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Free speech, explained by Greg Lukianoff — Transcript

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0:00- Right at the end of 2013, 2014,
0:02we started seeing students coming in,
0:04demanding deplatforming of speakers they didn't like,
0:07demanding new speech codes,
0:09whether they're microaggression policies
0:11or trigger warnings,
0:12and this was something we weren't used to.
0:14I wasn't used to being on the other side of students.
0:16This was kind of shocking and disappointing for all of us.
0:21So we're hoping that campuses will actually realize
0:24that they have a free speech problem now,
0:26and be willing to reform it.
0:33- Today on Big Think, we are talking to Greg Lukianoff,
0:36President and CEO of FIRE,
0:37the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression,
0:40and co-author of the new book,
0:41"Canceling of the American Mind,"
0:43which he co-wrote with Rikki Schlott.
0:45Greg, thanks so much for coming on Big Think today.
0:47- Thanks for having me.
0:49- First, why don't you explain what FIRE does,
0:51for our audience who might not be aware.
0:53- The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
0:55is 25 years old this year.
0:57And we were founded back in '99, specifically to protect
1:00freedom of speech on college campuses.
1:02Now, why was that necessary?
1:04Well, it was partially because only 20 years
1:06after the beginning of the Free Speech Movement,
1:08campuses started passing speech codes in the mid '80s,
1:11to restrict speech that while nominally,
1:14pointed at preventing racist or sexist speech,
1:18allowed for the censorship of unpopular opinions on campus.
1:21So we fought for free speech on college campuses,
1:24defended a lot of faculty, a lot of students
1:26all over the political spectrum;
1:27to be very clear, we're unusually nonpartisan,
1:30right down to even the people who work for FIRE.
1:32We rebranded as the Foundation for Individual Rights
1:35and Expression, because we started getting so worried
1:38about the situation for the First Amendment,
1:40and for free speech culture off-campus, that we decided
1:43that we couldn't just focus on higher ed anymore
1:46and we had to defend the free speech rights of everybody.
1:49- Help me sort of understand a little bit
1:51about the First Amendment as it relates to free speech:
1:54What exactly does the First Amendment protect,
1:57and how does FIRE's role in protecting free speech
2:00really work alongside
2:02the First Amendment rights of Americans?
2:05- So whenever I speak in Europe, for example,
2:08they think we're loopy or crazy for having
2:10our First Amendment over here,
2:11and that seems really radical to them.
2:14But I'm the rude American who goes over there
2:16and explains, actually we're right on this one,
2:19and explains that the primary difference
2:21between European ideas of freedom of speech
2:24and ours, is that we have something
2:25called the Bedrock Principle, in the United States:
2:28You can't ban something simply because it's deemed
2:32subjectively offensive.
2:33This actually, by the way, comes out of a 1989 case
2:36called Texas v. Johnson, about whether or not
2:38you're allowed to burn an American flag,
2:40to give you an idea of the various kinds of expression
2:42that can be considered offensive.
2:45And I think, this is the right call
2:46for a multicultural society.
2:48My dad's Russian, my mother's British,
2:50I grew up in an environment with a lot of kids
2:52from all different backgrounds,
2:53from all different parts of the world.
2:55And we all had very different ideas
2:56about what politeness meant,
2:58what offensiveness meant, for example.
3:00So for a genuinely diverse society,
3:02I think the Bedrock Principle makes a great deal of sense.
3:05Also, when I go over and explain that,
3:07they don't seem aware of the fact
3:09that threats aren't protected in the United States.
3:12Discriminatory harassment's not protected
3:14in the United States.
3:15Incitement to imminent lawless action is not protected.
3:18So a lot of the exceptions that we have
3:20in the First Amendment, have been hammered out
3:22over about 100-year process of how do you have
3:27freedom of speech in the real world?
3:30- And so that's an interesting place
3:32to dive into a little bit,
3:33exceptions to the First Amendment,
3:36and detailing those explicitly
3:38because you know, I feel, when a lot of people,
3:40when talking about free speech,
3:41they'll say things like, "I'm a free speech absolutist,"
3:44so they'll be talking to free speech absolutists.
3:46But what does it mean necessarily, in terms of the law,
3:48for there to be an exception to free speech
3:51and to the First Amendment?
3:53- Yeah, it's kind of funny.
3:54Free speech absolutist is one of those terms,
3:56that when I get accused of it,
3:57I take it usually, as a kind of compliment,
3:59but then immediately say, "No, no,
4:01free speech absolutists don't actually exist,"
4:03or at least, among people in constitutional law.
4:06Most of us actually believe that there are
4:09and should be some exceptions to the First Amendment.
4:11Interesting fact, by the way, the First Amendment
4:13in the United States, did not have a lot of force,
4:16even though it was passed in 1791,
4:18did not have a lot of force of law until 1925.
4:22So it was a long process before it actually
4:24meant a lot in law.
4:26And the extent to which free speech was actually protected
4:28in the United States, that was largely due to
4:30free speech culture, norms about not censoring people,
4:33not actually the law.
4:34So it was only in the 1920s really,
4:37when you started having a meaningful First Amendment.
4:40And the very first exception that was established,
4:43to the First Amendment, was incitement.
4:46Although people use the hackneyed term,
4:47"You can't shout fire in a crowded theater,"
4:50it's something where basically,
4:51First Amendment people kinda roll their eyes at it.
4:53The standard is actually, the First Amendment
4:56doesn't protect imminent lawless action
4:59in an environment where that lawless action
5:01is likely to take place.
5:02So that means, standing in front of the mayor's office
5:05right before it gets burned and say,
5:06"Let's go burn down the mayor's office," to a crowd,
5:10that could be potentially incitement.
5:12It is a tough standard to meet, but it should be,
5:15because what preceded it was an idea
5:18that if your speech could be found to eventually lead
5:22to some human evil, it could be banned-
5:25this is called the bad tendency test.
5:27And of course, the bad tendency test provided
5:29almost no protection to freedom of speech at all
5:32because you can always argue that someone's opinion,
5:34"Well, actually, that's gonna lead to dancing,"
5:36and then we have "Footloose,"
5:37and everything goes higgly-piggly.
5:40So incitement was the first standard.
5:42Defamation is not protected,
5:43but that has to be an accusation of fact.
5:46Basically, saying someone like, "This person is a pedophile,
5:50and I know for a fact they are," that could be defamation.
5:53It has to be an accusation of fact,
5:54it can't just be, "I think this person is a jerk."
5:57That's an opinion, for example.
5:59Discriminatory harassment is severe, persistent,
6:02pervasive pattern of behavior that's directed
6:06towards an individual or group,
6:09that's designed to be discriminatory.
6:11And that's something that applies on campus, for example,
6:14and other situations that are regulated.
6:16It's not a general exception to freedom of speech,
6:19it's actually not even considered freedom of speech
6:21because it's considered a pattern of behavior,
6:24as opposed to a mere expression of ideas, etc.
6:28So those are some of the big,
6:30some of the primary exceptions there.
6:32- You mentioned the free speech culture
6:34and free speech norms is what sort of gave us
6:37a free speech sort of protection
6:39when there wasn't much in sort of the law.
6:43What do you mean when you talk about those terms?
6:45- It's been weird to have to even argue about
6:48the existence of free speech culture at all.
6:50Of course, there were free speech cultural norms
6:53that led to the passage of the First Amendment in 1791.
6:57You had to have first, people who think it's a value
6:59important enough to a democracy,
7:01to put it in the constitution in the first place.
7:04And then to get it ratified.
7:05Culture precedes law in that respect,
7:07particularly in a common law country,
7:09since judges are part of the culture,
7:11culture and law work hand-in-hand to a degree,
7:15in ebbs and flows.
7:16I always try to be clear here: what you want as a society
7:20is to have free speech law that's very protective,
7:23and free speech culture that is also respectful
7:25of freedom of speech.
7:27Now, how are they different?
7:28One of the ways in which free speech culture is different
7:31is one, it's a series of norms.
7:33And when something's a norm, it has to be,
7:35it's a balancing act.
7:36And in "Canceling of the American Mind,"
7:39which I co-authored with the great Rikki Schlott,
7:41we talk about norms of free speech culture
7:44as being probably, best explained by idioms
7:47we heard all the time as kids,
7:49and by we, I mean Generation X, the most basic
7:53of course, being, "It's a free country."
7:55But then of course, "To each their own,"
7:57everyone's entitled to their opinion.
7:59The idea that you should walk a mile
8:00in someone's shoes before judging them.
8:03All of these ideas that are basically, about check yourself,
8:06you're just one person.
8:08And what's good for you, is not good for everybody else.
8:12These are all small D, democratic norms
8:15that also reflect a free speech culture.
8:18The idea that everyone's entitled to their own opinion
8:21seems obvious, but you wouldn't know that
8:23in some circles today, both on- and off-campus.
8:27- When did you feel that free speech culture
8:30may have been at its most robust,
8:33and when did it start to sort of erode a bit
8:35to where we are now, at a place where free speech culture,
8:39I think, you would say, is a bit at risk?
8:41- I would say free speech culture seemed to be in good shape
8:45up until maybe 20 years ago.
8:48When I first started working on campuses in 2001,
8:53one, I was shocked at how easy it was
8:55to get in trouble for your opinion, even back then.
8:58But one of the things that was very clear at the same time,
9:01was that the students were very good on freedom of speech,
9:05that they actually got freedom of speech.
9:07They got it better than professors, amazingly enough,
9:09and certainly, better than administrators.
9:11I don't have to agree with my professor,
9:13but they still have the right to their opinions
9:15or their ideas.
9:16Edgy comedians, edgy artists, that's okay.
9:20I don't have a right not to be offended.
9:22These were all things that younger people seemed to get,
9:24up until fairly recently.
9:27The problem in 2001, by the way,
9:29was the administrative class at universities.
9:32We talk about it a lot in "Canceling of the American Mind,"
9:35is the first great age of political correctness,
9:37basically 1985 to 1995, where there was this sort of fervor
9:42for enlightened censorship.
9:44The idea that you can improve the world
9:45just by shutting more people up.
9:48There was a sort of moral fervor to it,
9:50but by the mid-'90s, after all of these codes
9:53had been defeated in court, and after people off-campus
9:56started saying, "No, that just seems stupid.
9:59Like, how is that going to advance anything
10:02if we can't actually, you know, talk?"
10:04It fell out of favor.
10:06Political correctness became a joke,
10:07both on the left and the right, and everybody went,
10:10"Whew, thank goodness that's over!"
10:11But unfortunately, the administrative class,
10:14even though professors got disenchanted with the idea
10:16of enlightened censorship and the student population changed
10:19to one that was much more pro-free speech,
10:22the administrators kept the bad dream alive.
10:25So things were bad on campus already,
10:29but primarily due to the administrative class.
10:32What changed dramatically though,
10:35was right at the end of 2013, 2014,
10:38when we started seeing students coming in,
10:41demanding deplatforming of speakers they didn't like,
10:44demanding new speech codes,
10:45whether they're microaggression policies
10:47or trigger warnings, and this was something
10:49we weren't used to.
10:50I wasn't used to being on the other side of students.
10:53This was kind of shocking and disappointing for all of us.
10:57Now, sometimes people think that what we're saying is,
10:59"Oh, the problem used to be campus administrators
11:03and now, it's students," that's wrong.
11:05The problem is that a administrative class,
11:08a bureaucratic class at universities,
11:11was trying to sort of convince students
11:14for most of my career, it's like, "Hey, you know,
11:16like, this professor maybe should be punished
11:18or this speaker should be deplatformed,"
11:21and didn't get a lot of buyers.
11:23That suddenly met a new population of students
11:26who were much more enchanted with the idea
11:29of enlightened censorship.
11:30And administrators and students started working together
11:34to get people punished-
11:36and this is how you end up with the disaster
11:39that we've seen over the last 10 years.
11:41And it's something we really put a lot of data,
11:43we put a lot of meat on the bones
11:44of how bad it's gotten on campus.
11:46And just to give, you know, a quick example,
11:49from 2014, to the middle of last year, which is 2022,
11:54and to summer of last year, we saw over 1,000 attempts
11:57to get professors punished on campus.
12:00And this is overwhelmingly, and I mean, overwhelmingly
12:03concentrated at the most elite colleges in the country.
12:05The top 10 schools in the country have wildly more attempts
12:08to get professors canceled, than anywhere else.
12:11And it's about 80 schools in the top 200 schools
12:14that account for more than half of all cancel culture.
12:16By cancel culture we mean, attempts to get people punished
12:19for their opinion, for their freedom of speech.
12:23So we see about 1,000 examples of this.
12:25And we know that's a wild undercount by the way,
12:27because when we polled professors,
12:29one in six professors said that they had been
12:33either investigated or threatened with investigation
12:35for their speech, academic freedom, research,
12:38all the things that tenure, academic freedom,
12:41and free speech are supposed to protect.
12:43So one in six, that would be
12:45tens of thousands of professors.
12:46Understandably, the less elite colleges
12:48you don't hear as much about.
12:49We actually polled students by the way,
12:51and we found about 9% said the same thing,
12:53which is well over a million students, extrapolate outward.
12:57But of the 1,000 ones we know about,
12:59the more than 1,000 ones that we know about,
13:01about two-thirds of those professors
13:03get punished in some way.
13:05And about 200 of those, as of last summer, get fired.
13:09More than 40 of those were tenured professors,
13:12something that I used to think, was impossible.
13:15Tenure is designed to make it essentially, impossible
13:18for someone to be fired for their free speech
13:20or academic freedom.
13:22And now, it's become a pretty daily occurrence.
13:24To put some historical comparison on there,
13:28the Sedition Act of 1798,
13:32involved about 50 prosecutions,
13:36with about 10 actually being found guilty, in the country-
13:40that was considered a great sin against the First Amendment.
13:44McCarthyism, about 100 professors was the standard estimate
13:49that was evaluated at the time.
13:50We're talking about twice that right now,
13:53actually being fired.
13:54And we're at an environment
13:56where it is much more politically homogenous
13:58than it used to be, with multiple, multiple,
14:01multiple mechanisms before firing takes place,
14:04to get professors and students to conform.
14:06And also to be clear, we point out attacks
14:09from the left and the right,
14:10and about one-third of the professors who are punished
14:12are initially targeted by the right.
14:15- So that's interesting to sort of understand
14:17sort of the growth that has sort of happened
14:21in college campuses, specifically.
14:23I wonder, you know, one of the things that comes to mind
14:25to me, when you talk about the the dates associated
14:28with this sort of explosion of these incidents,
14:31is just the invention of social media-
14:33- Yes. And the internet
14:35and ability for people to broadcast their opinions publicly.
14:39In preparation for this interview, I ended up reading
14:42Martin Gurri's "The Revolt of the Public-"
14:44- Yes. - And one of the things
14:45that struck me, in that book, was just
14:46the amount of information that humans now create.
14:49I think, it was in 2001, we created more information
14:52that year, than in previous years of human history,
14:56and then we doubled that amount of information in 2002,
14:59so you can imagine what we're doing nowadays.
15:01How do you think about just like, the amount of speech
15:05that is existing because of an invention like social media,
15:09in relation to the phenomenon that you are talking about,
15:13in terms of people wanting to censor opinions
15:16that they might disagree with?
15:19- Great question, and Rikki and I do incorporate
15:23some of Martin Gurri's analysis
15:24into "Canceling of the American Mind,"
15:26because "Revolt of the Public"
15:27is a very important book to read.
15:29Now, I go back to my earlier training and my earlier studies
15:33about the invention of the printing press,
15:35something I studied, back in law school.
15:38And I study it during Henry VIII's England,
15:41because Henry VIII was actually the first one
15:43to start the process of licensing the printing press.
15:47Only people affiliated with the Crown
15:49were allowed to own and operate printing presses,
15:52as a way of controlling what actually got printed
15:54and said in England, and why?
15:58I think, the overall thinking on the printing press
16:00was first, we thought it actually might be pretty good.
16:03It might actually be a tool for progress.
16:05By 1520, they start going, "Oh wow, this infernal device
16:10led to a lot of civil and religious strife."
16:13It really was the original disruptive technology.
16:16So Henry VIII, and all of the Tudors
16:19wanted to put the genie back in the bottle.
16:21They wanted to rein in this disruptive technology.
16:25And now, of course, we know that yes, it was disruptive.
16:28It probably doomed Europe to maybe 200 years of strife.
16:33But it was worth it.
16:35What it actually led to was the scientific revolution,
16:39people getting to communicate across
16:41lines of difference, the passing down of knowledge.
16:43But probably even more importantly,
16:46the ability of millions and millions of additional people
16:49being able to look at ideas and say, "That's a dumb idea."
16:54To look at a book and be kind of like,
16:56"That's a terrible idea and I'm gonna write in response.
16:58I'm gonna go out and print out my own thing refuting you."
17:04That's called disconfirmation.
17:05And disconfirmation is one of the greatest tools
17:08ever devised for the pursuit of truth.
17:11Now, what does this have to do with social media?
17:13Well, sounds a lot like social media and the internet.
17:16Certainly, when I was younger,
17:18there was a lot of optimism about the internet.
17:21There is even a lot of optimism in the early days
17:22of social media, that essentially, people get to, you know,
17:25put their weird on and actually be themselves.
17:28But that was followed by a period
17:31of what we call, "cancel culture."
17:34Where essentially, instead of using it as you know,
17:37check out how weird and interesting
17:39and individual people are, it created an opportunity
17:42to get people together to shut down, go after,
17:47otherwise cancel, people that would say things
17:50that they didn't like.
17:51So a million different additional eyes on the problem,
17:55back during the time of the printing press,
17:57had the power to tear down any institution,
18:00any idea, or any person.
18:02And that's exactly the same thing that happened
18:04with social media.
18:05Cancel culture on social media,
18:07created a mechanism by which people,
18:10who used to write angry letters to their local newspaper,
18:13that just got stuck in a drawer, could create the appearance
18:16of there being thousands of people angry
18:18about what that one reporter said,
18:20and therefore, get that person fired.
18:22So social media, at this stage, can tear down any idea,
18:25any person, or any institution.
18:28Now, I wanna be clear here, that's not an entirely bad thing
18:33because some people need to be torn down,
18:35some ideas need to be torn down,
18:37and some institutions need to be torn down.
18:39But what social media hasn't been able to do yet
18:42is build anything.
18:44And this relates to Martin Gurri's idea of negation.
18:46Essentially, the way we argue today, seems to be nihilistic,
18:51because we want you torn down,
18:53we want this idea, this institution to go away,
18:56and we don't really seem to have a battle plan
18:59for what it's supposed to build.
19:01And at this point, social media isn't great at building.
19:04I still have a little bit of tech optimist in me though,
19:07I believe it's possible to develop social media
19:10to help with the search for truth,
19:12but we haven't gotten there yet.
19:15- That's interesting, in this environment
19:16that we're in right now, and talking about
19:19the ability to protest, and what does it look like
19:24when protest reinforces free speech norms,
19:28the types of things that you think, would be good
19:30for a free speech culture?
19:31I'm curious how you sort of think about that
19:36in relation to this environment that has allowed people
19:39to voice their protests in a variety of ways.
19:43- Yeah, when it comes to protest, FIRE exists,
19:47and we defend protestors all the time.
19:49But we do not defend them, nor should we defend them
19:53when they shout down speakers, when they block
19:56people's ability to actually get to speeches,
20:00or particularly, when they engage in violence
20:03against people who want to attend,
20:05or even sometimes against the speakers themselves.
20:07That is not freedom of speech, that is mob censorship.
20:11It's as old as time,
20:13and even First Amendment norms require the government
20:16to actually protect speakers from the mob.
20:19Free speech culture norms, of course, you know,
20:23value the idea of
20:25"I get to hear what this person has to say,
20:27and you don't get to stop me from this.
20:29Just 'cause you don't like the speaker doesn't mean
20:31I don't get to listen to them."
20:33That is imposing your will on me just as much
20:36as the Victorian censors would've done.
20:39So free speech norms and the law, you know,
20:42come on strongly on the idea of,
20:44you know, speakers are allowed to speak.
20:46You don't have the right to shout them down
20:48and prevent other people from hearing them.
20:51So it's been unfortunate that in the last year, in 2022,
20:55we saw a big uptick in shout downs on college campuses.
20:58Whether this is San Francisco State University,
21:01or Stanford or Yale, we've seen a lot of efforts
21:05to basically, chase speakers off campus,
21:07which is just not, it's not good for free speech,
21:10it's not good for free speech culture,
21:11and it's utterly antithetical
21:13to what the point of higher education is supposed to be.
21:17So when it comes to protest, you have the right to protest,
21:20but you don't have the right to decide for other people
21:22what they can consume, what they can listen to,
21:24what speeches they can attend-
21:26and I really worry that there's a younger generation
21:29that simply doesn't know that distinction.
21:32- Any sort of free speech culture
21:33is going to be a bit messy just because, in many ways,
21:36it's going to be sort of like a bunch of individuals
21:38coalescing around a series of events
21:41or statements and things of that nature.
21:43I guess, how, just considering the volume of speech,
21:47how should we account for the messiness
21:49that we're also seeing with it,
21:51relates to free speech culture
21:54and perhaps, cancel culture and protest culture.
21:57Part of me wonders is like,
21:58isn't it always going to be messy when you have
22:00like, an exponential explosion like we're in right now,
22:03in terms of the amount of speech
22:05that people are partaking in?
22:06- So there are personality types that want order,
22:11and there are personality types that love messiness.
22:14Now, I wish I was less messy in my house, in my office,
22:18but overall, I love the mess of human interaction.
22:21I love the mess of freedom, of democratic societies,
22:25of people talking across lines of difference,
22:27about people being wrong about things
22:29and then actually going like, "Huh, you know what,
22:31actually, you make a good point there."
22:33I think, free societies at their best
22:37invite a certain amount of messiness,
22:39and of course, that messiness is increased
22:42when you have this many additional people
22:45in the global conversation.
22:47But at the same time, I think, the instinct
22:50to make things simpler, to make things less messy
22:54is a dangerous one.
22:56Because particularly, when you're talking about
22:58using power to do that, that that's what really
23:01keeps me up at night.
23:02That's what scares me is that like, somehow people are like,
23:04"Oh, we're gonna pass a law,
23:06we're gonna fix this whole thing."
23:06It's like, "Oh god, no, like, that's not the way
23:09we deal with this."
23:11The way we dealt with the printing press
23:13was by developing norms around
23:16how we would actually deal with it as a society.
23:19That we would have some skepticism,
23:20you know, not just believe everything that we read,
23:23we'd wait to hear someone refute it.
23:25Those norms of open-mindedness, but also skepticism
23:29and checking and rechecking, and what Jonathan Rauch calls,
23:33liberal science, those were very much the norms
23:35that made the enlightenment successful
23:38for development of science and for democratic institutions.
23:41So I think, that I'm more afraid of the people
23:44trying to cure the problem of the messiness,
23:46than I am about the messiness itself.
23:48Partially because I think, when you grow up
23:51in a major technological shift or even just living in it,
23:55people start developing norms to deal with it.
23:58So once we might've been like,
23:59"I'm gonna join this angry mob
24:02to get this person fired!"
24:03I think a lot more of us are like,
24:05"Well, maybe I should wait to see
24:07what comes out about this."
24:09I think corporations are adjusting to this
24:11by sometimes, when you have a cancel culture mob
24:13that comes out of social media,
24:16that they're sensibly going, you know what,
24:18"We're gonna wait a bit like," basically, we have
24:21a two-week cooling off period.
24:23This is something I recommend for like, all groups,
24:25before we decide to look into it
24:28because we found that we make very bad decisions
24:31when we're just responding to the 1,000 angry people
24:33who think I should fire this or that person.
24:36So I think we are adjusting to the absolute avalanche
24:40of information, which is just going to be a fact of life
24:42for the rest of our existence,
24:44barring some calamity that would be far worse
24:46than the comparatively minor problems we have today.
24:50- I'm curious to get your thoughts
24:52on how college campuses have responded
24:54to the events of October 7th, and the antisemitism hearings
24:58from Congress that followed,
24:59and the impacts that both of these things have had
25:02on the free speech environments-
25:04- Yeah. - Both, on college campuses,
25:05but also in the culture writ large.
25:08- Oh man, where to begin with post-October 7th, on campus.
25:11I mean, it's just been absolutely crazy.
25:15The book had the misfortune of coming out
25:17right in the middle of the first stages
25:20of the response to the attacks by Hamas.
25:23And it took people, you know, at least a minute
25:26to understand how relevant our book,
25:28and FIRE's work was to the campus response
25:31to the October 7th attacks.
25:33Campuses really kind of mishandled the initial stages
25:38of what happened after October 7th.
25:40One thing that happened a lot
25:43was schools being hesitant
25:47to issue the same kind of statements
25:49that they'd actually produced about every other
25:51local or international incident that had happened.
25:55Now, I actually don't believe that universities
25:58should ever have been commenting on this
25:59in the first place, but they were understandably,
26:02called out by critics, including Larry Summers
26:05and Sam Abrams, who are both on our advisory council,
26:08for being willing to condemn other social evils
26:12and other calamities that had happened,
26:14but not willing to condemn the attacks of October 7th.
26:17I think, that if the ultimate result
26:19is that more schools are deciding, "You know what,
26:22we shouldn't really be commenting on all of these things."
26:24It establishes an orthodoxy, it gives the idea
26:27that from the top up there are orthodoxies
26:29on this campus, and that is a problem.
26:31So that's one good thing that might actually
26:33come out of the October 7th attacks.
26:36Then of course, very predictably, a lot more people
26:39start getting in trouble for pro-Palestinian opinions,
26:41which eventually led to, well, no, no,
26:45part of what led to, and it's very important to say this,
26:48to the antisemitism hearings, what were real incidents
26:51of Jewish students getting assaulted,
26:54which we actually saw video of, including at Harvard.
26:57At Cornell, there was a student arrested,
26:59and rightfully so for death threats issued
27:01against Jewish students.
27:03You start seeing actual harassment, actual threats,
27:06all those things we talked about
27:07is not actually being protected speech,
27:10and nor should they be.
27:12But in addition to that, there were students
27:14being targeted for what have been characterized
27:17as calls to genocide, and the two primary forms
27:21are shouting "intifada," or the chant,
27:24"From the river to the sea," and that's important context
27:27to understand the antisemitism hearings.
27:30Because a lot of them, when they got
27:31in front of the questions, didn't very persuasively
27:34explain why shouting "intifada,"
27:36or "From the river to the sea," should be protected.
27:39But most importantly, they couldn't convince the audience
27:42that they were good on free speech because why?
27:46Harvard, and University of Pennsylvania,
27:48finished dead last on our massive, data-rich study
27:53of what schools were worth for free speech in the country.
27:56Nobody believed them because for far less offensive things,
28:01by most people's standard, University of Pennsylvania
28:03and Harvard had been completely inconsistent.
28:06So there was a certain amount
28:07of reaping what they'd sown, on these two elite campuses.
28:11That they had not been great on free speech,
28:13everything relied on them being taken seriously
28:15as being great in free speech,
28:17and they didn't convince anybody.
28:18This was interesting for us at FIRE
28:21because our worry was that people would take
28:24the wrong message from the antisemitism hearing.
28:26The fear was that a lot of people would take this as,
28:30"No, we actually just have to clamp down
28:31on speech in general."
28:33We are seeing an uptick in students getting in trouble
28:36for pro-Palestinian speech on campus,
28:38and we're defending them just like we always do.
28:41We do make the point that in terms of professors
28:44getting in trouble, and students getting in trouble,
28:46we're still not at a stage that's as bad
28:49as we saw in 2020 and 2021,
28:51which is something that everybody needs to grapple with.
28:53Because there's a whole sort of contingent
28:55that suddenly became aware of like, "Oh my god,
28:57you can get in trouble for your opinion on campuses now."
29:00It's like, where have you been?
29:03It's been this way for years,
29:04just you weren't paying attention
29:06when it was happening earlier.
29:09So we're hoping that campuses will actually realize
29:12that they have a free speech problem now,
29:14and be willing to reform it.
29:16But in the meantime, something that we need,
29:19if only to battle the hyper-bureaucratization
29:22of universities, how low their viewpoint diversity is,
29:25their terrible record on free speech,
29:27and how expensive it has actually become,
29:30are new, fresh-thinking, smaller experiments
29:33that let people show how smart, hardworking,
29:37how well read they are without having to go
29:41deeply into debt in order to attend some of these schools,
29:44which in some cases, look a little bit more
29:46like cushy resorts than citadels of education.
29:49- Yeah, I would like to give you a chance
29:51to talk about that a little bit more because I do think,
29:54one of the things that is interesting
29:55is just thinking about how much space colleges,
30:00but particularly elite institutions, take up
30:03in sort of like, the collective discourse that we have,
30:06relative to just like, the variety of ways
30:08in which like, people can learn things nowadays,
30:11people can prove that they know things.
30:14And it just, I'm curious about like, the reforms
30:16that would allow for sort of this breaking of this grip
30:19that these institutions seem to have
30:20on the imagination of the media and the public writ large,
30:23and what those reforms would look like.
30:25- I'm not really sure when it happened,
30:28and maybe it was just, you know, moving from a different
30:31economic class, you know, in my life being, you know,
30:34very working class as a kid, and then going to a place
30:36like Stanford for law school.
30:38Maybe the society didn't change, but I think it did,
30:40because when I was a kid, you know,
30:42someone bragging about Yale or Harvard
30:45would've gotten a serious eye roll.
30:46And somehow, in the late '90s, I think partially,
30:50because so many of the people in the tech boom
30:52had their names attached to fancy schools,
30:55that there was suddenly this like, real kind of premium
30:58on what I derisively called the fancies, you know?
31:01The Stanfords, the Princetons, the Harvards, the Yales,
31:05and it's continued amazingly enough,
31:08these multi-billion dollar mega corporations
31:11are given way more credit than they should be,
31:14for producing our, you know, quote, unquote,
31:16"best and brightest."
31:17And this applies to not just, you know, entrepreneurs,
31:21but also people in our politics.
31:23We allow this small, select number of schools
31:27to have way more power and influence over American life
31:29than they ever should have had.
31:32And so if what's going on at the moment is this reevaluation
31:36of like, "Should we really have been giving
31:38people from Harvard this much credit?"
31:39No, you shouldn't have been, but now,
31:41if that's one of the takeaways, then I'll take it.
31:44I think that's actually good and healthy
31:46and hopefully, that's one of the lessons
31:48that we can take away.
31:49I get excited about littler projects,
31:51whether it's University of Austin or Minerva University,
31:54an experiment going on in San Francisco,
31:56to some of the things that Sal Khan is doing,
31:59by creating a high-quality, college-level content
32:02that you can actually, you know, prove you've consumed.
32:04I think that that's where a lot of our thinking should be.
32:08Then one of the reasons why this matters for free speech
32:11is I'm genuinely scared that a lot of-
32:14if we rely too much on the fancy schools
32:17to decide who our ruling class is-
32:20they're going to bring with them,
32:22into their future lives as American leaders,
32:25some of the really negative attitudes
32:27about freedom of speech that has unfortunately,
32:29become all too common at the most elite colleges,
32:32and that will be bad for everyone's freedom of speech.
32:35- Greg, thanks so much for coming on Big Think
32:37to talk about free speech, the First Amendment,
32:39and how these things are playing out
32:40in the broader culture.
32:42- Thanks for having me.
32:43- Want to dive deeper?
32:45Become a Big Think member
32:46and join our members-only community,
32:47watch videos early, and unlock full interviews.

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