This is the registration option for IN-PERSON attendance at the August 6 session, which takes place at the Lebanon Opera House, Lebanon, NH. This event is open seating; your ticket will not correspond to an assigned seat.

Can Freedom of Speech Survive?  And Should It?

Nadine Strossen, John Marshall Harlan II Professor of Law Emerita, New York Law School

The many current threats to free speech include: “cancel culture,” which penalizes those who question prevailing orthodoxies; rampant self-censorship about “sensitive” topics; Big Tech wielding unprecedented power to restrict and chill expression; government officials pressuring Big Tech to suppress even more material; campus assaults on academic freedom; state laws that bar the teaching of “divisive” concepts; federal and state laws (including President Trump’s executive orders) that have some positive and some negative implications for free speech, including on campus; federal and state laws that restrict minors’ access to sexually oriented online expression; public officials’ (including the President’s) initiation of defamation lawsuits against their critics; and weak public support for free speech, the media, and universities, according to polls. This presentation will discuss the pros and cons of free speech and censorship, addressing legal principles and policy considerations.

Nadine Strossen, New York Law School Professor Emerita and Senior Fellow at FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression), was national President of the American Civil Liberties Union from 1991 to 2008. An internationally acclaimed free speech scholar and advocate, who regularly addresses diverse audiences and provides media commentary around the world, Strossen is also the Host and Project Consultant for Free To Speak, a 3-hour documentary film series distributed on public television in 2023. Her books about free speech include: Free Speech: What Everyone Needs to Know® (Oxford University Press 2023); HATE: Why We Should Resist It with Free Speech, Not Censorship (Oxford University Press 2018); and Defending Pornography: Free Speech, Sex, and the Fight for Women’s Rights (Scribner 1995), which was republished with a new Preface in 2024 as part of the NYU Classics Series. Her many honors and awards include the National Coalition Against Censorship’s Judy Blume Lifetime Achievement Award for Free Speech. She serves on the Advisory Boards of several organizations that do free speech work, including: ACLU, Academic Freedom Alliance, Foundation 3 of 3 Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR), Heterodox Academy, National Coalition Against Censorship, and the University of Austin.