Free Speech Under Attack at Arizona State University
The Rich Zeoli Show
Audacy
4.9 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 21 June 2023
⏱️ 14 minutes
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Summary
Ann Atkinson— Executive Director of the T.W. Lewis Center for Personal Development at Arizona State—joins The Rich Zeoli to discuss her Wall Street Journal opinion editorial, “I Paid for Free Speech at Arizona State: The University is Firing Me for Organizing An Event Featuring Charlie Kirk and Dennis Prager.” You can read the full editorial here: https://www.wsj.com/articles/i-paid-for-free-speech-at-arizona-state-honors-college-kirk-prager-faculty-27c10a72?mod=opinion_lead_pos5
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Z-O-L-E-H-O on your schedule from Talk Radio 1210 W-P-H-D in the Free Odyssey app. |
| 0:08.0 | Good catch, Henry. Good catch. |
| 0:13.0 | Well done. |
| 0:15.0 | By the way, Jeff is the winner of the movie in Westfield, New Jersey. |
| 0:18.0 | One of my favorites, of course, the Blues Brothers. |
| 0:21.0 | Want a mission from God. |
| 0:24.0 | 8558391210 is the number. |
| 0:26.0 | So this is an amazing story and it's infuriating at the very same time. |
| 0:31.0 | And here to talk about it with me, Ann Atkinson is the executive director of the T.W. Lewis Center for Personal Development at Arizona State University. |
| 0:41.0 | Ann, how are you tonight? |
| 0:43.0 | Hi, Rich. I'm OK. Thank you for having me on this show. I look forward to our conversation. |
| 0:48.0 | Meet you. I'm grateful that you're here. You wrote a piece in the Wall Street Journal. |
| 0:52.0 | I paid for free speech at Arizona State. The university is firing me for organizing an event featuring Charlie Kirk and Dennis Prager. |
| 1:01.0 | I am so sorry to hear about what you're going through, Ann. |
| 1:06.0 | Well, thank you. It's unfortunate. I've been running the center for the last two years that exist to teach students things like entrepreneurship, hard work, personal values, career success. |
| 1:18.0 | And we also weave in traditional American values of that hard work and personal responsibility into what we do. |
| 1:26.0 | And we were just trying to put on a speaker program on health, wealth, and happiness. And I never would have imagined what would have ensued as a result. |
| 1:36.0 | And, you know, what's particularly interesting about this and is that fire, the foundation for individual rights and expression right here in Philadelphia. |
| 1:45.0 | We've had them on the show many, many times. They actually gave ASU a green light rating for its written policies on freedom of expression. |
| 1:53.0 | You point out that the university happily complied when fire suggested it adopt the Chicago principles and protect the free robust and uninhibited, |
| 2:02.0 | sharing of ideas among all members of the university committee. So it sounds like everything was going the right way. |
| 2:09.0 | They were doing all the right things or at least saying all the right things, Ann. |
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