Dec 17, 2020

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

A Discussion with Will Creeley

Will Creeley

Hosted by Christina Gessler

Summary

Welcome to The Academic Life. You are smart and capable, but you aren’t an island, and neither are we. So we reached across our mentor network to bring you podcasts on everything from how to finish that project, to how to take care of your beautiful mind. Wish we’d bring in an expert about something? Find us on Twitter : The Academic Life @AcademicLifeNBN.

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 19^th 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