to disagree with the text the school board has selected and there are many disputes about web viewpoints should be part of the official curriculum. I wont go into them, but think about disputes on how to teach biology including evolution, courses on sex at an even American History and slavery. Let me briefly anticipate them, and concerns about giving students too much freedom in school. Recognizing students Constitutional Rights will not undermine education at all. There are two concerns is going to undermine education or put people at risk of their safety. Regarding the first concern, education preserving the Schools Educational function is the essence of the material tests. Disruption does not have to be tolerated. The second safety, schools may always clamp down on speech thats illegal outside of the school like true threats, a narrow constitutional standard, very hard to satisfy but also harassment and so forth. More important, even speech protected outside of school by the constitution that threatens violence or serious disruptions but it does not rise to the level of a true threat under constitutional law may always be silenced by a school before it causes problems while officials contend the speaker and investigate whether there is cause for concern. Safety comes first. Thats a taxonomy. The principal or official has to figure out what kind of speech that his spirit the students own that is not, not prodrug or School Sponsored and within the taxonomy applied the correct test because each of these has a slightly different formulation. I understand it is hard for teachers and principals and the spur of the moment when they are worried to try to understand and use a complex set of standards. But theyre also not adequately prepared to do that. So i provide a chart in the book and this is the color version that can be ordered and placed in the Principals Office at heinrich maneuver poster. What do i do now . This is going to remind us the students own speech i have to really slow down and i cant silence it unless theres a thread of material disruption. Then i have to understand something about what that means. If this School Sponsored i need to slow down. I can censor it but only if i have a legitimate pedagogical reason and the fact someone finds it offensive or might be controversial is not a legitimate reason under the First Amendment that includes prodrug or inciting violence or inflammatory arent inflammatory censor and punish them at my discretion. Since now how does this work. The speech at the core of contemporary debates, texting, online speech, bullying and racist expression falls in the category of what i call pure student speech. It is governed by the material disruption test. Let me begin with creative artists who commonly get in trouble at school are fictional and graphic works. This is a poster that a High School Senior named sarah bowman who had never been in trouble. She was a good student, majoring her lunch hour posted at the corridor. 15 minutes later before any students have been if they were in the cafeteria. The janitor saw and got upset and took the poster to the Principals Office. As fans and i will capture it. Who killed my dog. He was my best friend. Digi just kill my dog . If you dont tell me who killed my dog, onto you. She had taken a course during the summer that taught her about conceptual art designed to capture to ranged fictional people and in the Principals Office she explains this. The principal believed her, but he still said i have to suspend you for five days. Subsequently, the school board got involved in the school board decided that she should be suspended for 81. 5 days, the rest of her senior year and that she could not return to school must a psychologist examined her and confirmed that she was mentally fit to be in school. The court easily held that her rights have been violated and she was able to return to school for her senior year.