How to Use Your First Amendment Rights On Campus (and Off)

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In this episode you’ll hear: about the limits and the breadth of the first amendment, what to do when your free speech rights are violated, why having “free speech zones” on campus doesn’t work, and what you can do when someone else’s free speech is hurtful or offensive.

Our guest is Will Creeley, legal director of The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.

Will began defending student and faculty rights for FIRE in 2006 after graduating from New York University School of Law, where he served as an associate executive editor for the New York University Law Review. He is a member of the First Amendment Lawyers Association and serves as Co-Chair of the Education Subcommittee of the American Bar Association’s Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice.

Your host is Dr. Christina Gessler, a historian of women, gender, and sexuality. She specializes in decoding diaries written by rural women in the 19th century. She credits her ability to read nearly-illegible things to a childhood spent trying read her dad’s handwriting. Christina’s dad was a public defender; human rights and how to defend them was dinner table talk nightly.

Listeners to this episode might be interested in:

• First Things First: A Modern Coursebook on Free Speech Fundamentals, by Ronald K.L. Collins, Will Creeley, David L. Hudson Jr., and Jackie Farmer.
• "How to Respond to Richard Spencer," by Will Creeley, The New York Times (Oct. 19, 2017).
• Jim Crow Campus: Higher Education and the Struggle for a New Southern Social Order, by Joy Ann Williamson-Lott.
• "Fighting for Free Speech on America’s Campuses," by Cecilia Capuzzi Simon, The New York Times (Aug. 1, 2016). 
• FIRE's Tips for Student Activism

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