Currents 050: Greg Lukianoff on Free Speech

Jim talks with Greg Lukianoff, president & CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) and co-author, with Jonathan Haidt, of The Coddling of the American Mind. They discuss FIRE's mission of non-partisan free speech advocacy, recent high-profile cases & repeat offenders in higher-ed censorship, the history of university speech codes, the concept of harm, problems of progress, lack of viewpoint diversity in higher ed, bad-faith uses of harm-claiming, understanding the scale of modern censorship, free speech as a foundational value of Western civilization, Georgetown professor Ilya Shapiro's recent controversial tweet, abuse of the white supremacy label, overemphasis in progressive circles on the morality of inoffensiveness, what the 1969 Barbara Papish case reveals about decreased support for free speech, lack of leadership among university presidents, the Alumni Free Speech Alliance, what parents can do to help children understand the importance of free speech, counterintuitiveness of free speech rights, and more.