jonathan zimmerman and sidney wilkerson talk about

their book "free speech and why you should give a damn". the national archives hosted this event and provided the video. >> many thanks to everyone at the national archives for hosting this event. as someone who obviously reveres the ideals that are reflected in our nation's founding documents, which we've been working hard to approach in reality, the national archives for me is one of the most moving, inspiring places in the world and it's a great setting for this great book, because john and signe's book brilliantly transmits our ideals to a younger generation, inspiring them to continue the enduring efforts to translate those ideals into present-day realities for everyone. so i'm going to start with you, john. why did you write the book? who are your ideal readers?

what message do you want to convey? >> the real reason i wrote the book is signe emailed me and asked me to write it. when you get an email from her, you act, when you're talking about one of the greatest cartoonists of our times. if you're a football player and get asked to play with tom brady, the answer is yes. when i started to write it, i realized what my message was. it's a message to people younger than me, but mainly to my students and also to my young adult daughters, because in my experience many people in the younger generations have developed a skepticism about the free speech and in some places have even developed an animosity toward it. this was very much crystallized for me during this kind of seminole meeting that i had with mary beth tinker. mary beth tinker, of course,

being the 13-year-old girl who wore the black armband to school in des moines, iowa, in 1965, was sent home and later sued with the others and this became a tinker v. des moines case and the supreme court upheld student speech rights. mary beth tinker came to my class at the university of pennsylvania and told her story with the armband and the students started asking questions and the first question was, look, ms. tinker, you were fighting a good fight, you were fighting the war in vietnam. these people today that spew hate, racist and sexist hate, homophobes, they just want to hurt people. why should they be allowed to speak? and mary beth tinker had a very pointed response which i'll never forget. she said, listen, at my middle school in des moines there were schools that had dads and uncles and brothers that were rivging

risking their lives in southeast asia. you don't think they were hurt by this senator-nosed kids? of course they were, speech hurts. and that's precisely why we need to protect it. because it hurts, there's always going to be the impulse to stamp it down. when you do, it's actually the people at the bottom that are going to be hurt. and i mean really hurt, censored. and that was her message. some of the other students said free speech, it's just something about power. people with power use that term to protect their own speech and to prevent others from using it. and mary beth said, no, you've got it wrong, it's the opposite. in 1965 i was a 13-year-old girl and speech was the only power that i had. and across time, and this was the real message of the book, people without power have used free speech to challenge their circumstances and to challenge their oppression, which is

really what she was doing, because until that time, students really didn't have any rights. not ones that the constitution recognized. so that's really what i wanted to communicate to my students and to others, the radical history and potential of free speech. >> i hadn't known that story about signe being the instigator of the book. john has such a great sense of humor, i never know when he's teasing, but i gather this is how the book came into existence. can you tell us what prompted you to reach out to him and to contribute your brilliant cartoons? >> i've been cartoons for almost 40 years, and i depend on the free speech amendment every single day, really. and i've seen so many times when people have criticized me, saying, she can't say that.

i was once speaking at a cartoonist convention and we had visitors from the middle east, all men, and i was on the podium and i was speaking and they said to the host, is she allowed to say that? which, by the way, was the title of molly ivan's book, the great and very provacative writer who died about ten years or so ago. but, anyway, it's crucial for cartoonists. and cartoonists around the world have been imprisoned and sometimes even killed because of their cartoons. they've gone into compile or even underground. even after the cartooning controversy in the early 2000s, an artist in seattle did a

cartoon about mohammed day and it was teasing, it was sort of making fun of the controversy. it wasn't an attack on islam. and yet she was put on a watch list and has gone underground and that shouldn't be in the united states of america. and that's current. that was, you know, within the last ten years. and the other thing i really want to say, and i'll say it again, is that i've been called everything, and i've been picketed. our paper has been picketed. but we invite the picketers in and they then get a place in the paper to respond. and then it goes back and forth among readers. so my belief is that really controversial cartoons just like

controversial statements, records, movies, books, they don't end a conversation, they begin one. and sometimes it takes something pretty controversial just to get people to really engage in the issues. so, for me, it's free speech -- it's like the platform on which i stand and so do the cartoonists, the rest of the cartoonists in the united states of america. >> thank you very much. i recently was reminded that you are one of many -- not many, a small group of cartoonists interviewed for an upcoming book that is going to focus on cartoon censorship. getting back to this book, which is wonderful in prose and

pictures, since the book is aimed at students and presumably their teachers as well, it's especially interesting for them to understand their own free speech rights and the challenges to them, so they understand that this is not just affecting other people at other times in history and other parts of the world. so what do you tell them? what is their stake in these issues now? >> well, their stake is enormous. it's enormous because before mary beth tinker, schools could silence anybody they wanted, universities and some places as well. and it's only in the last half century that young people have received any kind of speech rights that, again, are, you know, enforced by law and by courts. but i think the most important thing to remember is all these rights are extremely tenuous and they are always under attack and that's precisely why we have to

study their history and we have to be vigilant about protecting them. so right now there's a case in the supreme court about a cheerleader in northeastern pennsylvania who was disciplined by her school for a text message that she sent on a saturday from a convenience store. this is after she had failed to make the cheerleading team and she texted f school, f cheerleading. and the school disciplined her and said she couldn't be on the cheerleading team. and they said that they needed to do this in order to protect order. well, that's always what censors say, is it not? there's going to be some terrible consequence. people are going to say or do or think the wrong thing and we've got to blot it out. but, of course, where does this end? most educators that i know did not get into the business in

order to monitor people's snapchats and instagrams and i think this is an important example that happen we need to be aware of the history, and most importantly, we have to be vigilant about protecting them. >> i'm proud to say that that current case, is an aclu case, as was the tinker case, as have been every single one of the supreme court's free speech cases going all the way back to the 1940s, and the implications, as you indicate, john, are enormous, because schools are basically saying they have authority to regulate anything that might potentially disrupt the school. i can't see an exception to that that would essentially squelch

free speech. >> i think the courts have been less attentive and protective of teacher rights than they have of student rights. so in 2007 a teacher named deborah mayor was teaching a fifth grade class about the warner rock -- actually, it was in 2003, the case was in 2007 and she was teaching a lesson from a student approved program for kids, and a kid in the class asked her, have you ever been to an anti-war protest? and in response, she said, yes, as a matter of fact, i drove by one in bloomington and i honked my horn in approval. because of that she was not reappointed by the school. and the courts have upheld that. arguing that teachers essentially have to sell their

free speech rights to the district in exchange for their jobs. and i think a lot of us wonder how the teachers can actually model discourse and indeed democracy if we hamstring them in that way. >> i would like to ask you both a question. i found the book so -- which i read twice and learned a lot both times, and i know a fair amount about free speech myself. i just finished teaching an entire semester seminar on freedom of speech, and i still learned a lot and found it, you know, completely appropriate level for me. but obviously you're also aiming at a younger audience. what age range do you contemplate -- i'll first ask you, john, and i'm very curious whether you had to change your argument or your presentation in any way, and then i would like to hear from signe from that as

well. >> i'm amazed you read it twice. you must be starved for entertainment. but your question, i think we imagined anyone from age 11 or 12 up reading it. i think that con se skrend to our young people, but as the case illustrates, i think that in some ways these questions are more urgent for young people than anybody else, and we absolute wrote it in an idiom and tone we hope can really be understood by anybody from middle schoolers up. >> and, signe, i know that you have some of the cartoons. maybe this is an appropriate time for you to show some of them and comment on them and i would love to hear john's comments about them as well. >> yeah, please, both of you feel free to jump in.

i am just going to share my screen. here is the book title. because this isn't a new -- i'm going to talk starting with the cartoons. of course they've been big in the news here the last couple of decades, but pointed editorial political controversial cartoons go way back and so i thought i would start with the guy who sort of credited to be the father of western cartooning, and i'm sure you're all guessing exactly who it is, which would be martin luther. 500 years ago martin luther was

protesting the influence of the pope and rome on his german community and his beliefs, and to illustrate his feelings towards rome, he hired local artists and used the fairly new printing press to create wood cuts to illustrate his point. and, let's see here, i'm just -- >> well, i would have flunked that test. i would have never answered martin luther. >> here's one of them with a couple of his supporters sticking out their tongues, bearing their bottoms and barking in the face of the pope. now, this is not an image that i would have used in the daily

newspaper in my world, but the consequences of free speech for him were possible death at the time. so we'll just fast forward 300 years. this is a clipped history. to a german immigrant to the united states who became america's greatest cartoonist ever, and that is thomas nast. this is one of his iconic images of rich people in new york of the time, but he was also known for criticizing, absolutely skewering a guy name boss tweed, who was the political --

democratic party political leader of his time. and tweed said i don't care what they print in the newspapers. my constituents can't read. but stop them damn pictures. and what people forget is that also he was a huge supporter of abraham lincoln and anti-slavery. he was against slavery. and lincoln called him my best recruiting sergeant. this is his brilliant engraving done just two weeks after the emancipation proclamation was signed. we can talk about cancel culture later, but he did do controversial cartoons that people still don't like and he has been canceled several times by several organizations.

and yet this is what he did for america. fast forward again to the early 1900s, and then we get into some of the things we talked about in the book with women's suffrage. these women not only protested and marched, but about 20 or more cartoonists came out, women came out of their normal lives and started cartooning for suffrage. and as you know, women went to jail. alice paul was in prison for her free speech rights. so these women were using their pens. this is nell brinkley. any man who loves and reveres his mother and his country should idlize if he wore ships at all the three graces, suffrage, patriotism and

americanism. sorry, my dog is going off on the mailman. and also at this time, margaret sanger was actively agitating for rights for women for birth control and getting attacked by police and driven off the stage time and time again. so this is from our book. go ahead, speak freely. and fast forward again to the man who was probably our most eloquent ever user of free speech, martin luther king, whose whole -- his only weapon was his free speech and he used it as we all know brilliantly, and he paid for it, of course, with his life. but to put it in modern terms, i mean, if you switch how you look at things, the police who were

suppressing and attacking him, we find your speech to be hurtful, dr. king. it was more than hurtful, of course. onward, in my career religions have been the most insensitive. it's okay if you're praising them, it's a blasphemous if you're not. we need to see it so we know if we need to ban. this was a portion of the book about religion. and to prove that we shouldn't be taking them quite so literally, after the danish cartoonist debacle, there were many cartoons defending -- or protesting the attack on the

cartoonists, but i'm trying to go for a different point of view, and this one is the big fat book of offensive religious cartoons with all our major religious leaders, including mohammed, third from the right, and it is to make the point i made earlier, that it's okay if people are laughing. if you're showing a religious figure or a political figure happy and laughing, that's okay. it's just criticizing when the image is different. this cartoon went around the world many times after all the cartoon controversies, and never has been -- never with a problem. back to our book, what jonathan has said and what i think the basic point of our book is, is that you can't just muzzle people and think that hated --

or hateful ideas will just go away. i fixed it. no, not exactly. so the one thing i would like to leave you with about cartoonists is that any teacher knows that it's usually a boy in the back of the room drawing bad images of the teacher, it's just a compulsion that some people have to make fun of the authority figure in front of them. and cartoonists who are prominent take on the biggest authority figures there are. this man was a syrian cartoonist who criticized the syrian regime. he was taken, beaten and his

hands stomped on to break them so he couldn't draw again. but his first cartoon in the hospital will show you the spirit of a cartoonist. from his hospital bed. so there you have it. there's the cartooning spirit and just try to keep us down. thank you. >> that is so remarkable. i have to ask both of you, i'm thinking of, you know, the great gilbert and sullivan, other collaborators. which came first, the cartoons? >> well, i wrote the text first and then signe wrote the cartoons. but i think actually the cartoons are really what make the book because i'm a words guy, and i think that if you

look, for example, at that terrific one about king, which is my favorite cartoon in the book, i think you get this kind of -- it's not just visual, it's almost a guttural embodiment of what the book is trying to say. especially the awful racist white cops. what you're saying is hurtful to us. of course it is. just like mary beth's armband was harmful to kids who had dads fighting in vietnam. that's what speech does, but that's the worst reason to try to censor it. once you put it into your rubric, there's not going to be any speech left. >> since you talked about the mlk cartoon and, signe, you gave the history of thomas nast with respect to emancipation and abolition. i had not known about that. so this is why i read your book

twice. i learn something new every time i interact with either of you. john, do you want to explain -- there are so many -- i wouldn't even say arguments today. but even assumptions that if you really care about racial justice, then you have to be very skeptical of free speech. and we see this all the time, we see fines on college campuses, hate speech is not free speech. in fact, even politicians, some of them who graduated from law school say that, and there's this assumption that, yeah, in the good old days, you know, maybe it was people like martin luther king who were being aided. but now we know it's not that way. it's white supremacists, it's unite the right. even supreme court justice kagan a couple of years ago famously said, you know, free speech, the first amendment, is being weaponized to oppress people who lack power.

john, bring it forward to the present, please. >> well, you know, i think there has been something that switched. i do think in a way it's generational, although kagan isn't young anymore. but i think we've lost sight of the radical potential of free speech. free speech is like sandra johnson said patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. people say that about free speech and those are people who haven't thought about the women suffrages that we talked about. look at this panel. we've got the first female director of the aclu, we've got the first woman to win the pulitzer of cartooning. how far would women have gotten without free speech?

the answer is nowhere. we wouldn't be in this configuration without free speech, without the people that exercise free speech to challenge sexism and other kinds of discrimination. and i think we need to look outside of our moment. at one level justice kagan is right, we awful people have and continue to embrace and, yes, weaponize free speech, and for anyone who wants to read more about that, read nadine strossen's book about hate. >> there are no cartoons in it. >> it's a great book, nevertheless. but to me the point of that book is we shouldn't try to pretend or wish away the presence of hate. it's a part of us and a part of our lives and indeed a part of our speech. but the answer to it is not to create some grand pubah, either

university president or a tech company guru who is is going to then tell us what is hateful and what isn't. that isn't the way democracy works. it's not the way america works. we can't do it. >> signe, another argument that is constantly being made against the robust free speech that you and john are advocating so effectively, but a strong counterargument, which john alluded to, is hurt or harm, but i know from critics that they'll say those words are trivializing. we really feel deep psychic, emotional trauma, and even physiological implications, manifestations. and, by the way, there are free speech problems, too, because this hurtful traumatizing, insulting speech that denies our

humanity silences us and chills our free speech. so if you really cared about free speech for everybody, especially the oppressed, why are you making fun? you know, signe, how dare you create an image of the prophet? don't you know how hurtful and traumatizing that is to muslims around the world? how do you answer that? >> well, first of all, a cartoon can't blow anybody up or decapitate anybody. it is just an idea, and it is a way of reframing the argument. i think that -- i mean, the danish cartoonist controversy is kind of a good example. the danish imam who was a

fenlded and tried to get support in other countries and it ended up being riots in pakistan with people killed, later sort of just left. he was appalled by what had been unleashed by that fury. and i think the editor of the paper also might have, you know, learned lessons from how everything was set off. but i just have to back the cartoonist for being able to say, look, you know, there is a conflict here, there is a

conflict with certain values that have -- that are sort of new in our country. but that's not the end of the conversation. it's a conversation. it's not a one side says something and that's the end of it. >> the other thing -- yeah, the other thing that i would add on this subject, and i think the danish cartoon episode is a good example, it embodies the condescension, they're like, oh, those sensitive muslims, we have to protect them. what are you really saying about them if you're saying that we need to withdraw this image, signe's, or anyone else's from the public sphere. you're saying in some ways they're less than human that they can't exert the same self

control that the rest of us can. it's all in the guise of saying you're so down with muslim people, to me is insulting, which isn't to say -- there's an irony there. >> that was one of the points, one of the reasons why he felt that was completely appropriate to solicit those cartoons. it was a way of showing that these people are not only fully human, they are fully danish and it is part of our tradition in this country and newspaper to make fun of every religion, including whatever protestantism or whatever the predominant religion is there. >> just one point on that. when they first were published and before the outrage happened, several newspapers in the united states published them just as news articles, you know, no big deal, the austin statesman american and one of the denver

papers, and there was no controversy, because people didn't know they were supposed to be outraged. but then when the controversy started, none of our major papers would publish them. you know, i can't even say this word right, but pucilaneous response of "the new york times" saying, well, we're just not going to show them, we're not going to show our readers, supposedly the smartest, best, greatest readership in the entire world couldn't take and process the fact that these are drawings on paper. >> doesn't "the new york times" completely abandon all cartoons, at least in its overseas editions? >> don't get me started on that. if they were hiring cartoonists,

i wouldn't be one of them. but they used to run a round-up of cartoons in their sunday paper and it was very popular. and that was a range of points of view. now they even got rid of that. >> a topic you had alluded to earlier, signe, a cancel culture, it's true, government officials are still censoring speech, as the case now pending in the supreme court. but we have a tremendous problem of self-censorship, not only among supposedly fearless newspaper editors, but also among students and teachers, which i think is a very serious problem. >> well, i'm not a student or a teacher, but i think jonathan spoke to that about, you know, the free speech protects kids. but you've got to get out and

exercise your rights. i mean, it's good for your muscle memory to remember that we have conversations and they can get animated and heated. but, you know, one of the problems it seems to me right now is you look at the -- you look at the nbc -- or the cnn news on one side and the fox news on the other, and it's like they all are talking to themselves. let's have some more yell fests. >> signe, for a pulitzer prize winner journalist, what do you say to a 13-year-old kid who doesn't want to be ostracized by her classmates for saying something that's unpopular? she doesn't want to be falsely accused of being a racist? >> look, the first thing i do is say i get it, and this is not

just -- i mean, it's not a gratuitous example because this happened to me at the university of pennsylvania after the 2016 election. trump voters came out to me in my office and, you know, i would always say, look, i'm glad you're telling me, i really wish you would say this in class, because to signe's point, i think we would learn more. this is really a cultural and educational question to me. if we're self-censoring and biting our tongues, we're not learning from each other. they say, look, it's easy for you to say, you're not going to have to face the wrath that i would. and they're not entirely wrong. at the college, you may recall there was a student that posted something on the net in 2016 saying, hey, there's a trump rally in westchester, is anyone going and could i get a ride. and she was so vilified by other students, including with

physical threats and called the worst kinds of names that she dropped out of bryn mawr. so this is a huge problem. it's a problem that's bipartisan. i don't want anyone to think that it's only people on the left doing the canceling. look at all of these state legislatures that are saying that schools can't teach the 1619 project. what is that if not cancel culture? >> look at liz cheney. she got canceled pretty bad. >> entirely by republicans. >> how can we encourage young people to risk the censure of their peers and of their teachers? we've seen some incidents where teachers are not standing up for popular viewpoints. they're not all like you, john. >> i think this is where the history piece becomes so

important. recognizing that almost everybody that we've been taught to celebrate and appropriately, as, you know, a tribune of social justice, was also a great tribune of free speech, right up to mary beth tinker. and i can tell you that after mary beth came to my class, i did see a difference in the way that the students related to this question. because, you know, i do think history can inspire as well as inform. and when you read about figures like mary beth tinker or margaret sanger, and what they risked by raising their voices, i think it can inspire you to raise yours. >> okay, well, i'm getting some questions from the audience and believing in audience free speech, i would like to turn to the first one i see of those. is there a place where the right to free speech is rightfully curtailed, like when it incites

violence? >> sure. nadine is the expert on this. you can't call up the white house and say you're going to murder the president. or to take an example of higher ed, i couldn't say to a student i like the sweater you're wearing, and if you wear it again on tuesday i'll give you an a, right? is that a limit on my speech? of course it is. one that i'm very happy to accept. most forms of sexual harassment are verbal, right, and they're illegal? so obviously there are limits on things that we can say. but i think it's really important to go back to tinker and the school case that if an institution, especially a public institution, wants to limit speech, the burden should be on that institution to show why it's absolutely necessary to do so. and that's what tinker said. tinker did not say that the kids can say whatever they want at

all times. a kid can't stand up in the middle of math class and start calling their teacher a racial or sexual slur. right? tinker did not say you can say whatever you want. what tinker said is that if the school wants to restrain you, the school has to show that what you are saying created a material and substantial disruption to learning. so that's a really good example, for me, about a kind of, i think, very reasonable thought. and we can argue and discuss about where those limits should be and none of this is easy. a kid wearing the bible, and some people think homosexuality or gay behavior, should they be able to wear that passage in school? will that disrupt somebody's learning? the larger point is that the burden has to be on the

institution, not on the speaker, to show that this is such a risk that you can't say it in this environment. >> you also alluded, john, to the fact that all of us as professionals and as human beings engage in appropriate self censorship. just because we have a right to say something doesn't mean that we always say it. and in that vein, signe, i wanted to ask you if you have any constraints, self-imposed on topics or people that you would not include in your cartoons. and here i'm going to quote something that was often said by the detractors of the danish cartoons, including people that i used to think of as supporting free speech, saying, oh, but those cartoons were punching down and it's not fair or appropriate to punch down. >> well, first of all, it was at

a time when people were being beheaded and burned in cages and there was fairly dramatic behavior that i think people were repelled by that was done in the name of the muslim religion. and i don't think that was, you know, by any means should be taken as the whole religion, but it was part of what was happening in the history of the time. yeah, there are things that i didn't do and making fun, gratuitously making fun of any religion was one of them.

i wouldn't just go out and do a cartoon about a muslim or a catholic or anybody else. and i also -- the first cartoon that i showed from martin luther, i worked for a family newspaper. i didn't do nudity, i didn't do sex. there were sort of -- kind of informal standards, and the reason i didn't do them would be that they would detract from the point of the cartoon. people would just get upset by the fact that there was nudity. and likewise, i wouldn't -- you know, i wouldn't include a religious figure gratuitously if it wasn't about something that had to do. i didn't go around picking on

cripples. >> right, right. i would just add, anybody who knows signe wilkerson or her work, she doesn't do any of this gratuitously. she's not trying to o fend anybody. but sometimes she will, right? just by virtue of the fact that she's dealing with important and emotional political and cultural questions. and i think the real question for all of us is, when people are upset, do you concede to that? and also i would add, in the case of the muslim cartoons, do you can seed to their bullying and their violent threats? for me as an american, the best analogy to this dispute, is there's this really interesting juncture during the civil rights movement of the 1960s where there's a civil rights demonstration and peter, paul and mary and hairy bellfonte are

there. and at one point harry gives a peck on the cheek to mary, and immediately in the southern part of the united states, the networks cut away, because they said people are going to be upset. white people in the south are going to be upset at the idea of a black person and a white person kissing. now, were they correct in that affirmation? they were. and there were plenty of people that were upset. that's my point. are you going to concede to people's bigotry? that's what they did and that's what's reprehensible. they weren't wrong about the upset. they were exactly right. >> well put. here's another question that i think is for you, signe. do you feel memes are the new cartooning? >> good question. and, yes, actually i think they are. this democratized political

cartooning, what they lack is drawing. but they do the same thing. they make immediate and pointed and funny remarks about almost t instantaneously, much faster than i can draw a cartoon, even if i was drawing the image that the meme had. and the other reason that they are so ubiquitous is obviously, they are using today's medium. i -- might history withdrawing pen on paper, and it was printed in paper, that is over, over, over. even though i just don't think that editorial cartoons, the traditional ones have the same impact as they do when you open a page and see it on your table

in front of you, and memes, well, i mean, they stick around because paper sticks around, whereas a meme is gone, and then there is another one. or a funny tweet. i mean that is why people love them. they really are like -- they are refreshing, during the day, to take your mind off stuff. and make you laugh. and make you think. so yes, i regretfully concede that means are, they have their place in political discussions. >> okay, next audience. why is free speech under threat in america? i thought the first amendment protected it? professor? >> it is always under threat. that is really the theme of the book. we have these four chapters

where we say free speech allows you to criticize leaders and allows minorities to challenge their leaders -- and allow students and teachers to speak in school but it's a laos, because all these things have been observed in the breach, that is the point. it should allow it. of course it should! but it never really has. america is a work in progress. it is always incomplete. as delighted as i am to be doing this panel quote at the national archives, are not at the national archives, we are on zoom, but we would've we were at the national archives, we would be in the presence of those documents. a reason that i think we worship those documents is not because we've attained the ideas and them, it's rather because we are struggling to do

that. we are imperfect like all human beings. we move in fits and starts. we are blinders and blinkered and imperfect and that is precisely why we need to study the history and continue the study, because ironically, we are never actually going to get there. if i can put on my leader hat, no portion of the constitution, including the deliberates or the first amendment is self enforcing. for most of our nation's history, all of these wonderful promises of liberty lay around completely unfulfilled and constantly violated and practiced. which is why the aid fell u.s. formed more than 100 spent -- more than a century ago. and even when you've seen a case at the supreme court that

enforces a person, that does not automatically mean that every school teacher and every school district around the country even knows about it, let alone is actually enforcing it. >> i should tell you that my students, including some really well informed students were shocked to discover that the vietnam war was the real first national conflict we had, that the courts continually upheld the rights of people to protest it. that was in my lifetime. all of this is really recent, and that is precisely why we got to see -- beef so protective of it. during the vietnam war, the guy named cohen walks into a post office wearing -- >> he was a college student. >> yes, a college student. he was arrested. ultimately the court said that he could in fact where that jacket, but by that time --

it's not that long ago. and there were other cases where people were arrested for wearing an american flag as anti-war protests. people arrested for plays in which people made fun of soldiers. this is all during the vietnam era. the fact that they were rested showed that people still believed you didn't have the right to criticize the war and so if you've ever been to an anti war protest, thank cohen. and thank the other people that laid down the line and sometimes their lives so that you had the right to say what is on your mind. would i find extraordinary is the number of young people, mary beth being a classic example, who comes to the aclu and other organizations and stand up for their rights, and

that means they have to defy teachers, principles and i remember when case the aclu, when recently first student, who refused to salute the american flag. she was never in american in connecticut. she said i don't want to, because i don't believe that we have the liberty and justice for all of. we have a lot of racism in this country. she was punished. which is not only a violation to the first amendment, but very old supreme court decision, enforcing it, and we had to go to court. ultimately, of course we won. i will never forget the judge lecture at the school. he said you are supposed to be teaching her about this, not the other way around. so one of the messages to the young people who i hope are all going to read your book is that they are never too young to know about their rights. to stand up for them. they can accomplish a lot on their own, that they have a lot of allies, including the aclu.

go signe on signe? >> can i just show my screen to illustrate that last point? >> sure. >> it's just illustrate the last point. that is also from our book you don't have to. just stand up for your rights, you can neil for them as well. >> and it does take a lot of courage, as we said, to stand up against authority. in today's cancel culture climate, people tend to be more afraid of their peers and their authority figures. >> definitely, and there is a big, big survey, i know nikki you are on the board dog, an incredibly extensive survey. college students have found that college students of every

political party, every race, they are censoring themselves, not because of their afraid of me, but they are afraid of their peers. and i think the peer effect is extremely strong, especially when your young. when i was 18 i really did care a lot about whatever 18 year olds thought but i think that is another reason why people that run these institutions really have to stand up and raise their voices about wet a problem that is. big and i haven't heard enough of that. after the fire report i wanted to see a whole bunch of university presents to stand up and say look, this is bad. which is bad, specifically? it is bad that tens of thousands of young people report that they are not saying what they think for fear of being canceled. that is bad, because our job is to educate. that dynamic is an educational. it inhibits what we can learn from each other. doug >> we have two minutes

left, so john, you were in the middle of a closing statement, or could have been. but if you could finish that and then i will get signe the same opportunity. >> one of my heroes and arguably the most important jurist that was on the supreme court, he said that the spirit of liberty is the spirit that is not too sure of itself. i think right now too many of us are too sure of ourselves. and that is why we are trying to censor speech. we know what's right. actually we don't. the other thing he said in the same speech is that unless liberty lives in the heart of american men and women, he said women as well. that was cool in 1944, that no constitution is going to protect it. if this is not just a matter of law. it's really a matter of culture and it's a matter of all of us deciding what sort of society we want to live in, and we've

got to protect liberty. if we don't, no politician is going to. >> thank you. signe? >> he speaks my mind and we are out of time. i just want to thank everyone for tuning in. go look at those darn pictures. do not be afraid of them. >> one of our audience members made a great suggestion, which i will use as my closing remark, and that is that this book would be a perfect graduation gift where everybody who is graduating from kindergarten to middle school, and i would say law school and college. thank you. >> brilliant. brilliant remark. >> yes. i approve! thank you all. >> yes, and thank you nadine strossen, for being a great moderator and role model.

in france, freedom of speech is guaranteed under the declaration of rights of man. but with deceptions, and particular, hate speech. up next, a panel of journalists and law professors compare the definition of free speech in france and the united states and explore whether france's model would work here. the national constitution center hosted this program and provided the video.

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