Europe into some of it is not allowing them to some of is not that you can see the cathedral and the National Board for the time it was created. You have england, ireland and scotland. Of course the way that it takes place our collection holds a large quantity of items about that exploration which includes the moment plan they come to the United States so youve got the colonies in jamestown that is shakespeares world planting itself in north america and that is a complicated history and part of the history of the country. Host yes he was when he wrote tempest he wrote a pamphlet about a shipwreck in bermuda but he makes reference to stories about the new world of new world that were coming back and so he never visited it. He would probably have great information that when he but when he uses the phrase like brave new world, he is saying there is a place we havent explored overturning our expectations about what human beings are like and what nature is like. Thats something that is firing to the imagination. Spinnaker was a portion of this work booktv took up the library. You can watch the full tour online at booktv. Org. We will be live from the library at noon on april 23 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeares death. [inaudible conversations] him good afternoon and welcome to the Cato Institute. Im Vice President and publisher and i would like to thank you for coming here today for the viewers online being broadcast by cspan. You may not know the washington subway metro system was closed today so the people that have joined us made a great effort to hear something about this book lessons and censorship have a subvert First Amendment rights which is the topic of the book for him today forum today. We chose for this particular book and the reason is it is the 255th birthday of a man named James Madison and as it happened James Madison wrote the First Amendment because he wrote the first that were introduced into congress and beyond that was more than just the author or the person who wrote them but was also a strong defender and believed very heavily in them. I should say also i learned part of medicines birthday means the First Amendment center valuable has designated his Birthday National freedom of information day which we are celebrating along with the publication of the book. I cant help however referred refer to what i thought was an interesting and a useful comment for madison on this very topic First Amendment freedom amendment freedom of speech. He wrote a popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it is but a prologue to a farce or tragedy they must arm themselves with the power that knowledge gives and we will continue in this as we go down to the history of the United States and that the First Amendment is a central theme of as catherine just said to make the whole system work. Madison interestingly they designated him as a list first person to move go into the freedom of information act hall of fame which is interesting. With that said we have a person here who down the line will be a candidate for being in the freedom of information at hall of fame. The author is a law professor at George Washington university and during the current academic years at the Harvard Graduate School of education this book lessons and censorship was named the best work by the concurring opinions First Amendment views. Professor ross specializes in constitutional law with an emphasis as you might guess in the First Amendment also family law and the legal and policy issues concerning children. Shes published widely and has been interviewed on Many Television shows and has testified before congress. On the panel that we had it was in the conversation which i recommend to everyone here both in general and a month or two find it at cato. Org. On twitter the hash tag is cato events. Professor ross has also been on the associations steering committee. To the family court review in family law shes a distinguished advocate of the First Amendment we are happy to welcome you and the Cato Institute to talk about the book. Thank you to all of you for raising the streets of washington state. The equivalent of the snow day. Im going to begin by reading the opening from my book. The accounting new york proclaimed in the spring of 2012 you are not allowed to do this she asserted as she confiscated flyers from an indignant student who was protecting her friends suspension. Later upon censorship the episode had a quality. They had been punished for the opposition to bullying but in the way that the school deemed inappropriate. The seizure was as clueless as it was surreal because the First Amendment protects the speech rights of Public School students in grades k12 and yet schools all over the country regularly censor speech by children and judges often let them get away with it. When i use the word censorship throughout, im talking about stopping speech before it happens and punishing it afterwards. Schools silence and punish students to express their own opinions on every side of important issues that we are debating including national and local politics, the rights of persons, guns, a abortion and why. They suspended a sixyearold who called a classmate a poo poo head and another person shared her personal experience of finding christ was like finding a lost dog. In the upper grades, school suspended two boys who were political tshirts. One praising the marines poo poo head im sorry, john is this there is a mechanical problem here. Is there a im going to have to do it appear. Me should have practiced. I thought that this was set up. Now im just trying to figure out can we pause here . This is awful i have a beautiful shirt to show you. One was praising the marines and another boy was criticizing president george w. Bush as a substance abusing chicken hawk and schools are increasing the authority to punish students for what they say offcampus on their own time im a subject i will return to at the end of my comments. The constitution protects all of this expression as well as the speech that adults might regard as worthless. But the constitution protects worthless as well as worthwhile speech. And when we talk about students, we are also often talking about adolescent humor simply beyond adult comprehension. Students were especially likely to get in trouble for speaking up with somebody elses parent finds the speech controversial which really means they say that its offensive because i disagree with it. That controversial and disagreeable speech are but this is designed to protect. That powerpoint is just disappearing okay. Thank you. Students were especially. I should never use powerpoint. At the heart of the problem is that too many principals and School Board Members dont know or dont understand the limits the constitution places on their ability to control what students say while others simply disregard the law because they dont like it. As i worked on this book almost everybody i talked to inform only said i had a censorship story. Either from their own days in school or from their children. In the long time teachers incredulously told me that they had no idea that students have First Amendment rights and they asked me where i had come up with such a creative notion. So i have to begin by giving you a whirlwind tour of the First Amendment doctrine as it applies to students and then i will turn over to some stories that capture some of the particular contemporary dilemmas. The speech in the first and the First Amendment is very concise. It says Congress Shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech. As interpreted, this means that the government and anyone acting on behalf of the government government may not silence the speech because of its viewpoint. School districts and everyone that works for them from principles to teachers to School Bus Drivers are the government when we talk about the students freedom to speak. My research and comments today are limited to Public Schools because the First Amendment doesnt apply to independent schools rather secular or religious they are not the government. The Supreme Court took up the issue of the speech rights in 1943 and one of the earliest cases that actually upheld the speech rights of any individual. West virginia involved elementary School Students that were jehovahs witnesses who were at risk of expulsion and being sent to a juvenile reformatory because they refused 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 up and being punished can be dire. Many students enter the pipeline as a result of being suspended, expelled or sent to an alternative school for troubled students after they engage in protected speech. So just like the jehovahs witnesses in 1943, the consequences are stark. That held the people including younger students couldnt be forced to say what wasnt in their mind, a concept today we call the rule against compelled speech. The court emphasized the limits on the states course of powers that are exercised by village tyrants or by the federal government and it underscored that the First Amendment was designed to protect the nonconformist of all stripes. The court particularly focused on schools because the case involved two elementary schoolgirls. Because schools are educating the young for citizenship they must protect individual rights. If we are not to strangle the free mind at its source and to teach the youth to discount important principles of government as mere platitudes. Decades later the court returned to student speech and began to carve out a special way of claiming that the schools had illegally censored student expression. The first iconic Supreme Court case in modern times and hearing just listing the cases. I dont expect you to retain all of them. The first case tinker versus des moines decided in 1969 at the height of the vietnam war and they held a schools violated the First Amendment by suspending students with more black armbands to school to protest the war. The court took into account all the things that society expects fiscal two accomplish especially the importance of educating the young for citizenship and they crafted a special test that gave the schools more leeway to be streamed speech than the government has in the world at large. It announced that the schools couldnt censor the expression unless authorities had a reason to anticipate that the speech could lead to material disruption of the schools function or the rights of others and in short i will refer to this as a material disruption test. As the courts course became more conservative under every new chief justice it gradually carve out exceptions to the material disruption test in 3liter cases. These data schools more and more power to send her student speech but did not extinguish student speech rights. Two of the exceptions gave discretion to censor the student expression as lewd or that advocates the use of illegal substances which you may recognize as the bong hits for jesus case. The most important exception stands from hazelwood versus kohlmeier a decision that created a special category of speech the court labeled School Sponsored. If speech is School Sponsored, if it is treated as a school is speaking and the student is not even though the speech originates with the student in such places as High School Papers or literary magazine but also much further. To be School Sponsored the speech must appear in premature or in Justice Alitos words, to be the schools own speech so that a reasonable person would think that the school had approved it. This is all expression in the student performances from Extracurricular Activities and more. Stripping down the students of their voices. Schools try their best to avoid the material disruption standard because it is hard to satisfy. They claim all cursing is lewd and therefore can be punished even when students read aloud from classical literature or mutter to themselves thinking that no one can hear them. Some schools have even begun to assert that what students say in the classroom and within homework assignments handed him only to the and only to the teacher is School Sponsored expression, though no one in their right mind could think that the school had a chance to understand it and approve it before the students submitted or uttered it. This approach severely limits the range of the viewpoints in the classrooms especially since teachers in many jurisdictions are not allowed to disagree with the text that the school board selected and there are many disputes about what viewpoints should be part of the official curriculum. I wont go into them but think about the disputes to teach a subject in biology such as evolution and courses on sex ed and even American History into slavery. Let me briefly tell some Common Concerns with giving too much freedom in school. Recognizing students Constitutional Rights will not undermine education at all. Its going to undermine education or its going to put people at risk of their safety. Regarding the first concern, education, preserving the Schools Educational function is the essence of the material disruption test. So, disruption doesnt have to be tolerated. As the second, safety, schools may always crackdown on speech that is illegal outside of school like clear threats, and narrow constitutional standard, very hard to satisfy that also harassment and so forth and more important even speech that is protected outside of school by the constitution that threatens violence or serious disruption but doesnt rise to the level of each grave threat may always be silenced before it causes problems while officials contained the speaker and investigate whether there is cause for concern. So that is the taxonomy. The principal or other official has to first figure out what kind of speech this is. The students know that isnt used or School Sponsored and then within that taxonomy, collect the test because each one has a slightly different formulation. I understand that its hard for teachers and principals in the amendment when they are worried to try to understand the complex set of standards. They are also not adequately prepared to do that. It so i provide a a chart in the book and this is the one that can be ordered into order and placed in the Principals Office. What do i do now we do not leave do now we have a speech incident. Okay this will remind us the students over the speech i have to sign a design that could slow down. Then i have to understand something about what that means incomplete advice is at School Sponsored i need to slow down and i can censor it but only if i have a legitimate reason and fact someone finds it offensive or it might be controversial but its not a legitimate reason under the First Amendment but violence or inflammatory in some way i can censor and punish it at my discretion. [applause] so now how does this work lacks most of the speech at the core of the contemporary debate, texting, online speech bullying and racist expression of holes falls in the category of what i called pure student speech governed by the material disruption test. Let me begin with creative artists. She was a good student made during her lunch hour and posted in the corridor about 15 minutes later before any students had seen it they were on the cafeteria as the janitors saw it and got nervous and took her to the Principals Office. It says who killed my dog he was my best friend. Did you kill my dog . If you dont tell me who killed my dog i will kill you. She had taken the course during the summer that talked about conceptual design to capture fictional people. And in the Principals Office she explained this and the principal believed her but still said i have to suspend you for five days. Subsequently, the school board got involved and by School Boards decided that she should be suspended for 81. 5 days. The rest of her senior year and she couldnt return to school unless a psychologist examined her and confirmed that she was mentally fit to be in school. She sued and the court held that her rights have been violated and she was able to return and complete her senior year. They said once the principal interviewed her and understood what was going on, there was no reason to anticipate disruption especially because even if other students might have been upset had they seen the poster, nobody saw it. So there was no cause for concern at all. In a similar case involving a work of fiction, and the appellate judge reviewed his fellow panelists were for allowing the school to punish the writer. Today students will have to hide dog work and this lost their speech rights and if someone finds a t