This Saturday, July 29 from 12 to 5:30PM, the Chicago Humanities Festival will bring “experts on free speech from the public sector and the world of academia for a day-long series of conversations exploring the challenges and consequences facing free expression in today’s society.”
If you can’t make it to downtown Chicago for the panels, we’re hosting their HD live-stream of the entire thing, right here at the Chicago Review of Books (in this very article). You can also watch via the CHF’s Facebook Live feed, right here.
Here’s the schedule:
Speech & Campus Life: 12-2:15 PM
“University of Chicago President Robert Zimmer will open the day’s events with a brief overview of the path U of C has taken with regard to free speech on campus. Following Zimmer, Scott Jaschik of Inside Higher Ed will moderate a panel discussion featuring Northwestern University Provost Jonathan Holloway (formerly Dean of the undergraduate Yale College), Professor Allison Stanger of Middlebury College, and Johns Hopkins Bioethics Masters Student Cameron Okeke, who has written passionately about speech and diversity on college campuses.”
Speech & Imagination: 3-4 PM
“Suzanne Nossel, the Executive Director of PEN America, an international organization advocating for the rights of writers, and two-time Poet Laureate of the United States Natasha Tretheway will discuss the avenues available to writers and artists of all stripes as free expression, both here in the United States and abroad, faces retrenchment. CHF Associate Artistic Director Alison Cuddy will moderate this conversation about the prospects for free expression in our increasingly divided world.”
The Fate of Free Speech: 4:30-5:30 PM
“Anne-Marie Slaughter, President and CEO of the New American Foundation, and former Director of Policy Planning in the Obama Administration, and David Cole, the National Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union, are each extremely well-positioned to discuss the current and future state of free speech in the public sphere, in both face-to-face and digital spaces. In a moderated conversation, Slaughter and Cole will survey current conflicts over speech, dissent, and liberty, and look ahead to what all of us can expect to face in the days to come. University of Chicago Law professor and constitutional scholar Geoff Stone will moderate.”
