Transcripts For CSPAN3 Discussion Focuses On Free Speech On College Campuses 20160912

President ial debates on cspan. Listen live on the cspan radio app or watch any time on demand at cspan. Org. Next, law professors discuss the constitution and free speech at colleges, including examples where the First Amendment was exercised. This is an hour and a half. Good afternoon and welcome to the George Washington University Law school. Im susan karamanian, the associate dean for international and comparative legal studies. Im delighted to introduce this distinguished panel on a topic that has been front and center in the news over the past year, and that is the issue of freedom of speech on campus. The idea for this panel came last year, when developments were breaking at Yale University and the university of missouri. Coincidentally, the book of my colleague, and one of our panelists, professor Catherine Ross, was just coming out. Professor rosss book is lessons in sensorship, how schools and court subvert students First Amendment rights, and it came out in 2015, under Harvard University press. We had hoped to do something last spring but time passed, and in some respect the passage of time was a good thing, because this issue is not going away. And so events that play themselves out to a certain extent, yet i think its appropriate, as we begin the Academic Year that we have the opportunity to examine the topic of freedom of speech, particularly in the context of a university. Universities typically have been considered places for the Broad Exchange of ideas, including unpopular ideas. Over the past year, the concept has been challenged on various university campuses. Last week, a dean at the university of chicago wrote incoming students and announced that trigger mornings had no place at that university. The dean cautioned against intellectual safe places and also raised questions about withdrawing invitations to speakers merely because the message of the speaker could be controversial. This panel will examine legal and other dimensions of whether and how speech and expression can be regulated on campus, consistent with the overall educational objective of the university. We have a very distinguished panel here today, but we also have in our audience a number of academics, scholars, practitioners that have worked in this area. I see my colleague, Professor John bansaf, who has been front and center on some of these issues throughout his life, while here at George Washington, and other universities, and we have individuals who have played an Important Role in shaping the jurisprudence. Today, we will first hear from my colleague, professor Catherine Ross. As i mentioned, her newest book is lessones in censorship. This book has been named the best book on the First Amendment of 2015 by concurring opinions. Professor ross has spoken on free speech on university campuses, at many places over the past year, including the university of chicago, stanford, harvard, and yale, as well as the Constitution Center with which were going to learn a little bit more in just a second with, also on the panel was dean fred lawrence, and jeffrey rosen. She has recently joined the board of advisers of the First Amendment Library Project of the foundation for individual rights in education, which will make key First Amendment documents online. Professor ross has a distinguished record having taught or visited at harvard, princeton, university of pennsylvania, boston college, and st. Johns school of law. Professor ross will give us an overview of the areas where there have been tension on campus, and attempt to try to make sense of the situations and how we can assess what has gone right and what has gone wrong. Then we will hear from fred lawrence, the former dean of the George Washington University Law school, and also the former president of brandeis university, who is the ceo and secretary of the Phi Beta Kappa society. First, welcome home, fred. [ applause ] second secondly, secondly, Dean Lawrence is a former assistant u. S. Attorney for the Southern District of new york, where he became chief of the civil rights unit. He was a professor at Boston University school of law before joining the George Washington University Law school, and he is the author of punishing hate biased crimes under american law published by Harvard University press in 2002. Dean lawrence will speak about the issue from the angle of a former academic administrator and in particular will focus on what does this mean for the future of universities . And then finally, well hear from g. W. Law professor jeffrey rosen, who is also the president and the chief executive officer of the national Constitution Center in philadelphia. Hes a contributing editor to the atlantic and nonresident senior fellow at the brookings institution. Professor rosens new book is titled louis d. Brandeis american prophet and came out earlier this year at yale press. The Los Angeles Times has called professor rosen one of the nations most widely read and influential legal commentators. Professor rosen will examine the issue of freedom of speech on campus in the broader, in a broader context, principally looking at public discourse, as well as politics. After the principal presentations, we will open the floor for questions and discussion. Please note that, if you wish to speak, we will have a microphone. Identify yourself and also note that, because this is being recorded today live by cspan, that, that information will be available to the public. So lets welcome the panel and professor ross, the floor is yours. [ applause ] thank you very much, susan. Not only for those very gracious introductions, but for really being the motivating organizer of this event, and im just back from a sabbatical year, im really pleased to see so many old friends and some new faces as well. My initial research in this area, as susan mentioned, focused on Public Schools from grades k through 12, and i should note that nearly 90 of American Children receive their compulsory education in Public Schools. My work culminated in lessones in censorship and in that book, argued that learning to take freedom of speech seriously, to understand why we have it and what it means, and lookithe abi of that freedom is essential to xhokcy and the task of learning about that liberty has historically been assigned to our Public Schools. I show that our schools today failed to search or to honor free speech principals, the that he lower courts often let them get away with it, violating students constitutional rights. And i urge that schools teach the meaning of liberty by allowing students to live it, to exercise it. The Supreme Court has ruled that the strict scrutiny generally applicable to government regulation of speech doesnt apply in grades k through 12, though it does apply in almost every other context. Instead, a more relaxed legal doctrine governs students speech rights and the justification for that is the very important function that schools serve in our society, in preparing students to participate in democracy as citizens, and also to earn a living. They have messages they have to convey and they need a certain degree of order in order to do that, so students may not disrupt the functioning of schools, and then there are a few other particular guidelines and tests that the court has developed. So schools can control much more speech than the government can control elsewhere, web were talking about schools, and censorship both in school and elsewhere includes both silencing speech before it occurs, which we call prior restraint, which was the original free speech doctrine, no prior restraint of speakers, as well as punishing speech after the speaker has expressed his or her views. Lessones in censorship shows in grades k through 12, School Officials have pressed to expand the boundaries of each kind of speech that the court has allowed them to censor, and they often offer in excuse at all, no rationale for a weak or even laughable reason like a School Administrator had to spend ten minutes talking to the student and there were other things they didnt do, or some kids were whispering to each other, which one wise federal judge said, thats just the background noise of school, what are you talking about . And these attitudes have led at least one student to say my school is all about censorship. What are some of the other things that schools do that lead students to believe that censorship is the regime of the day . Schools violate expressive rights by silencing controversial ideas, in the classroom, where there should be robust debate, and outside the classroom, including criticisms and parodies of School Officials, even though the right to criticize the powerful is one of the things that distinguishes a free society from a totetalitarian societtalitariaa. Key to what is going on in college kaucampuses, public cens any speech that anyone finds offensive enough to complain about. By the time my book appeared last fall as dean karamanian pointed out, i was not working behind the scenes to arrange these distractions. Words like coddled have been applied to College Students who seek to be protected from offense, and some people have suggested this might be related to helicopter parenting, to a generation of young people who have never had to fend for themselves in the world, but i suspect theres something more pernicious going on. I see a link to what students learned and what they failed to learn in grades k through 12. Schools have failed to teach the meaning of free speech, have failed to demonstrate that we mean what we say when we talk about individual liberty, and they have given precisely the wrong message. They have taught students that its okay to suppress speech that offends someone or seems controversial. School rules too often outline, outlaw and punish harmful words or hurtful words between students that the constitution clearly protects from calling one a poopoo head on the playground, to racial and homophobic words essential to our age. I will come back to this because thats a key to whats going on, on our campuses, and i have to say one last thing about k through 12. And a doctrine of the First Amendment noticed the hecklers veto. It is actually kind of exactly the reverse of what the doctrine says. The doctrine says that when a speaker enrages a mom, the job of the state through the police is to control the mob and protect the speaker so that the speaker can continue to speak. Instead schools teach that the mob can, indeed, and will silence the speaker. Just one example. Young man in a high school in east hampton, new york, known as a playground to the rich and famous, Hillary Clinton is fundraising there this week, repeated something that hed heard someone else say that was a rude sentiment about hispanics. Over heard by hispanic students, very large part of that population, people who do the work during the summer, they believed that this young man was the originator of the sentiment and believed in it. And they threatened his life. He was whisked first to the nurses office, and then off campus, escorted by police, and he was suspended for the remainder of the Academic Year. This event took place in september. He was forced to stay home the entire school year, while he was threatened at home, at his parttime job, which he had to quit. Every time he left his house. He begged for an opportunity to explain himself to his peers either in writing, over the loud speaker or at an assembly and the school said no, you cannot speak. Seeing this, the hispanic students, im lumping them together. Of course, theyre not one group but the leaders said he was suspended. He hasnt explained himself. Clearly he is guilty. It took several years before he was cleared by a state inquiry and it became clear that his speech rights had been violated. Meantime, hed had to move to california in order to feel safe and be able to resume his education. That is a very dramatic example, but only one of many in which the hecklers veto rules in our nations schools. Speech expressly protected by the constitution, compared to only 24 of boomers and 12 of people over 70. So how does this all relate to what is going in the Nations College campuses . When i say colleges, im including community colleges, fouryear colleges, and universities with graduate programs. Lets start with the purpose of education, to be able to learn how to question perceived truth, how to evaluate it, and how to think critically. Two of the most influential and best statements about the centrality of free speech to the purpose of universities both came from the university of chicago. Another came from yale in the early 70s. Susan has explained why chicago is so relevant today because of this letter that has gotten a lot of attention in the news. And it first was written in 1967 by harry calvin, a professor of the law school, and one of the most eminent First Amendment scholars of his time. It says the mission of the university is the discovery, improvement and dissemination of knowledge and added a university cannot insist that all its members favor a given view of social policy, however compelling and appealing that view may be. It must respect free inquiry and a diversity of viewpoints, and this led to the pithy statement in brief a good university, like socrates, will be upsetting, a truth that seems to be missing in much of the debate today. In the 1960s students viewed that administrators would silence their speech when the students pressed for more personal liberty, liberty to challenge authority, to engage in political protests, to force razzi off campus and freedom to enjoy sex, drugs and rock n roll, a battle they largely won. But this time around the most vocal students are demanding that College Administrators silence their professors and their peers. Very odd turnaround for those of us who experience the first round of student activism. The students ask to be protected from hurtful words, sentiments, even gestures and they seek the coercive power of authority to enforce social norms that may well be laudable and may even have their genesis in the values of the 14th amendment respect, dignity and equality, regardless of race, ethnicity, jeb der, gender identity and so forth, laudable as the proclaimed goals are, the means some students advocate for fly in the face of First Amendment expressive rights of other students, faculty, and other people on campus. This Development Led to a second statement from the university of chicago and in 2014, the University President asked Jeffrey Stone, again, a Law School Professor and a leading scholar of the First Amendment, that came up with a new set of principles that sounded an awful lot like the calvin principles. That report said its not the proper role of the university to attempt to shield individuals from ideas and opinions they find unwelcome, disagreeable, or even deeply offensive. Concerns about civility and Mutual Respect can never be used as a justification for closing off discussion of ideas, because open and vigorous debate is an essential part of the universitys mission. And this is the context in which chicagos dean of students wrote to the freshmen about to metr metriculate last week in the letter distributed to all of you today and which made headlines around the country. The headlines focus on trigger warnings but the scope was much broader. In fact, we might think of the letter itself as a sort of gentle trigger warning. Being upset may be part of your education here at the university of chicago. And that may be part of our intent or it may be unavoidable, given what we do. And in response to questions the dean said nobody in chicago will be surprised we have quite a reputation for our support for Free Expression. Students coming to chicago, the dean said, should anticipate challenge and even discomfort, even discomfort, not so kimpb from the upsetting experience that socrates promised. There are several things chicago says it wont do, and i think these provide a very good model for other universities. No trigger warnings, no cancellation of inviting controversial speakers, classic hecklers, sorry, classic prior restraint, no condemnation of spell electule safe sprays spaces from individuals can retreat with perspectives at odds with their own. Members must have freedom to espouse and explore a wide range of ideas and the word explore is really important because one of the things that people are doing when theyre students, both because of their age and because of the process of education is theyre exploring. Theyre exploring ideas identities and may say things they will later disavow but how will they test whether they want to be different people than their parents. Look at other forms of culture, beliefs. Students coming from a religious home, want too think about a more secular life. Secular student may explore religious ideas. Its a period of growth, both from a point of view of autonomy, which is also a First Amendment value, and political exploration, which is often said to be the highest First Amendment value, exploration benefits everyone. So these are laudable guide posts. Before i go on to talk about some of the specifics, i want to just clarify a few important points and give you a couple of definitions. Chicago, like George Washington university, is not a staterun or state funded school. Its a private institution, private universities are not bound by the First Amendment, just as private secondary schools are not bound by the First Amendment. Staterun schools are, so the university of missouri had to obey the First Amendment, though it didnt always. It posted on its site at one point, if you see hate speech you should report it immediately to the campus police. No, you cant do that. That was taken down, just as an example. But many of the leading universities in the United States have voluntarily undertaken to affirm that they support freedom of expression, and that thats part of what they stand for. While we may not be able to hold them to that in a courtroom, the best way for us to evaluate whether they have lived up to their promise to respect First Amendment norms or what ive called First Amendment values is to compare them to what the constitution requires as it has been interpreted by the courts. So thats why i think its valid to talk about First Amendment legal doctrine, even in the context of a private university, if that university has said we are a site for Free Expression, not if they have disavowed that order, said nothing, like a lot of religious universities will say obviously we dont think all viewpoints are equal, and we dont encourage exploration of all viewpoints, and yet, Liberty University invited bernie sanders, so im certainly not disparaging religious universities. Second, some expression is outside the protection of the speech clause. There are certain categories of expression that the law categorizes as unprotected speech and these include truth threats, specifically defined group of statements, incitement of obscenity, libel and fraud, and if students on campus or off engage in unprotected speech, then they can be disciplined and they can be arrest ed and they can be liable in a civil suit. Those are all options. Third, we have to distinguish ideas and speech from conduct conduct may also violate campus rules or laws, and ill give you one example. At ole miss, one student and one alum hung a noose and a Confederate Flag on a statue of james meredith, who was the first africanamerican to attend ole miss, he integrated it in 1962. That was arguably expressive conduct or what we sometimes call symbolic speech but it also violated federal law. In short, it was a symbolic lynching, calculated to threaten and intimidate black students. It was a federal civil rights crime and they both pled guilty, and at least one of them has served time. So we have to conduct can be stopped and conduct can be punished. That is different from words alone. Or destroying art that depicts slavery in the Residential College known as calhoun at Yale University. That happened when an employee smashed a stained glass window. Student could have done it and student could have been punished for conduct, not for expressing dislike of the stained glass window that depicted slavery. Now, many people say that speech alone, its racist or other vile speech, makes no contribution at all to our exchange of ideas and to our public debate but first it all it might be political speech no matter how objectionable, political speech is the apex of the First Amendment values as i said, but in addition the constitution protects the right to speak foolishly and without moderation and if i may, that is often characteristic of young people. This brings us to the arguably immoderate problem of hate speech, which is really at the core of what students are protesting, what they want to be protected from is things they see as hate speech, though it may seem much more mild to some observers. Courts have overturned every Single College hate speech code that has been challenged from infringing on speech rights. When Justice Sotomayor was writing as a law professor, she said it is impossible for a hate speech code to satisfy the First Amendment. The rules of free speech are different in other countries, we often compare ourselves to, and many do have hate speech codes. Justice alito while he was on the Third Circuit considered a high school hate speech code and theres absolutely no right to be protected from offensive speech, even if the schools purpose is to create a safe, secure and nurturing environment, just what these College Students are seeking. If the law demands High School Students and even younger children learn how to respond to their peers, when they are provoked by noxious speech, surely we can expect university students, College Students to do the same, and some of the speech in k through 12, the courts have expressly held as protected, include things like really course shaming andette lick slurs that i will not repeat, but they go far behind microaggression. I dont minimize the pain that is caused by this sort of language, regardless of the victims age and maturity. So what is going on on our campuses . Very briefly, trigger warnings. Professors may choose to give trigger warnings if they want to, and that started with response to victims of rape, or domestic violence, who might be very upset by academic discussions, at least to say this might be coming up, but now students have demand ed trigger warnings for a range of things they feel sensitive to that may or may not be comparable and often really puzzling, like dont teach antigone because it raises suicide and we shouldnt have to think about suicide as a possible life choice. Life choice might be the wrong word. [ laughter ] so if professors want to do it, they can, but compelled speech is alsoer ha verbotem under thet amendment. Quoting shakespeare or quoting mark twain, that is part of learning, and to not use the word is often to avoid the very lesson. So youre teaching lets say a history course about George Wallace, and not requesting to use the words he used . The point is to have people understand how they were a slap in the face and to use a pseudonym or an initial undermines the entire educational experience, as well as the understanding of what was going on when George Wallace was running for public office. Okay, professors have been disciplined and inquisitions have gone on what theyve done in the classrooms, outside of the classroom and online. Canceling speakers, we dont want to hear the speaker, president s rescind invitations, not only is that nothing more than prior restraint but again more speech is the answer to noxious speech. What can students do . They can demonstrate outside where the speech is going on, but they cant go inside and shout the speaker down. They can give out pamphlets. They can hold a competing event at the same time or at a different time. Peer to peer communication, microaggression by peers, where students say i want not only a safe space like a designated place for people like me, where i only have to see people like me and talk to people like me, but they want to be safe wherever they go in the cafeteria, in the gym. This is, look at this, it has almost no boundaries as indicated by a code promulgated at the university of california Santa Barbara last year. That code said you cant ask people where they were born, where they were from. If do you that, you have to have sensitivity training and you will be reported for a bias offense to the campus police. You also cant make passive statements like america is the land of opportunity. Somebody who disagrees or whose family had a different experience might be offended. So just think about going to Santa Barbara as a student, and how are you supposed to know how you can have a conversation with anybody, much less find out the kind of biographical information that is quite commonly the basis for building a relationship. So we can have more speech rather than less. We can try to set norms and encourage certain ways of interacting with each other. We can provide settings for Difficult Conversations. What we cant do is censor including punishments that are reflected on a permanent record. [ applause ] thank you, professor ross for first illustrating the extent to which the education in k through 12 is having a profound effect on the attitude of students and universities, and secondly, giving us the specific examples and the tension points and how, in your judgment, they should be resolved, so thank you so much. Dean lawrence . Well it is lovely to be introduced ads Dean Lawrence in this building. Susan thank you for your kind words of introduction. It is a distinct and great pleasure to look around this room and see so many dear friends and colleagues, colleagues still, and students who who have had a chance wed be studying criminal law and that is relevant to part of what i want to talk about and to be with jeff and catherine on the setting, both of whom i had a chance to debate and discuss thesish use. Catherine and i had the chance to do it in jeffs national Constitution Center so you werent there so we had to smoke you out coming back to g. W. Law and im glad we did. In many ways my take on these issues is not different from catherines, as much as it begins at the end. It begins after where she was in a sense. Its not like two lines parallel to each other. Its a line that continues. Robert hughes, great art critic, from australia, and that may be relevant to the story because sometimes it takes somebody from outside our culture to tell things about our culture too close to be able to see. The color of water is hard to discern. When youre outsued sometimes you can see things you might not otherwise see. Wonderful piece in the new yorker a number of years ago in the aftermath of a censorship case involving artwork of robert maple thorpe. Some of you in the room may remember this. Maple thorpes work was provocative, to say the least and he had an exhibition at the Cincinnati Art Museum which the good and the great of cincinnati decided to shut down, it being better to save the good citizens of cincinnati from this artwork. Lawsuit was brought under the First Amendment, Cincinnati Art Museum being a Public Institution and not so surprisingly, the Cincinnati Art Museum lost. Maple thorpe won and the right for the art to be exhibited was upheld. Hughes wrote a brilliant essay in which he said americans tend to overconstitutionalize most important matters, by which i meant the following by asking the wrong question, not so surprisingly, you get the wrong answer. Wrong answer is probably not the right way, you get an unhelpful question. If the question is, is the artwork protected the answer is yes. Hughes said thats an interesting but ultimately he would say unimportant question. To him, he said the important question is the aesthetic question. Is any of this art any good . He went on to write an essay i found persuasive, some of it was good, some of it was okay and some of it was pretty lousy, but by constitutionalizing the question we deprive ourselves of the context in which to have that debate. Now you can take it out of the art context and put it in the speech context. Similar example that some of you will recall in skokie, illinois, the Neonazi Party wished to march, asked for permission and the citizens or the leaders of skokie could have simply thrown the request out. It turns out theres no First Amendment right to get your mail returned, but they chose instead to deny them the right to march, and they gave the nazis the only victory they could have gotten, because on the First Amendment question, the nazis were right and skokie was wrong. On Everything Else the nazis were wrong, as we found out with the punchline to that case that most people tend not to remember. The demonstration did happen. The march did happen. They were vastly outnumbered by a counter demonstration. They were revealed not so surprisingly to be a pathetic ragtag little group and having had to express their views, it collapsed of its own weight. By framing it as a First Amendment question in an interesting way, the good and the great of skokie, illinois, asked the question in the only way the nazis could have won as a First Amendment question. Now weve talked about this so far in the First Amendment context, as catherine said, private universities are not bound by the First Amendment, this university is not the university where i was privileged to be president for a number of years, private university, but it does seem to be that whats an advantage of private universities is that the exercise therefore is not just one of constitutional interpretation. It is a relentlessly normative argument. We are building it from the ground up. What would we want the rules of Free Expression to be, if we were starting over again . Whats the context we would want . What makes it complicated in universities is that there is a good argument for us being both more and less protective of expression. The more may be the obvious piece. We have a mission in universities, and its wonderful to have the late great harry calvin remind us of this. You know, when youre a dean or a president you sometimes fall into the habit of thinking these places exist for the purpose of being run, and you lose track of why they exist. We have a say create mission. It is the creation and discovery of knowledge and the transmission of that knowledge through our teaching and through our scholarship for the betterment of our local, national and international communities. Thats what were charged to do, and its the highest responsibility which im familiar. As a result, you would expect that Free Expression must be as broad as it possibly can be, for the battle, for the debate, for all ideas to flourish as my hero and jeffs hero, Louis Brandeis told us the answer to bad speech is more speech, not less speech. On the other hand, we also are a very unusual kind of community, these academic communities, and we are training, educating our students and each other not just with information, but for the role that you will play in running this society. And so we can, to use an oldsfashioned term, purport to play a role in your moral education, something that, if the president of the university were to say might sound a little oldfashioned, maybe even a little cringeworthy for some in the room, but you wouldnt say it was out of bounds, whereas if the mayor or the governor said it, i think you would say its out of bounds. I dont need the governor of my state or the mayor of my city participating in my moral education. Ive got other people who do that for me, thank you very much, including my wife. I just want that on the record. [ laughter ] but your president , your dean, your professor, thats part of what she or he might very well choose to be about, because this is a place of education on the broadest level. So that would argue for other concerns about speech to play a role. Now, let me come back to what Robert Hughes taught us about not overconstitutionalizing the subject. But before we discuss not overconstitutionalizing it, let me just tack on 30 more seconds to catherines very powerful presentation about the constitutional piece of it for good and sound reasons, we want our bounds of protected speech to be as wide as possible, not just for the reasons i think typically given that we think the marketplace of ideas gives us a better answer, because i think many times the marketplace of ideas does not give us a better answer, and so if that is the place i were looking i would often come up unsatisfied, but instead, i think in a somewhat less consequentialist, utilitarian view of speech and more know neocantian and brande form of speech, what we are in speech, what distinguishes us from other mammals is partially this thumb which is useful and our ability to express ourselves and be understood by others in a deep, subtle nuanced, profound way. Thats who we are. Thats what it means to be a person, and so for society to shut that down is to shut off our oxygen at least figuratively and sometimes literally. So we would expect the bounds of protected speech to be wide, but as hughes told us, thats the first part of the discussion. Now theres the next part of the discussion. There is speech that is protected and should be protected but is there nothing more to say about it . Might we wish to say, you have the right to say certain things, and in certain contexts its a right that you might be well advised not to exercise. Thats also part of education on a campus. These are delicate, complicated nuanced lines, to be sure, but as my teacher, the late charles black, said, just because lines are hard to draw, i cant talk about charlie black about lapsing into the texas drawl as some people in the room know, question are not freed of the obligation to try to draw them, he said, so of course the lines are hard to draw but we are not free to the obligations to try to draw them. And so how do we solve some of these puzzles . Lets look at some of the specific examples that are on campus right now, and that are so challenging, and im going to argue that part of this, and i think part of where i think the chicago recent letter got it right almost entirely. Where it got it wrong it got it wrong in some problematic ways. Problem was about tone and overly muscular tone to why its sort of a good thing for people to be banged up and offended, which i think is probably not intended by the dean, but i think unnecessary and i think its fair to say could have been predictable, that would be the response, but also part of it is that it paints with too broad a brush. We will not give trigger warnings. Well, actually, as catherine said, this kind of was a trigger warning all by itself, wasnt it, this letter . Heres how we do business in chicago. You better be aware. I think thats actually not a bad way to start the year. You might even call it a trigger warning. When i taught criminal law and before that at 17 years at Boston University, routinely one of the most compelling classes, one of the most electric class, and yes, one of the classes that was the most difficult for most of us in the room, is the class in which we took up the crime of rape and specifically in the context of acquaintance rape. Now, i didnt know the term trigger warnings when i started as a professor because it hadnt been invented yet but i did start every class, every year, on acquaintance rate by saying lets just be aware of the fact that, unlike any other crime we have done this year or will do the balance of this year, i am virtually certain that there is at least one victim in this room, and i am virtually certain that there is at least one perpetrator or accused perpetrator in this room, and if i now expand the question to say people who are one degree of separation from a victim or an accused perpetrator, i probably picked up most of you, if not all of you. Thats it. I dont think that took 60 seconds to say. But i viewed that as my obligation in setting a context for a classroom conversation for the conversation to go forward, and no one was silenced. No one was told what he or she couldnt say, and i dont know that a student had a right as a matter of a trigger warning to hear it, but i felt an obligation, as an instructor to say that, as i set the context for my class. And i think university wide, there are contexts where that kind of statement is at least helpful and sometimes part of the education of our students. So if a trigger warning means setting it in context it means one thing. If a trigger warning means you shouldnt have to read Huckleberry Finn because there are words we dont use today it seems something else. We dont get very far in an argument taking the most extreme version of the other side and cartooning it. Instead, taking the other sides position at its most attractive and trying to join issue with it is where well get our best work done and i think in that context, there say role for a kind of trigger warning, which is why it paints with too broad a brush to say we wont do trigger warnings. Incidentally it turns out thats not even the rule of the university of chicago, where it turns out that professors are perfectly free to give trigger warnings and of course they are. Because it would be a vast violation of Academic Freedom if the dean of university of chicago were saying that you couldnt do that. So even he didnt really mean what he said in this not terribly wellworded but still ultimately very helpful for raising the subject trigger warning. Safe places, what do you mean by safe place . Safe place means you cant discuss difficult things in a classroom, obviously not. I just gave you a pretty good example of how you do that. However, if Sexual Assault victims wanted to have a place where only victims of Sexual Assault would be together to discuss what theyd been through, not only do i see no problem with that, i could see that as a helpful way for many of them to deal with an issue that they need to deal with. If you want to test whether safe places works, just take an issue that you care about deeply and ask yourself the following question. Would you like a place on campus, just once in a while, where you can say i want to be in one place where i dont have to hear about that . You know, i just want to be people who agree with me on that. If you say i want the whole campus to be that, then you have no business being in a university, because the university will be a place where people will bump into each other and affect each other, but should there be some places where you can go and say, this is a place where im not going to have this issue. I debate this issue all the time and i want one place where i dont debate that issue. We used to, in a more innocent time, call them fraternities and sorori sororities. But there are many ways in which we can think about a right of association, which is perfectly consistent within a broad campus that ultimately is committed to a broad range of Free Expression, and yes, finally, hate speech, something that i have worked on 30plus years at this point. Hate speech is a category that actually captures within it a number of different things. There is actually violent words, which is to say verbal assaults as ive called them, words that literally threaten and as catherine said those are outside the bounds of the First Amendment. Thats part what have we sometimes mean by hate speech, and i think there is little question that even in a state university, and i would argue in a normative matter and private university that such speech could be restricted, but now lets take a step back. Suppose its not words that are intended to threaten, but words that are, in fact, intended to provoke, intended to offend. To say that that should be protected, to me, is as hughes said about maple thorpe, both true and ultimately unhelpful, because it doesnt take us through the next stage to say, what ought a dean, a president , do in response to that . Lets take a couple of examples and wrap up with that. A couple years ago, university of oklahoma, some of you will remember this case, a fraternity is having an event, theres a bus ride out to their founders day i think they call it. It is not so surprisingly an overwhelmingly white male fa ternt, and they are are engaged in singing a song that has apparently been part of the fraternitys culture. It is horrific beyond bounds, right . Its not that we just dont they dont use the n word. You know the word they use. We dont have a person in our fraternity. It goes on to say illusions to lynching and so on. Horrific, horrific stuff. Of course, what makes it different today from how this story would have happened 20 years ago . This. Because it turns out now everybody walks around with a tape recorder and with a camera and with a video and with the ability to send it viral. Thats what happens. So, now it goes viral and the whole world sees this. And the president of the university of oklahoma, very able academic administrator, throws them out of school. And he gets lucky that they dont sue. Because if they do, the same thing that happened to him is happening to scobey. He asked the question and the only way they could win, you mean, theyre allowed to sing this song . Tell me a little more about the context. If they are involved in activity that is directly threatening somebody, thats different. Here i would differ with catherine a little bit. I dont think i look at speech and content so much. To me thats a distinction that collapses 6 its own weight. Burning a flag, is that speech or is that content . John hart eli gave us the answer to that 100 years ago. Its 100 speech and 100 content. How can we distinguish . I think the criminal lawyer in me says look at the mental state us. What did they attempt . If singing theyre attempting to threaten somebody. Thats not what they were doing on the bus. They were being disgusting, vulgar, outrageous. So why did david bourn throw them out of school . I think he felt he had sotosay something strongly critical of this and i think he was right. He felt this was his only option and i think he was wrong. I think he had another option. Another range of options. And that is to use the bully pulpit of the president , which if youre wise you use very sparingly. Its a currency that once used dissipates very quickly to say this is inconsistent with the best values of this university. Now, let me tell you from personal experience what happened when you do this. You get it 360. Roughly half of the people say, that is totally pointless. You did no good. You effected nothing. No teeth, no guts to it. And the other half say, you have inhibited free speech. You have restricted speech. I guess they cant both be right. But it does seem to me that there is something to what we used to call moral education, that the university ought to be engaged in. And there are times when we say, maple has the write to put up his art and Robert Hughes has the right to say some is lousy. There is speech youre allowed to give and sometimes the dean and even the president is allowed to say, this is inconsistent with the highest values of this university. Thank you. Thank you so much, Dean Lawrence, for first emphasizing the importance of the manner of the attempt to try to regulate speech. I thought that was very observant. Secondly the emphasis on cont t context. Then this tension between the moral obligation of professors and administrators and how do we go about judging that obligation. I think its a very difficult issue. And i think through Dean Lawrences comments we understand the complexity of it, so thank you very much. Professor rosen. Thank you so much. I am so honored to be here with my dear current and former colleagues, Catherine Ross and fred lawrence. Its superb to be part of this incredibly important question. Were really talking about the conflict between Free Expression and dignity. How should they be recollencile. Him here as proud g. W. Law professor and as author of this riveting new book about a mutual hero of many of ours, Louis Brandeis who had a lot to say about free speech and dignity. What i want to do is channel brandeis and ask wwbd, what would brandeis say about the conflict between hate speech that is on one hand and Free Expression on the other. Before i do that, i want to give a plug before this really incredible tool that the national Constitution Center has launched that will help all of you to make up your own minds about how to strike this balance. That is the enter active constitution. We have assembled with the help of the conservative and Libertarian Federalist Society and the progressive American Constitution Society, the top scholars in america to write about every clause of the constitution, describing what they agree about and what they disagree about. But thats not all, i say like a ginsu knives salesman. Can you see every historic roots in the constitution and you can compare it to the way its protected in constitutions around the world. What i want to show you now, if i can find the mouse, because like all technologies, this one is eluding me. Heres the mouse. What are the constitution and what do the top scholars in the country say about the free speech clause in the First Amendment . Go to constitutioncenter. Org, click on interactive constitution. Well select the free speech clause and well find, lo and behold, its written by no other than Jeffrey Stone and eugene bullock. Jeffrey stone who wrote the free speech principles of the university of chicago and nominated by the American Constitution Society and eugene voluntarilyic of uvla school of law. In 1,000 words these scholars give us the core, subtled history of the First Amendment. Youll learn courts in america speech can only be bound if its intended to and likely to cause imminent violence. That extraordinary speech principle which comes from Louis Brandeis is the crown jewel of free speech and dwishs us from the rest of the world. How am i confident in that . Because when i click back and go to rights around the world, i can then click on Free Expression and note the way other countries around the world protect free speech. And if i click on france, for example, i see from the declaration rights of 1979. Of course, that huge exception has allowed france, like germany, like europe, like most of the countries of our world, to ban hate speech that causes dignitary, to ban group libel and ban all sorts of speech which in america is constitutionally protected. The other thing can you see on this thrilling tool is see historic roots of american liberty. If you go to writing rights youll see the framers when they wrote the bill of writes, cut and pasted are state constitutions. You can see the proposal of Robert Sherman taken from connecticut which says the framers believe people have certain natural rights such as the rights of conscience, matter of religion, of speaking, writing and publishing their sentiments with peace and assembly for the common good and applying to government for petition. The framers believed that the rights of speech were natural writes that in hearing us from god and nature and not from government. When we move from a state of nature to Civil Society we retain those rights in order to secure greater security and safety for rights that have been for safekeeping. We can learn from this wonderful tool that madison thought free speech was so important, he thought the most important one in the bunch is one that would have prevented the states as well as the federal government from prescribing free speech. No state shall violate or trial by jury. Took the 14th amendment and the bloodiest war in American History to make that part of the constitution. So, its very exciting. And you, ladies and gentlemen, each of us in this room will reach different conclusions about the proper balance between dignity and free speech. By going to this remarkable tool and how exciting to click on not only the First Amendment but all clauses of the constitution and see top scholars, both giving areas of agreement and disagreement. This is just a remarkable tool for constitutional education. I want you to check it out, make up your mind. I want to ask the question which is so significant to the topic before us. Wwbd, what would brandeis do about this very difficult conflict . The reason brandeis is so relevant is not only did he write the most important opinion about free speech in 209th century, one that Justice Elena kagan says was the greatest statement of free speesh in the 20th century but he also wrote the most important article about privacy at the end of the 19th century. Privacy was a dignitary right. It was a right to be free from emotional injury. Brandeis and his partner, charles warren, were concerned about new technologies, name lit instant camera and tabloid press that ensure what used to be whispered from the closets was shouted from the rooftops. They complained that pages upon pages are full of idle gossip which can only be procured by intrusion. They looked into american law for protection for what they rightly called protection of honor. They said american law, unlike roman law, has not protected against offenses of honor. They have come up with a whole series of brandeis torts, which sound like a delicious dessert which is a law that allows citizens and celebrities to sue for the publication of truthful but embarrassing information that causes emotional injury. And brandeis proposed this new right, which he called the right to be let alone. Then he had second thoughts. And he wrote soon after the article was published. I reread the privacy article. Its not as good as i thought it was. He said to his riwife, alice. After the course of long reflection, he came to change his mind about the balance between free speech and dignity because he came to be troubled by three aspects of encouraging courts to protect dignitary torts. First it allowed citizens to remove truthful information from public discourse. Second, it allowed people to sue for emotional injury. Third, it required judges to decide what was and wasnt Public Interest and brandeis decided that should be decided by citizens and not courts. How did he express this remarkable transformation . He expressed it in the whitney opinion. This is another homework assignment im giving to you in my g. W. Law professor hat. Well read a couple paragraphs right now. Live googling is not a good idea but here we go. Were going to look up whitney versus california. I can read it from my book but i want you to see these beautiful words as well. We go right to brandeis concurrence. Heres the setting for whitney. Briefly, american law historically had published speech that had bad tendencies, that might possibly in the future lead people to bad acts. The quintessential examples were the acts where john adams forbade krction of himself and federal administration but allowed criticism of his republican Vice President , thomas jefferson. Jefferson was so appalled by this offense of what jefferson considered the natural rights of freedom, thoughts and opinion that he pardoned several of the people convicted under the acts and also with madison wrote the virginia and kentucky resolutions that declared speech to be a natural right and suggested that punishing speech because it might have a bad tendency was an offense against what jefferson believed should be complete freedom of thought and opinion. Fast forward to 1917 and piece pea naj act and anarchists are published for speech that add voe quats communism. A woman called anil whitney is punished under an extremely object truce California Law that forbids assisting an organization to advocate terrorism. Thats a lot of levels removed. The thought is when she stood up in a communist party rally and basically attacked lynching and racism that her speech might possibly lead people to be sympathetic to the communist party and that might possibly in the distant future lead them to resist the draft. And shes accused under this law and is convicted. Other politicians have been convicted under similar laws, including eugene b. Debs, candidate for president in 1920, was actually put in jail for standing up and giving a speech denouncing the draft. Most of the courts have upheld the conviction. Brandeis, who joined some of the earlier opinions, has been reading thomas jefferson. Its the summer of 1926 and hes reading jefferson and his denunciation of the sedition acts and he reads the letter to Elijah Boardman in the footnote. This is jefferson, we have nothing to free from demoralizing of others if others are left free to demonstrate their errors especially when the law stands ready to produce false criminal act. These are safer corrections than the conscious of the judge. Thats the core of jefferson light and freedom. He believed we had the ability to develop our faculties. Only if we have untraveled access to the arguments of all sides of issues of public importance, including hateful councils can we make up our own minds as citizens. Brandeis is reading jefferson, distilling this and condenses it into this constitutional poetry which is the whitney opinion. Its worth my assignment to you is to read all lets just read this one paragraph because it encapsulates why brandeis changed his mind about the balance between privacy and free speech. Here it is. Those who won our independence by revolution were not cowards. Its the revolutionaries of 1776, not the framers of 1887. They did not fear political change. They did not exall the order at the cost of liberty. Can you follow along with me. To courageous, selfreliant men with confidence in fearless reasoning applied through the process says of popular government. No danger flowing from speech can be deemed clear and present unless the incidents of the evil apprehended is so imminent that it may befall before there is opportunity for full discussion. If there be time to expose through discussion the false hoods and fallacies the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforce silence. Only in emergency can justify oppression. Such must be the rule to be reconciled with freedom. That is just as good as it gets when it comes to legal writing. And you understand now why brandeis is so insistent on protecting hateful councils. He says as long as theres enough time to reason and deliberate, then citizens can reject for themselves hateful speech. The best council for evil councils is a good one. This is the best defensive counterspeech in American History. Thats why only when theres this speech is intended to cause eminent violence and the violence is likely to occur. The next paragraph he goes on to say cant justify prohibition. He says minor crimes dont justify repression of speech. Its hardly conceivable, he says, that the court would uphold a constitution which punished trivial felonies, speech there must be the probability of serious injury to the state among free men that deter rents ordinarily to prevent crime, education or violation of law. The quoer and beautiful faith that emerges at the centerpiece of this great philosopher is thinking faith in education, faith in reason and faith in American People that when presented with the best arguments and educating themselves through rigorous selfstudy reason would prevail. So, thats why i believe, although im ahead of an institution that has an inspiring mandate from congress to educate americans about the constitution on a nonpartisan basis, so i cant take sides and political dough bates our job is to bring together the best arguments on all sides of Current Issues just as brandeis insisted. Nevertheless i think that because of this beautiful defensive reason, the Supreme Court was correct and jefferson was correct, to construe our constitution, to prohibit the punishing of speech except when its intended to and likely to cause imminent violence. I think thats why brandeis was right to change his mind between the balance between dignity and free speech and why the glory of the american constitutional tradition is so central to freedom today. Ill just end with the words of brandeis. If we would govern by the light of reason, we must let our minds be bold. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, professor, for first giving us insight into the important work of the natural constitution Constitution Center and giving us access to the web portal. I think thats very important, not just in the context of the United States constitution, but the comparative work that can arise from it. But secondly, looking at some premises of free speech, in particular the focus on faith and reason and deliberation of individuals, and the notion, i think a lot of us are being challenged right now is do we have the ability to engage in liberation and device and are we getting accurate information, are we questioning, are we thinking critically . I think this raises the importance of the role of universities in particular. Weve had three wonderful speakers. We have about 15 minutes for questions and comments. We have a microphone oh, yes, professor. Lest you think jeff is so into brandeis, you can also read about whitney in the very first chapter which opens with a sentence that jeff just quoted. Its really important. This is a wonderful book. Just get it. As the only guy here not selling a book so, enough with our infomercial here, but i would say that among the things that keeps us going back to Louis Brandeis as opposed to a lot of of his contemporaries, brandeis has an extraordinary freshness that i think we just saw. And that you will see in either of these wonderful books, both of which i happen to own. Yes. Professor. And i have a question id like to suggest a theory, as you all have demonstrated. The First Amendment is dead or dying on most campuses, including our own. Were private. As you know, under contract law and other laws, many courts say were still we still must protect free speech and i think that reason is that those who should be doing something about it, when free speech is strangled on campus, are not. By that i mean professors and particularly the professors of law and particularly a constitutional law and those of us with tenure. Lets take several examples from g. W. , youre all from g. W. , so maybe you can tell me why this happened. Last year one of our students brought home a religious symbol from india. A student looked at it, thought that it was a swastika. It wasnt. And our president immediately suspended him for a term. And was about to throw him out. So far as i know, im only one who came forward and defended him. We kept him from being thrown out and everybody else was silent. A year or two earlier, some of you may remember we had a speech goer. Any of them could anonymously call into the pinkertons and complain about the students or faculty and that went on for a while, until i was complained about. I had to dash home from europe, found out the complaint was that i had been rude. Rude, rude. You, john . Yes, me. It turned out the complainant had nothing to do with g. W. The occurrence occurred off g. W. Property. It turned out she had broken into a place i was in charge. When i told her if she didnt leave, she might be arrested, i was rude. But it wasnt until i that the university changed some policy. A couple years before that our Student Newspaper in the april fool edition we had a dean of students not very popular, they ran a comic showing her as a dominatrix. For that freedom had to be expelled a month or two before their graduation. Couldnt help them then. I had to be up on the hill testifying. I had a law student go over there, raise hell, First Amendment, delay it until i can get over there and they did such a good job that it was over before i got there. But these are three instances, and i can give you a dozen more on our campus, where nobody else stood up. Just in texas last week, men and women are parading around with didos, some kind of object jekz about guns. And the chancellor is threatening to discipline them. The one you cited where a couple kids were singing a racist song, clearly constitutional protected. Yeah the president acted and so as far as i know, all of these, none of the professors spoke up. None of the proefrs did anything about it. And that may be the reason why it didnt die. Let me ask you, why is this happening . Can you explain it . Better yet, can you justify it . I think hes looking at you, jeff. Were all from g. W. This all happened on our tenure, so to speak. Its not just on our campus. But every time i read about all these crazy things going on, where people put the word trump in chalk on a floor and theyre disciplined. Or they say, as you said before, people who succeed success breeds success or Something Like that, or lets make america better. Theyre being thrown out. And in all these articles i read, i almost never read about the facility, law facility, tenured law faculty coming forward. Why do so many professors talk the talk, but dont walk the walk. Thank you so much, professor. First of all, ill start with emory, not to skirt the g. W. Issues. The News Coverage suggested that the president punish the person who put trump in chalk everywhere, which led a lot of minority students to say that they felt unsafe on campus. In fact, minority students who went to see the president say they understood the person who expressed themselves or herself in chalk had a right to do so. They just wanted people to not how it made them feel. And the president should be commended for his decision not to try to find out who the speaker was and not discipline there was several im just talking about a separate committee. John, this is not the place to have a debate about that. Im just thats why were here. No, but the example you used im trying im trying to clarify the record. The president took some legitimate steps to say we ought to facilitate Difficult Conversations on campus. We ought to look at our codes but, in fact, nobody was punished for that. As to the g. W. , i have to confess that i rarely, if ever, read the g. W. Paper. And i was unaware of two of the three examples you gave. Sometimes my law students bring things to my attention but if another incident arises, let me know about it. Im probably oblivious and im well known for speaking up. Dean lawrence, do you have insights particularly as a University President , not here, of course, but at another school . I think both from the point of view, the president and faculty, the president gets enormous pressure from all constituencies on this, which is why i am not going to respond to specific examples. Professional courtesy that i didnt care for it when other president s took shots at me. I dont want to take shots at other president s. We cant under the circumstances. But i will say in slightly more abstract terms as i try to describe, i think its incumbent on the president to articulate the values of the institution are on both sides. And you start with a fullthroated defense of Free Expression. And then you do get to say after you planted that flag firmly, you do get to say, and here is where there are limits on that right and here is an example of you have the right but you ought not exercise i think jim wagner got it roughly right in that regard. I can tell you in that case that he was under enormous pressure from all sides on that one. In terms of faculty, i think there are lots of faculty lots of different things. I think tenure was designed precisely to give people the opportunity to do some of the things that youve done very bravely. I think of you every time i get in an airplane and theres no smoke in there. Thank you. Were all in your debt. Even people in this room dont know what im talking about, theyre in your debt. Now theyll figure it out. I do think that there are plenty of examples to the con temporary of what you said. Ill give one most recently. This past year i was on sabbatical from yale law school. All the events in yale that took place in the fall, half of which you read in the paper and half of which never made it to light for some reason or another, which is selective reporting and how these things happen in a dangerous way. There were faculty on all sides of that issue, including in the law school, and several prominent members of the law faculty who were strongly associated with what we might call the more you know, the more fervent First Amendment side of that. There are plenty of xamps where that happens, too. Prediction . This issue is now at a level of Public Awareness that were going to see more discussion of it, not less. I think ultimately thats a good thing. Thats why, you know, at the end of the day i would say i poked at several pieces of the chicago letter but im grateful for the fact that they took the opportunity to raise the issue and im grateful for that dean for taking some flack and doing it. So, i think, well get more discussion, not less. Great. Next question. Its wonderful to see you back here, fred and its wonderful to see all my colleagues down here. This is a fascinating topic. Ive had students increasingly interested in this issue, in particular, because i teach domestic violence, women students who are rape survivors, many of them, various assault who find criminal law and teaching of rape to be retraumatizing. And there was a study done by one of my students, which im dying to get her to publish. Im not sure whats going on. It was an Anonymous Survey both here and other schools and getting feedback from other people who spirexperienced it. I want to ask kind of a global question. It seems to me its very easy to be an absolutist in defense of the First Amendment. Glowing about the glorious, noble purposes and concept of the First Amendment, but i dont see a lot of honoring, although fred is moving that direction, of the pain that is inflicted by some free speech in some settings and how damaging it is. Particularly to the extent the race examples are a good example but the gender examples are more ubiquitous because theyre more acceptable to say things demeaning of women and demeaning of survivors of all kinds of abuse of women in settings where there are plenty of survivors who are likely to be feeling very unsafe in the environment. I have a friend named steve heyman. I dont know his relationship to brandeis or his personal view. Im curious to know if any of you have read it. Im very curious about what fred might think of it. What steve is doing that goes beyond what i hear you doing, fred, is hes saying First Amendment itself should be a more balanced analysis because we should not be allowing free speech to be an absolute trump no matter the pain, no matter the horror it inflicts like the protests of funerals of the gay servicemen. There should be limits on this. It is not adding to the glory of free debate and democracy to allow that kind of thing. And the gratuitousness, the extreme viciousness of a speech where it cannot be remedied, there are other rights at stake. His book is very thoughtful and thorough. Im throwing out as a general, larger question, if it were true there were certain kinds of free speech that go to the 14th amendment, that go to the right of equal protection because they generically silence women or people of color, gay people, would there be any would you nuanced or view of the First Amendment at all f that were understood and known and or what do you think of his book . A number of people have taken this one on. I think his book is good. For my money, jeremy harms is better. He says straight up, i dont know if this is going to persuade everybody and im not doing First Amendment analysis but somebody ought to work through in a careful and methodical way the harm in hate speech and he something. I think we all, not just our students, we ourselves fall into the habit of this kind of american exceptionalism thinking our constitution is not only a great constitution but like anything else is not exactly liberal democracy. And then you see how these issues are treated in israel and places that, you know, certainly appear to be pretty functioning democracies and they take a very different view of Free Expression. What i come away from people like waldron, it does keep me up at night, it does trouble me and it does push me to do a lot of work on that, what i call second side of the equation because i guess i would put it this way. To me, one of the biggest differences, what universities looked like when they were first when is one i held up. Social media and the role, the other is the colossal impact of diversity and we have campuses that blessedly look and are very different from the ones that most of us of my generation went to. That means the cost of Free Expression does not fall equally on all members of community. I ultimately conclude its a cost worth bearing for all reasons we spoke about. The fact that the cost does not fall equally on all groups does mean theres more to say than just to say, and its protected, lets move on to the next subject. It does mean its incumbent on us to talk about what kind of community do we want to have and what kind of speech do we want people to be revolted by. David bourn, go back to oklahoma, had it within his power to really come out strongly against them to the point they would have said that chills our right because there are two kinds of Chilling Effects. Theres a Chilling Effect we mostly mean. If you say this, youre thrown in jail. Thats the Chilling Effect thats unconstitutional. Then theres a different kind of Chilling Effect. Which is if you really persuade me of something that ive been saying is wrong, im probably going to stop saying that because you really persuaded me that i shouldnt be repeating that. That argument doesnt work anymore. I could say thats a Chilling Effect. Thats the healthy way we effect each other and influence each other. So, that part of the discussion has to go on as well. Professor rosen, professor ross, would you like to show us any insights or any final words before we wrap up . Brandeis now the hard about the balance between dignity and Free Expression. He conclude as a matter of constitution, there should be no exception to free speech for dignitary harms because of the fact citizens make up their own mind. That doesnt mean the harms of hate speech cant be acknowledged, cant be subject to counter speech and cant be restrict on the platforms that mattered most. Its remarkable in this great discussion, which im so glad has focused on free speech on campus, we havent discussed, you know, the platforms that will control what students can hear and say and thats the internet platforms. Its the content policies of those companies that have more to say about the indignanty of hate speech than First Amendment. Theyre not bound by the First Amendment. All those companies do restrict hate speech. You cannot google or facebook hate speech that denounces religion but you can denounce religious leader. I think, in fact, the balance between free speech and dignity is being struck in a nuanced way in a place where students are actually speaking and hearing. I think thats why its all the more important to defend this beautiful American Free speech tradition as a constitutional matter just because the constitution is limited in the areas in which it actually applies. Thats very interesting observation, particularly when were going to define what is the university, then. A lot of that is information that is outside the bricks and mortar, so to speak. Professor ross. This question came up as panel study at stanfords Constitutional Center that i was part of. It sort of came out, interestingly, its supposed to ask where people are frop fromm, but it came out that almost everybody on the panel was a descend antd of or directly a refugee from people who had left the soviet union and people whose family had survived the second world war, jewish families, and so why was it that this panel mostly agreed that hate speech should be protected in the United States . And i hadnt mentioned anything about that. Here i think its relevant. So, my family arrived in the United States in 1940, one of the last boats to reach the United States from europe. Russian jews who had gradually moved across europe, seeking safety. And when my father was a teenager they lived in the city of dansik, which was supposed to be protected by the league of nations, but was not. At a certain point jews could no longer go to school and before he was sent to belgium to continue his high school education, he would walk his brother to a special school set up for jewish children. And the lovely people no, okay, people stood and threw rocks at them yelling, jews, jews, jews. So, do i know that words and hate speech and harmful ideas can lead to conduct that is beyond all comprehension of evil . Of course i do. But what i flernd my family at the dinner table was, we are so lucky to be in the United States. We take the values of liberty that were not part of the culture where we came from so seriously that you know, we have not only a privilege to exercise our rights, but an obligation to exercise them and standing up against injustice and against hate speech and racism and prejudice of all kinds. And so it depends what the context and message that you get is. Not to silence people, but to say, lets make sure that these ideas dont go too far. That we have the tools to do that within our constitutional system. Thank you so much, professor ross, for putting this discussion into a broader historical context. Also to giving if, i think, a bit of a unique meaning as well and significance of it. To so many people that have been affected by limits on speech and consequences associated with that. If you can join me, please, in thanking panel. And we look forward to having additional conversation and reception were having across the haul. Thank you so much for coming