Recent Events

Literary Cafe:
Unlearning Liberty:
Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate
by Greg Lukianoff

Monday, November 18, 2013 at 6:30 pm

featuring a discussion with the author

Location:  A home in Westwood (contact the AFA office for registration and address)

Admission: $15.00

Parking: Free by Valet
 

About the Book

Unlearning Liberty reviews the different occasions and excuses for censorship in modern American universities, marshaling a bewildering array of case studies.the ludicrous reaction to posters at University of Wisconsin-Stout; the legal threats to critics of the administration of Peace College and the entirely repellent tale of Indiana University punishing a student worker for reading a book about struggles against the Klan in front of coworkers.

But this is not merely a compilation of cases. Lukianoff traces the history of campus censorship after the "political correctness" disputes of the 1990s, and weaves the incidents of censorship together to explain how different vaguely defined ideas (like "harassment" and "disruption" and "civility") are used in an unprincipled manner as trump cards to shut down free speech. Moreover, he rather convincingly illustrates how university censorship influences the attitudes and tolerance levels of students, and explains why we should fear that students taught to submit to censorship and due process violations will not be reliable supporters of free expression or due process as voting adults.

About the Author:

Greg Lukianoff is an attorney and the president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). He is the author of "Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate" and his writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Boston Globe, in addition to dozens of other publications. He is a regular columnist for The Huffington Post and has frequently appeared on television shows, including the "CBS Evening News," "Fox & Friends," and "Stossel." He received the 2008 Playboy Foundation Freedom of Expression Award and the 2010 Ford Hall Forum's Louis P. and Evelyn Smith First Amendment Award on behalf of FIRE. He is a graduate of American University and Stanford Law School.