WTH is Happening With Campus Protests This Fall? FIRE’s Greg Lukianoff on the Threats to Free Speech
What the Hell Is Going On
AEI Podcasts
4.4 • 633 Ratings
🗓️ 19 September 2024
⏱️ 53 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Free speech is under attack on America’s college campuses. 2023 was already set to be the worst year for de-platforming – speakers being canceled or shut down because of their views – even before October 7 unleashed waves of antisemitic protests that worked to silence anyone attempting to support the Jewish state. Absent serious reform that protects all voices in our academic institutions, this school year will blow last year out of the water. What can schools do to protect free speech on campus? How are students taking matters into their own hands by rejecting self-censorship? And what are the best and worst schools for freedom of speech?
Greg Lukianoff is an attorney, New York Times best-selling author, and the President and CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). He is a regular author on free speech issues and was executive producer of the documentaries Can We Take a Joke? (2015) and Mighty Ira: A Civil Liberties Story (2020). Lukianoff earned his undergraduate degree from American University and his law degree from Stanford.
Read the transcript here.
Read FIRE’s 2025 College Free Speech Rankings here.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This podcast is brought to you by the American Enterprise Institute. |
| 0:03.0 | If you like what you hear, please subscribe, rate, review, and share. Thanks for listening. Here's our show. What the hell's going on? What the hell is going on? What the hell is going on? I don't know what the hell he's talking about. You don't have to know what the hell is on it. What hell's the matter with these guys? We don't know what's going on. What hell's going on? |
| 0:01.1 | Who in God's name knows what it's all about. |
| 0:29.2 | Hi, I'm Danielle Pletka. |
| 0:30.8 | And I'm Mark Tieson. |
| 0:31.8 | Welcome to our podcast. |
| 0:33.1 | What the hell is going on? |
| 0:35.9 | Mark, what the hell is going on? What the hell is going on is students, what the hell is going on? |
| 0:37.8 | What the hell is going on is students are back on campus after a summer off following the |
| 0:43.2 | tumultuous spring of protests and all the rest of it. |
| 0:47.0 | The Hamas spring? |
| 0:48.4 | Yeah, the Hamas spring, exactly, instead of the Arab Spring, the Terror Spring. |
| 0:52.7 | And they are walking into a hail of gunfire, not literally, but figuratively, in terms of the free speech climate on college campuses. |
| 1:01.7 | We've got Greg Lukianov here, who joining us today, who has just released his new survey of students and the free speech atmosphere on college campuses, his rankings of universities |
| 1:13.3 | are who's good, who's bad. And last year was one of the worst years for deplatforming of speakers. |
| 1:19.7 | It's really the status of free speech on college campuses is an absolute disaster right now. |
| 1:25.3 | So we have a great conversation with Greg, and I don't want to, and I don't want to bogart that. But what I really want to talk about is something that |
| 1:31.3 | that I brought up at the end, which strikes me forcibly almost every day. I genuinely believe that |
| 1:41.1 | the vast mass of Americans under 40 years old don't actually understand what the |
| 1:48.0 | First Amendment is and what free speech is. And, you know, Greg Lukianoff, who's the president |
| 1:54.5 | of the, of fire, that does these rankings, the foundation for individual rights and expression, |
| 2:00.1 | I think he agrees. Free speech is |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from AEI Podcasts, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of AEI Podcasts and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.