Free Speech on Campus

Professor Lee Epstein and Chancellor Andrew D. Martin

Political Science 334

Spring 2022

TOOLS 3: SOCIAL SCIENCE AND FREE EXPRESSION (February 16)

This class session will consider how Americans—including judges—think about free expression. To prepare for class, please read:

• Lee Epstein, Andrew D. Martin, & Kevin Quinn. 6+ Decades of Freedom of Expression in the U.S. Supreme Court. Report prepared for the New York Times. If you're interested: The NYT article using the report is here.

• Knight Foundation. 2020. “The First Amendment on Campus 2020 Report: College Students' Views of Free Expression.” Read Executive Summary, Section 2 "Campus Climate, Diversity and Free Expression" and Section 3 "Balancing Free Speech and Diversity on Campus."

• Andrew J. Wistrich, Jeffrey J. Rachlinksi, & Chris Guthrie. “Heart Versus Head: Do Judges Follow the Law or Follow Their Feelings?” 93 Texas Law Review 855 (2015). This is a (long!) law review article that explores how judges' emotional reactions to litigants can affect the judges' decisions in many areas of the law. To get the gist, please read pp. 855-862 and one of the experiments on pp. 874-898. Finally, read the Implications section, pp. 905-912.

  Section/Class Activities

• Each section will design an experiment (see Wistrich, et al.), relevant for college campuses today, to establish a baseline commitment to free speech. Sections will present their design in class.

• Discuss the implications of Figure 29 in the Knight Foundation Report. Each section should develop a recommendation for what (if anything) should be done on college campuses in response to Knight’s data.