Discussion: Is freedom of speech upheld by law or by culture?

​Join us for a discussion about free speech and how it is upheld or threatened in both the law and the culture. This article gives viewpoints from two different thinkers, with many references to current and past events. Bring any thoughts from this article or others for discussion.

​Reason: What's the Best Way to Protect Free Speech?

​Other relevant articles:

​The War on Free Speech and the Weaponization of the Law

​1967 University of Chicago Report on the University's Role in Social and Political Action

​Learned Hand's Spirit of Liberty Speech

​Here are a few excerpts:

​"Free speech culture is more important than the First Amendment. It's more important because free speech culture is what gave us the First Amendment in the 18th century." - Greg Lukianoff

​"The point of the law is to sort out competing claims of rights. The things decried as "cancellation" of free speech—public denunciations, calls for firings and boycotts, and so forth—are indisputably other people's free speech." - Ken White

​"The idea that bad people can be beneficial to society, and good people might be useless, is something that seems heretical in the context of cancel culture, which deems nasty things said in tweets 10 years ago relevant." - Greg Lukianoff

​"The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right." - Learned Hand, 1944

​"I mean, most of our campuses, including my own, have become echo chambers. So faculties run from the left to the far left. Surveys done with the self-identification of faculty show that there's been a purging of Conservative, Republican and Libertarian faculty members." - Jonathan Turley