Upcoming Speaker
“Speak Openly to the World: Academic Freedom in Divided Times”
Tuesday, April 1, 2025 | 12:30-2 p.m. | DMF Auditorium
Jacob T. Levy
McGill University
Jacob T. Levy is Tomlinson Professor of Political Theory and associated faculty in the Department of Philosophy at McGill University. He is the coordinator of McGill’s Research Group on Constitutional Studies and was the founding director of McGill’s Yan P. Lin Centre for the Study of Freedom and Global Orders in the Ancient and Modern Worlds. He is a Senior Fellow at the Niskanen Center, and has been a Distinguished Fellow for the Study of Liberalism and the Free Society of the Institute for Humane Studies, and a Templeton Adam Smith Tercentenary Fellow at The University of Glasgow. Levy is the author of The Multiculturalism of Fear (OUP 2000) and Rationalism, Pluralism, and Freedom (OUP 2014), and editor or coeditor of Colonialism and Its Legacies; Nomos LV: Federalism and Subsidiarity; Interpreting Modernity: Essays on the Work of Charles Taylor; and the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Classics in Contemporary Political Theory. He holds a B.A. in Political Science from Brown University, an M.A. and Ph.D. in Politics from Princeton University, and an LL.M. from the University of Chicago Law School. He serves on the editorial board of The American Political Science Review and The American Journal of Political Science. His writing on contemporary questions has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Globe and Mail, Vox, Foreign Policy, Salon, The Australian, Slate (France), The Chronicle of Higher Education, Reason, The Boston Review, and The New Republic.
Past Speakers
“Mill, Harm, and Campus Speech”
Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024 | 12:15-1:45 p.m. | DMF Auditorium
Andrew J. Cohen
Georgia State University
Incorporating insights from John Stuart Mill’s classic On Liberty, Prof. Cohen speaks directly to current issues of speech on campus. Why are freedom of thought and action so important? What is harm? What harms come from silencing speech? In a university setting in particular, Cohen examines the need for intellectual diversity and the major harm that comes without it.
Andrew Jason Cohen is Professor of Philosophy and Founding Director of the Interdisciplinary Studies Program in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) at Georgia State University. He is the author of Toleration and Freedom from Harm: Liberalism Reconceived (Routledge, 2018) and Toleration (Polity, 2014). He is currently working on a book on civil discourse.
Watch the video of this event »
“Anti-Racist Education is Anti-Everything Except Racism”
Tuesday, March 12, 2024 | 12:15-1:45 p.m. | Moakley Auditorium
Dr. Erec Smith
Associate Professor of Rhetoric, York College of Pennsylvania
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“Free Speech in Higher Education”
Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2023 | 12:30 p.m. | Moakley Auditorium
Eugene Volokh
Professor of Law, UCLA; noted First Amendment expert
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“Dialogues in Democracy”
Tuesday, Oct. 3, 2023 | 7 p.m. | Rondileau Student Union Auditorium
Lech Wałęsa
President of Poland; Nobel Laureate & Global Leader
Watch the video of this event »
On Tuesday, Oct. 3, President Lech Wałęsa came to Bridgewater State University. A pro-democracy dissident and union organizer, Wałęsa answered questions from about 20 students before giving a talk to more than 1,000 people. Read more about Wałęsa's visit »
“Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media”
Sept. 20, 2022
Jacob Mchangama
Executive Director of Justitia; 2016 Marshall Memorial Fellow
Watch Jacob Mchangama on YouTube »
Jacob Mchangama traces the legal, political, and cultural history of the idea of free speech. From the ancient Athenian orator Demosthenes and the ninth-century freethinker al-Rāzī, to the anti-lynching crusader Ida B. Wells and modern-day digital activists, Mchangama reveals how the free exchange of ideas underlies all intellectual achievement and has enabled the advancement of both freedom and equality worldwide. Yet the desire to restrict speech, too, is a constant, and he explores how even its champions can be led down this path when the rise of new and contrarian voices challenge power and privilege of all stripes.
