Since the First Amendment was written, there has been vigorous discussion, and often vehement disagreement, about exactly what “free speech” does, and should, mean. Increasingly, campuses are where the debate over free speech boils over.
Universities — and law schools — aspire to be laboratories for knowledge, a place where ideas and debate about those ideas flow freely. And yet, free speech can also cause great harm. What should free speech look like on campus? Should universities impose limits, and should they punish students who violate those restrictions?
In this episode, Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky and Eddie S. Glaude Jr., James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor and Chair of the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University, talk about how universities and law schools can navigate these situations without compromising the larger principle of free speech.
About:
More Just from Berkeley Law is a podcast about how law schools can and must play a role in solving society’s most difficult problems.
The rule of law — and the role of the law — has never been more important. In these difficult times, law schools can, and must, play an active role in finding solutions. But how? Each episode of More Just starts with a problem, then explores potential solutions, featuring Dean Erwin Chemerinsky as well as other deans, professors, students, and advocates, about how they’re making law schools matter.
Episode Transcript
Erwin Chemerinsky:
I’m Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of Berkeley Law, and this is More Just, a podcast about how law schools can and must play a role in solving society’s most difficult problems.
Erwin Chemerinsky:
What should be the rights of free speech on campus and what should be the limits? Universities and law schools aspire to be laboratories for knowledge, a place where ideas and debate about those ideas flow freely. Yet, free speech can cause great harm as well. Recently, there were incidents at Yale Law School and Hastings Law School where students shouted down a speaker and disrupted the event. They claim that their disruptive speech was protected by the First Amendment. Was it?
Erwin Chemerinsky:
In this episode, I wanted to talk about how law schools and universities can navigate these situations without compromising the larger principles of free speech. I’m joined by Eddie Glaude, James S. McDonald Distinguished University Professor and chair of the Department of African-American Studies at Princeton University.
Erwin Chemerinsky:
Eddie, welcome to this podcast. I think how I’d like to begin is by asking you what’s your overall view with regard to free speech on campus. What should be the protections? What should be the limits? I know it’s a broad question, but it seems the right place to start.
Eddie S. Glaude Jr.:
Sure. Well, it’s a delight to be in conversation with you, particularly around this important issue. I basically hold the view that universities and colleges and law schools and the like should be places where the cognitive virtues are celebrated, cultivated, where there’s a free and open exchange of ideas, where there is a kind of cultivation of curiosity and open mindedness, where we see in our exchanges and debates intellectual courage and humility, that universities, if they are to function, and law schools… If they are to function and to fulfill their missions, it seems to me, must cultivate the kinds of spaces where people can engage in the free flow and exchange of ideas.
Eddie S. Glaude Jr.:
I think there is some assumptions that make this possible and I think that that is to say that in order for all of that to work, there has to be a presumption that as interlocutors, we all have equal standing, that each person is accorded dignity and standing in order for this work. If the community is compromised by views that call into question the background conditions that allow for the free exchange of ideas, then the very ways in which we function, it seems to me, are in jeopardy. Right? The very ways in which we go about doing our business can collapse right in front of us.
Eddie S. Glaude Jr.:
And so, part of the danger that is inherent in the free speech debate and the value that animates our practice… I could put it this way, Brother Erwin, is that there are folks who are using our values as a means to undermine the very thing that we do. So, what do we do when people use liberal means for illiberal ends? And, what do we do when people take advantage of the base value, the basic value that allow us to do our business, to actually undermine the background conditions that make our communities possible?
Erwin Chemerinsky:
We certainly agree where you start. We both want college, university places where all ideas and views can be expressed, and I also agree that the real hard situation is what happens when people are using speech to undermine the values of the community. There, I’m not sure if we necessarily agree. What would you think about hate speech codes on campuses? Because, hate speech undermines the values of the community. Hate speech, for example, calls into question the underlying assumptions of equality.
Eddie S. Glaude Jr.:
Let’s put it this way. It seems to me that it has to be an extraordinary case for a university or college or law school to censor a speaker. Right? But, I am very clear that people speak and people can answer. So, if someone holds a view that I am less than a human being and that is the basic premise of a range of conclusions that they’re drawing in their talk, I am well within reason to be offended and to engage in a variety of forms of response. It could take the form of protected forms of protest. It could take the form, if it’s egregious enough, where I may make the decision to engage in civil disobedience.
Eddie S. Glaude Jr.:
So, it has to be an egregious act for a university to censor a speaker, it seems to me. But, I don’t think… This is where we may disagree because those who have to hear it are those who may have to experience it. May very well think it rises to the level that they must protest. Right? And, the forms of that protest are such that it could be a form… Like I said, a form of protected speech or they could make the decision, because this is what civil disobedience is all about. I could make the decision to protest, understanding fully the consequences of my decision. And, it’s at that point that I think universities or institutions like our own will have to make the decision.
Eddie S. Glaude Jr.:
Well, where do we stand vis a vis this tradition of civil disobedience and vis a vis our commitment to free speech?
Erwin Chemerinsky:
Let me try to focus on your example. Let me give a very specific illustration. A few years ago, one of the justices of the Israeli Supreme Court was invited to speak at Berkeley Law. A student group, Students for Justice in Palestine, made clear that they planned to disrupt the event to keep the person from being heard. I said to them, “If you disrupt the event, you will be disciplined. I encourage you to express your views without disruption.”
Erwin Chemerinsky:
And, what they did, and I admire them for it, is they handed a leaflet to everyone who walked in the room. They put a leaflet at every seat. They invited their own speaker. All the things that I encouraged. But, imagine they hadn’t done that. Imagine that they had engaged in disruption, shouted down the speaker so the speaker couldn’t be heard. Should the school have punished those students? Because, I think those students might have put it in the way that you think of it, of they believe the Israeli government is suppressing Palestinians in a way that denies their existence.
Eddie S. Glaude Jr.:
The school has to make the decision, it seems to me, in that instance with regards to the scope of punishment. Does this warrant expulsion? Does this warrant…? I mean, you know the range of things that are available to deans across these institutions. And, I think it’s really important because colleges and universities in particular… And, professional schools are outside of my wheelhouse. But, colleges and universities are training grounds for citizenship. They socialize us into how to be citizens in particular sorts of ways. They’re not just simply places where there the free exchange of ideas because we know what we’re doing when we have dorm rooms. We know when we have these activities that go beyond the classroom. In so many ways, colleges and universities… And, we see this happening in the admissions process. By the way, classes are constituted because this is the most contrived communities you can imagine.
Eddie S. Glaude Jr.:
So, it’s this training ground for how to be with each other in a broader society and part of that involves protests. Part of that involves standing up for one’s ideals. And so, when a student group or a student decides to engage in a certain form of protest, whether it’s deciding to shut down a speaker in this instance or to take over a building, which has a long history at universities and colleges, I think it’s important at that point for deans and presidents and the like to begin to think about the scale of the response and what we’re signaling to our students because what they learn here, they will then enact in some ways in the broader society.
Eddie S. Glaude Jr.:
So, do we not want to challenge the state because we’re afraid that they might throw us in jail and throw away the key? Well, we might take that risk. But, there are some… There were some kind of, shall we say, safeguards. I mean, I’ll use as I’m talking too long here, but I’ll use this as an example. Bob Moses talks about the Civil Rights Act that was passed before the Civil Rights Act of 1964, beginning… I’m mixing my dates. I think it’s 1956. And, he says without that civil rights act, the state could have done to them what the government of South Africa did to Mandela. They could have threw him in jail and threw away the key. But, it was precisely because of that legislation that allowed them to engage in the work that they engaged in in a variety of ways.
Eddie S. Glaude Jr.:
So, the short answer to the question, Dean, is at that moment the university has to begin to weigh its various functions vis a vis its students.
Erwin Chemerinsky:
Of course, we agree that there’s a gradation of punishments and that the punishment should always fit the offense. But, I still want to go back and ask the question. Should the university punish at all? Or, to put it another way, what about the students’ claim that their engaging in speech that silences others is protected by free speech?
Erwin Chemerinsky:
I alluded in the introduction to an incident at Hastings Law School where Ilya Shapiro was going to speak and he had said very offensive things about the nomination what ultimately was Ketanji Brown Jackson. And, students came and shouted so he never was able to speak, shouting very insulting things. There’s an incident at Yale Law School where someone was speaking and there was an effort to shout the speaker down, though ultimately the speaker was able to continue.
Erwin Chemerinsky:
Were those activities by the students, since they were in the form of speech, protected? Or, were those activities of students something that the universities can and should punish, before we get to what should be the punishment, what’s the gradation of the punishment?
Eddie S. Glaude Jr.:
So, what I’ve tried to do is to shift the ground of the conversation. I don’t think this is a matter of protected speech. I think this is actually a matter of protected or unprotected forms of protest. Right? And, I think once we shift that, once we make that shift, now we’re on a different terrain. Students have to make the choice. Right? Do I engage in passing out the leaflets? Or, does this particular speaker rise to the level where I make the decision to risk my standing at this particular institution?
Eddie S. Glaude Jr.:
And so, to hide behind the notion of protected speech, it seems to me in this instance, some students… I don’t want to say they’re wrong. But, I do want to say that they’re standing in the wrong tradition in this regard. They’re invoking the wrong resources to justify their actions in that way. That’s what I’m saying.
Erwin Chemerinsky:
And, there are two ways of framing this. One is perhaps more from the perspective of the administration. Do we have the legal authority? Should we punish those who engage in disruptive behavior? The other is in the perspective of the students. And, from that perspective, of course you’re right that even if there’s punishments, potentially great punishments, they could choose to be engaged in civil disobedience and take that risk.
Erwin Chemerinsky:
It’s interesting that the students who engage in this, the best I can tell, don’t say, “We’re engaged in civil disobedience and we acknowledge we may be punished.” Their view is, “We’re just speaking, albeit speaking very loudly, albeit speaking so others can’t be heard, so what we’re doing is protected as speech too.”
Eddie S. Glaude Jr.:
Yeah, I… Yeah, I…
Erwin Chemerinsky:
Is that a fair question?
Eddie S. Glaude Jr.:
I identify with the tradition that doesn’t hide behind that particular kind of formulation. Right? I think when I think about the civil rights movement, when I think about moments within the context of the black freedom struggle of the mid 20th century, even when I think about the free speech movement on Berkeley’s campus, I don’t think that claim is at the heart of their practice and I think they’re on stronger ground by standing in this tradition of civil disobedience and then asking the question of institutions. Where do you stand in this regard? Because, it seems to me that there are occasions when some people utter certain things and I am perfectly within my right to say F you as the answer.
Eddie S. Glaude Jr.:
I use this example all the time with my students. In Jefferson’s notes, he actually thinks out loud that the question of the status of black folk must be decided on the operating table. Right? In some ways. We have to… Whether who we are, our capacities. May very well be a matter of biology. And, when I teach that, and I teach it alongside of David Walker’s appeal published in 1829 which is a response in part to Jefferson’s notes, and David Walker’s appeal is inflamed. It’s passionate. And, the expectation is that he is supposed to… At least one expectation is that he was supposed to respond to Jefferson’s claim with reason. But, how does one respond to the claim that you are inferior in that way, with reason? What does that mean?
Eddie S. Glaude Jr.:
So, there are occasions and you can see this, for example, at the Yale event, where the ADF has been declared by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group, that the LGBTQ plus community could respond in the way that they did. And so, part of what I’m thinking, particularly, Dean, against the backdrop of what’s happening in our society broadly, that institutions like our own must be careful to balance our commitment to free speech and our commitment to a tradition that has made the U.S. what it is, and that is this tradition that enables protest in a wide variety of forms.
Erwin Chemerinsky:
Once you… Speaking of the perspective of the institution and how the institution respond, then my view is that the institution should say is people shouldn’t be able to shout down others because if people can shout down others, then the only speech we’re going to hear is that which no one cares enough to shout down. So, my position as a dean is if you dislike a speaker who’s here, I’ll support you in bringing in whatever speaker you want. I’ll support you engaging whatever protest you want, so long as it’s not disruptive. If you engage in disruption, then you will be punished. Now, what the punishment will be is obviously going to depend on the nature of the disruption.
Eddie S. Glaude Jr.:
Mm-hmm (affirmative)-
Erwin Chemerinsky:
And, were people put in danger? Was property put in danger? So, I agree with you at the gradation of punishment, but the place where you say the institution… I have a very strong position that all ideas and views should be able to be expressed within the university and if you don’t like the ones that are being expressed, bring in your own speakers and express your view. But, you can’t silence others.
Eddie S. Glaude Jr.:
I’m committed to a weaker version of the claim because we don’t hold that position in abstraction. Right? We hold it against the backdrop of a society that’s in flux, whether that’s in conflict. And, we know that not only are there organizations that are deliberately trying to create dramatic confrontations on our campuses in order to dramatize these sorts of things, we also know that there’s a longstanding view of universities and colleges as the last bastions of liberal radicalism and it fits within this broader effort on the part of forces in our community that are passing legislation to limit what teachers can teach, that are engaged in passing legislation to limit the forms of protest, that are trying in so many ways…
Eddie S. Glaude Jr.:
You think about what’s happening in the DeRay McKesson case to really, really challenge the way protest takes shape and can be enacted in the country. But, this is happening against the backdrop of an extraordinary moment in the history of the United States, so I think it’s important for institutions to really think carefully about this value. Right? In light of the social forces that are threatening American democracy right now.
Eddie S. Glaude Jr.:
And, it’s not a matter of just simply progressive voices trying to shut down conservative voices. It’s really about, in part I think, an all-out assault on democracy in our country. And, I could say a little bit more about that as we continue but let me just say this too because for every event that we’ve just described, for every moment at Yale, at UC Hastings Law School or Middlebury or Berkeley, there are thousands of lectures that are happening on our campuses by people who run the gamut ideologically, that are not fraud and vexed and they do not exhibit this kind of behavior. So, we need to ask ourselves particular questions about what is the nature of these particular conversations that call for this sort of behavior on the part of our students.
Erwin Chemerinsky:
I agree. I just worry that when you say institutions need to think carefully, that that is too vague, that we really need to talk about should institutions be punishing disruptive speech or shouldn’t. Let me give you an example that’s outside the liberal conservative context. You might remember a number of years ago at UC Irvine, the Israeli ambassador Michael Oren was scheduled to speak. As soon as he began, a student in the audience shouted so he couldn’t be heard. That student was escorted out of the room and Oren began to speak again.
Erwin Chemerinsky:
As soon as Oren started, another speaker stood up in the back of the room and shouted so Oren couldn’t be heard. That person was escorted out of the room. The chancellor, Michael Drake, now the president of the University of California, was there and asked the audience to please let the speaker continue and then there’d be the opportunity for response. Well, altogether, 11 people stood up in sequence to shout down Oren and then after he was… After the 11 students, they all stood up, did a chant and left the room and Oren finished.
Erwin Chemerinsky:
Well, should the university have punished those 11 disruptive students? Should they have been criminally prosecuted? I wrote an op-ed both before… about the week it happened and later, saying I believe that students should be disciplined but I didn’t believe they should be criminally prosecuted.
Eddie S. Glaude Jr.:
Mm-hmm (affirmative)-
Erwin Chemerinsky:
Turns out, they were disciplined and they were criminally prosecuted for disrupting a public meeting. Where would you come out there? I mean, the students believed with all their heart that they were fighting against injustice and yet, they did disrupt an event and they kept 500 people from being able to hear something they wanted to.
Eddie S. Glaude Jr.:
Look, the way in which I respond to that… I don’t ever see myself being a dean of anything or a president of anything, is the students understood the risks. To criminalize it is horrifying to me. On a certain level, it actually speaks volumes about the direction of the country. The nature of punishment… As I said, it all depends on what’s the scale of punishment. What is the scale of the response to the act?
Eddie S. Glaude Jr.:
So, here at Princeton, we had, I think, a moment where we had a speaker. I think it was Charles Murray. And, what happened is that a number of students and a few faculty all sat in the seats of the talk and as he began to talk, they got up and walked out. So, they took up all the seats in some ways as a way of responding to him. How does an institution respond to that? Well, it could very well be a kind of restatement of the value to free and open inquiry, to academic freedom and free speech. It could very well be a set of punishments directed towards the students or whatever.
Eddie S. Glaude Jr.:
So, I’m just again thinking about the nature of the protest, what happens, and the scale of the response, it seems to me. So, I’m not dodging your question, Dean. I’m just saying institutions will have their rules. Students will press up against those rules. Institutions have to then make the decisions. Not institutions. People have to make the decisions about the nature of the punishment they dole out.
Erwin Chemerinsky:
And, we agree as to that, though I keep thinking it through in terms of is any punishment appropriate. I don’t think in most circumstances expulsion would be appropriate. I don’t believe criminal prosecution is generally appropriate. But, I also think that the institution can’t ignore the disruption and it has to be a punishment that conveys the institution’s values.
Eddie S. Glaude Jr.:
I don’t know what’s in the tool chest of deans and presidents in terms of punishment beyond expulsion and the like. I don’t know what that would entail. So, I’ll be honest there.
Erwin Chemerinsky:
What about university administrators speaking out themselves? When Ilya Shapiro made his statement, the dean of Georgetown Law School, William Treanor, condemned the statement. Some believe that the dean acted inappropriately in expressing condemnation of Ilya Shapiro. If something happens on campus, should administrators speak out?
Eddie S. Glaude Jr.:
Yes. The president has a different sort of role, I suppose, but my instinct if I was in a position of authority in that way, there would certainly be moments in which a colleague may say something that warrants my comment. One could actually make the comment, as you’ve done in our conversation, where you can describe something as offensive and still protected as protected speech. You could do that. One could grant that. And, I don’t want to deny… Just because one is a dean or a president, you don’t suddenly lose sight of your own commitments and you’re also… In that moment, you know that there are competing values that define the institution you represent.
Eddie S. Glaude Jr.:
So, if someone who’s a member of the community utters a sentence that actually calls into question the dignity and standing of other members of your community, then you have every responsibility to call that out. But, you also can say that at the same time that it may be noxious but such and such as the right to say it. Or, depending upon other matters, you might remove them from the classroom, as Shapiro was removed. I mean, it’s like John Dewey would say. You know, you have the good, the right and the beautiful. These things collide. They’re not easily kind of separable, right? So, you may be a virtue theorist and you may be deontological in your orientation or you… Right? But, it’s not as if these things are separate.
Eddie S. Glaude Jr.:
The good could actually run smack into the right at any time. And so, there are going to be competing values in this moment and we have to navigate them with some sense of intelligence and discernment, it seems to me.
Erwin Chemerinsky:
What about social media? So much speech now occurs over social media, including hateful speech over social media. How do educational institutions deal with that if it’s members of their community who have engaged in such speech over social media? Or, if it’s speech from others directed at members of the community?
Eddie S. Glaude Jr.:
I haven’t quite figured this one out. I’ve been thinking about it a lot. I don’t want to fall into the trap of Jonathan Haidt and kind of be nostalgic about a moment that never was. Right? A moment where some sort of consensus… There’s always been this sort of conflict ever since women and people of color made their way into American higher education. Right? Where diversity was actually lived in our spaces. Right? And, we’re trying to figure out sexual harassment policy. We’re trying to figure out because this is relatively new in terms of the history of universities in the United States.
Eddie S. Glaude Jr.:
And, there’s always been the kind of complication when you have these kind of technological leaps, whether it’s radio, whether it’s television, and now social media, that complicate how we talk with each other, how we deliberate. So, what do I do in the face of it? I’m not sure. I do know that social media at once can be this extraordinarily democratic space and at the same time it could be this extraordinarily effective and efficient mobilization of the mob. And, I don’t know what to do with those counter tendencies, those contrary tendencies, if that makes sense.
Erwin Chemerinsky:
And, on that, we agree. I think social media has so democratized the ability to reach a mass audience. Used to be you’d be rich enough to own a newspaper or get a broadcast license to reach a large group of people. Now, anyone with a smartphone or access to a library modem can do so. But, it also means it can be used to do great harm. It can be used to quickly circulate information that’s very private or defamatory or enormously hateful.
Erwin Chemerinsky:
I was involved in a case a few years ago. It involved Mary Washington University, a public school in Virginia. And, they were debating the issue of whether to allow Greek life and three women wrote an op-ed in the school newspaper saying they were opposed to Greek life because when there’s fraternities on campus, there’s more violence against women. They … targeted over a social media platform called Yik Yak. Over 700 viral messages were placed on Yik Yak, threatening them with rape and murder, among other things. They complained to the campus and the campus said it’s anonymous speech over social media. We can’t do anything about it.
Erwin Chemerinsky:
And, they sued and I represented them in the federal court of appeals and said that the school had to do something, that it was being deliberately indifferent to sexual harassment and that violates Title IX and the Civil Rights Act. I prevailed in the Fourth Circuit on that because I said the university has some obligation to protect the students under those circumstances.
Eddie S. Glaude Jr.:
Mm-hmm (affirmative)-
Erwin Chemerinsky:
I think we would agree on that.
Eddie S. Glaude Jr.:
Mm-hmm (affirmative)-
Eddie S. Glaude Jr.:
I know we would agree on that, actually. You know, I think even at Princeton, there was an instance during the Black Lives Matter protests. Once the students took over the building and made their demands, the ugliness of Yik Yak made itself known and it wasn’t just simply racial slurs. They were actual threats. And, the university responded, I think, by shutting down Yik Yak. I think. I’m not sure. I have to check that.
Eddie S. Glaude Jr.:
We absolutely agree on that. But, I think again where we draw the lines, how we draw the lines, I’m not sure. This is your area more than mine, but I think my underlying concern, because I know the scope of your work, Dean, is that people are using the free speech question to generate a moral panic in order to hold back what we see happening in the country and that is to hold back the cultural shifts that are following the demographic shifts. There is a moment happening. There is something happening in the country where America’s trying to figure out… We are trying to figure out who we are and there are folks who are using, who are invoking free speech, as a way to truncate, to arrest how we figure this out. And, we have to be careful in navigating this minefield, it seems to me.
Erwin Chemerinsky:
We would certainly agree with that. Let me just conclude our conversation as we look to the future. You and I have both been teaching a long time. This is a podcast, so people can’t see us. I can confess. We’ve each got some gray. I think I have more than you. But, what I’ve seen over the time I’ve been teaching is a decreased commitment to free speech principles among my students, that… Now, I’m generalizing and there’s certainly students who are ardent supporters of freedom of speech. But, I would say many more of my students now are skeptical of the value of free speech and much more inclined to want to see restrictions on speech. Do you see that among your students? Do you have a thought about why? Do you have a sense of what it’s going to mean for the future?
Eddie S. Glaude Jr.:
What I see, I wouldn’t describe it in the way that you do. What I see are young people trying to figure out how to live together differently, that we live in this extraordinarily diverse world and people are trying to figure out how to affirm the dignity and standing of their fellows in a world that is fraught, vexed, shot through with meanness, ugliness, where grievance and resentment and hatred often over-determine our conversations, our way of life.
Eddie S. Glaude Jr.:
And then, you combine that with a deep suspicion, at least… And, this is how I’m reading it, and you tell me if you think I’m wrong here. A deep suspicion that most… That many are not engaging in good faith, that they really hold noxious views about me, about those who are seen as different, that they feel that they’re being beaten over the head, that the decentering of the cisgendered white male involves the dismissing of the cisgendered heterosexual white male in some sense.
Eddie S. Glaude Jr.:
So, what I see is not so much a dismissal of the value of free speech or a commitment to free speech. What I see is a kind of grappling, a struggle with how are we going to be together. It’s… And, I’ll use this example really quickly. You can imagine when the South collapsed, Jim Crow and the South collapsed, and you had generations of folk who grew up using the N word freely, expecting, right, certain norms to organize social interactions. And then, suddenly their world changed. Not so much by way of law, but by way of custom. And, it took a minute or two or several, if it has ever, for people to figure out how to live with each other under these new conditions.
Eddie S. Glaude Jr.:
We are in a moment. Trans, black… The browning of America has disrupted certain settled assumptions and I see my students who have grown up in that moment trying to figure out how to be in light of those shifts and disruptions.
Erwin Chemerinsky:
I think that’s so well put. I think I would respond to this by saying that the only way to deal with those changes is to have speech and let people express their ideas. I think there are a lot of my students who are much more skeptical of that premise. They equate free speech much more with the vitriol of Yik Yak than with the noble expression that’s part of the… We want to be the marketplace of ideas. I think it’s a generation that’s grown up from a young age being taught that bullying is wrong and they’ve internalized that message.
Eddie S. Glaude Jr.:
Hmm.
Erwin Chemerinsky:
I think that for you and me, we can have in mind visual images of the anti-Vietnam War protests or the civil rights protests as our model of what free speech can accomplish. I worry that for them, that’s as long ago as World War One was for me. It’s ancient history.
Eddie S. Glaude Jr.:
Right. Right. Right.
Erwin Chemerinsky:
And so, I think they approach free speech in a very different way, which, to go back to what you said, I think they approach this cultural challenge, transformation, crisis, much more skeptical of free speech than you or me.
Eddie S. Glaude Jr.:
Depending on the day, I may agree with you there. But, I remember I was on the Bill Maher show, who is always talking about free speech, and I’m saying this from the vantage point of someone who comes out of a tradition who’s had to bear the brunt of America’s hatred and ugliness. And, I just looked at Bill Maher and I said, “You just can’t say anything that comes to your mind and let it come out of your mouth without expecting somebody to respond.”
Eddie S. Glaude Jr.:
So, there have been conditions under which, Dean, certain communities had to be silent in the face of certain speech. Now, they’re loud and their allies are loud and we don’t know what the hell to do with those who were once silent who are now speaking with a full throated voice. Right? In a full throated way. So, I want to cherish my ability and my son’s ability to speak back to those who would deny them their humanity. But, we also have to be mindful that we have to do so within the bounds of what it means to be a democratic society.
Erwin Chemerinsky:
That’s the perfect way to end the conversation. I wish we’d keep going. There’s so much more I want to talk about but we’re out of time.
Erwin Chemerinsky:
I want to thank you for this great conversation. I’ve been talking to Eddie Glaude, who’s the James S. McDonald Distinguished University Professor, the chair of the Department of African-American Studies at Princeton University. I hope you enjoyed this episode of More Just. I hope you’re sure to subscribe wherever you get podcasts. Until next time, I’m Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of Berkeley Law.
###