In this lecture titled, “Campus Free Speech,“ Professor Sunstein defends three propositions. First, America’s universities are the arsenals of democracy on parallel to the military as the arsenal of democratic survival. Second, universities and those who regulate them ought not to engage in viewpoint discrimination. Third, universities as components of democracies ought not to claim that the educational mission justifies restriction of offensive or hurtful speech. Professor Sunstein then explores several scenarios under which these principles can be applied.
Cass R. Sunstein is the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard. He is the founder and director of the Program on Behavioral Economics and Public Policy at Harvard Law School. Sunstein is the author of hundreds of articles and dozens of books, including Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness (with Richard H. Thaler, 2008), Simpler: The Future of Government (2013), The Ethics of Influence (2015), #Republic (2017), Impeachment: A Citizen’s Guide (2017), The Cost-Benefit Revolution (2018), On Freedom (2019), Conformity (2019), How Change Happens (2019), and Too Much Information (2020).