Think About It

Can teaching liberate you from living in a myth? What if racism will never end? In this episode I speak with Professor David Shih at the University of Wisconsin Eau Claire, who has not only thought and written powerfully about free speech on campus but enacts his understanding of this issue in his teaching.

Can Hate Speech Only Be Countered With More Speech? Nadine Strossen, former President of the ACLU and professor at New York Law School, argues for the essential role of free speech in social justice activism and the limits of regulating speech. Strossen works and teaches in the areas of constitutional law and civil liberties.

In free democracies, the role of the university is to be an arbiter of truth. They share this critical role with a free press. What is happening with universities in the age of Trump, where the media's role as an arbiter of truth is under severe attack? Join me in a conversation with Professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat, an expert of the history of fascism at New York University, and a frequent commentator on various platforms and monthly columnist for CNN.com on contemporary politics

Do the champions of free speech today really represent the liberal values they lay claim to? Jason Stanley is Professor of Philosophy at Yale University and the author of How Fascism Works. In this conversation, he discusses the necessity of taking hate speech and dehumanizing language seriously, the politics of inviting speakers to campus, and privacy as a core aspect of liberal democracies. specializes in philosophy of language, epistemology, action theory, and early analytic philosophy.

The law is not a static thing. In this episode I speak with Luna Martinez, a student at the University of California at Berkeley School of Law who is interested in using the law as a vehicle for social change. Martinez offers a nuanced view of how students think about the campus controversies, and how the law is worthy of careful analysis in order to advance society’s goals.

What’s the relation of free speech, hate speech, and equality in America? How can we make sense of the speech debates in today’s legal and political contexts? David Oppenheimer is Clinical Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, Co-Director of the Pro Bono Group, and Director of the Berkeley Comparative Equality and Antidiscrimination Law Study Group.

What are the philosophical assumptions and underpinnings of free speech? Jay Wallace is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley and served as co-chair, with Dean Prudence Carter, of the Commission on Free Speech for UC Berkeley. Wallace works in moral philosophy, political philosophy, philosophy of law, and philosophy of action.

There must be no middle ground on speech. In this episode I speak with Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean of the University of California, Berkeley School of Law and a Distinguished Professor of Law. He is the author of ten books, including The Case Against the Supreme Court (2014) and Closing the Courthouse Doors: How Your Constitutional Rights Became Unenforceable.

Where do these controversies start – a deep dive into American politics from the 1960s till today. Ian Haney López is Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. His recent work engages the question of how racial divisions in society and growing wealth inequality in the United States are connected.

When the university speaks, what should it say? Universities should never restrict speech, but they should use other ways of expressing their values and opinions. This is the view of Corey Brettschneider, who is Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at Brown University, where he teaches constitutional law and politics. He is also Visiting Professor of Law at Fordham Law School.

What is the theory of language behind our understanding of free speech? Sonia Das is Professor of Anthropology at NYU and the author of Linguistic Rivalries: Tamil Migrants and Anglo-Franco Conflicts (2016). As a specialist in linguistic anthropology, she wants to know how abstract ideas about speech are lived by human beings, and how language not only reflects the world we live in, but constructs it too. Is hate speech just speech we dislike or a phenomenon that impacts the way we live?

Did the civil rights movement owe its existence to free speech, or is free speech the result of social movements? Fred Schauer, Distinguished Professor of Law the University of Virginia, thinks most people have got the causation backwards. In this episode, he tells us about the history of legal interpretations of the First Amendment, and the costs of enforcing the speech rights of hate groups. Schauer is known for his work in constitutional and First Amendment law.

Charlottesville was not about speech but violence. In this episode I speak with Ben Doherty, the Head of Library Instruction and a Research Librarian at the University of Virginia School of Law, who discusses the events of August 2017 in light of the violence that occurred, and how a narrow focus on speech obscures the issues we still need to grapple with today.

How can Charlottesville recover from the carnage of summer 2017? John Mason, Professor of History at the University of Virginia, discusses the violent and troubled history of Charlottesville and the U.S. South, what to do with Confederate statues, and coming to terms with the collective trauma of the events of summer 2017. Mason is Professor of History at the University of Virginia, and teaches African (in particular, South African) history and the history of photography.

What does power have to do with free speech? Sarah Kenny is a former student and president of the student council at the University of Virginia. In this interview, she talks about the contested legacy of Thomas Jefferson at the University of Virginia, disputes over civility, and the experience of being at the center of the terrible events of the summer 2017.