“People who target minorities don’t have a place in this community and should be expelled.” Can you believe in free speech and still have this stance on hate speech? Professor Laura Kipnis of Northwestern University explains the difference between hate speech and microagressions and how they should be handled on campus.
Northwestern University—like many universities around the country—recently banned consensual relations between faculty and students. In response to this decision, Northwestern Professor Laura Kipnis wrote an ironic essay highlighting all the professors married to former students on the campus and at other campuses around the country. In the Learn Liberty video below, Professor Kipnis discusses the […]
Numerous top comedians have said that they refuse to perform on college campuses because of their chilling climate on free speech. When even noncontroversial comedians like Jerry “What’s the deal with Ovaltine?” Seinfeld refuse to perform for college students, you know just how bad the situation has become. In the Learn Liberty video below, Northwestern […]
Limits on free speech are often justified to prevent people from offending others. But to paraphrase Nietzsche, if we can overcome what offends us, it makes us stronger. In the Learn Liberty video below, Northwestern University Professor Laura Kipnis explains how being offended can actually be an intellectual exercise which allows us to explore the […]
In the third episode of Free Speech on Campus, Laura recounts when students organized a protest against her for writing an offensive paper. Kipnis goes on to explain how lack of tenure is hurting education.
In this episode of Free Speech on Campus, professor Laura Kipnis discusses why it’s important for students to take on social stereotypes. She notes how campus humor is a good way to judge where the boundaries are for each generation.
If what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, does what doesn’t offend you make you stronger? As many push for bans on offensive speech, Professor Laura Kipnis highlights the benefits of offensive speech. In particular, she shows how examining what offends you can lead to a greater understanding of your own beliefs. By banning offensive […]
Russia has been cracking down on its internal dissent, limiting speech that does not coincide with the government’s narrow and controversial policies. Last year, up to 54 people were sent to prison for hate speech, marking a dramatic five-fold increase from five years ago. Take Anastasia Bubeyeva, for example. Bubeyeva now lives alone with her […]
Was Don Quixote a pioneer of religious freedom? Eric C. Graf, Professor of Literature at Universidad Francisco Marroquín, explains how Miguel de Cervantes used his novel Don Quixote to illustrate the negative consequences of censoring speech and religion. Do you agree with Cervantes’s argument that individuals should be left alone to have freedom of conscience? Or are there […]
Those trying to curtail free speech often invoke its very limited exceptions to achieve their goals. For example, they often point to legitimate restrictions of speech based on “time, place, and manner.” This limited legal restriction to free speech allows police to, say, prevent public speech with a loudspeaker from occurring at 2 a.m. because […]
Disagreeing with what someone has to say but defending his or her right to say it is the foundational defense of free speech. English writer Evelyn Beatrice Hall sums it up well when she says: I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”] This view […]
Has Citizens United protected your freedom of speech? Or has it made it so that our democracy is overrun by corporate interests?
If you’ve been part of any conversation about American higher education recently, you might have heard someone complain that colleges and universities are morphing from educators to babysitters. Now, students at Dartmouth College are fighting back against the perceived shift. Leaders of the school’s student government delivered a scathing petition, signed by 1,200 students, demanding […]
This week’s allegations that Facebook has systemically suppressed conservative speech on its news feed has rankled many users who believed they were being showed an unbiased list of “trending stories.” For some background, a report by trusted technology news source Gizmodo quoted several former Facebook employees whose job was to curate content and manage the highly-viewed and […]
In a recent commencement address at the University of Michigan, former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg was booed after criticizing campus safe spaces. As Yahoo News reported: The whole purpose of college is to learn how to deal with difficult situations — not run away from them,” Bloomberg told the school’s graduating class. “One […]
Jason Riley, esteemed Wall Street Journal columnist and frequent commentator on the issues facing black Americans, was disinvited from his planned commencement speech at Virginia Tech this week. The department head and other faculty members had concerns about his writings on race, which focus on how government policy that is supposed to help black people […]
OK, so let’s say the $h!t finally hits the fan. Imagine that whomever you think would be the worst possible president has just been elected. Further, imagine that he has made clear, “Don’t think we’re not keeping score, brother,” or that anyone who didn’t cooperate with his plans would “pay a big price.” Would you […]
Like it or not, drawing penises is a time-honored college tradition just like pulling all-nighters and playing drinking games. But when a University of Delaware student drew a penis on a giant beach ball in a free expression exercise, he was told by campus police that it violated the school’s sexual misconduct policies. It’s certainly […]
A recent incident at American University’s School of Law highlights just how divisive the issue of campus speech has become. As the Washington Post reported, it began with a note: Earlier this month, someone left a hand-written flier on the door of a faculty member’s office at American University’s Washington College of Law that read, […]
A new Gallup survey, sponsored by the John S. and James Knight Foundation and the Newseum Institute, compiled 3,072 phone interviews with college students and 2,031 interviews with adults to study how Americans feel about free speech. The findings? Apparently, 73 percent of college students thought that their ability to freely express themselves was secure. […]
April Fools! Learn Liberty is back in charge, and everything the Department of Careful Communications (DCC) said about censoring and redacting our content is moot. The DCC targeted us because it was worried that some of our communications might offend or misrepresent some people—or lead to confusion or disorder. Specifically, the DCC criticized: Our Speak […]
April Fools! Learn Liberty is back in charge, and everything the Department of Careful Communications (DCC) said about censoring and redacting our content is moot. Learn Liberty believes that the most effective way to challenge assumptions and refine ideas in a free society is to engage in respectful but frank dialogue—conversations in which we are […]
Yale University is ground zero for the free speech debate. Last Halloween, a professor was verbally attacked for having the temerity to say student should be able to express themselves through their Halloween costumes. Last week, two faculty members took to the pages of the New York Times to discuss the implication of the attack […]
Does free speech offend you? Do you believe that freedom of Speech gives you the freedom to speak your opinion? Professor Howard Baetjer from Townson University is asking college students from different campuses to take the Free Speech Challenge. #SpeakFreely What is your most controversial opinion? Let us know in the comment section and use […]