HLS Hosts Cass Sunstein for Campus Free Speech Book Talk

Harvard Law School professor Cass R. Sunstein ’75 discussed his recently published book, “Campus Free Speech: A Pocket Guide” at a Tuesday afternoon event at HLS organized by the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard.

In an interview with The Crimson before the event, Sunstein said he started his book — which was inspired by recent nationwide university protests — to analyze the state of free speech on college campuses.

“The book began as notes to myself. The real purpose was to get clarity,” Sunstein said. “And then after a while, I had a very large number of scenarios with at least provisional answers.”

During the event, Sunstein added that the book is grounded in First Amendment principles and aims to provide a set of tools for universities and administrators to help make decisions about free speech.

“If institutions of higher education are acting in accordance with the hard-won wisdom of the First Amendment, then we will see some problems that defied people as less difficult,” Sunstein said in the interview. “Where we see problems, we might start to see solutions if we have First Amendment principles in mind.”

Reece M. Brown, the executive director of CAFH, said the event provided an opportunity for education and increased awareness on the definition and implications of free speech.

“There’s been a lot of negative activity on campuses and universities nationwide and even overseas cases where individuals, students, administrators and faculty have been negatively harmed or inhibited for speaking their minds for intellectual inquiry,” Brown said.

This summer, Harvard launched “phase three” of its Intellectual Vitality initiative, which is aimed at promoting free expression through “thoughtful discussion and consideration of different perspectives in classrooms, student groups, and social settings,” according to the College’s Intellectual Vitality website.

“It’s really hard to have a place of intellectual vitality if people are not curious and are finding it difficult to pursue knowledge,” Brown said. “If we can get the definition right, if we get the rules, the state of play in a good spot, then we can better support everyone in that intellectual vitality.”

Tianyi Xu, a Harvard Law School student who attended the event, said he has faith in Harvard’s effort to address concerns with freedom of expression, but worries about consistency in how the University will monitor protection of speech.

“It’s imperative that Harvard doesn’t substitute its own institutional point of view for how they police student speech,” Xu said. “The danger comes, in my view, when you are using time, space, and manner restrictions as a pretext to really encroach upon the substance of what you’re really trying to prohibit people to say.”

Randall L. Kennedy, the event’s moderator and an HLS professor, said he hopes people are attentive when reading Sunstein’s book.

“This is a very interesting, complicated, worthwhile subject for all of us in the University to be attentive to,” Kennedy said.

“Characteristically, it is very attuned to freedom of expression, and recognizes how essential freedom of expression is to the carrying on of an educational mission at one of the world’s great universities,” he added.