Is there a campus free speech crisis? On this episode of So to Speak , Nico Perrino is joined by FIRE's Will Creeley and Samantha Harris to discuss this simmering question. Watch the video of this podcast recording: youtu.be/uoO6TCAQpaE Additional reading: " The 'campus free speech crisis' is a myth. Here are the facts. " by Jeffrey Adam Sachs " Everything we think about the political correctness debate is wrong " by Matthew Yglesias " The skeptics are wrong: Attitudes about free speech on campu...
Mar 27, 2018•50 min
In 2012, a same-sex couple entered Masterpiece Cakeshop and asked its owner, Jack Phillips, to create a cake for their wedding reception in Denver, Colorado. Phillips declined the request, reportedly telling the couple, "Sorry guys, I don't make cakes for same-sex weddings." That brief, 20-second exchange eventually found its way to the U.S. Supreme Court , where it is now the subject of one of the most controversial First Amendment cases in years. The issue before the court is whether applying ...
Mar 22, 2018•1 hr 32 min
Former Evergreen State College Professor Bret Weinstein describes himself as a "professor in exile." The evolutionary biologist left Evergreen last September in the fallout from the controversy surrounding the school's planned Day of Absence programming. Weinstein's objection to the programming led fifty students to disrupt his class and demand his resignation. The backlash became so intense that Evergreen's chief of police told him she could not protect him from protesters. As a result, he had ...
Mar 08, 2018•1 hr 26 min
Most Americans are familiar with The Great Wall of China. Fewer are familiar with the Great Firewall of China. The Firewall blocks vast expanses of the world's web content — and it's just one of the tools the Chinese government uses to monitor, censor, and even manipulate what its approximately 1.4 billion citizens see online. On this episode of So to Speak , we explore one of the most extensive and effective censorship systems ever devised by a government. How does the Chinese government do it?...
Feb 22, 2018•40 min
In 2001, University of Alaska president Mark Hamilton made national headlines when he wrote a sternly worded memo declaring that freedom of speech on campus "CANNOT BE QUALIFIED" [emphasis original]. Hamilton retired from his position as University of Alaska president in 2010. However, his memo lives on in FIRE lore as the gold standard for a university president's response to a campus free speech controversy. On this episode of So to Speak , we talk with Hamilton about his famous memo and what ...
Feb 08, 2018•58 min
Has the history of how our constitutional rights came to be protected on campus been forgotten? Professor Randall L. Kennedy believes it has. It's a history even he wasn't familiar with until recently. On this episode of So to Speak, Professor Kennedy explains how civil rights activists in the 1950s and 60s secured early victories for free speech, due process, and public assembly on high school and college campuses. Professor Kennedy teaches courses on contracts, criminal law, and the regulation...
Jan 25, 2018•1 hr 32 min
Was our modern First Amendment born out of a chance encounter on a train bound for Boston in 1918? On this episode of So to Speak , we speak with Seton Hall Law Professor Thomas Healy . He argues that Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes' unlikely run-in with Judge Learned Hand in the summer of 1918 set off a series of events that culminated in a new trajectory for the First Amendment in America. Professor Healy is the author of " The Great Dissent: How Oliver Wendell Holmes Changed His M...
Jan 11, 2018•1 hr 3 min
Did the founders intend for the First Amendment to protect as much speech as it does today? University of Richmond Assistant Professor of Law Jud Campbell argues probably not. He is the author of an article recently published in The Yale Law Journal that Cass Sunstein says "might well be the most illuminating work on the original understanding of free speech in a generation." In "Natural Rights and the First Amendment," professor Campbell argues that the founders' understanding of the freedoms o...
Dec 28, 2017•1 hr 7 min
The Institute for Justice doesn't litigate your typical First Amendment cases. They don't take cases involving protest bans, controversial speakers, or political dissent. Instead, the libertarian, public-interest law firm takes cases often ascribed to the margins of First Amendment concerns by the public and even some judges: cases involving occupational speech, commercial speech, and campaign finance. On this episode of So to Speak , we speak with IJ President and General Counsel Scott Bullock ...
Dec 13, 2017•56 min
Masses Publishing Co. v. Patten (1917) might be the most important free speech case you've never heard of. In his now largely forgotten decision in the case, then Southern District of New York Judge Learned Hand rejected the United States postmaster general's arguments for refusing to mail Masses magazine. The magazine was staunchly opposed to World War I and the compulsory military draft. The postmaster general argued that the recently passed Espionage Act gave him the authority to deny the mag...
Nov 30, 2017•1 hr 58 min
Harvard University professor and FIRE Advisory Council member Steven Pinker is a rockstar academic. He has written 10 books, many of which are bestsellers, including most recently " The Better Angels of our Nature " and " The Sense of Style ." On this episode of So to Speak , we chat with professor Pinker about free speech, free inquiry, taboo, dangerous ideas, and, of course, his forthcoming book on the Enlightenment: " Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress ." ...
Nov 15, 2017•41 min
Nowhere have the campus free speech debates been as intense as at the University of California, Berkeley — the home of the Free Speech Movement. Violent protests against one speaker. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in security costs to protect another. Speaking invitations extended and then (maybe?) rescinded. And that's just this year. On this episode of So to Speak, we revisit the events surrounding the 1964 Berkeley Free Speech Movement to see if the university's storied past can teach us an...
Nov 02, 2017•55 min
Is the modern college campus suffering from a decline in viewpoint diversity? Do American universities prepare students for life in a politically divided democracy, or might they be teaching habits of thought that will add to America's political divisions? Does political orthodoxy reduce the quality of research, scholarship, and education? Heterodox Academy and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education conducted a live panel discussion at New York University in New York City on Tuesday, ...
Oct 19, 2017•1 hr 26 min
The experts are calling it the free speech debate of the next decade: Who makes the rules for what people can say — and see — on the web? And who pays the price when "The Delete Squad" gets it wrong? On today's episode of So to Speak: The Free Speech Podcast, FIRE's Alex Morey talks to experts on all sides of the issue, from the Facebook team working to keep the social network uncensored — but also safe — for users, to directors at Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Committee to Protect Jour...
Oct 05, 2017•44 min
The British free speech invasion is here. Our friends from the current affairs magazine spiked have traveled across the pond to host "Unsafe Space," an all-star free speech tour of American college campuses. On today's episode of So to Speak, we catch up with spiked editors Tom Slater and Ella Whelan in New Jersey to chat about the tour, which kicks off next week in Washington, D.C. We also discuss developments overseas, including spiked's latest free speech rankings of campuses in the United Ki...
Sep 21, 2017•48 min
Would Isaac Newton succeed on the modern college campus? The genius who discovered the laws of motion, but who also obsessed over alchemy, was introverted and prone to unpredictable mood swings. Scholars believe he may have had autism, which is one of the many neurological conditions that contribute to "neurodiversity" in the world. And according to one new theory, the way modern colleges regulate speech is particularly chilling for neurodivergent people, like Newton, who are estimated to make u...
Sep 07, 2017•52 min
Last week, Judge Richard Posner suddenly retired from the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals after nearly 36 years on the bench. The 1981 President Reagan appointee authored over 3,300 judicial opinions during his tenure and is widely considered one of the most vocal, provocative, and influential appellate court judges of all time. On today's episode of So to Speak, we hear Judge Posner's candid thoughts on the First Amendment as we play for you a conversation he had with Professor Geoffrey Stone...
Sep 05, 2017•1 hr 4 min
Nadine Strossen knows the dangers of Nazism. Her father was liberated from the Buchenwald concentration camp one day before he was scheduled to be sterilized. If American soldiers arrived a day later, Strossen would never become the first female president of the ACLU. She wouldn't even be alive. After Charlottesville, there has been vigorous debate about the so-called limits of free speech. Should white supremacist and neo-Nazi ideologies enjoy full First Amendment rights? And if so, should civi...
Aug 22, 2017•1 hr 8 min
Fredrik deBoer has been in and around academia his entire life. He's a fourth generation Ph.D. who has blogged about education issues since 2008. Writing from a socialist perspective, he regularly tackles campus free speech debates. Last month, deBoer wrote a piece for The Los Angeles Times arguing that recent efforts to shut down conservative speakers on campus have contributed to an environment where 58 percent of Republicans say colleges have a negative effect on the country. On today's episo...
Aug 10, 2017•1 hr
During the summer of 1919, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis changed his mind about free speech. Earlier that year, he voted to uphold the conviction of Charles Schenck for opposing the military draft. A year later, he was the lone dissenter in a case dealing with nearly the same issue. In 1927, he wrote what some consider to be the greatest defense of free speech ever penned by a Supreme Court justice in the case Whitney v. California. Why did Brandeis change his mind? On today's episod...
Jul 27, 2017•1 hr 4 min
In Shakespeare's 1599 play "Julius Caesar," the title character is warned by a soothsayer to "beware the Ides of March." After protesters attempted to shut down a modernized production of the play in New York's Central Park last month, theater companies may now be warning each other to "beware the ire of hecklers." On today's episode of So to Speak, we speak with Arts Integrity Initiative Director Howard Sherman about the controversy surrounding The Public Theater's production of "Julius Caesar,...
Jul 13, 2017•50 min
It was 100 years ago this month that the Espionage Act of 1917 was signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson, making it a crime to interfere with the operations of the United States military. During its lifetime, the act has had a troubled history with the First Amendment. It has been used to criminalize wartime dissent, restrict press freedom, and prosecute government whistleblowers. On today's episode of So to Speak, we speak with University of Washington School of Law scholar Ronald Collins...
Jun 29, 2017•1 hr
Simon Tam likes to quote Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous line — paraphrased from transcendentalist Theodore Parker's earlier statement — that "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." That said, Tam likes to add that the arc doesn't bend on its own. It takes courageous individuals willing to stand up for their rights for justice to be achieved. Tam can now add himself to the list of those who bore the cost of standing up for their rights — and found justice. Yesterday...
Jun 20, 2017•1 hr 4 min
George Mason University Professor Tyler Cowen has spent the better part of the last 40 years on college campuses. That's why when he wrote in his new book "The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream" that college campuses are "among the segments of American society where the complacent class exercises its strongest influence," we wanted to learn more. On today's episode of So to Speak, we ask professor Cowen why he believes college campuses are complacent and what impa...
Jun 15, 2017•1 hr 4 min
FIRE President and CEO Greg Lukianoff once declared 2014 the year of the heckler. But after high profile examples of mob censorship at the University of California, Berkeley, Middlebury College, and Claremont McKenna College, has 2017 become the new year of the heckler — at least on college campuses? On this week's episode of So to Speak, host Nico Perrino is joined by his FIRE colleagues Will Creeley, Samantha Harris, and Joe Cohn to help answer this and other questions about free speech on cam...
Jun 01, 2017•1 hr 4 min
Where are the new frontiers in First Amendment law? Where do scholars and the courts see the potential for expanding First Amendment protections in the future? What technological developments pose challenges to existing First Amendment protections? Our guest on today's episode of So to Speak will help us answer those questions. Professor Eugene Volokh is the Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law at UCLA and the founder of the popular legal blog The Volokh Conspiracy. Before receiving h...
May 18, 2017•1 hr 12 min
Ira Glasser is one of the most consequential civil liberties figures in American history. He ran the ACLU as its executive director from 1978 until his retirement in 2001. In the process, he transformed the organization from a small, $4 million nonprofit with offices in a few cities into a household name with an annual budget of $45 million, a $30 million endowment, and staffed offices in every state, Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico. This week is the 50th anniversary of when Glasser started wit...
May 04, 2017•2 hr 14 min
Sex and the Constitution are not two topics often thought of together. But University of Chicago Law School professor Geoffrey R. Stone seeks to change that with the publication of "Sex and the Constitution: Sex, Religion, and Law from America's Origins to the Twenty-First Century." The newly released, 700-page book is 10 years in the making. Stone's comprehensive review extends all the way back to the ancient Greeks and Romans to explain how sex came to be legislated in America. Professor Stone...
Apr 20, 2017•52 min
On April 6, Manhattan Institute Fellow Heather Mac Donald was standing in Claremont McKenna College's Athenaeum preparing to give a lecture to an empty room. An empty room was not what Mac Donald expected when she traveled to California from her New York City home to deliver a lecture on her new book, "The War On Cops." But outside the auditorium, close to 300 people had surrounded the Athenaeum, preventing prospective audience members from entering. They were protesting Mac Donald's defense of ...
Apr 17, 2017•35 min
From Buckley v. Valeo (1976) to Citizens United v. FEC (2010), legal disputes over the constitutionality of campaign finance laws have captured the general public's attention for decades. At the heart of the debate is a question of whether money donated to political candidates or spent influencing elections is speech protected by the First Amendment. And, if it is, are there countervailing interests outweighing those core First Amendment interests? Even within the free speech community, the deba...
Apr 06, 2017•47 min
