Category Archives: Free Speech

Within just my first year as The Tennesseans inaugural First Amendment reporter, many remarkable issues have arisen, though one story in particular took the fight for freedom of expression to the national level: that of the states attempt to restrict drag performances through the law.

The story for me, anyway, started as many drag-related stories do: with sore feet and an insufferable number of outfit changes.

Instead of performing on a stage, however, swathed in glitter and creative costumes, I was driving at an ill-advised speed across the state of Tennessee at 1 a.m. in early October 2022. I had just traded the nude stilettos and maroon dress I wore for my twins wedding rehearsal for a pair of beat-up boots and jeans to report on a drag performance in Jackson, Tenn. A drag performance that, unbeknownst to me, would mark the very beginning of the massive cultural debate in the state.

Weeks previously, my colleague and I heard through our local grapevine rumblings of conflict in our small west Tennessee city regarding an upcoming Pride event and drag show. Although this was just before my transfer to The Tennessean as the First Amendment reporter, the pushback to a constitutionally protected activity immediately piqued our interest.

Leading the charge against the event was a local legislator and members of a local church who hours before the event was scheduled to begin argued in court to restrict the event to adults-only attendance, something organizers ultimately agreed to do. Members of the local church advocated heavily for the cancellation of the event, saying events like these ridicule the basic laws of nature and decency and are an improper usage of the First Amendment.

The restriction of the show to adults-only was not enough, in the legislators own words, and he vowed before my furiously scribbling pen that he would take this to the Tennessee General Assembly to prevent such performances from happening across the entire state.

We had no idea that our coverage of the event would lead to months of follow-up stories and serve as the basis for an intense clash between First Amendment rights and religious beliefs. Lawmakers passed a measure classifying male and female impersonators as adult cabaret and restricted performances to adults, private property and away from any place where they could be seen by or be harmful to minors.

I could go on about the research we did as the story swelled beyond me and the Jackson city limits. I spent hours in the halls of the state legislature, made dozens of phone calls to both supporters and dissenters of the law and collaborated with my new colleagues in Nashville and beyond as I fully took over the First Amendment beat.

Despite intense backlash from across the country, the bill restricting some drag performances became law in early March of 2023, before being swiftly halted by a federal judge as a lawsuit against it worked its way through the courts.

The lawsuit came from a theatre group in Memphis continuing the citys long history of standing up to discrimination and resulted in a Trump-appointed judge ruling that the law was an unconstitutional infringement on the freedom of expression and speech, and it was directly targeting drag performers in a discriminatory way. Additionally, the judge noted that the law could have much farther-reaching effects than written because both the vagueness of the laws language and the incorrect usage of the legal definition of obscene left people with no way to accurately determine if they were breaking the law.

Some of the facts used to determine the outcome were the very statements the local legislator said to me back when this all began defining his push for the bill as a targeted effort against drag performances, despite his latter statements claiming the opposite. Ironically, freedom of speech and expression is what was threatened under this bill, and the legislators own freedom of speech is what helped stop the bill.

The underlying point is that speech and the reporting of such is incalculably important. Journalism is about the people, and even bigger than that, the freedom people have thanks to the First Amendment. By the people, for the people and so in a rather cyclical analogy, the people are the speech, and the speech is the story.

Beyond our papers research for this topic, the story was about the young drag performer who stepped shakily onto a Nashville stage for their debut performance, too scared to come out to their parents but so elated to find solace in the local drag community. It was about the long-performing drag queen who excitedly led me backstage after a show closed, dripping rhinestones and smeared makeup, to show me his custom clothing designs that got him through fashion school. It was about the parent who tearfully shouted encouragement for their adult child as they stepped confidently onto the stage, later telling me about how her son used to be terrified to even make eye contact with strangers.

And it was about the local pastor who although very confused on how drag performances worked (Are they all queens? he asked. Is there a ranking system?) was even more confused why there was such a push to restrict free expression, with a law that could be so swiftly used as a weapon to discriminate with abandon.

What is more godly than living as God made you? he asked me. I didnt have an answer that night.

But an answer did come, in a way, when the judge affirmed what many of us know: that the freedom of speech and expression is not about whether you like the speech or not. Its about allowing the vastness of the human experience to be expressed equally in our diverse society, from the halls of the state legislature to a small stage in Jackson, Tennessee. And to express that fully, reporters must continue to focus every single story on what matters most: the people.

And, clearly, I need to focus on wearing comfier heels.

Angele Lathams position as the First Amendment reporter for The Tennessean is made possible thanks to a partnership among the Journalism Funding Partners, the Freedom Forum and The Tennessean.

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First Five: Covering drag and free speech in Tennessee - Southwest Virginia Today

Judge David A. Rodabaugh, Lima Municipal Court, shared Constitutional Limits on State and Federal Governments Regarding the Rights of Private Citizens, during Bluffton Universitys Constitution Day Forum on Tuesday, Sept. 19.

During the event, Rodabaugh discussed the recent Supreme Court decision for 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis. The case dealt with matters of free speech, nondiscrimination and LGBTQ-rights.

Free and open to the public, this presentation served as Blufftons Constitution Day annual educational event.

A lot of people dont know whats in it. You need to read it and see whats therethe rights and interests you have, said Rodabaugh. You may not know it, but it affects you on a daily basis. Without the Constitution, what do we have? Another king? A dictator? The Constitution protects individuals and protects our freedoms.

All educational institutions which receive federal funds are required to offer an instructional program each year on or near Sept. 17, the day the U.S. Constitution was signed in 1787.

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Judge Rodabuagh discussed free speech, nondiscrimination at Forum - Bluffton Icon

Nearly 500 anti-LGBTQ bills have been introduced in state legislatures in the U.S. in 2023. Many of those bills seek to reduce or eliminate gender-affirming care for transgender minors or to ban drag performances in places where minors could view them.

Most of those bills have not become law. But many of those that have did not survive legal scrutiny when challenged in court.

Anti-LGBTQ laws that federal judges have concluded do not pass constitutional scrutiny include anti-trans legislation in Arkansas and anti-drag legislation in Tennessee.

A notable feature of these rulings for me a First Amendment scholar is how many rely on the First Amendments protection of free speech. In several of the decisions, judges used harsh language to describe what they deemed to be assaults on a fundamental American right.

On June 2, 2023, a federal judge permanently enjoined Tennessees attempt to limit drag performances by restricting adult entertainment featuring male or female impersonators. When a law is permanently enjoined, it can no longer be enforced unless an appeals court reverses the decision.

The judge ruled on broad grounds that Tennessees law violated freedom of speech, writing that it reeks with constitutional maladies of vagueness and overbreadth fatal to statutes that regulate First Amendment rights. He also ruled that the law was passed for the impermissible purpose of chilling constitutionally-protected speech and that it engaged in viewpoint discrimination, which occurs when a law regulates speech from a disfavored perspective.

Three weeks later, a federal judge granted a temporary injunction against Floridas anti-drag law on similar broad grounds.

And in Utah, a federal judge required the city of St. George to grant a permit for a drag show, ruling that the city had applied an ordinance in a discriminatory manner in order to prevent the family-friendly drag show from happening. As in the other cases, the judges ruling was based on First Amendment precedent.

On June 20, 2023, a federal judge permanently enjoined an Arkansas law, passed in 2021 over the veto of then-Gov. Asa Hutchinson, preventing transgender minors from receiving various kinds of gender-affirming medical care, including puberty blockers and hormone therapy.

The judge held that Arkansas law violated the Fourteenth Amendments equal protection clause which ensures laws are applied equally regardless of social characteristics like race or gender because the law discriminated on the basis of sex.

Arkansas claimed its law was passed in order to protect children and to safeguard medical ethics. The judge agreed that these were legitimate state interests, but rejected Arkansas claim that its law furthered those ends.

The judge also held that Arkansas law violated the First Amendment free speech rights of medical care providers because the law would have prevented them from providing referrals for gender transition medical treatment.

During June 2023, federal judges in Florida and Indiana granted temporary injunctions against enforcement of similar state laws. This means that these laws cannot be enforced until a full trial is conducted and only if that trial results in a ruling that these laws are constitutional.

In striking down these unconstitutional state laws on First Amendment grounds, many judges went out of their way to reinforce the point that freedom of speech protects views about sexual orientation and gender identity that may be unpopular in conservative areas.

In his ruling on the St. George, Utah case, U.S. District Judge David Nuffer stressed that Public spaces are public spaces. Public spaces are not private spaces. Public spaces are not majority spaces. The First Amendment of the United States Constitution ensures that all citizens, popular or not, majority or minority, conventional or unconventional, have access to public spaces for public expression.

Nuffer also noted that Public officials and the city governments in which they serve are trustees of constitutional rights for all citizens. Protecting the constitutional rights of all citizens includes protecting the constitutional rights of members of the LGBTQ community and of other gender-nonconforming people.

Free speech rights also extend to those who want to use speech in order to help promote the well-being of LGBTQ people. In ruling that Arkansas law violated the First Amendment, Judge Jay Moody stated that the state law prevents doctors from informing their patients where gender transition treatment may be available and that it effectively bans their ability to speak to patients about these treatments because the physician is not allowed to tell their patient where it is available. For this reason, he held that the law violated the First Amendment.

As additional anti-LGBTQ state laws are challenged in court, judges are likely to continue to use the First Amendment to show how such laws fail to respect Americans fundamental free speech rights.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Anti-LGBTQ laws in the US are getting struck down for limiting free ... - Oregon Capital Chronicle

Justin Hendrix is CEO and Editor of Tech Policy Press.

On Friday, I attended a packed lunchtime discussion hosted by the Harvard Law School Rappaport Forum titled Censorship, Content Moderation, and the First Amendment. The panel was moderated by Noah Feldman,a Professor Law at Harvard. Speakers included Jameel Jaffer,Adjunct Professor of Law and Journalism at Columbia Law School & Executive Director of the Knight First Amendment Institute, Columbia University; and Daphne Keller,Lecturer on Law at Stanford Law School & Director of the Program on Platform Regulation at the Stanford Cyber Policy Center.

The discussion focused on issues that may soon be considered by the US Supreme Court, including the constitutionality of laws passed in Texas and Florida that would prevent social media platforms from taking action on certain political speech. In August, the Biden administration urged the Court to decide whether the laws are constitutional, and it is expected to do so.

And, the Rappaport Forum panel also considered Missouri v Biden in light of the recent US Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling against the Biden administration. That case concerns what is permissible government persuasion and what is impermissible coercion and significant encouragement when lobbying social media companies to make certain content moderation decisions. On Tuesday, the government asked the Supreme Court to pause a block on its contacts with social media companies, while the plaintiffs seek a rehearing of the Fifth Circuit decision to address its scope.

(For another compelling, recent perspective on the issues in Missouri v Biden, I recommend reading former Twitter trust and safety head Yoel Roths essay, published today by the Knight First Amendment Institute, which focuses on the portion of the Fifth Circuit ruling concerning the FBI drawing on his personal experience.)

With the Law Schools permission, Im publishing the transcript of the Rappaport Forum discussion here, as it is a useful and accessible way to engage with the issues at play. As the Knight First Amendment Institutes Jaffer put it, the courts are going to hear this full slew of cases over the next few years relating to the governments power to influence or coerce or expose the social media companies content moderation decisions. And I think it hardly needs to be said that those cases are going to have an immense effect on the character of digital public sphere and therefore on our democracy as well.

Id add only that the effects will extend well beyond the US, since it will change the ways in which global social media platforms conduct themselves when it comes to content moderation and political speech. The implications may be even more profound in countries far beyond the jurisdiction of US courts.

This transcript is lightly edited.

Noah Feldman:

I just want to say a word about the two leading topics that well be talking about. And we will, Im sure expand beyond just those topics. The first is a set of cases that are in front of the US Supreme Court now that are being briefed and will be argued this Supreme Court term and decided, one expects, by the end of June, involving laws passed by Florida and Texas that in their form regulate what social media platforms may and may not do in their content moderation.

And to oversimplify, each of these laws imposes on the platforms something like the standard that the First Amendment imposes on government in moderating content. As you know, that standard and not just those of you who were in my First Amendment class, welcome, glad youre here. We just had two hours of First Amendment. So these are the real, the people really committed to the First Amendment and I thank you for coming.

As you know, all of you, the standards that a private company and the social media platforms are private companies, are ordinarily held to, are not First Amendment standards. Because the first amendment in the first instance only regulates the government. These state laws therefore would put the content moderation operations within those companies in a very different position with respect to what they can and cannot moderate than they presently are. It would require far, far less moderation of things like hate speech and misinformation and possibly even ordinary everyday offensiveness than they practice under current circumstances. And the circuit courts of appeals split on the constitutionality of those laws and thats why its before the Supreme Court now.

Hard to imagine a topic more important for free speech in the United States today than what are the standards that the social media platforms may or may not use to determine what content can be on those platforms? And here that issue arises in direct relationship to the First Amendment.

The other is also before the Supreme Court, but in a slightly different procedural posture, if youll forgive the legalese. It is a case involving an argument by individuals whose content was taken down from social media sites for violating their rules on COVID misinformation. Who alleged in district court where they won a preliminary injunction. That the Biden administration convinced by means of encouragement and even coercion the platforms to take down their content by fine-tuning their content moderation misinformation standards to prohibit what they were doing.

The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit partly upheld a preliminary injunction issued by the lower court. It narrowed it down to just the Biden administration and not people in the CDC and the Supreme Court decided to stay that order until I think four oclock today and gave until the end of the day Wednesday for people to submit briefs. So its very probable that before you go off to your happy hours this evening, there will be a Supreme Court decision on this fascinating and rich issue, which sometimes we use the shorthand to call it, we call it jawbone. I actually dont know the intellectual origins of that phrase because it sounds to me like Samson and the jawbone of the ass, and that didnt end well for the Philistines.

Daphne Keller:

It is.

Noah Feldman:

Is that actually the origin? I always thought it had something to do with the fact that you talk out of your jaw, but I guess not. If so, its a very loaded metaphor, I guess it assumes a conclusion.

But what is meant is circumstances where government officials use persuasion, and persuasion that may go up to the line, will cross the line of coercive persuasion to the point where the decision to remove the speech becomes in law the speech of the government. And by becoming the speech of the government, is regulated by the First Amendment. Okay, so for those of you who havent taken First Amendment or havent taken it recently, the idea is that the government ordinarily can say whatever it likes, but it cant stop people from speaking. Private parties can stop other private parties from speaking and theyre not stopped by the First Amendment from doing so.

But if the private party, the social media company, removes the speech of another private person and does so because the government made them do it, then at that point it becomes the governments speech Act and then it cannot lawfully be performed. It wouldve been fine on that theory if the platforms did it themselves, but its not constitutional if they did it by being pushed into it according to some complex legal standard by the government. Without further ado, Daphne, the floor is yours.

Daphne Keller:

Thank you so much and thank you to Harvard and the Rappaport Forum for hosting us here.

So Ive been practicing platform speech law for a long, long time and Ive been teaching it for 11 years, I just realized. And when I started teaching it, every single class was on the topic that lawyers call intermediary liability. So thats the question of when the law can or should require platforms to take down user speech because that speech or that content is unlawful and its doing harm in violating the law by being distributed further by the platforms. And every year that I teach for the past five or six years, Ive had to drop a day of talking about that question, which is when does the law require platforms to silence their users? And add more material about the opposite question, which is when can the law stop platforms from silencing their users?

Are there situations where there can be, what we call must carry laws compelling platforms to carry speech against their will because a government body has decided that thats whats in the public interest? And as we know from Noahs introduction, in these cases coming out of Texas and Florida, that theyre likely to go to the Supreme Court soon, those states are asserting the right to compel platforms to carry speech that they dont want to. But lest you think that other issue has gone away, there have been three state laws requiring platforms, effectively requiring them to take down user speech that got struck down as unconstitutional in the past two and a half weeks. So there is a lot of action on both sides of this. When does the law make platform silence people? When does it compel them to let people speak? And its a very complicated set of issues because there really are speech considerations on all sides.

It is quite understandable that people want to be able to talk in some of the most important public forums of our age and they dont like it when a giant corporation stops them from doing that. That is not surprising and while it is passed as politically an issue of concern to the right and to Republicans right now, I think it is absolutely a bipartisan issue. Liberals dont like being silenced by corporations either. It is, I think unsurprising that were seeing the great wave of regulation right now, including the three state laws that were just struck down and the Texas and Florida laws, because were in this historically unprecedented situation of very concentrated power over public discourse and private discourse. The things that we once would have said to each other in a church or a bar or a note passed in class are instead passed through these private companies and transmitted digitally.

And that introduces both a greater capacity for control because theyre there at all, because its a centralized power and because they can have tools that automatically detect what words you use and automatically, if inaccurately you suppress things. So its unprecedented power and because it is private power, the tools to defend users rights from surveillance under the Fourth Amendment and from censorship under the First Amendment, those legal tools dont work or they dont If they work, we dont know how they work yet because the idea of applying them to private actors in the way that some advocates want to do now is unprecedented, is unexplored territory, figuring out how that could possibly work.

I think I want to suggest that there is a problem in the way that states have responded to this concentration of power, and that this is a problem that appears on the right and the left. Again, I think a lot of this gets passed as partisan and isnt necessarily. The problem is that regulators say, Wow, private companies, YouTube, Facebook, Google, you have so much control over discourse, its terrible. Were going to have to take that over and tell you how to use it. So instead of saying, Theres a concentration of power, lets undo the concentration of power, which is conceivable through interoperability mandates or through changes in privacy law. Instead of taking that approach, the approach that you get from both the left and the right is to say, use your power in the following way. Use it to take down more of this kind of speech or use it to keep up more of this kind of speech.

And I want to drive home that, the Texas and Florida laws, although they get called must carry laws and Texas and Florida themselves claimed that they are common carriage laws, which suggests that the platforms are supposed to just carry everything that people say, they actually introduced some pretty significant state preferences about speech. They are not content neutral, theyre not speaker neutral and they incentivize platforms to do things that will suppress speech as well as maybe carrying more speech. So, one way that that works is Texass law has a mandate to be viewpoint neutral when platforms are deciding what content to take down. If they want to take down anti-racist content, then they have to also, and I said that backwards. If they want to take down racist content, they also have to leave up anti-racist content. You pick your really difficult issue and theyre supposed to carry speech on both sides of it. If they want to take down pro-anorexia content aimed at teenagers, they might have to take down anti-anorexia content aimed at teenagers.

What that does for listeners, if youre on the internet and you wanted to follow a speaker you already respect or learn about something, is as the cost of accessing the information you want, which maybe is the anti-racist speech, you have to also put up with this state mandated inclusion of the stuff that you didnt want. So it is very much changing what it is that users can see and read online at state behest in a way that raises questions, not just about platforms rights to decide what to do, but about users rights to speak or rather to access information online. It is also, I think, quite likely speaking as a former platform lawyer, that if the platform is trying to decide how to comply with the viewpoint neutrality mandate, theyll say, You know what? Id rather have no one talking about racism at all than have to carry both the pro-racist and the anti-racist viewpoints. So Im just going to take down a whole lot more speech than I used to. And thats the consequence of this, the nominally pro-free expression law in Texas.

I can tell you more about ways in which I think the laws more in the weeds to introduce state preferences for speech, but hopefully that sets out the basics of it. I have about three more minutes, right? All right. I think theres an underlying problem here or an underlying difficulty, which is about what in the trade gets called lawful but awful speech. This is this very large category of speech and I had an article in the UChicago Law Review going into more depth on this, that is legal, its protected by the First Amendment, thats probably not going to change. But it is also morally abhorrent to many people, it violates social norms and they dont want to see it. So the pro-anorexia content, the pro-suicide content, the beheading videos, the Holocaust denial, the list is very long, and its very ugly.

If we dont want to see that content on the internet, we cant use the law to make it go away. And so where weve been so far is were stuck having private companies come up with rules and enforcing the rules that theres economic demand for and social demand for, but nobody likes that either because of this concentration of power issue. And so the deeper question I think is, how to deal with that. And the answer cant be, or I hope it cant be, Well, well just ban a bunch more speech. If we will use the law to restrict all this stuff that is currently First Amendment protected. Or theres a version of that that says, You can still say all that stuff offline, but if you say it on platforms, its more dangerous, so they have to take it down. And maybe the FCC will administer a new set of rules for previously lawful speech and say platforms have to take it down.

There are a lot of directions you could go to use legal power to address that. And I think theyre all pretty scary. And so I am much more interested in approaches that go back to this idea of maybe lets not have that concentration of power. Lets build what my Stanford colleague Francis Fukuyama calls middleware or what other people call it, adversarial interoperability or competitive compatibility. Which is finding ways to make it so that internet users can decide for themselves what speech rules they want to be subject to and have a competitive marketplace of different providers coming along, letting you select the Disney flavor of YouTube or the version of Twitter that is curated by a Black Lives Matter affiliated group or the combination or something from your church. There are all these ways to layer competing speech rules on top of existing platforms that I think can take us away from this idea that there has to be just one set of rules and the government gets to say what its going to be.

Noah Feldman:

Thank you so much, Daphne. On that last topic, itll be interesting to talk about A, whether that puts people into filter bubbles and B, whether were not actually seeing the market competition now in the way that, the company formerly known as Twitter, now has radically different rules of engagement than it did previously and is yet were in competition with other factors. Jameel.

Jameel Jaffer:

So I totally disagree with everything that Daphne said.

No, its really a privilege to be up here with Daphne and Noah who are both wonderful people and really smart thinkers on this set of issues. I do need to correct one thing that Noah said. I did not, in fact, dream up the Knight Institute. It was Columbia University and the Knight Foundation that dreamt it up and then made the mistake of hiring me to build the institute. So as youve already heard, the courts are going to hear this full slew of cases over the next few years relating to the governments power to influence or coerce or expose the social media companies content moderation decisions. And I think it hardly needs to be said that those cases are going to have an immense effect on the character of digital public sphere and therefore on our democracy as well.

Some of those cases have already been mentioned, in Florida and Texas. We have these laws that require the social media companies to carry content that they would rather not carry. The laws also limit the use of recommendation algorithms, they require the companies to dispose all sorts of information to their users and to the public. Theres also this Missouri case that Noah referred to where users have sued the Biden administration over its efforts to coerce the platforms or influence the platforms into taking down what the administration saw as vaccine disinformation. I would put into this category of cases, also the TikTok cases where the Montana has banned TikTok altogether from operating in the state. And one way to think about that law is as the most extreme content moderation where TikTok cant serve any content at all to its users. There are lots of other cases Daphne referred to some of them. Lots of other cases in the lower courts right now that raise these kinds of issues. I think that the plaintiffs have a pretty good chance of prevailing in most of those cases.

And in my view, the plaintiffs probably should prevail in most of those cases. Because most of them involve what I think can fairly be described as government efforts to rig public discourse. And that is precisely what the First Amendment was meant to protect against. But I think that it matters a lot how the courts resolve those cases, how the plaintiffs win those cases. Im worried that the courts are constructing a First Amendment that sees every regulatory intervention in this sphere as a form of censorship. And I dont think that that version of the First Amendment would serve free speech or democracy very well. In my view, the First Amendment should be able to distinguish between regulation that undermines the values that the First Amendment was meant to serve. Values like accountability and tolerance, self-government and interventions that promote those values. The First Amendment needs to be able to distinguish those two categories of interventions.

And of course its important that the First Amendment be attentive to the possibility that any intervention in this sphere is an effort to distort public discourse, or that the intervention will have that effect. And I dont want to move past that too quickly. I think thats hugely important, if you doubt the importance of that, just look around the world at the way that fake news laws are being used now against journalists. So I think its hugely important that First Amendment doctrine continue to be attentive to the possibility that any regulation in this sphere has that intent or that effect. But I do think it would be a sad thing and something terrible for our democracy if the courts constructed a First Amendment that was indiscriminately deregulatory. A First Amendment that left essentially no space for regulatory intervention at all, even intervention that might be important to protecting the integrity or the vitality of the digital public sphere.

So I think its worth taking a close look at some of the arguments that the social media companies and the technology companies, more broadly, are making in these cases that we have identified already. So one of the arguments is that, the collection of user data is speech within the meaning of the First Amendment. Another is that, any regulatory intervention that implicates the platforms editorial judgment has to be subject to the most stringent form of constitutional review. Another argument is that, any regulatory intervention that focuses specifically on social media companies should be subject for that reason to the most stringent form of constitutional review. And then finally, any regulation that would be unconstitutional if applied to newspapers must also be unconstitutional if its applied to social media companies. So its not surprising that you see social media companies making those arguments. What business wouldnt want to be totally beyond the reach of regulation?

So I understand and appreciate why theyre making these arguments. But if courts accept those arguments, its not just the bad laws that we have already identified that will be struck down, its also good laws. Those kinds of arguments will preempt legislatures from passing laws that I think most of us, no matter what our political views are, would agree make sense. Privacy laws for example, that would restrict what data the platforms can collect and what they can do with that data. Interoperability laws, which Daphne already mentioned, that might make it possible for third parties to build on top of the networks that the social media companies have created. Transparency laws that would allow the public to better understand what effect the platforms engineering decisions are having on public discourse. Or process oriented laws that would give users whose speech is taken down the right to an explanation or the right to appeal that decision.

Now, I know Noah wants me to make this argument in the strongest possible way, but I need to caveat it in one respect at least, which is that, the details are going to matter a lot. Im not making the argument that every transparency law is necessarily constitutional. Again, its important that the courts be attentive not just to the reasons why legislatures are passing these laws, but to the actual effect that the laws are likely to have on First Amendment actors exercise of editorial judgment. But a First Amendment that precluded any and all regulation of social media platforms would make the First Amendment, I think the enemy of the values that we need the First Amendment to protect. Should I stop there or do I have a couple more minutes? You want me to-

Noah Feldman:

You can go on for another minute.

Jameel Jaffer:

Yeah. Okay, well only-

Noah Feldman:

Say something provocative.

Jameel Jaffer:

Okay. All right.

Noah Feldman:

The last time I had a discussion with Jameel, we got into a yelling argument that took an hour and a half and its all on video somewhere.

Jameel Jaffer:

You werent the moderator.

Noah Feldman:

I wasnt the moderator, thats true.

Jameel Jaffer:

I guess the only thing, maybe this will sharpen the argument slightly. So the argument that the First Amendment shouldnt make any distinction between newspapers say and social media companies seems especially misguided to me. Theres no question in my mind that social media companies exercise editorial judgment. They make judgments all the time about the relative value of different categories of speech that seems like editorial judgment of the kind that, or at least analogous to the kinds of judgments that newspapers make about what should appear in their pages or that parade organizers make when they decide which floats can appear in the parade, that seems like a form of editorial judgment to me. But the relationship that a social media company has, to the speech that appears on its platform is different from the relationship that a newspaper has to the speech that appears in its pages. To say that another way, both of these kinds of actors exercise editorial judgment, but they exercise editorial judgment in different ways.

And those differences I think should matter to the First Amendment analysis. Why dont I leave it there? I can say more on that.

Noah Feldman:

Great. I would love to ask a question to both of you that derives from something that Jameel said, but I think its relevant to both of your comments. And that is the question of why we have a First Amendment in the first place at all. So I think you said in passing Jameel that the whole point of the First Amendment is to avoid the government distorting free speech or rigging what discourse is out there is the public. And I want to push back from the standpoint of the people who passed the Florida and Texas laws. I think what they would say is, Thats not the main purpose of the First Amendment, although it might be a purpose. The main purpose of the First Amendment isnt to enable people to speak freely. And nowadays, the place that people speak is on social media. And as platform lawyers certainly know, and everyone who uses social media knows, an enormous amount of content that you might want to say on social media, you cant.

It gets taken down and the more controversial you are, the more quick they are to take it down. And so from that perspective, if the government cant tell social media to allow free speech, and if you cant define free speech by saying, Were not going to make up a special definition for you, were just going to use the definition that the courts make us use, how on earth can that be in violation of the principles of the First Amendment? It seems like the only way it could be is if you think something that you guys both claim not to think, I think, which is that, the platforms are not just like newspapers who can say whatever they want.

So if theyre not like newspapers, what could possibly be wrong with Florida or Texas saying, You know what guys? Youre subject to the same standards that were subject to. And the reason for that is that the First Amendment is about maximizing peoples capacity to communicate and you are in the real world, the thing that stands between this generation and the possibility of free speech. So I would like each of you to address that.

Daphne Keller:

So thats not what they said though.

Noah Feldman:

Well, lets reconstruct it in the strongest argument that they could. Lets then just imagine a statute which is a variant on this, these statutes that just says, The platforms may not do anything that the government may not do with the regulation of free speech. Is that constitutional in your view?

Daphne Keller:

I dont think so.

Noah Feldman:

Thats what I thought.

Daphne Keller:

And so to be clear, the difference is, so Florida says, You have to let politicians say anything and journalists say anything. So it is picking winners as speakers and giving them special privileges. And I think those are important special speakers too, but the way they do it is very clumsy. And then Texas says, You have to be viewpoint neutral, but actually you dont have to be viewpoint neutral as to these things we think are really bad, you can just take that down.

Noah Feldman:

Just imagine they did it well.

Daphne Keller:

Yeah. So, instead were imagining a law that says theres a common carriage law, which is what Texas and Florida claim they have, which says, You have to carry every single thing period. Or you have to carry every single thing thats legal. And so if you know somethings illegal, take that down, but you have to carry everything else. I think one, I guess, the constitutionality, but man, those lawmakers constituents would hate that. Their kids and grandparents and cousins and whatever would go on YouTube and suddenly see a bunch of extreme porn or go on TikTok and see a bunch of pro-suicide videos and think this is not something people would actually be happy with. But setting that aside, I think, so I have been focusing on the speech rights of internet users and how theyre affected. But here the impact on the speech rights of the platforms is quite visible and quite extreme. Is taking away their ability to set any editorial policy at all, which I think is clearly a First Amendment problem. It also will, I think would be a .

Noah Feldman:

But why? Because corporations deserve free speech rights?

Daphne Keller:

Well, because we have a bunch of precedents saying that the parade operators and the cable operators and so forth, various commercial entities or non-commercial entities that just aggregate third party speech and set some rules for it, they do have First Amendment rights. So because the Supreme Court I think is my main answer there. But I also think it would destroy the

Noah Feldman:

Can I just push back? I mean, what if the Supreme Court said that, A parade is one thing, because can always make your own parade. But I tried to make my own Facebook and I wasnt so successful. So theyre not exactly like a parade, and so were going to treat them differently. And I think Jameel thinks that they should be treated differently from newspapers. So if that were the case I mean I dont think, imagine the precedent doesnt limit us here, because I personally dont think that it does. Would you still think, if you were on the Supreme Court and not bound by a precedent, do you believe that these giant gajillion dollar multinational corporations that control all of our speech have their own free speech to shut us up? Or thats the question that Im asking.

Daphne Keller:

Yes. Yes, they do. I dont think there should be-

Noah Feldman:

Why?

Daphne Keller:

There should be more of them. They shouldnt have the power that they do, but they are providing a service that most users want in curating the speech that they see. So its not a free speech mosh pit, every day when you show up on Twitter or YouTube or Facebook. And theyre doing that in expressing, theyre expressing their own priorities about what speech is good and bad in so doing. It seems like, I agree with you, the court can just change it and maybe they will, and maybe thats the world were heading for. So precedents not that important, but I think that there is a First Amendment value being served that would be served better with more competition, but its definitely a First Amendment value.

Noah Feldman:

Jameel, and especially given that you think theres a difference between the social media companies and newspapers, I want to know what the principle is behind that difference. Unless you are willing to allow the government to force the social media companies to allow free speech.

Jameel Jaffer:

Well, I mean I think it depends. So the answer for newspapers, the Supreme Court has already given us in a case called Miami Herald. So there was a law that wouldve required newspapers to run opposing viewpoints when they editorialize on certain topics. And the Supreme Court struck it down, saying, You cant force newspapers to publish opinions they disagree with and to carry speech so they dont want to carry. And so the question is, does that principle apply or apply with the same force to social media companies? And I dont think it should. I do think that there are circumstances in which legislatures should be able to impose, must carry obligations on platforms even if they couldnt impose the same ones on newspapers. Im not totally unsympathetic to that aspect of the Florida law. The Florida law says, the best version of the Florida law would say, A couple of weeks before elections, the big social media companies can take down political candidates posts only according to, say, published procedural rules that are applied generally and not just to political candidates or to a particular subset of political candidates.

Now, do I think that law might be constitutional because I think the social media companies have no First Amendment rights at issue here? No. I think the social media companies are exercising editorial judgment as Daphne says, theyre just exercising it in a different way than newspapers do. But the fact that theyre exercising editorial judgment isnt the end of the analysis. Then theres the question of, is the public justification for overriding that editorial judgment strong enough to justify overriding it? And I think you could make a strong case or at least a plausible case, that in the weeks before an election, the publics interest in hearing from political candidates should prevail over the interests of Facebook or TikTok in promoting the political candidates that they might prefer at that particular moment in time.

Now, the Florida law, Im not defending the Florida law. The Florida law I think was passed in order to retaliate against companies that were perceived to have a liberal bias. I dont think there are any legislative findings in the Florida law to justify the must carry provision I just described. But Im not unsympathetic to that argument and I dont think we want a first amendment that categorically precludes legislatures from even considering those kinds of must carry provision.

Noah Feldman:

So can I push you just a tiny bit to what seems to me like it would be the logical conclusion of that view? You say there has to be a compelling governmental interest, fair. What about the compelling governmental interest in the next generation of people who communicate only on social media, for the most part, having free speech? I mean, we dont have a public The Supreme Court has said that the public sphere today is online and on social media. So if you accept that, then I cant even imagine an interest more compelling to override the supposed free speech interests of these gajillion dollar corporations. I think neither of you is jumping up and down about the idea that all corporations have free speech rights, but well leave that to one side.

But the core idea would be that we cant have free speech anymore if the platforms are treated as exercising the editorial control. And you yourself, I mean, I think Im expressing a view, its closer to your view than to mine, because I tend to be on neither newspapers. But Im really trying to articulate the counter view. Once youve conceded that under some circumstances their editorial control can be overridden, why not override it just all the way down the line and lets just have free speech and we dont have to invent some bad free speech law. Well just use the free speech law the Supreme Court has already created for governments.

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Experts Debate Social Media and the First Amendment - Tech Policy Press

Emil Herman, a Seattle socialist, made an open threat to carry on a free-speech war in Spokane, backed by the Socialist Party.

Herman appeared before the Spokane City Council to ask for permits to hold street meetings on Stevens Street between Main and Trent avenues. He intended to address crowds on the subject of amnesty for political prisoners.

The council rejected Hermans request.

You are making a mistake to deny the right of free speech and we may be forced to speak without permission, Herman replied.

Spokane was no stranger to the issue. It was the center of a famous Wobbly free speech fight in 1909-1910, and city leaders were clearly not anxious to repeat that kind of street disruption. Yet they were also in no mood to be threatened.

Let me tell you something, Herman, council member Charles Fleming said. We are not denying you nor anyone else the right of free speech. There is a $100,000 stadium down here, provided for just such purposes, and if you desire to speak there I have no doubt permission would be gladly given.

From the aviation beat: Daisy Smith, Spokanes sole woman aviator, was still in St. Lukes Hospital after her near-fatal airplane crash two months earlier.

She was reported to be recovering well, and might be able to leave her bed within the next few weeks.

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100 years ago in Spokane: The stakes were high for the city to avoid ... - The Spokesman Review

In other words, Princetons culture for free expression is getting worse, and a large portion of Princeton students feel intimidated by the idea of sharing their opinions on issues considered controversial.

Beyond students self-reported hesitancy to share their opinions, the survey reveals that Princeton students support for free speech culture is tenuous at best. For example, when asked which best describes their view of what speech should be allowed on campus, about half of students (48%) said that any speech that uses discriminatory language or that a group or class of persons finds offensive or hurtful should not be allowed.

Just 30% said all speech that would be protected by the First Amendment should be allowed.

Princeton students also expressed a willingness to censor not only visiting speakers, but also their own classmates: 40% of students said that an athletic team should be able to deny a spot to, or suspend, a student who expresses views others find offensive.

PFS cofounder Ed Yingling noted that these actions against students would clearly violate the universitys rules, yet many students showed a surprising willingness to punish their fellow students for expressing unpopular opinions.

In more positive news, students seem to be taking notice of Princeton President Christopher L. Eisgrubers recent free speech-affirming statements. In FIREs 2022 College Free Speech Rankings, 27% of students surveyed said that Princetons stance on free speech was not very or not at all clear, compared to 12% in the PFS survey done a year later.

Still, as Yingling said, and as much of the other survey data indicates, There is a huge gap between the rhetoric and the reality; most Princeton students neither support nor understand basic free speech principles. Indeed, just 18% of students said they were very familiar with Princetons free speech rules.

Yingling desires to provide opportunities for students to discover that free speech protections are meant to benefit them by ensuring their right to learn, ask questions, and express themselves openly.

To reverse this trend in the coming years, alumni have their work cut out for them. Whatever it takes, well be standing with them for the expressive rights of the Princeton community.

Despite gaps in student knowledge about free expression, not all hope is lost. Students reported a strong desire to witness open debate on campus:

The marching orders for Princeton University and the Princeton Free Speech Alliance are straightforward: Host on-campus debates that show the power of dialogue through disagreements.

Already, Yingling has pledged, on behalf of PFS, that the organization will continue to do its part to improve the climate for free speech on campus by supporting faculty and students who exercise free speech, providing educational materials to students, and sponsoring programs and debates that model open discourse.

To follow up on verbal commitments to free expression by Princetons president and the schools adoption of the Chicago Statement an excellent free speech commitment for colleges and universities Princeton should consider revising its speech codes. The university still receives FIREs worst, red light, rating because its Guidelines for Compliance with the Acceptable Use Policy both clearly and substantially restrict freedom of speech.

To reverse this trend in the coming years, alumni have their work cut out for them. Whatever it takes, well be standing with them for the expressive rights of the Princeton community.

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Princetonians for Free Speech launch a new survey to measure the success of free speech advocacy - Foundation for Individual Rights in Education

Several far-right politicians in France have criticised statements from the European Commission and the French government that they would be willing to ban Twitter if it does not comply with EU regulation on societal risks and disinformation.

Jean-Nol Barrot, French Minister for Digital Affairs, stated in an interview with the newspaper Le Figaro on Monday (29 May) that he would be ready to ban Twitter in case of non-compliance with EU legislation.

Barrots comments came in reaction to Twitters announcement that it will withdraw from the EU Code of Practice on Disinformation, a voluntary agreement that gathers all major social media platforms, such as Facebook and TikTok.

While the Code is non-binding, keeping up with its voluntary commitments is a way to anticipate the Digital Services Act (DSA), which next year will start to apply a particularly strict regime for large online platforms like Twitter to manage societal risks like disinformation.

Breaching the DSA can lead to fines of up to 6% of the companys global annual turnover and a blanket ban from the EU market in cases of repeated non-compliance. Following the decision, Commissioner for the Internal Market Thierry Breton warned Twitter: Youcan run, but you cant hide.

While Barrot acknowledged that Twitter indeed plays a major role in the public discourse, the Minister emphasised that the French governments position aligns with that of the Commissioner.

Twitter told the European Commission it is seriously considering withdrawing from the EU Code of Practice on Disinformation, a voluntary agreement that preludes upcoming binding rules, EU officials told EURACTIV.

The announcement of Twitters withdrawal from the code would come as

The unsuccessful far-right candidate for Reconqute in the 2022 French presidential election, Eric Zemmour, expressed his opposition towards Barrots position, calling him and Breton censors who wanted to silence any free speech.

Marion Marchal, niece of Marine Le Pen and executive vice-president of the Reconqute party, used the same descriptions for Barrot and Breton in a tweet and added that they were centrist extremists with totalitarian reflexes.

Florian Philippot, leader of the party Les Patriotes and former vice-president of the Le Pens far-right National Front (FN, now RN) also stated in a tweet that Barrots position was extremely serious and added that France was no longer a democracy.

Barrot replied to Zemmours tweet, saying that freedom of expression is neither a right to disinformation nor a right to provoke racial or religious hatred, in a reference to a decision by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in January that confirmed the conviction of Zemmour for inciting religious hatred.

Billionaire Elon Musk bought Twitter in April 2022, coming in as a self-styled defender of freedom of expression. Under Musks new leadership, he reinstated several controversial accounts that were previously banned from the platform, including that of former US President Donald Trump in November of the same year.

Another result of Musks more libertarian approach is content moderation, for which Twitter has shifted toward community-led Community Notes. Media reports have associated Twitters new management with a rise in right-wing extremism on the platform.

Another question raised is if Twitter will exit the EU voluntarily. Since Europe is only a secondary market for the platform, some have speculated that the cost of compliance with EU regulations might exceed the benefits. More cynical observers have even hypothesised that a clash with woke Europe might be instrumental in Musks political agenda.

[Edited by Luca Bertuzzi/Nathalie Weatherald]

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Potential Twitter ban sparks controversy over freedom of speech in France - EURACTIV

Codi Lazar, an associate professor of geological sciences at California State University, San Bernardino, has been concerned for some time about the trend toward censorship in higher education.

The state of academic freedom and free speech on college and university campuses is, indeed, unsettling. FIREs report, The Academic Mind in 2022: What Faculty Think About Free Expression and Academic Freedom on Campus, found that 40% of liberal faculty are afraid of losing their jobs or reputations due to their speech and 2 in 5 faculty self-censor more now than they did in 2020.

In an interview with FIRE, Lazar described the struggle for academic freedom and free speech on campus as a battle between two intellectual spheres at the university one which values free inquiry, open debate, open conversations, [and] free speech versus one which teaches a particular brand of political activism and suppresses free speech and open inquiry when they are deemed harmful.

Lazar believes that once a schools administration decides that it is the role of the university to protect people from harmful words, it is no longer doing the work of a university. He pointed out that such policing on the administrative level means that the universities are [becoming] places where discourse is not welcome on certain [topics] and that those who disagree with mainstream views regarding these topics are fundamentally bad people.

I dont think anyone should be in charge [of what views people can express], Lazar said. Thats not a university anymore.

It got to the point where I felt like I had to do something. And he did.

In fall 2021, Lazar researched public lists of faculty who are members of, or signed open letters for, organizations like Heterodox Academy and the Independent Institute, and he reached out to professors on those lists within the California State University system, the largest four-year university system in the county. He described to them his concern that faculty members feel they cant speak up about particular topics and he expressed his desire to connect with like-minded faculty in the Cal State system to fight back against this trend.

He received an enthusiastic response, and the groups first meeting was a great success. About their first Zoom call, Lazar said, For the first time, most people there were in a room full of people where they could really say what was on their mind about certain things.

During the winter and spring semesters of 2022, the group put together a systemwide open letter in support of academic freedom, which was published in June 2022. It garnered more than 240 signatures from faculty across the Cal State system.

Lazar hopes that C-FAF can serve as a model and an inspiration for other faculty in the United States who are concerned about the state of free speech and academic freedom on their campuses and are looking for ways to fight censorship.

By the time the letter was published, this group had grown into a solid body of faculty who met regularly to discuss academic freedom at Cal State schools. Their commitment inspired Lazar to form a steering committee with five other faculty, who named the group the CSU Faculty for Academic Freedom, or C-FAF.

Lazar says that his involvement in C-FAF has inspired him to voice his opinions. Just knowing that there are other faculty within the Cal State system who staunchly support free speech and academic freedom has enabled him not to feel alone and to express his ideas to his colleagues, even when he disagrees with them.

The whole experience has really empowered me to start speaking my mind, Lazar said. I realized that [our goal] is not just to defend academic freedom but [to] set it up psychologically so that we can practice academic freedom.

He talked about conversations hes had with his colleagues who have described to him their reluctance to express disagreement with school policy or with mainstream opinions about other hot-button issues. That kind of culture of self-censorship, he said, is not sustainable for a university.

The guides language will chill faculty speech, as faculty might rationally conclude they should self-censor to avoid any possibility of being reported for perceived racial slights.

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So if theres one thing that we can do, Lazar explained, its just connecting with people, saying its okay to say whats on your mind.

C-FAFs steering committee has a number of goals, including:

Ultimately, Lazar hopes that C-FAF can serve as a model and an inspiration for other faculty in the United States who are concerned about the state of free speech and academic freedom on their campuses and are looking for ways to fight censorship.

I hope that people self-organize on campuses to help make sure that their voices are heard, Lazar said. It feels good to connect people there are people out there, and its a wonderful feeling emailing someone youve never met before and their response is, I cant express how happy I am to hear from you.

Check out C-FAFs website to read more about the group and all of their current plans.

FIRE is hosting a webinar about academic freedom on June 7! Codi Lazar will be on the panel, along with Executive Director of the Council of Academic Freedom at Harvard Flynn Cratty, associate professor of history at Carleton College Amna Khalid, and FIRE attorney Adam Steinbaugh. Register here.

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Cal State faculty stand up for academic freedom and free speech - Foundation for Individual Rights in Education

At Princetons 276th Commencement on Tuesday, May 30, President Christopher L. Eisgruber encouraged graduating students to let your voices rise to protect two important values: free speech and equality.

We must stand up and speak up together for the values of free expression and full inclusivity for people of all identities, Eisgruber said, followed by rousing applause from the students, families, friends and other guests seated inside Princeton Stadium.

The University awarded 1,265 undergraduate degrees and 679 graduate degrees during the ceremony on Tuesday, May 30.

These constitutional ideals are complementary of not in competition with one another and we have a responsibility to protect them, Eisgruber added.

To all of you who receive your undergraduate or graduate degree from Princeton University today: Your help is urgently needed now! he said. So, as you go forth from this University, let your voices rise. Let them rise for equality. Let them rise for the value of diversity. Let them rise for freedom, for justice, and for love among the people of this earth.

Eisgrubers remarks came during the ceremony held on a picturesque spring morning where the University awarded 1,265 undergraduate degrees and 679 graduate degrees.

The event capped days of campus celebrations, including Reunions for alumni, Baccalaureate featuring an address by philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah, Class Day with a speech by U.S. Rep. and Class of 1986 graduate Terri Sewell, and Hooding for masters and doctoral degree candidates. The ROTC Commissioning ceremony was held Tuesday afternoon and included remarks by Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a Class of 1980 graduate.

I have to say I think weve had the best weather for Reunions and Commencement in the history of Princeton University. And for what youve been through for the last four years, you deserve it, Eisgruber said, referring to the challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic during the Class of 2023s first years at Princeton.

1

Guests keep cool with sun hats decorated with orange and black ribbons.

2

Seniors decorate their caps with tiger tails.

Photo by

Denise Applewhite, Office of Communications

In his Commencement address, Eisgruber explained the connection between the landmark Supreme Court free speech case New York Times vs. Sullivan and the civil rights work of the late entertainer Harry Belafonte.

Belafonte was one of the principal fundraisers for Martin Luther King Jr.s civil rights campaigns and he received an honorary degree from Princeton in 2015 in honor of his social activism and humanitarian work.

During the 1960s, Belafonte had a leadership role in the Committee to Defend Martin Luther King and the Struggle for Freedom. The Supreme Courts 1964 Sullivan ruling centered on a newspaper advertisement funded by the committee.

The Supreme Court thereby, suddenly and in a single decision, created one of the most speech-protective legal doctrines in history and, for that matter, in the world today, said Eisgruber, who is also a renowned constitutional scholar.

"When people talk about free speech rights in America, they often depict them as the legacy of the American founding in the 18thcentury, or as the product of elegant dissents authored by Justices Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis Brandeis in the early 20thcentury," he said. "Without meaning any disrespect to the Constitutions framers or to those legendary justices, this much is clear: the expansive, legally enforceable free speech rights that Americans cherish today first emerged in the 1960s during and because of the fight for racial justice in the South, a fight whose leaders included Black student activists."

Shifting to the present day, Eisgruber expressed his deep concern over efforts to drive a wedge between the constitutional ideals of equality and free speech.

There are people who claim, for example, that when colleges and universities endorse the value of diversity and inclusivity or teach about racism and sexism, they are indoctrinating students or in some other way endangering free speech. That is wrong, Eisgruber said, followed by more enthusiastic applause from the crowd.

Speaking to the students seated before him in rows of chairs on Powers Field, Eisgruber concluded: Wherever your individual journeys lead you in the years ahead, I hope that you also continue to travel together, as classmates and as alumni of this University, in pursuit of a better world. All of us on this platform have great confidence in your ability to take on the challenge. We applaud your persistence, your talent, your achievements, your values and your aspirations.

Princeton graduate students gather for a selfie before the ceremony begins.

Photo by

Charles Sykes, Associated Press Images for Princeton University

His theme of active involvement was also invoked by valedictorian Aleksa Milojevi, a mathematics major from Belgrade, Serbia. Milojevi spoke of how he and his peers had been actively nurtured by the full Princeton community. He reminded them to practice active appreciation themselves, both of others and of the everyday wonders in their lives.

Whether its actively enjoying campus or actively loving our community, I believe activeengagement was central to my Princeton experience and I suspect many of you feel the same, he said. Even academically and professionally, I believe it is important to enjoy what we are doing, as we are doing it.

He concluded: As you carve your future, I hope you will actively love those around you, as the people on this campus loved us!

Annabelle Duval, a history major from Rhinebeck, New York, delivered the traditional Latin salutatory address, tracing the Class of 2023s undergraduate career from the challenges of remote learning during the pandemic to the joys of celebrating the mens and womens basketball teams during March Madness.

This chaotic time we will remember for countless years. Friends, let us always preserve these dear friendships, formed by many nights in Firestone Library, and may the spirit of the tiger always be with us! Duval said, as translated to English.

During Commencement, Princeton presented honorary degrees to five distinguished guests:

The ceremony also included recognition of the winners of the Presidents Awards for Distinguished Teaching, which honors Princeton faculty with sustained records of excellence in teaching undergraduates and graduate students, as well as the recipients of the Princeton Prize for Distinguished Secondary School Teaching, which is given to outstanding teachers from secondary schools in New Jersey.

After the ceremony concluded, students made their way from the stadium to FitzRandolph Gate at the front of campus. It is a Princeton tradition for undergraduates to walk out the center gate only after theyve graduated, and a stream of joyous graduates took the opportunity to appreciate their place in the Universitys long history.

Visit Princetons YouTube channel to re-watch graduation events, and follow #Princeton23 on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for more highlights, photos and videos.

Commencement capped off three days of celebratory end-of-year events for undergraduate and graduate degree candidates.

Photo by

Denise Applewhite, Office of Communications

A Class of 2023 jacket is seen among the crowd in Princeton Stadium.

A Princeton senior laughs during the salutatory address.

Photo by

Denise Applewhite, Office of Communications

Princeton seniors wear stoles from the Pan-African graduation ceremony, which was among various cultural and affinity group celebrations held as part of Commencement events on campus.

Photo by

Charles Sykes, Associated Press Images for Princeton University

Class of 2023 graduates Daniel Diaz-Bonilla (second from left) and Sammy Popper (far right) celebrate with Diaz-Bonilla's siblings, Clara (left) and Christian (second from right).

Photo by

Denise Applewhite, Office of Communications

Class of 2023 graduate Rena Kashari (center) stands with her parents, Najwa Khojah (left) and Khalid Kashari (right).

Photo by

Denise Applewhite, Office of Communications

Seniors walk through FitzRandolph Gate at the front of campus after Commencement.

Photo by

Denise Applewhite, Office of Communications

Mortar boards are thrown in the air by members of Princeton's Class of 2023.

Photo by

Charles Sykes, Associated Press Images for Princeton University

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Graduates at Princeton's 2023 Commencement are called to action ... - Princeton University

The Freedom of Speech : Throughline Book bans, disinformation, the wild world of the internet. Free speech debates are all around us. What were the Founding Fathers thinking when they created the First Amendment, and how have the words they wrote in the 18th century been stretched and shaped to fit a world they never could have imagined? It's a story that travels through world wars and culture wars. Through the highest courts and the Ku Klux Klan. What exactly is free speech, and how has the answer to that question changed in the history of the U.S.?

Volunteers help roll up a giant banner printed with the Preamble to the United States Constitution during a demonstration against the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling at the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall October 20, 2010 in Washington, DC. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images hide caption

Volunteers help roll up a giant banner printed with the Preamble to the United States Constitution during a demonstration against the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling at the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall October 20, 2010 in Washington, DC.

Book bans, disinformation, the wild world of the internet. Free speech debates are all around us.What were the Founding Fathers thinking when they created the First Amendment, and how have the words they wrote in the 18th century been stretched and shaped to fit a world they never could have imagined? It's a story that travels through world wars and culture wars. Through the highest courts and the Ku Klux Klan. What exactly is free speech, and how has the answer to that question changed in the history of the U.S.?

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The Freedom of Speech : Throughline - NPR