The Free Speech Project, a grantee of The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, studies the state of Free Speech in America, particularly in higher education, in the context of broader developments in civil society.
The Free Speech Project
This iconic image by Norman Rockwell depicts a classic example of Free Speech in action - a dissenter rising to express his views at a town meeting in Vermont, shortly after US entry into World War II, while being listened to respectfully by fellow citizens.
Senator Joseph McCarthy and Roy Cohn
In the 1950s, in a sustained assault on Free Speech, US Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-WI) investigated the political beliefs of Americans. Here, he consults his young aide Roy Cohn, later a mentor to Donald Trump, who became president in 2017.
Rise of the Free Speech Movement
The modern focus on free expression on America's college campuses began at the University of California at Berkeley. Here, in 1964, Mario Savio exhorts his companions in the Free Speech Movement to rise up and protest campus restrictions on public speech.
UC Berkeley Protest
The UC Berkeley campus is still at the epicenter of Free Speech controversies in American higher education. Here, a pause during a recent face-off between opposing factions in the struggle over who should or should not speak at Berkeley.
The Tinker Family
In a landmark 1969 decision, the US Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that the Tinker children of Des Moines, IA, were engaging in protected symbolic speech when they wore black armbands to school to protest the Vietnam war, and could not be expelled for doing so.
Black Lives Matter
The Black Lives Matter movement, which grew out of police shootings of young, unarmed African-American men, has been involved in Free Speech controversies, especially on college campuses. Here, supporters of the movement march in Chicago.
A pro-choice activist amidst pro-life demonstrators
The debate over abortion has brought protests to statehouses across the country, to the US Congress, and to the Supreme Court. Here, a "pro-choice" demonstrator stands among "pro-life" activists at the Supreme Court in Washington, DC.
Westboro Baptist Church
Fred Phelps, founder of the Westboro Baptist Church, poses with signs his family used at military funerals to oppose growing tolerance for gay rights. The US Supreme Court ruled 8-1 in 2011 that even such “outrageous speech” is protected.
Charlottesville, VA, Confrontation
In August 2017, Ku Klux Klan and other white nationalist and anti-Semitic militants gathered in Charlottesville, VA, to “Unite the Right.” Violence ensued, with one counter-protester dead and many injured, leaving painful dilemmas surrounding Free Speech.
Pitched battles in the streets of Berkeley, California, as rival factions fight over who should be allowed to speak at one of America's great public universities. A faculty member seriously injured on the idyllic campus of Middlebury College in Vermont as violence erupts at a talk by a controversial visitor that she attempted to moderate. Bedlam on the floor of the Texas House of Representatives with pistol-packing legislators threatening to kill each other. A Princeton professor receives death threats and goes into hiding after cellphone videos of a commencement speech she gave in New England, in which she criticized President Trump, go viral. A massive replica of the Ten Commandments erected near the Arkansas State Capitol, but bulldozed into smithereens hours later by an angry citizen. A neighborhood pizza parlor in the nation's capital hurled into the spotlight after a "fake news" conspiracy report inspires a North Carolina man to open fire in the restaurant. One of America's great newspapers, the Los Angeles Times, reduced to recruiting subscribers by promising "We publish what's REAL."
What is happening to Free Speech in America? The Free Speech Project at Georgetown University, launched with the support of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, aspires to find out and to analyze the condition of First Amendment values. Watch this space over the weeks and months ahead.
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