Different phenomena and if you will all under common road break and it prompted the question what are the commonalities here . Why is it that it seems like so many people have simultaneously lost their minds . [laughter] im here today in part because i care a great deal about the fine art of not losing your mind. And asking questions about how do we return to a somewhat more sane place in our politics . One of the things that this book highlighted at least for me is that all these phenomenon seem to be happening in two main locations. One of them is the campus environment and the other is of course social media. What are these two environments have in common . I would like to offer three answers, perhaps our panelists will have their own or will have responses to mine. My three answers at least are as follows. First theres the toto effect, the total effect is a wellknown phenomenon in Political Science where when a society undertakes to reform itself that is often precisely the moment at which conditions seem even more intolerable. Thats to say one some positive social change things somehow end up seeming works. And there have been, i think, a number of positive social changes in recent years. Gay and lesbian people have met with, finally, social acceptance and equality and i regard that as a positive development. We have had a great deal racism in our past and there is much nowadays that in fact it has greatly lessened and thats wonderful and we ought to be happy and somehow we are angrier than ever before. We have seen a resurgence perhaps of some degree of racism but also we have a remarkable sleeplessness about things that seemingly is to be racist. And thats puzzling. And certainly one of the subjects of this book. We have seen things that were formerly regarded as watershed moments or as significant positive developments being recast as in back negative, one example that robbie talks about is the film boys dont cry which was in fact a transforming film one that talked about how transgender people ought to be treated perhaps better than they are nowadays that film is considered problematic by many trans activists. For reasons that at the time were not considered problematic at all namely abplaying the lead role. So the toto effect has something to do with it i think. Second point i would suggest is that both in college environments and on social media there is a strong incentive to cling to ones home audience. Find something bad from outside your group and condemn it in front of your group and you raised your own social esteem, you raise your own standing within the group. So it seems simultaneously we are all attempting to do this each to our own social groups. In the book charlie kirk, the noted conservative activists is quoted as saying the left hates the idea there are other ideas. But as a libertarian its my experience that this is the case with pretty much everyone. Someone social media we also segregate an oncampus is too there is a strong degree of ideological self segregation. That i think is why it seems like we are all so angry now. We are all finding the worst from the other side and presenting it to our own side and trying to raise our own social standing within our own groups. This is a dangerous dynamic. I dont see the end of it. I dont know how we pull out of this. And third, the third dynamic i think is very similar on social media and College Campuses is the presence of at least potential gatekeepers. I am just old enough to remember the presocial media internet. It was great. There werent any gatekeepers. Yes there were nazis, yes there were environmental terrorists, yes there were all sorts of crazy abominable people out there, we all knew they existed and they worked on our blog and that was great. That was enough. Thats all we needed to be happy. They were out there, we were here we were okay. But when there are gatekeepers suddenly everyones politics changes. Everyone changes to try to capture the gatekeepers to make the gatekeepers take our side and to keep the other people out. I think that is something that social media has brought to the online experience that was not present before its arrival. In the social media age as opposed to the internet before social media we now have the prospect of gatekeepers. And everyone is trying to play two or perhaps become the new gatekeepers. So those were three of the many many thoughts i have had while reading this book and i am sure that our panelists who whom i will now introduce. First the author robby soave, associate editor ahe is a commentator in many different venues. His work at Rolling Stone reporting sexual assault, alleged, at the university of virginia, one him a 2015 Southern CaliforniaJournalism Award as a columnist for the daily beast his writing appeared at the New York Times, the new york post, cnn, usa today and newsweek. In 2016 he was named in forbes 30 under 30 list for law and policy. And he is a regular guest on fox news, cnn and various syndicated radio programs. He will speak first. Next up will be jane kersten who is a senior politics editor at box. Com. With a focus on conservativism, the gop and also far right. She is a cohost of the popular vox media podcast the weeds. Her work has been featured in New York Times, espn magazine and various other magazines. Last week greg look yadav is attorney New York Times best selling author and the president and ceo of the foundation for individual rights and education. He is the author of unlearning liberty, campus censorship, and the end of american debate. Rhythm of speech and fires guide to free speech on campus. Most recently he coauthored the coddling of the American Mind. How good intentions and bad ideas are setting up a generation for failure. This New York Times bestseller expands on an earlier september 2015 atlantic cover story that he did with his coauthor jonathan hite he is finally the executive producer of can we take a joke . A future like documentary that explores the collusion between comedy censorship and outrage culture both on and off campus. Please welcome our panelists. [applause] thank you all so much for coming here today. Thank you all for being here. The subject of my book panic attack young radicals in the age of trump is the culture of activism at the moment we kind of occupy right now particularly on College Campuses. Where number of progressive activists, particularly at elite education new institutions have been engaged in attempts to shut down visiting speakers who they may disagree with. Professors who may actually be very well to the left who they object to something they said in classroom and then call for investigations of them. Grew other student groups whose activities they dont agree with. This is a problem more pervasive i think at places like harvard and yale and liberal arts institutions. Where the culture of not all students, not most students but a small number of very progressive kind of radical fringe believes that ideas that they disagree with are not only objectionable in like a tactical political scheme but represent a threat to their Emotional Wellbeing and their health. And the ideas should be unsalable on College Campuses. This is a problem i think the sort of National Media started paying more attention to beginning at length 2015 when there was a very notable event at yale. Adeno that college, Nicholas Comstock is, i believe greg was there in that event in a twist of faith you would not believe the writing of the season. [laughter] dean Nicholas Kristof is his wife had written an email to the students saying that rejecting previous guidance of the administration had given the students warning them not to wear offensive Halloween Costumes and chris offices wife had said you are probably all adults you can maybe decide for yourself whats appropriate to wear following. In a number of students rejected this attempt to be not paternalistic and surrounded the stock is in the square and berated him for a long time. Asserting that it was his role on campus to provide a safe space for them from discomfort from emotional harm. And that he had failed in his obligation to do that. They said explicitly that was the role of the administration is to provide us this overbroad safety from ideas and thing that that might trouble us. This is an undercurrent of activism that has cropped up time and time again in the years since this incident. Many of you are aware of this incidents that have attracted more National Attention attempts at Middlebury College to stop a planet debate between conservative anchor Charles Murray and liberal economist elton stenger. The activist actually attacks not only prevented the event from taking place but ended up putting disdain or in an upright. Events at berkeley and temps by conservative students to bring far right speakers resulted in smashed windows, trees being set on fire the events not taking place. This is not just happen just too far right. Our kind of people, but also to the professors people like Brett Weinstein and laura kipnis our two notable examples of very progressive academics whose students objected to something they thought or something they did and an campuses case launched harassment complaints that had her investigated. This continues to today in the news in the last few weeks a law professor at Harvard University ron sullivan who is well known for his expertise on criminal Justice Reform he was i believe an advisor to senator obama. He is represented and helped to free the wrongfully incarcerated tons of wrongfully incarcerated people and he has represented as you do if you are defense attorney has represented all sorts of controversial clients accused murderers, accused terrorists even but he was briefly in this last semester going to represent harvey weinstein. Who has been me too incredibly accused of Sexual Harassment and assault. Inactive a student about 50 of them had protests and said that sullivan representing weinstein made the safer women. That this would be impermissible. Harvard investigated sullivan and decided to fire him as not as a law professor but as faculty being of one of the residential colleges. He actually had a great oped in the New York Times just yesterday saying that he is very concerned about the emotions of students at many elite institutions being taken so seriously they are now dictating the policies and overriding values that the left used to believe very strongly in. Values of Free Expression and due process. So those two are areas where libertarians and progressives have historically been in close proximity. I have tremendous respect for the work the aclu has done over the years to defend the right of despicable people. To defend their free speech and due process rights. Even the aclu is sort of out of step with where activist culture is at william and mary i believe two years ago a member of the aclu attempted to speak to students and a group of activists to students associated with the local black lives matter group shot the woman speech down. They talked over her to prevent it from happening. And then there would be a talk of how the Mental Health of the entire campus nobody could go to classes. So this is the survey of the problems that i describe in my book and different activist groups being active over the last ten years. Their goals are but to keep it without getting too hyper or specific i will briefly talk about the trends linking the groups and contributing to them with these tactics specifically at university of michigan and they were where murray was supposed to speak in a prevented him from speaking. And i would say things and that you look very sensitive or foolish for thinking you cannot even be allowed to speak and what they told me over and over again with the research i did with this book if you let someone speak to makes people feel or that they disagree with on campus and feel uncomfortable then essentially we are committed to not having these Uncomfortable Conversations with people or allowing people non leftist to speak on campus because the result is mental trauma. That exist on the same spectrum that the campus is obligated to prevent the tactics are not only justified but necessary to protect people and their health. That is a new trend in activist culture that poses a complication for those that believe it should remain where Difficult Conversations must be placed where a range of ideological viewpoints should be aired and discussed where professors should have wide latitude to tackle the difficult subjects without them complaining to administrators for saying something they disagree with just yesterday i was talking to a friend of mine who was in education and she just talked to a professor she is friends with and they were horrified because at the start of class a female student announced now not on the gender binary and now dont want the pronoun what she was perfectly willing to do but because this was news to him during the classroom discussion that wasnt intentional at all that to go straight to the administration to report this. So there is a climate of many seeking the victimhood to be the most victimized person and the philosophy that trend that enhances that way of thinking which is incredible importance nowadays. The term comes from a sociologist who in the night late 1980s described you could suffer from sexism but if a woman of color to be intertwined against you that many activist on campus have been added from other categories with gender identity and many of these things are huge sources of oppression and to say that we only want to work from the activists perspective with people who fully agree on each category then you narrow down the range of people who are in Good Standing with a small tiny branch of many of the activists that i spoke to the day after the Trump Inauguration hundreds of thousands of people marched on dc to object to that truly appalling treatment of women but those who i talk to they said they hated that because it was not run and organized the people running it only checking one or two boxes or trans women of color so that is my criticism that this can be selfdefeating and self cannibalizing and no longer upholding free speech or due process is our recipe for disaster and my concern is these values are played out on College Campuses are permeating social media if these are the values of not just the elite campuses thats not real life anyway it doesnt matter but now moving to real life and organizations have to reorient their policies around the demands of a small tiny subset of politically engaged young people having people disagree or have uncomfortable discussions in the workplace and Broader Society because that is what these activists want. I will leave it there. Thank you. [applause] hello everyone thank you for inviting me to be a part of this panel just for correction sake i am not an editor yet. [laughter] i am a reporter. But i want to start off by talking about that i write predominantly about conservativism and the gop and something that was particularly interesting in part of why i love this panel is we have a discussion across ideological barriers so how the biggest sources on College Campuses so they are coming from outside in a couple of years ago to be so offended the American Flag with a tiny sock he demanded it be destroyed but it had to be removed and somebody had to do something about it. Of that that was a particularly telling incident because a host of other republicans have championed the idea they are stall warts and the alternative is leftist orthodoxy but it turns out everyone has a form of speech that they find deeply offensive that they think would rather you do not do. Right now my biggest obsession is a conversation over social Media Companies if they are too big and what they allow and what they dont allow and the senator from missouri is proposing to amend section 230 so social Media Companies would need to submit to the fcc, the unelected commissioners of the fc fcc, verification the moderation policy is neutral based on nobody knows what. So something that is important in making it on page 278 of his book but those activist engaging but elsewhere the rage does not matter as much. That is important to be very clear when we talk about all College Students there are millions of people in college and most of them are not at berkeley or yale or michigan unfortunately they are at Community Colleges they are attending smaller institutions where the instances of speech are really complex with the growth of the Administrative State and with that topic of conversation that i find fascinating that you hire somebody im surprised that nobody has asked me but so how we talk about these issues is just about important as the issues we are talking about is not most students but i was also working in a dining hall i wash dishes for 40 years. I remember my own experiences which at the time there was a group which i believe you referenced in the book with the efforts to end affirmative action on campus that also came from the Young Americans for freedom on and catch the illegal immigrant day and but if you remember the spy versus spy that i thank you are just the same people you just keep switching. Is that legal . Is important to recognize that culture of activism but we think of as the left and as the right i am rightleaning and with the social Media Companies i have a couple more questions about this. But its important to recognize the culture of activism is something worth having this conversation is not that they are doing activism wrong but the way colleges have created that atmosphere to do it, is difficult if you go to a College Campus and you are aware you have virtually no power. Nobody wants to listen to you. Your policy is interchangeable in which the Republican Party controls the white house and the senate and those that determine how they receive funding so thats a giant issue including wisconsin with the massive cuts under the Republican Administration so if you are on a College Campus right now the alternative seems almost unworkable when you have no space to make actual change you get into the spy versus spy of what i would call some people call this as virtual signaling but activism signaling talking about white people leaving the turning point usa creating watchlist to report professors for being mean or leftist. So that is that kind of activism signaling with this idea when you get down to it talk to College Campuses that we dont actually want to do this but this is the only way anybody will listen to us. It is the idea that the squeaky wheel gets the grease. The person who says we should kick all white people off the College Campus by National Media. And i have a couple of thoughts so lets send a bunch of reporters when the person over here says im working two jobs to pay off my College Loan Debt so i cant really get involved in campus activism even though there is far more of that person yelling and screaming person so i want us to be incredibly careful how we talk about College Students there is very much a tendency in our politics to cast aspersions to a wide swath of people and they object and then they say we dont mean you. But in this case talking about College Students must be extremely clear we are talking about. An extremely small group of people activism is largely the result of how it is created on College Campuses and has been for a really long time. So the same time africanamerican students were taking over Richard Nixon was is assembling a black cabinet how to reach africanamerican reporters and then disassembling it and then arguing for the place on the Supreme Court that segregation of White Supremacy is the law of the land so it isnt you that that view is relatively divorced from the politics that impact those College Students. But we also think its important because its important that he talks to the students and talking to trans people who feel they are being catered to and africanamerican students feel like a lot of the efforts are just to hire another diversity coordinator but not really doing anything about the issues because when i was at michigan you know why all these black kids are here. I was very interested to hear what their answer would be for co nobody had told me thats why i was at the university of michigan and i was thrilled to find out and i really appreciate that we are having these conversations about college kids we are not talking to them. I really encourage especially those of us who are getting further away but i think sometimes we can remember with that halo we were just having civilized debates but thats not what you what you were doing. Dont lie. But we are talking about millions of people into very small group whose activism is creating by the environment it is in prickling i want to be fair to those students and fair about the issues they are dealing with. And the biggest part of the disagreement there was an argument to the end that liberal activism or leftleaning activism could push people toward the open arms of the alt right. And speaking to Richard Spencer who spends a lot of time on College Campuses for somebody born in 1978. But following in a tradition the founders of the nazi party went on a college tour in the early sixties you can look at the speeches at Michigan State university to say any effort to protest that is pushing people towards me or to stop my expression of free speech all im asking is the sharing of ideas and civil discourse. But then in an interview in Playboy Magazine rockwell was a little more clear in said i hate niggers. I hate them i hate the niggers and the jews. So systemically people do not rind up in the alt right because of that liberalism of the left to take away for the responsibility that were conservativism and i think its incredibly important to remember that people arent political entities because they are pushed to do so but that gas chamber images did not do so because a professor at the university of missouri was a liberal. They did so because they decided to do so and because they decided to engage. So i want to be really clear about that. Theres a host of people who have been responded to by fulks on the left with cruelty and liberalism and social media on College Campuses. Richard spencer in his stupid suit. So we should give College Students more credit than that and how we talk to College Students about these issues. And again thank you for writing this book. [applause] hello. Im taking notes im not just tweeting. There is a lot of ground i would like to cover when there is a lot of interesting stuff but so i have been with fire for about 18 years of that. Went to law school to be a First Amendment lawyer and watching what has changed on campus since i started back in 2001 was pretty dramatic. And i agree with jane and i fight threats from campus all the time since frankly there are not that many people on the right for professors those that come from legislatures like the tennessee and North Carolina legislature when we are on the wrong side of that that has been a real fight i actually have a lot of fun in 2008 with Richard Dawkins the university of oklahoma and with a sense of legislator that evolution is unproven or unpopular theory and the media bias is not exactly what you would think. May be as of 2015 and those as horrifying so i wrote this book called how to beat the American Mind with a sociologist we have a lot of examples of professors on the left getting in trouble as well and even lisa who was fired from her job at the university of new jersey after going on Tucker Carlson to defend a black lives matter party where they only let black students do it. But interestingly she did not go to the school or have any parties but because the university was afraid they would get hate mail for defending this she was fired over her job. But her name doesnt come up that much if this is a politically correct stereotype it gets well covered both by the right leaning media and weirdly if somebody on campus but somebody says aha the right does it to that everybody says no kidding everybody does this at some point but amazingly but there is a big center of cases that get no coverage last year the institute told students that they are trying to dissolve the Student Union and dissolve professors rights and made the argument due to eminent domain. That doesnt make sense by the way but it is a nonsensical argument. This is one of the more straightforward pieces we have seen even though its a fairly elite college. So i do agree with a lot but i want to be clear that something did change in 2013 it wasnt subtle or slight or small and it was quite dramatic. For my career in 2001 students were the best constituency for free speech on campus. More than professors in the fall of 2013 we started to see campus shutdown and demands for trigger warnings of micro aggressions all under the course of about six months and im getting calls from friends we could take it for granted that students were on the right side for my entire career and say students were good on freedom of speech and then something really dramatic happened. Not just a small number of students then there are reasons for that but if you look at the Supreme Court cases over the last 15 years to understand why animal videos might be protected you have to give a lot of credence to history and freedom of speech. But one things that students dont seem to know is that it exists to protect minority rights then i have to explain this and i have to explain and freedom of speech of the majority is protected. 51 percent you have freedom of speech. My favorite person of the king in a non democracy. So setting that up only has freedom of speech for the minority. That the reason why increasingly live in communities and meanwhile you can be isolated in a way that simply was not possible with those that dont agree with you is still not get to all of them. So that is something that is happening outside of the university. But the one thing i have been hesitant to say i do think part of the reason why you are seeing some dissolution is because of the political tilt is dramatic. Then to try to make this argument in the New York Times to say administrators from University Professors and then protest and demand he be fired and that is currently off the table this is a wellestablished point so is something that i knew was bad that we are having some departments where it is 71 one literally let alone trump voters is that a problem by itself cracks probably. But what it does and i did not fully appreciate it leads to people whose parents that were used to the idea if they were progressive students they make demands of the university and told shut down this conservative group they are bothering me. In and say sorry freedom of speech but this has gone on generation after generation and after a while its not that surprising and say i worked in San Francisco at the aclu to have that impression that dramatic hate speech law with yes and even those who believe this stuff so what it leads to is freedom of speech is the bully and the big it and the rich people by the way rich people except communism do well. But we do have this perspective because they are in a political direction. So i enjoy his book its been a little while since i have worked in this field is little bit like having your living room but we do have attention focused on this and if i do have a criticism of the book thank you. [applause] so i think when they stood up to that fringe mob to shut down the internet when professors need to feel more comfortable to criticize and administrators will take seriously these investigations at the internal policy and cultural shift and to exercise Academic Freedom. Minority of people in the room and then to stand up to tell that person know. And those to be handcuffed and arrested and and those that will stand up and declare that. So you can have the power. And writing about this just yesterday it is frustrating for me and particularly with conservative audiences what will be due cracks how many of you went to college cracks almost all of you i publish five things but these five easy things you can do stop violating the law and then to have speech codes stop telling them to do that. And the freedom of speech and updating Academic Freedom standers, 63 colleges those that have actually adopted this and they have no excuse and president s need your back in when your unpopular opinion comes up to make sure that you will not be fired. Those cases tend to go away. And knows that have freedom of speech and Academic Freedom. Every country has to have that. You cannot blame students for not knowing something. May have never been taught. Number five they collect data it is clear from speaking on campus with the workingclass campuses micro aggressions and trigger warnings its not that big of a deal but thats the school where they had given up so we need individual universities committing to collect data about their own students so those are five really easy things universities can do students will work to protest and i want to be extremely clear that this is not the issue and an auburn that i you get all the black students on campus. And students are cognizant of that where you have a separate event somewhere. If they want to come to your college can put on College Campus i dont know if they even exist so i think for students look at Charles Murray so have an event on the bell curve for those issues and the problems surrounding that research and that is the sense that i am a sportswriter everybody has embraced the debates and in that sense for a lot of these kids that may be the person i am yelling at will change their mind. That is not how this will work. But those that dont violate anyones right to free speech because thats not a right to have somebody else say that you are an idiot but to encourage student protest and we will donate money to this fund for immigrants or lgbt. There are a lot of ways and ways to irritate the people and encourage students to do that. I was raised by activist hippies to go out to do something that doesnt give credence and that dont result in the sympathy vote to have some of these folks save my free speech is limited but if they speak to an empty room you gave them free speech. Thank you. Im also the president on the board of Public Access television and we learned in the sixties Congress Passed the Communications Act for people to state their views on any subject and trying to defend people with radical views but is there a lack of leadership from educational associations media organizations constitutional organizations to state a position like free speech. What can we do to pressure leaders to come forward and that still mean something to our constitution. I am wary in some cases blocking those pressures and to present a lawmaker that is often worse and the efforts to solve the perceived bias bias against the viewpoints of the social media sites or google. And then you can have a debate but then also what should be done about it. Theres a lot of people like lawmakers and section 230 which is a statute that gives some protection and then whether or not and changing these policies would not result in more conservative speech to invite the government to say its a disaster so im careful not to recommend to lawmakers specifically that you need to do something about this is thats a recipe for disaster. And also to support the right to protest obviously. Some of these are not even worth protesting so yes if he delivers his remarks to a empty room he perceives that as a debate if people try to silence him then people can say if why you expressing our ideas if they are so ridiculous . And then there are some people and they disagree a little bit but there are some who see that and say why do they try to hide this from me . Maybe there is something to these all to write beliefs i think roughly there is one third of the people with those far right circles and who got there and then to be so strongly suppressed or the more mundane versions because and they say these two people are both characterized as having insane beliefs i may quibble with them but they are not totally crazy of how great these ideas are and then you go down the rabbit hole. And there is a long history that i talk about in the book because that is from 100 years ago you have no idea how to join the fascist group and the newspapers only had to do that so while i absolutely support the protest they need to be more choosy. And it is important talk about free speech because Public Access television you can say whatever it is you want so there is an idea because when i talk to students on the right do you think a speaker should come to your campus . And abortion is great and that would be bad and texas state a student wrote an editorial that all white people should die. That is bad that we are giving this kid way more attention than he deserves freedom of speech is freedom of all speech i had nation of islam i protect your speech its insane but it is speech that im allowed to say but its worth noting that i really appreciate or for most people absolutely but then you get to the aclu sometimes it is Westborough Baptist church or crushing videos and you will be permitting speech from people who hate you and wish that you die. And that protects your speech to and its important to make that extremely clear it is all parts of speech. So commit yourself go write a short email to your alma mater and say i thank you should teach about free speech that you should stand up for and its amazing even if you are not a donor. They want to hear what you have to say. With even one major donor somebody completely unknown that does not so go out and do something about it. So this type of speech it is directly associated with the motivated hate crimes. So i am wondering if perhaps if they lessen those calls. There have been when they happen to say here is a room you can go when those Mental Health facilities and there are studies to chill out and talk to other people and typically they do this for the really far right speakers so now that were talking about the efforts but what i talk about in the book is to censor those nine people on the left are as greg mentioned but they put on her podium like after you. I dont know if we can swear on this but a graphic horrible thing then they would scream these at her to stop her from talking. Just making a pro transgender just Good Standing with the left. So a lot of what jane has said i completely agree with and that doesnt surprise me in the efforts on the left to stop people from speaking. But last week i wrote about a high school in San Francisco with the religious conservatives in particular its true and that has not stopped happening in on our censorship issues but in a Public School there is a mural painted by the leftists in the forties about George Washington and this painter hated the idea that George Washington was portrayed in all the textbooks that we steal the land and then slavery and all of that and thats reflected in his painting now that members of the San Francisco community are trying to get it repainted at a cost of 600,000 to the School District is problematic that it shows native American People that is the whole point of the painting we will not whitewash history so that absurdity has real prevalence so that we are not just talking about the rights but of those progressive people. I really want to underline that with the hate speech non sequitur what does hate speech have to do how does that relate to so many cases and he doesnt show up on that many campuses and those that have gotten trouble in the past so as the administrator has it out for an administrator but the best example of the way you make friends and influence people the best example is monday decided to go after comic con in san diego. Look that up on facebook they completely made fun of them there were counter protesters by 100 wine it was creative and memorable and the exact way you should approach. Also if somebody follows them with a two by. [laughter] i wish we could have known about this. [laughter] hello. The free speech and turn so my question is what is a proper way to address the concern that they are in fact being run by certain types of speech i have some thoughts on that because when i had my own College Experience and im gay if somebody comes to campus who is apparently homophobic , i understand that threat there is something to be said imagine if you are going to dinner and it turns out at the next table somebody really really hate you. For talking in the third person how terrible you are and immoral it would be better if you didnt exist. So some students on campus especially when the idea of that type of speech it is difficult for by mean that sincerely that i understand that is really har hard. I have dealt with that i remember there were a couple times on campus you didnt even have to attend the event but just have posters about the event talking about it so here is a gay person on the other side gay people should be murdered in the state both sides. That sucks. It hurts. But also thats a time to activate your own free speech if youre feeling injured or threatened then thats the time to go off about that. In a forum to talk about why and whats the best thing to do with that. That is something that was done very effectively in the 19 nineties and 2000s for marriage equality. There are a lot of people who instead of responding to the people who told us we were horrible and evil they didnt stop with responding to speech for by their own form of speech like samesex couples with children those who had been together 16 years and responded with their own forms of speech to nullify the argument so by the time the decision was made four years ago today, you have a vast societal shift how it was framed not because anybodys speech was shut down nobody stopped Maggie Gallagher for making up arguments about what lg pletter one lg d dash lgbt people are like that when you are feeling threatened, i have been there but to respond to that with more speech but respond with why that is wrong. I am here to talk about my own experiences but just come up with your own affirmative speec speech. Thats how i would deal with them on a College Campus. And for me frankly to be colloquial that is really messed up the evidence is extraordinary we see higher rates of depression and suicide for the incoming class around 2012 it is much worse than we thought. And they asked the questions the first thing we have to do is stop making it much worse if they show up on campus to say oh by the way we are here for you when you have your breakdown because people are fragile and theres nothing we can do for you other than warn you about it is setting up a selffulfilling prophecy. What we are doing is keeping a generation of students and wondering why they are anxious and depressed that you will be broken forever if you pass a certain point but this is something you actually have to be taught to say this is so clever and with those best inventions to ever come up with because when they start arguing open to the rest of Human History so this just has to be taught so taking that Mental Health crisis much more seriously because its almost guaranteed to make them or escalated or depressed or anxious and thinking that will fix things. And to be against the free speech that because there are power imbalances we cannot have free speech to say if you are on this platform you have all this privilege that i lack in that we exist in a free speech he dose we are not talking to each other or not capable until we erode or destroy the barriers of privilege. Until we do that if i have an unequal power relationship to you or Something Like that but of course my rebuttal is how could we decide or give power or authority or adjudicate who has power to speak. Its one thing the activists dont think about but privilege and power are situational. But for those that virtual total free speech who had these privileges and what other rights we could afford people to equalize society and then we need to have this conversation. We have time for one more question. I agree with the vast majority of the points the speakers have made but i do have one question how important is it really so only a few people actually have a hold of the sense of belief to go with it. And those that occur in ways but if it was a big deal with the deconstructionism there is a big uproar but it turns out hardly anybody believes in that other than a radical left academic so it turned out not to be a big deal for society as a whole but at the intersection now that he might be the same way radical academics who really believe in that but ultimately it is a Fringe Movement quick. It is very important the words that we use so commonly not just radical activists but when most young people talk. When i spoke i actually interviewed those who came up with that idea Vendor Selection reality and she said i dont know how this happened but the university of chicago specifically talking about intersection nullity as a lens of the discrimination law because she saw how they endured forms of discrimination that only happened to black women. There are a couple of specific instances with intersection nullity talk about how they are responding everybody says yes. If you say you are the Ethiopian Jews your experiences going to be different or if you are a woman from the lds church your experience is completely different. That is the baseline of intersection nullity not to compare that to diversity is the buzzword with everybody using that not knowing what it really meant so using it like this movement is intersectional but that linguistically doesnt make sense. So i can see as we get further away what they try to talk about and more toward the Administrative State or the system to hire the intersection nullity coordinator that makes 150,000, thats where i see it. Yes in my view is to say not a specific theory there are different forces and work in conjunction it is obvious in some sense but generally speaking you should have more authority and power if you have more sources of oppression because the oppressed bed i suspect this is part of the worsening of the Mental Health issue on campus because if you want to have that authority its harder to fake by race and gender which are leftleaning but you cant say you have a Health Problem and in fact is very common for activists to do that they will post in their biographies that they have ptsd or trauma. Im glad we have not just stigmatized and they get the help they need they interviewed a professor for my book you said asking every single one of her students they had ptsd a very prestigious liberal arts college there is no actual way theyll actually have that. So give that activist incentive to see them suffering from Mental Health problems. And intersection nullity itself is a theory but being attached from what they actually mean so i was just talking about how a group of catholics say that then i dont believe in the pope but then you say no you are not catholic so intersection nullity when we talk about it we believe that of what it saying and in the book we say it is an observation it is come play the valid identities intersect but heres where its a big deal but combined with privilege theory and stack ability that essentially if you have more zones of oppression then you have more of a status its too tempting of a rhetorical tactic i am being very sensible that overwhelmingly wealthy white hyper educated circles like in San Francisco this is when i started being called out by my privilege by rich white dudes over and over again and if it lets you win an argument every time than that version really does believe so tell me about your problem and then you tell them about the trauma that does have staying power even though it has been denounced as unconstructive but that version is so easy but that perfect rhetorical fortress that will be around for a while is my guess. Now we are just a couple of minutes before the scheduled end of the session does anybody have a real quick question quick. First over here ac cato or other institutes that use the panel as indoctrination rather than freedom of speech but the other issue i want to ask is dont you think world war ii the whole issue of freedom of speech or democracy your everything was by reach that is of the real issue and the real issue for one person to have 99 percent of the country and all the different issues. I think these issues matter when the climate is burning we still have to talk to each other. So if we have all this and then we can get further than that but these issues are important its not a distraction to talk to each other about the most important issues. Like sexuality and race where we are just barely removed from the federal government bans the lgbt and because of a lot of people who spoke up and said no. People who were marched out of the white house in 1965 that i am a homosexual and that was a crime. Think about the people the reason why we have the right to have this conversation today is because people took advantage of their free speech but i dont think it is a distraction from bigger issues but the speech that we have how much media is controlled that is free speech also so to talk about that to say with the intersect that is possible because of his free speech right now it is threatened and it is important this is not a distraction and the issues of how people want to live and who they want to live in what they look like are all deep role integral to the human experience. I guess thats a lot for those on the left but they say we just have to talk about class. But historically class in all of these issues have intersected in interesting ways and the only way to talk about it is through speech that is free. As moderator i would be remiss not to say that cato panels on a wide variety of topics that this is not to your liking or not encouraging to you i would encourage you to come to other panels. Is in indoctrination . I dont know. Do we disagree more . But when it comes to freedom of speech as a distraction . My god. It does not come normally to people like i said maybe crucified to chop off their heads or make them drink hemlock is normal that is part of our tribalism which is rare and it needs to be protected partially because it is the solution there is a good book that people criticize but the point is valid and there is a series of investments i believe that are published from world war ii that explains one of the reasons why to go against the japanese empire and the nazis was because we actually had a jackass say that will never work and that is a bad plan not only does that improve your ability to respond but those problems in the first place if you look at history one society they do incredibly stupid things because nobody said the emperor has no clothes absolutely we take that for granted right now we will be very sorry. So in closing i will just add that occasionally the activists would focus on Different Things other than the issues which was not significant to me if they were concentrating on Different Things i have a brief section in the book titled deafening silence about the war as it exists today which does not exist at all into nothingness. Like maybe a decade ago. Maybe it is the news media preoccupied but it is my agreement what progressives want on paper at least that causes me to criticize their tactics like a more conservative desire to see them fail. Please thank our panel one more time. [applause] [inaudible conversations] he came in at just 50 years old, had a mere two Years Experience on the dc circuit and never on the Supreme Court rehnquist was the chief in 1986 already had 14 years as an associate justice and in the personalities and how to work with his colleagues. As Justice Scalia told me rehnquist had enough time to cover his hide in incomes Young John John roberts with not much managerial experience to speak of naturally reserved and shy initially he had trouble navigating the justices and it is a constant work in progress how to persuade them or work with them. They are all appointed for life they are all set in their ways. The way for better or worse with office space or perks that they can be quite controlling calling him king john and whispering way and that to build up over time. So i wasnt sure how to handle this. So in my interviews before i chose chief Justice Roberts as a subject writing about Justice Scalia or soto mayor and the more i found elements of distrust and wanting to set himself above the others prickle i didnt know how to make anything of it so i mentioned it but i end up saying that doesnt really affect the law in the end but how they navigate or to work on a compromise or to back off from what he stated and that dynamic element with what we all live under. [inaudible conversations] good evening everybody i am with power politics and prose on behalf of everybody welcome and so much thank you for coming congratulations for braving the weather what a great day to have a book about the weath