For us he is a 1989 graduate of emory law school. And he was managing editor of emory law journal and got the enemiry University School of law merit scholarship. After that, howard clerked for to years for judge William Hutchinson on the third circuit. Another thing that is very important about Howard Bashman is he is the founder of the blog how appealing all about the business of the appeal at the federal appeals courts, and i remember back in 2002, im one of the bloggers on a blog called the conspiracy which started april 10, 2002, and that was the very beginning of the Public Policy and Legal Affairs blogs. A popular blahing instapundit had just been up and running several months, started in august of 2001, vola conspiracy pie, and another blog with an opening sentence that win Something Like hello and welcome to the first day of the nations first appellate blog, and as hauls an one also hauls been the best place to go to get muse on what is going on in the Appellate Courts and find out the most exciting appellate cases coming down, and all of these similar things. So ever since 2002 howard has been very useful to me in my blogging career and we have over in each each since then. Now howard will talk to us about free speech on university campuses. [applause] thank you for that very generous introduction, and for the record it was, among other things, thanks to a link from your blog to my blog that my blog began to develop a readership that today supposedly includes even some u. S. Supreme Court Justices who are willing to admit to it. On chance they read my blog every day, which is just an aweinspiring thing to have sun sway but they also read the volaconspiracy for the record as well. Thanks to the emory University School of law and to its Federalist Society student chapter for inviting me to be here today to deliver these remarks. I have been fortunate to deliver remarks to a range of Federalist Society student chapters from the Harvard Law Schools chapter to the thomas m. Cooley chapter in michigan, and many more in between but its just a special honor to come home to my alma mater. I was hoping for warmer weather, but im happy to be here anyway. Turning to the topic of my remarks today, let me begin with some good news and some bad news for you, regardless of where you stand on the issue of free speech on campus and student speech codes. In 2016, this year, for the first time ever, since the Organization Fire which stands four foundation for individual rights in education an organization headquartered philadelphia, a number of College Campuses that have received that organizations most negative antifree speech rating has dipped below 50 , to 49. 3 . That marks for the present time eight years during which the number of colleges and universities that have been rate has continued to decrease. Eight years ago that number stood at 75 . Lest you worry, however, Emory University remains part of the 49. 3 receiving fires mose negative campus free speech rating. Now if you oppose those restrictions on free speech, before you feel too happy about the fact that the trend has been heading in a positive direction, you should keep in mind that there are other statistics that give rise to a reason for great concern. Last october, an organization at yale, reported on the result of survey of College Students which found that 51 of College Students favored campus free speech codes, and 72 favored bringing disciplinary action against students or faculty members who use offensive language. Similarly, in november of last year, the pew research center, another very highly regarded polling organization, reported that 40 of people in the millenial age group, from 18 to 34, believe that government should be able to punish offensive speech. That was the largest percentage of any of the generational groups surveyed. Now, of course in recent months, campus protests and News Coverage have placed these issues very much in the spotlight of public attention. How have we gotten to this point . Where instead of clam mooring for a row clamoring for a robust and open exchange of ideas and unfettered free speech, students are instead calling for safe spaces, and trigger warnings, and demanding that socalled microaggressions and cultural appropriations be avoided. Indeed, some universities, including a number of Public Institutions, have created socalled free speech zones which happen to be conveniently located very far away from where anyone else ever happens to be. So that ordinary students who might be offended or have their feelings hurt by the Free Expression of their fellow students, dont have to hear or see what is going on. Now, appreciate as much as anyone the need to be considerate of one fellow human beings and more to the point, fellow students, and its also very important in educational institutions to have an atmosphere where people can learn. So atmosphere conducive to learning is very important. At the same time, however, a central part of the liberal arts experience, maybe the central part, is being exposed to new and perhaps even unpleasant ideas and broadening ones forwarding of others as a result. Prohibiting the discussion of unpleasant ideas does not cause those unpleasant ideas to cease to exist. Instead theyre just pushed beneath the surface where perhaps they will bubble back up in even more unpleasant ways than if they are the subject of discussion. So again, how did we get to where we are today in the current state of campus free speech and student speech codes. In the view of many, part of it and perhaps the large measure is the fault of the fact that children today are indoctrinated into the culture of Political Correctness before they even arrive at college. Theres what is knowns a the bubble wrapped generation. You bubble wrap something because you dont want it to get hurt. And helicopter parents who fly in to protect their children from any possible offense that could arise. And that insulates children from the otherwise rough and tumble world of controversial ideas that exist in real society. Moreover, instead of colleges being run by faculty members as they had been many years ago now, we have the atmosphere where in fact most colleges are run by what is call the bury bureaucratic class which happen to be administration with less newspapering of the value of free speech and not surprisingly, lawyers perhaps are partially to blame, and i regret to say that today. Theres what is known as the Risk Management movement, which has arisen and earns money for itself by giving advice to University Administrators about how to avoid lawsuits, and the concern is that more lawsuits would be brought by students in the absence of these free speech codes if free speech was freely allowed, than are being brought as a consequence of having these free speech restrictions. Now, aside from the troubling news that todays young people do not appreciate the value of their First Amendment rights as much as earlier generations have, there has also been a notable political shift in society. On the one side, you have perhaps conservatives and libertarians and then the very extreme left, if i can call it that, consisting of the American Civil Liberties union, which continue to speak out for unfettered College Free Speech rights. But many socalled liberals, unfortunately, are more than ready to trade the rights to campus free speech for a smiley faced world, where at the expense of trying to keep everyone happy, unpopular ideas are forced underground instead of being considered and debated. Even the son of seventh circuit judge richard a. Posner speak offering the university of chicago law professor eric posner has become a proponent of campus free speech restrictions. According to professor posner, todays College Students are too immature. Free speech can still occur offcampus if i cant occur on campus. And in a bit of the posner familys trademark law and economics analysis, students can take into account an institutions free speech availability in deciding where to go to college if that is important to that student. Now, as the father of a 20yearold son myself, i think that professor posner overstates the immaturity problem. He also, i believe, does not have a firm grasp on how competitive todays College Admissions process is. In my experience, evaluating a schools free speech rating and free speech policies tends to be very low on the list of things that people consider in decide where they wish to go to school. And one of the professor posners other suggestions is that you can go to a State University or Public College as opposed to a private college if free speech really matters to you. But that doesnt seem necessarily to be the answer because if you look at the fire organizations statistics, Public Institutions arent much better at recognizing free speech rights than are private institutions. Its interesting to note that over 150 years ago, british political philosopher jon Stewart Mills in his famous work titled on liberty offered four reasons why one should favor robust free speech rights. Those four reasons resonate as much to me today as i hope they resonate to people at the time that is say was written. The first reason is that an opinion compelled to silence could in fact be true, and to deny that fact, as soon as our own infallibility which should not be assumed. Secondly in mills point of view, even an ereason news viewpoint could contain a portion of the truth, just as a prevailing opinion is rarely or never entirely true itself. The third and fourth reasons are also very important. The third reason is, that if an opinion is not challenged, and does not need to be defended, then people will hold those opinions without appreciating the reasons why theyre viewed to be true. And, fourth, he was concerned that unchallenged opinions could ultimately turn into what he described as dogma, meaning that it would be at risk of perhaps devalued or discarded themselves because people didnt appreciate why they ever existed in the first place. Although mills originally published his essay in 1859, that is essay still has much to teach us today. With regard to offensive or unpopular speech arranges university of all places can and should provide the atmosphere where the reaction to such speech is not to silence or punish the speaker. But, rather to respond with speech to the opposite effect, and to allow the speaker and listeners to hear and understand the competing viewpoints so they can decide for themselves what is true and what should be believed. Before durning to the future it is necessary to say, just one more thing about how we got where we are today. From time to time expressions of others is a small price to pay for the rights of liberty and freedom that have produced this society in which we live today. [applause] is. So i just have a couple of comments i am not in fundamental disagreement with anything that you said but 1. That we are both interested in i have been here seven years and i am glad to say that at least in the law school we are fairly insulated and dont go across the street often but at least i have always felt that freespeech and open expression rights have been very robust. Admitted the dont have my finger in everything that goes on but being involved with the Federalist Society that is one candidate is somebody wanted to shut anybody down the federal the society would have spent a good candidate. I dont think anyone has tried to shut us down in fact, there was one incident that happened a few years ago an organization they used to be called the Alliance Defense fund now is a maya as defending freedom and they have done a lot of things one thing is to take a strong position against gay marriage and they also into litigation on religious freedom issues we had a person who came to talk about the religious freedom case he litigated Second Circuit maybe you have heard of it basically it new york they have all these Public Schools then empty during the weekend and there was a policy to make them available for outside organization to use for reading spaces but they decided they didnt want churches using the schools during nonbusiness hours and days sued on free exercise ground you cannot discriminate against religious people and i think theyre absolutely right and that i personally with their religious Freedom Litigation they do excellent work that was happy to have them come talk about the case of our number of students found out they were coming and got upset because of the gay marriage work and i think happened was an ideal resolution of the issue that there were students from the lgbt organization now what they were handing a leaflets explain these to explain the position they came to the meeting with a rainbow pens or shirts and were ready to challenge the speaker if he said anything about gay marriage because he did it because it wasnt about that and a good time was had by all. Now would with the this is not a great example because greater example is what if you wanted to speak out against gay marriage will what happened i dont know but but i was never in doubt that we would have been allowed to go forward and the deed would have supported us in rees would have still had a heated but civil discussion which exactly the way these things ought to happen. You mentioned the of lawyer culture and mismanagement and one interesting thing that has happened recently i have a number of friends to rob a the faculty at Harvard Law School so just by reading there facebook posts i have become aware there was a documentary called the Hunting Ground about rape and Sexual Assault on campus and a number of professors who spoke out and said this documentary that to position strongly in favor of of victims with the number of misstatements so the makers of the documentary had a statement that was published that said the fact that these professors were speaking out against the truth and reliability of the movie created a high style environment in the eighth person they think that means they are mad but that is the Nuclear Option because that is the trigger word related to harassment laws so few can showing your workplace there is a hostile environment in court that can lead to damages for the work place are for the university or what ever. So the etf that people could say rapists Sexual Assaults are bad but still we have to correct the mistake in saying carry about due process the idea that they can disagree where to draw the line between helping victims with the Due Process Rights universities are all about that the batf that people would turn to using the above lot to either base and were severely disincentive bias by means of damages judgment i think is antithetical to free speech and open expression values and is driven by a Legal Development and harassment law that even now cited university is in potential of the First Amendment but this sort of thing where it encourages universities especially private universities to take the attitude of cya to adopt the least offensive to everybody perspective. So i think that plays the strong role to cut down on speech much like worse workplace harassment law if you are the private employer sort if you dont really care if your employees tell jokes around the water cooler or put a little meme around the workplace now somebody says hostile Work Environment than that forces them to adopt policies nose jokes or knows of expression and so one that is driven by the need to protect yourself from damages judgments. And i agree in that you identify a the modern day defenders of free speech on campus on the one hand the Federalist Society camps as strong bassoons of the left because that is not a left right issue but a liberal and Classical Liberal issue so liberal left and liberal right are the errors of the free speech and open expression idea on the other hand, those of the parties you want to cut down loans beecher on the left and on the right to not just on the grounds would it be nice to live in a bubble and not be offended because it makes us feel bad that on the left is a militant view that critiques free speech on the ground that contributes to power imbalances and actually sees open expression as the affirmative harm to be combat it is what you ted read about if you hang on on tumblr. That is the element of the left even to call liberal. We often have people on the right conservative and those on the left that could be problematic in its own ways but calling people on the left liberals is extremely misleading because the left has always been divided in the entire liberal left for example, has included marxist and other revolutionary communist but there are people in the social Justice Movement could be could be called a liberal and belief in their rights including free speech but also to combat the justices but there are many people would say they reject those fundamental tenants so those opponents are the authoritarian right heel and left in the defenders are the liberal rights and auth