Hate speech and the First Amendment in focus at Rice April 9

I will be participating in a long-planned debate over the banning or criminalization of hate speech in the United States. I will be debate NYU Professor Jeremy Waldron, one of the leading proponents of new speech regulations. He is the author if The Harm in Hate Speech (Harvard University Press, 2012). The debate will be held on Tuesday, April 9th at Rice University in Houston.

There is a controversy brewing over free speech at Wake Forest University where an Instagram post has triggered an investigation. The Winston-Salem Journal reports that the “racist” posting  encouraged students to vote for a candidate for student body president. It read: “He wants to build a wall between Wake and Winston-Salem State and he’ll make them pay for it.” While the university’s president Nathan Hatch described it as a possible “parody”, an investigation was still launched. That has raised objections from students who complain of a chilling effect on speech under such rules.

In Minnesota, Augsburg University has reportedly stripped Professor Phillip Adamo of his directorship of the honors program after he used the n-word in a class discussion of a passage (using the word) from James Baldwin. In the meantime, at the University of Chicago (my alma mater) Professor Geoffrey Stone is under fire for the same alleged offense in a classroom. Unlike Augsburg, however, UChicago has continued its staunch defense of free speech and academic freedom in support of Stone.