Free Speech on Campus

RIT is hosting an important discussion around free speech and expression on campus. We invite you all to attend.

Please join us on Wednesday, November 17th for "Free Speech on Campus, Past and Present: Why it Matters and Where We are Headed." 

RIT Students, Faculty and Staff are invited to join the Zoom “Watch Party” in Fireside Lounge (SAU) starting at 3:30 p.m. The event runs from 4:00-5:30 p.m.

This event is made possible through the offices of the President, Provost, Student Affairs, Division of Diversity and Inclusion, and is sponsored by Gray Matter at RIT.

Adrian Pyatt, director of ethical governing and a member of the RIT Student Government Cabinet, will deliver introductory remarks.

Robert Cohen is a history and social studies professor at NYU whose books on free speech and student protest include:  The Free Speech Movement: Reflections on Berkeley in the 1960s (2002); Freedom's Orator: Mario Savio and the Radical Legacy of the 1960s (2009); Rebellion in Black and White: Southern Student Activism in the 1960s (2012); The Essential Mario Savio: Speeches and Writings that Changed America (2014); Howard Zinn's Southern Diary: Civil Rights, Sit-ins, and Black Women's Student Activism, (2018); When the Old Left Was Young: Student Radicals and America's First Mass Student Movement, 1929-1941 (1993). He was an inaugural fellow of the University of California National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement, who conducted a major study of the free speech crisis at UC Berkeley during the Trump era. His latest book, co-authored with Sonia Murrow, is Rethinking America's Past: Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States in the Classroom and Beyond (2021).

In order to prepare for the presentation, several items are being shared in advance for attendees' review.

Below are several items, including The New York Times story on the antiwar movement's disruption of two speakers at NYU in December 1968. This is followed by strong criticism of this disruption: first in an editorial in the NYU student newspaper and then in an open letter from NYU President James Hester. The last document is the NYU SDS chapter's (Students for a Democratic Society) rebuttal to this criticism. 

Mario Savio was a student and founder of the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley. In this video clip on his 22^nd birthday in 1964, he addresses a crowd of thousands, “asking that there be no, no restrictions on the content of speech, save those provided by the courts.”

View Video  

Cartoon by Signe Wilkinson. Used with permission, from Jonathan Zimmerman and Signe Wilkinson, Free Speech and Why You Should Give a Damn (2021).

An in-person watch party will be held in Fireside Lounge, SAU from 4:00-5:30 p.m. on Wednesday, November 17th.
No registration is needed to attend.

Interpreters and captionist provided upon request, subject to availability. If you need an interpreter we appreciate you making your request 2 weeks before the event. To make a request please visit: www.myaccess.rit.edu

If you are unable to attend the watch party but would still like to view the webinar live, you may register online and a link will be sent to you.

Register for the webinar