[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] okay, guys, we might getg. Started. Thank you so much for everyone to come to the event. Weekly journal of literature, culture based in london with interest in the United States and sponsored by panamerica. Tota delight to discuss issue of free speech which never seems to go away. I thought i begin things with literary angle. Poet milton, polemic, in it he said this, give me the liberty to know to utter and argue freely according to liberties. Those with otherwise come fault that they found liablists, the fire and the executioner will be the timeliest and most affectual remedy that can follow. Godfather that i believe in free expressions but which has been f active ever sense. As we discuss over 50 minutes, free speech is never in practice absolute. The question before us today is how much it should be championed specially in universities and those rights might include the right not to be offended but also the right to live free from abuse and intolerance and safely. Berkeley hosted ben shapiro and had to tighten security. By we are deeply concerned about the impact some speakers may have in individuals sense of safe and belongs. No one should be made to feel threatened because of who they are or what they believe. This week too harvard disinvited Chelsea Manning. Is that evidence that harvard is not a place where ambiguities can be discussed . The dean of chicago sent a letter to incoming freshmen and said this, our commitments to Academic Freedom means that we do not support socalled trigger warnings, we do not cancel invited speakers because their topic might prove controversial and we do not condone intellectual of safe spaces where individuals with retreat from ideas and perspective over their own. 152 member it was university signed a letter criticizing fori expressing the opinion. How far should we prioritize the need for safety and security within universities. I was asking students, an event that trigger warning and one member talk about shakespeare. There was a complaint about trigger warnings had not been ht prefaced by trigger warning. And so we do need to find a way how to preserve safe spaces and how important they r. We are going to consider is there risk of safe space to become segregated space. Im joined by two people hopefully a third who will silently enter, jelanl cobb, writer in 2015, one of the great jobs, his most recent book is call the substance of hope, hello, and also professor at colombia and Michelle Goldberg entering a room and as of tomorrow, economists at the new york times, congratulations to her. Her first book was called kingdom coming, the rise of Christian Nationalism and next the means of reproduction, sex power and the future of the world so shoves unafraid for tackling topics and along suzanne nossel, sponsoring this event, senior and hugely important organizations including human rights and Amnesty International and serving assistant secretary of state for organization. At the end we will take questions and observations from you. One thing youll notice is everyone is using youthful and lovely we are not students. Lets start by asking the panel, if i may, do we believe the third principle, free speech significantly under threat or more broadly . First good afternoon and thank you for an invitation. I come to visit every so often. Im happy to be with you today. T and so, sure, i think free speech is under threat. At i dont think its under threatt in College Campuses. I think the preeminent threat t free speech in the country resides in 1600 pefl avenue. We have seen not justi rhetorical, people who might be in left universe, objectively we have not seen a president referring to the media enemy of the people, retrofitting language in 21st century demagoguic presidency and for us to actually grapple with what that means with daily drip, drip, drip of political assaults against the press is something that we should be concerned with. When we look at the way the conversation about free speech on campuses has helped, very often what ive noticed about the kind of reaction and movements is that they tend to drape their agendas into virtues of democracy and what i mean by that is saying that you are upholding one principalra democracy but dismantle another principal of it. I think the example that stands out to me most notably the Voter Suppression excuse me, Voter Integrity Commission they have now in which they are allegedly attempting that our votes, that our elections are untainted but having no concern for the number of people who are finding it much more difficult to actually participate in democracy through voting. Pa the same thing happens with free speech. When we are looking at the conversation around free speech, it is not, a standing for much more nephew set of concernse in the way that free speech would. Its worth noting that the different spate of neo nazis events and farright events have been driven as freespeech events and also be noted that we saw lots of people who were in that part of the world, part of the ideological spectrum defending Milo Milo Yiannopoulos and those things were being defended under the name of free speech as opposeth substance subsequent issues. Should he be excluded from making various types of not just stupid but as well as inflammatory comments . Well, i think the virginia of democracy is that everybody has the right to be stupid in their own turn and publicly, stupidity is own indictmentment, that notwithstanding i dont think thats what the concern was. When he began making statementnt that is people weree uncomfortable with about child molestation they became something indefensible. They left principle of free speech, milo has the right to talk about things that make usto uncomfortable like child molestation and defend the right to do but the opposite is what has happened. Do you blame trump for how free speech ideas have been wrongly articulated on campus, do you think we go from the head down as society . I think he made it worse. We issued a report last year called campus for all diversity inclusion, free speech at u. S. Al universities, documenting these rising tensions and pressures between the drive to make the campus a more inclusive, equal environment open to all students from all kinds of backgrounds, making sure they really can learn and feel comfortable and accommodated at the university but also arguing that those changes and that necessary evolution of the university should not and must not come at the extense of robustob protections for free speech and Academic Freedom. Its our view that the two sidet too often talk pass each other. And social change and those who are defending free speech need to come together and come together. So i think really . Thats my, i think do you have an issue . Racism and sex schism, i think people who are concerned are not going to come together in promulgating [applause] i dont disagree with you, but you pointed this out. Not all people cloak themselves in the language of free speech come in peace. And i think what has happened especially over the last few months is this, you know, those who are advancing whether its a racist or a sexist or an antigay agenda, calling themselves and claiming the mantel of free speech advocacy at berkeley which is really about a particular political agenda, i think the danger there that we see is a rising generation of students who are becoming alienated from the concept of free speech because a they see it being invoked only to protect ideas and speech on the other side. I think thats a real risk. What were trying to point out is that free speech is for all of us. You know, you need free speech if youre going to challenge the administration, if youre going to challenge a professor. You fend on those protections in order you depend on those protections to insert your views. So weve got to reclaim free speech as a treasured value, you know, not belonging to the right or the left, but to all of us. Thats the angle we come from. Michelle, do you think this is a new, is it a new problem, a new issue, do you feel . These things flare up from time to time, but were in a specific i think the dynamic has become particularly toxic with you have this dynamic, and i dont know how you break out of it, because there is, on the one hand, this generation gap about free speech as a first principle or an absolute value, right . I think that there are a lot of people younger than me who think that safety or inclusion or diversity or tolerance are more important than, you know, letting the nazis march on scoping key, for example, which was the kind of civil lib arertarian libertarian tradition that i grew up in. And i wonder if part of the reason some of them think that is because fascism really does seem closer than it ever has before. And so, you know, it was one thing to make an argument that we should let the nazis march when you couldnt imagine that somebody whos only a couple of steps removed from them would be in the white house. You know, now i think the theres a reason that people are much more alarmed about the mainstreaming of these ideas and that people feel such an intense need to kind of hold the line on what is acceptable. Because part of what steve bannon and the rest of the right doing very consciously is trying to expand the realm of what can be said in public and decent society, right . Thats what he means when he says politics are downstream from culture. But i think were in a really bad place where for a lot of really alienated young men the site where you can be transgressive, where you can kind of throw off the norms of Polite Society where you dont have to second guess everything you say, you can be your true self, if they feel like thats the right and i think that thats something that, you know, people like Milo Yiannopoulos are very good at playing on and that kind of, you know, University Culture becomes the culture of tiptoeing around things and strictures and watching your words and, you know, i think that inasmuch as the right is able to be the kind of swaggering rule breaker, its going to, i think its going to keep attracting a lot of these alienated young men. And then the more they push, the more people, the more kind of response they get from, you know, from the kind of trigger warning left or whatever. The more they feel. Again, i dont think its not right when they say were the new punk rock, but i think theyre getting some kind of [inaudible] is what youre saying. Yes. If you pander to what they believe a stereotype is, then it does their work for them. You want to hold the line against fascists, do you invite them in and argue them, or do you push them out . Seems to me to be one of the questions here. What would do you think, jelani . I think there are a couple of things kind of implicit in this and kind to have other side of michelles point is that there is the very real we know this, that democracy can be undermined democratically. And so to kind of use the kind of threadbare at this point comparison but unfortunately still relevant, were talking about hitler being elected and not seizing power. So the idea of how we combat these fascist movements, i dont think that we have a full picture of what antidemocracy looks like. We can only conceptualize it, or in some ways we can only conceptualize it as a kind of robust and laissezfaire almost approach to free speech. But someone who has studied the history of race in this country can tell you very easily that there is a whole antidemocratic tradition in this country that was enhanced by the First Amendment. And what i mean by that is simply this in 1915 when birth of a nation was released, w. E. 3w6789 due boys and the naacp and William Monroe trotter, the civil rights leader, all of them wanted this film to not be shown. And within the naacp even, which was a fledgling organization then just a few years old, there was an internal debate saying do we really want censorship . This was not a abstract, academic question. Because birth of a nation was directly responsible for the rebirth of the ku klux klan x. This is not a, you know, should i be able to say this, it is directly related to these sources about lynching black people. And saying that when you have a hire hierarchical society, even Civil Liberties can be deployed in ways that reinforce that hierarchy. If we wanted to know the history of this country, we would know that. If we were willing to look at the history of this country, that would be apparent to us. And so when were saying, you know, are you in favor of the First Amendment, of course you are. But i also think that are we in favor of Everything Else that contributes to what we call a healthy democracy. So to answer your point, when they saw charlottesville, the city of charlottesville requested, tried everything they could to prevent that gathering from happening. And they said this is not a matter of free speech, this is a matter of intimidating the public, and these people are really interested in creating a violent atmosphere and so on. And they were knocked down, i think, three times in court. And the aclu defended the right of these farright groups to organize. And then once they got together, they did exactly what one would have expected, which is that they gathered around a church with a bunch of people inside, and they all had torches. And so anyone, again if we had an inkling of understanding about how antidemocratic the history of this country has been especially around matters of race, knew this is exactly where Something Like this would lead. All im saying is we should be mindful of an array of threats to democracy, not a singular one. I guess the question that follows [applause] do you trust young people as a whole on campuses or society as a whole to effectively selfregulate this . Sometimes you have to take absolute steps to limit freedoms because you cant trust society to regulate itself. Michelle, do you think thats possible with students . Should they be free to at least make these judgments themselves . Thats a good question, and i guess it kind of depends on what sort of judgment youre talking about, right . Like, should they be able to keep speakers that they dont like off their campus, should they be able to make certain demands of their professors. I mean, im sympathetic to professors ive spoken to who feel like they have to walk on egg shells in front of their students, who feel worried that theyre going to say the wrong thing and be brought up on a title ix complaint, you know . I think, you know, i had a lot of criticisms of laura [inaudible] book, but it was still kind of a cos caesque thing she had to go through. Heres something i dont trust, i dont trust that any kind of speech restrictions that we decide to allow against the right will only be used against the right. I mean, particularly when the left is not in power in this country, you know . And so and its actually true that weve, a lot of the, a lot of the examples of kind of really campus crackdowns on free speech, they dont get as much attention but theres, you know, a scholar you hear about leftwing scholars all the time who either lose their jobs for saying something intemperate about, you know, trump or white people. I mean, basically Tucker Carlson on fox news, you know, because he doesnt want to write about trump making deals with democrats, this is what he airs, you know . When hes not talking about dirty gypsies, hes talking about, you know, somebody said something at east tennessee, whatever, lets rile up the whole country in response. And so, again, my fear is that once you start temp rising them porrizing about free speech, it becomes harder to demand its an absolute the idea of safe spaces inherently is difficult for people who want to explore all sorts of ideas, even to reject them, that the unwanted and maybe its a price worth paying, you end up with institutions where risk is completely removed from the equation. So intellectually, there is a price to pay here. I think, you know, some versions of safe space are really just another term for freedom of association is. Of course you have the right to get together with a group of people who agree with you on who to vote for or who share your values or love a certain author, whatever might bring you together, you know, with a group of likeminded people for a meal, for a meeting. Thats different from declaring a whole campus or even a whole dormitory or dining hall a safe space and saying an alternative set of ideas is unwelcome there. Yeah, we have laws that protect people against harassment and threats, and i think thats very important. If people are being targeted, if theyre [audio difficulty] the environment where they live, they cant learn. Thats not a Healthy University environment. I think its the responsibility of the university to protect students against that. You know, but at the same time, you know, being an open space for all ideas. So i think the university can create the opportunity for safe spaces, students can find those spaces. You should know when you walk into one, you shouldnt fine yourself suddenly sitting at a table and discovering that, you know, because you think a certain way, you know, thats out of bounds. I think that does undercut, you know, the role of the university [audio difficulty] difficult, that are challenging. You know, i think jelanis right, that we have to be attentive to some very real dangers, you know, that we havent seen in our lifetime around marginalization of particular communities, rising authoritarian tendencies. And i think turning a blind eye to that is a big mistake. But at the same time, empowering the university, em purring particularly empowering particularly this government, empowering social media platforms to police and regulate speech, to draw lines, you know, to decide what is out of bounds i think surrenders our rights and will end up being used in ways, you know, that are the opposite of what, you know, what we here in this room might be aiming for. Im not so sure, im not so sure its that complicated, quite honestly. Because i think were using safe space in a way that is not common to how ive understood it on College Campuses. One, anyone whos been in my classroom, i always say if you know what i actually think at the end of the class, then it means ive failed. [laughter] as a matter of fact, just last week i did my favorite exercise which is that, you know, i