How to keep speech free and robust

SALISBURY — Nadine Strossen, former president of the American Civil Liberties Union, and United States District Court Judge William F. Kuntz will discuss  Strossen’s new book, “Hate: Why We Should Resist It with Free Speech, Not Censorship,” at Noble Horizons on Sunday, Jan. 21, at 2 p.m.

In a phone interview on Thursday, Jan. 4, Strossen was asked to define “hate speech.”

“There are dozens of definitions,” she said. “They’ve been labored over by governments, international bodies, colleges.”

What these definitions all have in common is “they are inescapably vague.

“Hate is an emotion.”

Strossen, who has a front-row seat as a law professor at New York University, is particularly concerned with suppression of free speech in the name of combating hate speech on college campuses.

She pointed out that First Amendment speech protections do not extend to private campuses, contrary to popular belief.

She said that college professors have reported to her that students complain about being assigned books they might disagree with.

“For anybody who cares about challenging the status quo, it depends on robust free speech.”

Her message is that the best antidote to “hate speech” is persuasion.

And she pointed out that both the pre-Civil War abolitionist movement and the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s were denounced as “hate speech.”

(Due to limited seating, this free program is by reservation at www.noblehorizons.org or 860-435-9851.)

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