This is the reason interview with Nicholas.

Thanks for listening.

If the problem with campus speech codes is the selectivity with which universities penalized various forms of bigotry,

wrote James Kirchick recently in the New York Times,

the solution is not to expand the university's power to punish expression.

It's to abolish speech codes entirely.

Kirchik, who goes by Jamie, is today's guest, and he was writing about widespread outrage at the deeply nuanced yet totally hypocritical defenses of free speech offered by the presidents of Harvard, MIT,

and the University of Pennsylvania at last year's congressional hearing about anti-Semitic

and anti-Zionist campus reactions to the October 7th, 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel.

Jamie is the author of two books, Secret City, The Hidden History of Gay

Washington, and the End of Europe, Dictators, Demagogues, and the Coming Dark Ages. He

appeared on this show, talking about both of those. Those are great episodes that are in the show

notes, links to them. He is also an ardent defender of Israel. We get into that a bit.

And he's also a self-described free speech absolutist who is disgusted by calls to restrict expression, whether on or off campus.

He says that instead of clamping down on speech, we should be arguing more openly and publicly, even, maybe especially when it's deeply uncomfortable, as it was when he raised from the stage novelist Alice Walker's anti-Semitic

views during a literary conference at which they were both speaking.

We talk about that.

It's a fascinating story.

Here is the reason interview with Jamie Kirchuk.

All right. Thanks for coming out. This is part of Reason's Little Singer series of Salons. And our guest

tonight is James Kirchick, the author most recently of the book, Secret City, The Hidden History of Gay

Washington.

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