The First Amendment on Campus and Online

The National Constitution Center, in partnership with a coalition of leading free speech organizations, convened a National First Amendment Summit on September 13, 2023, to discuss the increasing threats to freedom of expression and to celebrate the opening of the Center’s new First Amendment gallery. The third panel of the event, “The First Amendment on Campus and Online,” examined the increasing conflicts involving free speech on campuses and online in an age of social media, artificial intelligence, and other new technologies. Speakers included Will Creeley, legal director at FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression; Jeannie Suk Gersen, professor at Harvard Law School; and Nadine Strossen, emerita professor at New York Law School and former ACLU president. The program was moderated by Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center.  

Resources: 

• Will Creeley and Geoffrey R. Stone, Restoring Free Speech on Campus, The Washington Post (Sept. 25, 2015)   
• Jeannie Suk Gersen, What If Trigger Warnings Don’t Work?, The New Yorker (Sept. 28, 2021) 
• Jeannie Suk Gersen, The Trouble With Teaching Rape Law, The New Yorker (Dec. 15, 2014) 
• Jeannie Suk Gersen, Shutting Down Conversations About Rape at Harvard Law, The New Yorker (Dec 11, 2015)  
• Jeannie Suk Gersen, The Socratic Method in the Age of Trauma, Harvard Law Review ( 2017) 
• Nadine Strossen, Free Speech: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oct. 2023) 
•  Nadine Strossen, Hate: Why We Should Resist It With Free Speech, Not Censorship (2018) 

Questions or comments about the show? Email us at podcast@constitutioncenter.org. 

Continue today’s conversation on Facebook and Twitter using @ConstitutionCtr. 

Sign up to receive Constitution Weekly, our email roundup of constitutional news and debate, at bit.ly/constitutionweekly.

You can find transcripts for each episode on the podcast pages in our Media Library.