The First Amendment in Five Minutes

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The ability to say whatever we want about whomever we want is a big deal, which is why free speech is the cornerstone of American democracy. But what if that free speech incites hate or violence? Bring it on, says Monica Duffy Toft, Professor of International Politics at Tufts University. After all, you can't throw out the whole idea of free speech just because you don't agree with what someone is saying — that's the whole point of the First Amendment of the Constitution. Even if it's hate speech, the idea that it can happen is more important to uphold than the words themselves. Toft posits to "Let them assemble, let them have their freedom of speech, and redouble your efforts and take measures to ensure that that can happen." For more information, visit charleskochfoundation.org.

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MONICA DUFFY TOFT

Before joining The Fletcher School, Professor Monica Duffy Toft taught at Oxford University’s Blavatnik School of Government and Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. While at Harvard, she directed the Initiative on Religion in International Affairs and was the assistant director of the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies. She was educated at the University of Chicago (MA and PhD in political science) and at the University of California, Santa Barbara (BA in political science and Slavic languages and literature, summa cum laude). Prior to this, she spent four years in the United States Army as a Russian linguist. Monica’s areas of research include international security, ethnic and religious violence, civil wars and demography.

Her most recent books include: Securing the Peace (Princeton, 2011); Political Demography (Oxford, 2012); and God’s Century (Norton, 2012). In addition she has published numerous scholarly articles and editorials on civil wars, territory and nationalism, demography, and religion in global politics.

Monica is a research associate of the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford and at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. She is a supernumerary fellow at Brasenose College, University of Oxford, a Global Scholar of the Peace Research Institute Oslo, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Minorities at Risk Advisory Board and the Political Instability Task Force. In 2008 the Carnegie Foundation of New York named her a Carnegie Scholar for her research on religion and violence, in 2012 she was named a Fulbright scholar, and most recently served as the World Politics Fellow at Princeton University.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Monica Duffy Toft: So I’ve been asked to choose an amendment that I think is important and valuable, and so I think: the First Amendment.

And it’s not only because it’s the First Amendment, it’s what it says.

And it says “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

And I think from the Constitution this sets up the rest of the Constitution about what it means to be an American citizen and the value of our individual liberties because it sets us apart. As individuals we have the right to speech, we have the right to association, we have the right to religion, we can think, we can act, we can associate freely.

And as a scholar of international relations, when you poll people around the world and they ask, “What is it that you think is most important about the United States that you think sets the United States apart,” more often than not people point to the First Amendment and to the freedom of speech, the freedom of assembly, the freedom of religion as first and foremost what makes the United States special—that we privilege individuals as citizens, and our Constitution protects that.

We need to keep that in mind as citizens, and I have to tell you around the world people acknowledge that and respect that about the United States.

I really have a hard time with this this idea of freedom of assembly and freedom of speech regardless of the nature of that speech.

I mean there are exceptions to that, about whether it promulgates violence or potentially promulgates violence, and I tend to come down on the liberal side, that people should have freedom of...

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