‘So to Speak’ podcast transcript: Super Bowl free speech fumble

Note: This is an unedited rush transcript. Please check any quotations against the audio recording.

Nico Perrino: Welcome back to So To Speak, the free speech podcast where every other week, we take an uncensored look at the world of free expression through personal stories and candid conversations. I am, always, your host, Nico Perrino, joined by my two colleagues, Aaron Terr, and Will Creeley. They’ve been on the show before, welcome back, gentlemen.

Will Creeley: It is a pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Nico Perrino: So, were you the director of public advocacy last time you were on the show, Aaron?

Aaron Terr: Yeah, I think I was.

Nico Perrino: Yeah, I think you just were, because I think we did briefly talk about the role that public advocacy now plays within FIRE, which is sort of non-litigation advocacy related to FIRE’s off campus mission. You’ve been doing a lot of really good work on that front here. And Will, of course, the legal director. Let’s jump right in. This weekend is the Super Bowl, and there was an interesting case that came across our desks in recent weeks involving Super Bowl clean zones. Have you guys heard of this before?

Will Creeley: I have now. Nothing surprises me with the NFL. The NFL’s like the ultimate corporate be a muffs, and this is, I think, Exhibit A of what that means for local municipalities.

Nico Perrino: Well, they want total control over kind of their brand and the experience. So, what was happening here in Phoenix, Arizona –where the Super Bowl is set to take place this weekend – was the city counsel passed a resolution establishing a “clean zone” that requires property owners to apply for a permit to display temporary signage, which the city defines as “anything that is not physically built into your business,” such as posters, flyers, banners, pennants, flags, window paintings, and even balloons.

Jordan Howell, who wrote the article on our website about this said, “Sorry, parents, but the decorations for your kid’s birthday party will now need the approval of the NFL, and the Arizona Super Bowl Host Committee.” And this is a pretty restrictive policy. It was in place from January 15th through February 19th – or that’s what the regulation stated – and occupied a nearly two square mile zone in downtown Phoenix.

Now there was a lawsuit brought by the Goldwater Institute in Arizona challenging this, and the judge, a trial judge down there in Arizona, issued – what was it? – a restraining order saying that Phoenix had 48 hours to comply with the court order? I mean, what’s wrong with this from a constitutional standpoint?

Will Creeley: Where do we start? I’m a Buffalo Bills season ticket holder, lifelong football fan, football apologist in some circles, right? I will make no bones about it, I love the game. Hell, I even coach my son in second grade flag football with officially licensed NFL shirts. But there is nothing cool about this, and I will not make any apologies for the league in this instance. I mean, it’s just gross. Right down from the phrasing, right? This “clean zone”? I mean, blugh.

Aaron Terr: Yeah, I was thinking that -

Nico Perrino: I thought it was gonna be no drugs or alcohol in the zone. But apparently, no first amendment in it.

Will Creeley: Clean zone. I mean, the additive [inaudible] [00:03:11] gets tossed around to an alarming degree in our line of work, but, man, clean zone, as if speech unregulated by this gigantic corporate enterprise is dirty. And if I really wanted to level with the audience here, this is not gonna surprise anybody but, the reason this is happening is so they can sell advertising, right?

Nico Perrino: Yeah.

Will Creeley: I mean, I don't know, for years you’ve heard jokes that every local business right around this time of year can’t talk about come get your wings, or come down to the ACME supermarket to get your hoagie platter for the Super Bowl. You gotta say “the big game”. And this is the ultimate instance of the NFL saying, “We’re bigger than you, local government. You’re gonna sign away your citizen’s free speech rights if we’re gonna come bring our party to your town.”

Nico Perrino: And you’re gonna put us on the board to determine whether –

Will Creeley: That’s right.

Nico Perrino: – a private business owner can put up a balloon or a sign in their private business, which is just –

Aaron Terr: And one of the other problems with it is that there are no standards to kinda guide those decisions about when you ask for permission from the NFL, “Can I put up this sign?” it is kinda just there to have full discretion to decide, apparently, whether to accept or reject that request.

Nico Perrino: Is this something that’s happened before?

Aaron Terr: Yeah. I think there was a clean zone in Tampa last year.

Will Creeley: Yeah, I’m 100% sure they didn’t just think of this. Philly, where we’re sitting now, had the draft a couple years ago – the NFL draft – on Museum Parkway down by the art museum, and they locked it down. And I’m sure that was a little bit different, but it is a kind of super governmental entity, right? It’s bigger than government, it’s bigger than damn near anything. It’s the NFL coming to town, it’s like a big corporate spaceship comes in and zaps all your local leaders’ brains, and removes all their rules and laws, and says, “Now hear this, clean zone.”

Nico Perrino: Well, I’m trying to imagine how this all goes down, right? You’re a city, and you’re trying to pitch the NFL to bring the Super Bowl to your city, to your town, right, because it has a lot of economic benefit for the community.

Will Creeley: In theory.

Nico Perrino: And one of the things you pitch is, “Hey,” essentially, “We’ll remove all of our citizens’ first amendment rights within a two square mile perimeter for a month surrounding the Super Bowl if you come here. And to the extent any of them wanna advertise, we’ll put you on the committee that will determine whether those advertisements, or that signage, gets approved.” So, it’s an incentive to the Super Bowl to come to that city, right? Does the city, now that the law has been struck down, owe anything to the NFL? Right?

Presumably, the NFL signs a promotional agreement with Bud Light, right? And says, “You’re gonna have exclusive marketing permission within this two square mile zone. Joe’s Tavern on the corner, to hell with them, they’re not gonna be able to advertise Miller Lite.”

Will Creeley: Yeah, I bet you it’s a field day. The real winners in all this, besides the citizens in Joe’s Tavern, like you’re saying, are probably the lawyers, right? Because they’re also gonna think, “Wait a second, we get to delve into the nooks and crannies of this contract to figure out exactly who’s on the hook for what.”

It reminded me a little bit – and this is a bad comparison for the NFL and for Phoenix – but it reminded me a little bit of the world cup in Qatar, where at the last minute, if I’m not mistaken, if I’m remembering correctly, the Qatar officials were like, “Wait a second, you know what, we said you were gonna have these drinking stations here and here, and Budweiser, we know you paid hundreds of millions to secure that access, but now that we think about it, nah, we’re gonna –

Nico Perrino: I remember that story.

Will Creeley: – we’re gonna scrap that. You can’t actually drink there.” And there are these hilarious stories about the few hotels that were serving foreigners that were allowing people to drink there, and English fans getting there like, two hours before the game, and trying to drink as many beers as they could in two hours.

But I mean, that’s kinda what we’re talking about here, in terms of instead of the Qatari government, now we’re talking about the NFL. We are going to set the terms of engagement here. And, yeah, I bet you it’s a nice little mess, just like it probably was for Budweiser, and Qatar, and FIFA when Qatar changed its mind about drinking. But to hell with all that, that’s their problem.

Nico Perrino: Yeah, right, yeah.

Will Creeley: From where I’m sitting, great work Goldwater Institute. A credit to them.

Aaron Terr: Because I don’t think a legal challenge had been brought to one of these –

Nico Perrino: It blows my mind. I wish we woulda had this case.

Will Creeley: No kidding.

Nico Perrino: We mighta known about it first if the Super Bowl was in Philadelphia.

Will Creeley: That’s a serious thing actually – woah – by the way.

Nico Perrino: We almost lost will.

Will Creeley: Civil liberties – FOMO, fear of missing out – I get that all the time, and I know you folks do, too, right? You see an awesome case, and then you see somebody else bringing it. And all I can do is tip my hat, and say, “Damn, I wish that was me.”

Nico Perrino: We talked about one this morning, right? Involving a bakery, I forget where –

Will Creeley: Oh, yeah, the [inaudible] [00:08:03] case.

Nico Perrino: Yeah. The Institute for Justice had a case involving a bakery – I forget where, it’s some local community somewhere – and they hired school children, I believe, or they allowed for school children to paint a mural on the bakery, or next to the bakery –

Will Creeley: Call the cops.

Nico Perrino: They didn’t know what the mural was gonna be, but the mural ended up being something that included bagels in it, right?

Aaron Terr: Yeah, it was related to baked goods in some way, yeah.

Nico Perrino: And the city said because the mural had something to do thematically with the business, it needed prior city approval before it could be put up. So, this is like a classic IJ case. One of our colleagues, Alicia, was like, “If ChatGPT could’ve written – “ to come up with an IJ case, this would’ve been it.

Will Creeley: The perfect Institute for Justice case, yeah. And that’s one I’m –

Nico Perrino: Faulting commercial speech, which is their bread and butter.

Will Creeley: Commercial speech – yep, stupid local rules. Yeah, that was a perfect one. I also think –

Nico Perrino: So, the city filed a lawsuit on it, and I think the ordinance is on hold pending the outcome of the lawsuit.

Will Creeley: Yeah, yeah. And I think of the one from last summer with the Delaware woman who had just beaten cancer and got the vanity plate FKCancer – Fuck Cancer, right? And she’s riding it around, and she’s starting conversations. As I recall, people would come up to her crying, saying, “I saw your license plate, it really means a lot to me,” and that she would trade stories. It’s a beautify thing, right? This moment of triumphant resilience in the face of a lethal disease.

And then what, six to nine months later, all of a sudden, Delaware says, “Yeah, we’re gonna claw that back. We need that license plate back, it’s offensive.” And I was like, “This is a perfect case. I wanted that case so badly.” And ACLU of Delaware snagged it. So, again –

Nico Perrino: Those cases aren’t unique, though. Haven’t those kind of vanity license plate cases gone up to the Supreme Court?

Will Creeley: Well –

Nico Perrino: Or a couple appellate courts.

Will Creeley: The courts have weighted on the famous license plate case before the Supreme Court is Maynard v. Wooley, right? Live Free or Die on the New Hampshire license plate. But our colleague, Em [inaudible] [00:10:02], just wrote an amicus brief in a license plate case, which is on our website, filed it within the last two months. I know, it’s been a blizzard of amicus briefs lately, but that’s been what –

Nico Perrino: We have a new amicus attorney, right? It has been –

Will Creeley: We have a amicus attorney, we probably need three of them. Abby Smith, who’s done great work, joining us from Beckett, yeah. Anyway, but this is nuts, so kudos to Goldwater, great result, boo to the NFL, get your act together, you’re not bigger than –

Nico Perrino: Sometimes I kinda like the new rules or regulations they put in place, or take away, in cities surrounding the Super Bowl. I was going to Indiana University during one of the Super Bowls. All I know is the Super Bowl happened to align around my birthday, so we went up to Indianapolis, and they had removed their open container law.

Will Creeley: Ah, there you go.

Nico Perrino: So, you were able to walk around downtown, and it was this very festive environment, and they never brought it back. I think there are very few cities now that have done away with their open container regulations. New Orleans is one of them –

Aaron Terr: New Orleans, I was gonna say, yeah.

Nico Perrino: And Indianapolis is another one with like, bizzare –

Will Creeley: Let me see, would I trade open container regulations for first amendment rights for private businesses?

Nico Perrino: You know – it’s not an either-or scenario.

Will Creeley: You can do both, you can do both, yeah.

Aaron Terr: You can drink in the clean zone.

Will Creeley: There you go, drink in the clean zone. I’m gonna start using that around my house. I’m gonna say, “Sorry, kids, I’m instituting a clean zone here.”

Aaron Terr: I’m worried that college and universities are gonna pick up on that phrase. It’s almost like the opposite of a free speech zone.

Will Creeley: It is so gross.

Aaron Terr: I mean, the free speech zone, and then you have the clean zone, where you can’t –

Will Creeley: Ugly euphemisms. Free speech zone, and then clean zone, also gross.

Nico Perrino: Since we’re in Philadelphia, it might be worth asking. When Philadelphia wins championships or goes to Super Bowls, the city seems to come out in force. Broad Street seems to be a location right in the center of the city for those who aren’t in Philadelphia, leading right to City Hall. And citizens like the climb lampposts, bus shelters. I’m assuming this sort of –

Aaron Terr: Oh yeah, did you see the video of the people who fell through a bus shelter?

Nico Perrino: I saw that, yeah. There’s a whole genre of TikTok and Instagram reels that demonstrate the rockiness of Philadelphia celebrations, but not protected speech, I’m assuming, too.

Will Creeley: Yeah, once you go up the pole, you’re probably crossing a line there. There’s a great article, and you should put it in the show notes –

Nico Perrino: I was gonna ask you about this –

Will Creeley: Sean Hagan of South Philly, legendary article. Each paragraph in this Philadelphia Inquirer story is more Philadelphia then the next, and I say that with the absolute utmost respect. The headline is “Philly Pole Climber Who Caught Shotgunned Beers.” So, he’s up on top of a pole, he’s catching beers that people are throwing to him – this is after the Phillies went to the World Series. And the headline is “Philly Pole Climber Who Caught Shotgunned Beers, ‘Not My First Rodeo’.”

He shows up to work the next day. It’s an all-time, classic article. It’s worth [inaudible] [00:12:51].

Nico Perrino: The quotes are just French kissed.

Will Creeley: They’re gold.

Nico Perrino: And it’s talking about him talking to his boss, or why he didn’t show up at work. I forget exactly what it is –

Will Creeley: No, he did show up at work, to his credit. He shows up, and he’s a little late, and his boss is like, “I knew that was you.” Anyways, so I will say, just for all my neighbors and friends, I’m a Bill’s fan, I will say good luck to the birds this weekend. Maybe by the time you’re hearing this, we’ll have more iconic Sean Hagan and Philadelphia celebration moments to enjoy on YouTube.

Nico Perrino: Why is it that none of my teams ever do well?

Will Creeley: Hey, buddy –

Nico Perrino: I know you notice as a Buffalo fan. I’m a Notre Dame fan, and they’ve never won a championship in my lifetime.

Aaron Terr: Well, you can always watch Rudy.

Nico Perrino: Yeah, right, I could relive the glory days.

Will Creeley: I tell my kids, who are now old enough to cry after the ends of seasons, I say, “Losing builds character, and we are building Taj Mahals.”

Nico Perrino: Yes, right.

Aaron Terr: That’s it.

Will Creeley: All right, quick, let’s talk about something else before I get teared up here.

Nico Perrino: Yeah, let’s talk about Chicago, my hometown, where we have Mayor Lori Lightfoot, her running for reelection in that city, and –

Will Creeley: There’s a lot of primary challengers. I’m really interested in [inaudible - crosstalk] [00:13:58].

Nico Perrino: Really?

Will Creeley: Yeah.

Nico Perrino: I’m not familiar with the local politics anymore.

Will Creeley: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s interesting.

Aaron Terr: Well, no wonder this happened then.

Will Creeley: Yeah, no, I mean, that’s right. So, what did happen, Aaron? You wanna give us the facts here?

Aaron Terr: Yeah, so I think it was a staffer on –

Nico Perrino: Campaign staffer, yeah.

Aaron Terr: – on Lori Lightfoot’s campaign that sent an email to Chicago public schools and was encouraging teachers in the schools to offer their students extra credit to essentially volunteer to help Lightfoot’s reelection campaign.

Nico Perrino: No bueno? No bueno.

Will Creeley: Somebody shoulda said something. No, this is no good.

Aaron Terr: I don’t think you have to be a first amendment scholar or – I mean, the average person can look at this and see that it’s at least inappropriate.

Nico Perrino: Well, let me ask you about this. Let me steelman this, right? Because I know that you can get course credit – in college I remember you could, I don’t know about high school – for participating in campaigns. But it’s usually something that’s done of your own volition, your own choice, to the extent you’re presented with the opportunity. It’s just like kind of on a jobs board, people put it on there.

But there seems to be some sort of inappropriateness when you have the mayor, who is the top elected official in Chicago, telling teachers, her employees, to encourage their students to volunteer for her election campaign for course credit.

Will Creeley: And that’s the part, right? It’s not just any campaign. It’s not just “Go get involved in the Democratic process. Pick a campaign, we’ll give you some extra credit. Go get a civic education by knocking on doors.” No, no, it’s “You’re gonna knock on doors for my campaign.” What if you knock on the doors of our competitors, are you gonna get extra credit? No.

Aaron Terr: You get an F.

Will Creeley: That’s the problem, right? You’re commandeering students to engage in the political process in support of a particular candidate, or a particular message, and that’s a big, big, compelled speech violation. And we’ve seen that at FIRE. This has come up over the years. We’ve seen instances like this where we’ve had professors – I’m thinking of a case that is one of the earliest FIRE cases that I was around for –

Nico Perrino: The Citrus College case?

Will Creeley: The –

Aaron Terr: Or Rhode Island?

Will Creeley: – Rhode Island case where a student is in a – I wanna say he’s a graduate student in a social work program?

Nico Perrino: Yup.

Will Creeley: And Bill Falkner – am I getting that right?

Nico Perrino: I’m looking at our article –

Aaron Terr: Yeah.

Nico Perrino: – about Lightfoot here. We don’t actually name the student in –

Will Creeley: Yeah.

Nico Perrino: – that Rhode Island College case, but yeah.

Will Creeley: The case is still going on. And this is back in, like, 2006.

Nico Perrino: David French was still the president of FIRE.

Will Creeley: I mean, holy smokes, this is –

Nico Perrino: Greg was the legal broker.

Will Creeley: – an ancient case. Yeah. And so, it’s still working its way through the Rhode Island Supreme Court system. But he was required to engage in a group product, I think, for his graduate class in social work, where he had to lobby on behalf of a particular topic. And he proposed a conservative topic – he’s a conservative – and his professor said, “No, you can’t do this. You’re gonna have to figure out something else to lobby in support of.” And he’s like, “What are you talking about?” So, the professor was dictating the terms of his public engagement beyond class. It’s one thing if it’s a Socratic exercise thing.

I remember one of the best classes I ever had was a guy, a former Bush administration official, NYU undergrad public policy class. A hard class, good class. And he just assigned everybody topics. “You’re gonna make the argument in support of…” And me, I was privatizing social security. I know more about social security to this day than I would have had I not had to argue what was an unfamiliar position to me at the time. And steelmanning your arguments, getting [inaudible] [00:17:31] exercise within the walls of the classroom.

But as soon as you say, “And now you’re gonna go make that argument, and sign your name to it, and send it to your elected official.” Or, “You’re gonna go to the State House here in Rhode Island and lobby in support of this thing.” I mean, no, that is –

Nico Perrino: Yeah, it’s not just an academic exercise at this point.

Will Creeley: Right, right. That’s something totally different.

Nico Perrino: Yeah, I remember I had to argue one side or the other of the Export-Import Bank. Talk about –

Aaron Terr: There you go, right.

Nico Perrino: And I didn’t know what side I was gonna have to argue on before I arrived in class that day. So, you had to research both sides, and be prepared to make the case. And that can be a very good academic exercise, as you talk about. But it is different if I had to actually then take it the next level and write a legislature advocating for the position that I was assigned for that day regarding the Export-Import Bank. And that essentially what happened here. I mean, actually, it’s what happened even earlier than that.

One of FIRE’s first, first cases during the U.S. invasion of Iraq, a professor at Citrus College in California compelled undergraduate students to write anti-war letters to former president George W. Bush and penalized those who refused them.

Will Creeley: They can’t do that.

Nico Perrino: To the college’s credit, we wrote them a letter, and they responded swiftly to say yeah, the professor can’t do that, we’re sorry for that. But this Rhode Island case, again, David French – now a New York Times columnist, former president of FIRE –

Will Creeley: Yeah, congrats to David French, that’s right.

Nico Perrino: Just had his first column in the New York Times –

Will Creeley: In which he name checked us, thank you again.

Nico Perrino: Yes, he did. Yes, in a very kind of powerful and meaty piece, too.

Will Creeley: It really was. Worth reading.

Nico Perrino: Where he talks a little bit about some of his experience here at FIRE, and how it relates to kind of policing in a separate conversation. But anyway, that Rhode Island case that he was involved with didn’t make its way up to the Rhode Island Supreme Court until 2019, and it’s still in active litigation. We’re talking about a case – what 2006? My math’s not good –

Aaron Terr: Seventeen years?

Will Creeley: Yeah, I joined FIRE August 2006, and that one is still cranking. I mean, it’s nuts.

Nico Perrino: For us non-lawyers here, why would it take so long?

Will Creeley: Let me give a shout to Tom Dickinson and Bill Felkner’s legal team. That one has just been bounced up and down. It’s slow, it’s before the court, so I’ll just leave it there. But the process is winding and wending its way through, and it’s…

Aaron Terr: I don’t know exactly what the issues were in this case that had it going up and down, but often in lawsuits, one party will take appeal from adverse rulings at the trial court level – like before the case is done, before there’s been a final order in judgement sometimes – and that can go up to the intermediate appellate court. And then the losing party, that level might appeal to the Supreme Court, and then the Supreme Court makes a decision that says, “Okay.” And then they reverse the decision and maybe send it all the way down to the trial court to continue the case now that that issue’s been resolved. And then maybe another issue comes up –

Nico Perrino: So, you’re just playing whack-a-mole with different issues that [inaudible - crosstalk] [00:20:31].

Aaron Terr: Yeah, so that’s why generally, you actually can’t appeal to the next appellate court from the trial court level until there’s been a final order of judgement, that way you can just deal with all the issue that have come up through the course of the case. But there are sometimes exceptions where you can appeal – it’s called an interlocutory order – that you can appeal immediately. So, I don't know if that’s what’s going on here, but there’s a million different reasons why a case can take decades to resolve it.

Will Creeley: I could tell you all about it, but it would take 16 years.

Nico Perrino: Well, that’s why when you’re a public interest law firm, you kinda need to build a war chest, because some of these cases can last forever, and be very, very expensive. It’d be interesting to see at the outcome of this case – if Phil, hopefully, wins – what the attorney’s fees are.

Will Creeley: Yeah, it’d be very interesting. Just the length of the legal process reminds me of FIRE’s classic case in support of Hayden Barnes.

Nico Perrino: Valdosta State.

Will Creeley: Yeah, Valdosta State University where he’s –

Nico Perrino: In Georgia.

Will Creeley: – of Georgia. So, Hayden gets expelled – administratively withdrawn, as they put it – and by the time –

Nico Perrino: Talk about an [inaudible] [00:21:37].

Will Creeley: So, he’s an undergrad – I think he’s a sophomore – he gets kicked out. By the time the case is done, two trips up to the 11 circuit, he has not only re-enrolled somewhere else, completed his undergraduate degree, he’s also graduated from law school, so, it took a while. But yeah, thinking of public interest, civil liberties, fear of missing out, I feel it a little bit here, too, so hat tip to the Illinois chapter of the ACLU, which blew the whistle here. And it looks like the mayor has backtracked, right?

Nico Perrino: Yeah, backtracked really quickly. I mean, the Chicago public school teachers also made hay out of this.

Will Creeley: Right.

Nico Perrino: Said it was inappropriate as well. So –

Will Creeley: Good.

Nico Perrino: – Lori Lightfoot kind of got it from all sides.

Will Creeley: Good, as well the mayor should. The mayor should know better. And let that be a lesson to all elected officials. Boy, we got two municipalities behaving badly, right?

Nico Perrino: Hold me, let me look at my notes. Do I have anything else –

Will Creeley: Yeah, what else do you got?

Nico Perrino: – that we should cover? No, I don't know that we have any more municipalities.

Will Creeley: Tune in next time, I’m sure we’ll have more.

Nico Perrino: But we do have Indiegogo, Kickstarter, and Crowdfunder. Aaron, you wrote a lengthy piece for FIRE’s website called “Indie-no-go.” Some of our headlines are great. The Super Bowl one is “FREE SPEECH FUMBLE: Phoenix ordinance restricting signs during Super Bowl is offsides on the First Amendment.” Aaron’s is “Indie No Go: Popular crowdfunding sites cancel fundraisers for comic books about gender identity and U.S-Mexico border.”

So, let me just lay this out here. You have Mike Baron and Richard Bonk, who wanted to publish a new graphic novel called Private American, which was about these vigilante superheroes taking on drug cartels on the U.S.-Mexican border, is that correct?

Aaron Terr: Yeah, the main character is a Cuban American, ex-Green Beret, and something happened to him or his family, some tragedy at the hands of drug cartels, so he becomes this vigilante justice seeker at the U.S. border fighting drug cartels –

Nico Perrino: Human traffickers.

Aaron Terr: Human traffickers, terrorists, other bad actors. He’s sorta supposed to be a mashup of the Punisher, who Mike Barron wrote for that comic book in the past, and Captain America.

Nico Perrino: Supposed to be because this was just an idea when it was up on the crowdfunding site, right?

Aaron Terr: Right, right.

Nico Perrino: They hadn’t actually written the comic book yet. And there was another gentleman whose name – his last name’s Braley –

Aaron Terr: Chris Braley.

Nico Perrino: Chris Braley. But he didn’t create the comic book, right? He was someone who just helped with the fundraising process?

Aaron Terr: That’s right, that’s right, yeah.

Nico Perrino: So, he set up a Kickstarter campaign to raise $250.00. They ended up raising $2,500.00 – ten times more than they initially set out – before Kickstarter suddenly suspended the campaign. Right, Aaron?

Aaron Terr: Right. So, they had a few different campaigns. They had Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and Crowdfunder. I think the first campaign was on Indiegogo, and what happened with Indiegogo is they discovered that the campaign had been restricted so that it wouldn’t show up in search results on Indiegogo’s site, or on –

Nico Perrino: Oh, shadow banning.

Aaron Terr: Yeah. A form of shadow banning.

Nico Perrino: Or as Twitter like to term it, visibility filtering.

Aaron Terr: Right.

[Crosstalk]

Nico Perrino: Orwellian term, right?

Aaron Terr: Yeah. The euphemisms always have more syllables, too. I think George Carlin had a whole bit about that. How shell shock went to battle fatigue, to post traumatic stress disorder.

Nico Perrino: Yeah.

Aaron Terr: But anyway, yeah. So, Indiegogo shadow banned the campaign, and then at some point, they had a private American-dedicated Twitter account. That was suspended for reasons unknown by Twitter. So, those were kinda the first bumps in the road.

Nico Perrino: So, when you shadow ban it, you can only find the campaign with a direct link.

Aaron Terr: You need the actual URL.

Nico Perrino: Which you can’t share anymore on Twitter.

Aaron Terr: Exactly, yeah, yeah. And that’s kinda one of the points that I tried to make in the article, is when you have things happening on all these different fronts, that maybe any particular one in isolation might not be the biggest deal, but the cumulative effect of all of it can have a real impact.

Nico Perrino: These platforms tend to follow each other when someone gets deplatformed.

Aaron Terr: Right, right. So, then they kinda focused on the Kickstarter and the Crowdfunder campaigns. But then on the online publication The Daily Kos, someone wrote this article that was slamming Private American. They called it “a diatribe of racist propaganda,” and “stochastic terrorism disguised as a funny book”. And bear in mind, like you mentioned before, it hadn’t been released yet, so this is all just based on the synopsis on the Kickstarter page. And the author of that article encouraged their readers to express displeasure with Kickstarter.

Nico Perrino: Yeah, [inaudible] [00:26:35] functionally, and then it looks like in the comment section, some actually said, “Yeah, I reached out.”

Aaron Terr: Yeah, yeah. And so, some people did that. And then, literally, I think the next –

Nico Perrino: The next day, yeah.

Aaron Terr: – the next day, Kickstarter suspended the campaign, refunded all the money that Braley and Baron had already raised back to the donors, the backers of the campaign. No route for appeal, that was just it. And then I think it was just a few days after that that Crowdfunder followed suit and suspended the campaign.

Nico Perrino: Kickstarter is free to do this, right?

Aaron Terr: Yes.

Nico Perrino: It’s a private company. But you argue in the piece that it shouldn’t, and to the extent it articulates sort of principles or values for their association that they should live up to that. You write in here that Kickstarter’s charter says it will always support, serve, and champion artists and creators. Their website also says, “We don’t want art world elites and entertainment executives to define our culture; we want creative people, even those who’ve never made anything before to take the wheel. We help creators connect directly with their communities, putting power where it belongs.”

Aaron Terr: Right. They have all these lofty rhetoric on their websites about we’re toppling the culture gatekeepers, and we’re connecting our creators directly with their supporters, their communities. But then you’re kicking someone off your platform based on the content of their creative work.

Nico Perrino: Or just the outrage. Because these campaigns, in order to go up, they already need to be approved.

Aaron Terr: Oh yeah, that’s another point in mind, yeah.

Nico Perrino: So, Kickstarter reviewed and approved the project before it went live, then the Daily Kos article comes up, asks the readers to kind of form a mob that say, “Kickstarter, take this down.” Which they’re free to do, too, but you’d hope that some of these platforms that are committed to creativity and artistic expression would have a spine.

Aaron Terr: Yeah, yeah.

Nico Perrino: But, apparently not.

Aaron Terr: But, essentially, they’re just becoming a new type of gate keeper, whether it’s based on their dislike of the content of the Aaron Terr:, or whether it’s based on the public reaction, or angry internet mobs that want this art removed. Now you’re just a new entity that’s deciding what art is acceptable for people to consume, which is completely incompatible –

Nico Perrino: Becoming the new art world of latent entertainment executives and putting the power in Kickstarter not with the artist.

Will Creeley: Yeah, meet the new boss, [inaudible] [00:29:05] the old boss, that’s a really [inaudible] here, right? As you pointed out, Nico, it’s reviewed, approved. They have all these lofty promises, and then that goes out the window at even the slightest sign of controversy or trouble. Aaron comes to be director of public advocacy after a stint in our individual rights defense program – now our campus rights advocacy program – on the same way.

It reminds me a little bit of when we rate private schools. You make a lot of promises Harvard, Yale, whatever, Kickstarter, you’re free to do so. You could say we’re not gonna fund stuff featuring Cuban American guys taking on cartels that daily cost readers don’t like. You could have that permission there, but that’s not what you say. Have a spine, live up to your promises.

Nico Perrino: Well, some of these platforms are organized around specific missions, or values, or kind of ideas. I believe there are some crowdfunding sites out there dedicated to just kind of Christian initiatives. Just like there are expressive associations or companies focused on just dating apps for Christians, or Jews. You have those, but then you have platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo, which said they’re a platform for all artists, all creators, to connect with their communities to break down the gatekeepers, and then they go and do this.

And the rules are vague, you ask them why they’re doing it, they can’t really explain, they just kick you over to a policy that essentially grants them full discretion to determine what content can and cannot exist on their platform. And then you raise $2,500.00 – in one case of another artist who was crowdfunding for a comic book actually took their word at it. They raised $1,000.00, I believe, this is –

Will Creeley: Fifteen hundred. Nina Paley.

Nico Perrino: Nina Paley – this is Agents of H.A.G. – and actually put in an order to the printer before their fundraiser was cancelled and the money returned to the donors. Could you tell us about Nina Paley and her comic book?

Aaron Terr: Yeah, so Nina Paley is a comic book artist and writer, and she’s a self-described gender-critical, radical, feminist. So, there’s this disagreement among –

Nico Perrino: That’s a direct quote, too.

Aaron Terr: Yeah, yeah.

Nico Perrino: You remember it.

Aaron Terr: So, there’s this disagreement among feminists about transgender issues, and the relationship of gender identity and sex, and what the definition of a man and a woman is. And so, she writes this comic book, Agents of H.A.G., trying to get it self-published, and the main characters are Menopausal Woman and Sidekick – those are their actual names. And so, I think it’s supposed to be kinda representative of an older generation of feminist that she comes from.

Will Creeley: And the bad guy is named Ban Hammer –

Aaron Terr: Ban Hammer, right.

Will Creeley: – so it’s right squarely – I mean it’s –

Nico Perrino: It’s about how effectively gender-critical, radical feminist like Nina are being banned from all these different platforms. Again, this hasn’t actually been written yet, this is just a synopsis.

Aaron Terr: Yeah, a synopsis and a few panels that are featured on the fundraising page. So, yeah, obviously again, provocative, controversial material. And she had surpassed her fundraising goal, like you said, placed an order with the printer, and then Indiegogo, without any advance warning, just cancelled the campaign.

These companies, they’ll appeal to something in their terms of service about content that shows intolerance towards marginalized groups, something along those lines, or discrimination against marginalized groups, and that’s kinda the provision that they rely on. But again, Indiegogo kinda has those same commitments as Kickstarter, to create a freedom, to supporting artists, and it’s hard to reconcile.

Nico Perrino: Yeah. I mean, how does FIRE think about these sort of private institutions? This seems like an institution Kickstarter, Indiegogo, that it’s different in kind from, say, a payment processor. You wrote a little bit about payment processors, Aaron, or Cloudflare, which is kind of protects websites against denial-of-service attacks, or internet service providers.

Aaron Terr: Yeah, we’ve talked a lot about this, about this side, because there is always a tension. When you have private organizations, there’s this tension where you have on one side, the freedom of association that private businesses and organizations generally have, so they’re generally free to associate or disassociate with other people based on their views, based on their speech.

For instance, I think most people intuitively understand that there’s something different about for instance, Planned Parenthood firing an employee because they’re engaging in pro-life advocacy versus Bank of America denying service to a customer because they engage in pro-life advocacy, and the idea there is that some organizations, institutions, they kind of have an expressive mission themselves.

And so, if you have employees or members that are hostile to that expressive mission, and have views that are contrary to it, and that can undermine the very kind of purpose of the organization, right?

Nico Perrino: Or you’re a Jewish dating website and you have a bunch of Christians on it, right? You can say, “Hey –

Aaron Terr: Or Neo-Nazis, right?

Nico Perrino: Yeah, right, yeah.

Aaron Terr: Yeah, exactly. Whereas, Bank of America, or other kind of run-of-the-mill companies that just provide services to the general public, that doesn’t necessarily have that same concern, or the expressive component isn’t as strong for those types of businesses and organizations.

And there’s a real concern, I think, that if we wanna preserve not just a strong first amendment, but a culture of free speech – if many of these organizations and businesses get into this game of policing their users or their customers’ speech, then that’s gonna be very bad for our culture of free expression because it’s gonna create a huge chilling effect, especially if you’re hitting people in their pocketbook.

Nico Perrino: Particularly the closer they are to a public accommodation. They provide a service. You have a great line in your article here, Aaron, which talks about kind of the compounding effects of all these different institutions who are extensively non-ideological banning.

Just trying to publish a book, for example, potentially exposes you to multiple censorship choke points that can limit your access to important resources. Crowdfunding sites to raise funds for your project, social media platforms to promote it, online payment providers to receive your payments or donations, and online marketplaces to sell the book. So, it functionally excludes you from kind of the marketplace.

Aaron Terr: Right, and if all those different elements, or all those different points in the chain are all kind of converging around tolerance of the same kind of set of viewpoints, or forbidden views and speech, then that has kind of a multiplier effect.

Will Creeley: Yeah, it’s kind of like a turnkey, cultural authoritarianism. If the political wind blows a certain way, and enough pressure can be brought to bear, and those chokepoints collapse upon each other, like we saw in the Private American instance, where one of them follows the other, and they all kind of give each other permission, or a cover, to choke down on expression that offends a majority, or even just a vocal minority of folks, yeah, then you’re denied access, and that’s a real problem for our free speech culture.

So, what we gotta do, I think, is educate folks to say yeah, they’re getting payments on PayPal, or it’s listed on Indiegogo, but that first of all doesn’t mean that Indiegogo itself is “supporting or endorsing” the speech. Just like when we say at a private university, the fact that you’ve got a registered student group that doesn’t mesh with the university’s preferred line on a given political controversy doesn’t mean that they’re talking for the university.

That’s our one, and second of all, you gotta remind people that the answer to speech you disagree with is not to slap duct tape over somebody’s mouth, but let them say it, and then critique it, right? Let Agents of H.A.G. or Private American be published and printed, and then write your own comic book saying why you don’t like it, right? That’s what we wanna get to.

Nico Perrino: Well, there are two –

Aaron Terr: Yeah, write your critical review –

Will Creeley: Write your critical review. Say this is whatever, you don’t like it, but –

Nico Perrino: Well, there are two interesting points there to kinda pull out from what you’re talking about, Will, one of which is as soon as you take a position, you’re an institution that’s dedicated to one mission, you take a position on a political or ideological battle happening. The expectation is, from activists on all sides of issues, is that you’ll continue to do that sort of thing. And then if in the future on an issue you’re silent on it, that’s also a statement.

Will Creeley: You’ve either reneged on your commitment, or you didn’t hold it. Or because we now have these very homogeneous political blocks where you’re either red America, blue America, and it’s not like, “Oh, I support this idea from the left, and this idea from the right.” You don’t have this heterodox mixing, now we’re all sorted into these camps. So, if you support one thing, well then, you probably support the other thing. And if you don’t, what’s wrong with you, right?

Nico Perrino: Yeah.

Will Creeley: So, yeah, that’s –

Nico Perrino: I was reading –

Aaron Terr: [Inaudible - crosstalk] [00:38:37].

Will Creeley: Right.

Aaron Terr: Yeah.

Nico Perrino: I was reading an interesting analysis from Mike Allen, who writes the Axios AM newsletter about how corporations in 2020 and early 2021 were taking a lot of public stand on political and ideological issues, but have been doing that less so lately, and it’s kind of confusing their customers in a certain sense, or even their employees. A lot of their communication around these issues is now happening internally. Why are they doing that? Well, 1.) You have legislatures and politicians going after them for doing so, 2.) You’re also just alienating your customers –

Aaron Terr: How political do you want your bank to be?

Nico Perrino: Yeah, or Disney, right? This non-political entity for so long is now kind of reviled in certain respects by certain segments of the political right, because of the stance it took on some of DeSantis’ legislation. Now, corporations have taken stances on legislation all the time, but it seems like they’re doing it a little bit more often than they used to.

On thing I will say just to the extent that any of these corporations such as Netflix, or Amazon kind of host content is, when the calls for censure should come, if you take a strong stance early that you’re not going to censure, the demands go away.

Aaron Terr: Yeah.

Nico Perrino: Right? Ever since Ted Sarandos came out and said, “No, we’re not gonna take down Chappelle, that just ended that controversy. And Amazon saying they’re not gonna take down this or that book, no one – activists don’t try that tactic anymore.

Aaron Terr: Right, they’re looking for a crack in the armor. When you show vulnerability, and then they keep attacking.

Will Creeley: It’s really interesting, now that we’ve – what are we, six, seven months, eight months into the expansion? The lessons that are relevant from our time defending free speech on public or private campus, and particularly, here again, private campuses, right? For years, I would tell general councils, administrators, whomever, at conferences, have your commitment strategy before, have your precommitment to freedom of speech made clearly expressed in policy and statement in speech prior to the controversy.

Because it doesn’t matter if it’s MSNBC, or Fox bringing cameras to your campus. If you can say, “Look what I said before,” or “What’s on my T-shirt will answer all of your questions. We support free speech.” If you can do that, if you can be like Odysseus, and tie yourself to the mast before you go past the Sirens, you’re gonna be in great shape.

But if you try to make it up as you go along in that moment, good luck and God bless, right? I would say the same thing to these corporate titans, whether it’s Indiegogo or Netflix, whomever. And, you’re right, Netflix is a good example here. Say it early and often, and then say, “This is our policy. You can keep talking, it’s not gonna change.” It’s a little bit like parenting, Nico –

Nico Perrino: Yeah, I know, right? I’m learning that.

Will Creeley: Here’s the goal, we’re gonna stick to it. You can talk a lot about it, and that’s fine, you got the right to do it. But, at the end of the day, this is still the rule. And the rule is either we support [inaudible] [00:41:25] even if you don’t agree with it, or we don’t. And once you say, “We’ll take one thing down,” then you’re –

Nico Perrino: The floodgates open, yeah.

Will Creeley: – then you’re in the void.

Nico Perrino: We’re in Philadelphia, so president of UArts, President Yager – I forget his first name – when Camille Paglia, sort of the feminist writer, scholar – she had controversial statements about me, too, back in 2017, ’18, ’19 –

Will Creeley: She was being Camille Paglia, right?

Nico Perrino: Yeah, she was being Camille Paglia, and students wanted her fired. And the president issued, very quickly, an email to the entire campus community and said, “This sort of censorship, not now, not at UArts.”

Will Creeley: It just ended.

Nico Perrino: The demands. Thanks for writing the story, there’s some really good art in it. Really interesting art in it for those who want to check it out. Again, the article is “Indie-no-go: Popular crowdfunding sites cancel fundraisers for comic books.”

I want to pick up on a thread that we had two podcasts ago involving Hamline University. This is the story that never ends. Listeners who listened to that last episode with Michael Moynihan and Amna Khalid will recall that there was a faculty member at Hamline University, an adjunct faculty member, who was teaching a global art survey class including a module or a lesson about Islamic art history, showed a 14th Century Persian masterpiece painting that depicted the Islamic prophet, Mohammad.

She had noted that they would be showing depictions of Mohammad in the syllabus, and it gave a warning prior to that class as well saying if – or even the showing of the image – she was saying if this offends your sensibilities, you don’t have to look at this, you won’t be punished. Regardless, one devoted Muslim student did stick around despite the warnings, later at a forum said, “Who do you turn to at 8:00 a.m. when a teacher offends your religion?” which I found to be kind of peeking over the fence to see what sort of vulgarities your neighbors are behaving in.

Anyway, the university doubled down, it called out the professor, said that she was Islamophobic, said that respect for the observant Muslim students in the classroom should’ve superseded academic freedom, and got lambasted for it –

Will Creeley: And even in a statement after that, the president comes out in a – what is it – a statement or an op-ed I wanna say.

Nico Perrino: It was another statement where it said, essentially, academic freedom should be subject to the dictates of society.

Will Creeley: Right, exactly, it was like saying academic freedom should be superseded through religious sensibilities, but 800 words of that.

Aaron Terr: Yeah, and that was crazy because usually –

Will Creeley: That was gone.

Aaron Terr: – when you see the news that a president’s coming out with a follow-up statement, it’s almost always like all right, at that point, they’re kinda relenting a little bit, right?

Will Creeley: Right, but it was like, “How dare you. I will always protect my students. In fact, all my critics also Islamophobic to some extent.” And, I mean, it was just like the old “I’m rubber, you’re glue” kinda deal. I mean, I was impressed by the humor. It was like –

Aaron Terr: The Chutzpah, yeah.

Will Creeley: Yeah, it was a lot.

Nico Perrino: FIRE ended up driving a mobile billboard around campus the first two days of class – I believe it was January 17th and 18th, but I could have those wrong – that asked the question “Where does it stop?” and depicted the statue of David in boxer briefs. When you censure art because of sensibilities, where does it stop? And the university and its president got lambasted for this.

Ultimately, the chair of the university board of trustees says, “It was never our intent to suggest that academic freedom is of lower concern or value than our students. Care does not supersede academic freedom, the two coexist,” kind of walking back the president’s earlier email. And then the faculty, the fulltime faculty, voted 71 to 12 in favor of asking the university president to step down. So, they’ve gotten it from all corners, and we’ll see what happens, I guess.

Will Creeley: I will say the response I found genuinely heartening. Setting aside the doubling down from the university president, and even in some, perhaps, noteworthy corners. So, you’ve got the local chapter of the council on American Islamic relations – the local chapter at CAIR – basically telling professors watch what you say. He comes in, does a session, and tells the chair of the art department basically like, “Not everybody would look kindly on this.”

Nico Perrino: I think he said – this is more or less a direct quote, paraphrased slightly – is that, if you wanna teach some controversial stuff about Islam, teach it in the local library.

Will Creeley: Yeah, basically, it was something chilling and creepy, like yeah, [inaudible] [00:46:15]. Again, I’m paraphrasing, but it was something like fuck around and find out, basically, was the message being sent to the faculty there. And it was just this remarkable back and forth with the head of the local CAIR chapter.

And then the National CAIR comes in, and says, “Wait a second. Here’s our line, it’s different than this local chapter’s line, we’re basically gonna disavow that. There’s no conception of Islam that requires the response we’ve seen here.” They basically distanced themselves, which I thought was a very positive sign. National commentary, local commentary, faculty commentary, commentary from both the left and the right, it all coalesced around what I thought was a really healthy pro-free speech, pro-academic freedom, wait a second, this is crazy response.

And it came from Muslim scholars, it came from, like I say, scholars from the left, the right, it just felt like a unified moment of clarity, understanding that if we allow student sensibilities – student religious sensibilities in this case – but really student sensibilities, it ought to be privileged such that academic freedom is a dead letter, we’re in deep trouble.

So, I actually took it as a good sign. I mean, this was a classic case. I’ve been doing this for 16 years, this is one of the three or four most clarifying, crystalizing cases you can imagine, where you have the interest so clearly competing. Where the professor is doing all of the pedagogically sensitive things, and the students’ responses are similar. I mean, it couldn’t get more kind of encapsulating of the work that FIRE does on campus here, and this time the calvary showed up, so I was grateful for that.

Nico Perrino: We organized a faculty petition that had 400 faculty signatures from across the world, and we had something like 2,000 emailers use our Take Action portal to email the university president.

Aaron Terr: Which I think is far and away that the most popular, or the most sign on to a faculty letter that we’ve done.

Will Creeley: It’s just nice to know that that response is out there. Because it was depressing as hell, and it could’ve remained depressing as hell. I mean, if you had told me back in the beginning of January that we were gonna be having this update – I remember Professor Vollick emailing me about this one right around Christmas. And if you had said, “Come February, this one is still gonna be raging, and we’re gonna have a big partisan food fight where it’s folks on the left saying, “Yeah, this is right,” you know whatever. You could imagine this going the other way. I’m glad it went this way, to people saying, “This is too far, this is nuts.”

Aaron Terr: Yeah, including the faculty at the institution itself.

Will Creeley: Right? At the institution.

Aaron Terr: We would love to see that happen more.

Will Creeley: It’s nice to see faculty stand up for each other, whether it’s the chair of the department – and we’re not even talking about the interesting adjunctification angle here, right? Where it’s an adjunct, and it’s a non-renewal if I’m remembering, and they tried to do that dance, like, “Oh, she was already getting her contract cancelled,” blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I mean, I don’t wanna be too happy about it, I’d like it not to have taken a month, but yeah, it’s nice to see that that response, both in academia and the general culture, is there. Because this one got a lot of press, too.

Nico Perrino: You mentioned Rushdie. There was just an article that came out in The New Yorker yesterday by Remnick, who, I think, got the first interview with Salam Rushdie since he was attacked on stage in New York last summer, and there’s just a really striking photo in that of Rushdie. He’s got his glasses on with one lens blacked out because, I believe, he was stabbed in the eye, or he’s lost function in that eye. And the article is worth the read. If you’ve read Joseph Anton and his kind of autobiographical memoir of his days in hiding after The Satanic Verses came out, you’ll probably get a lot of what’s in this article. It also talks about his new book.

So, it goes through the history, but a couple of really interesting things that came out of it is one that having a hard time sleeping, you can imagine that, but he’s also – he doesn’t like to use the word writer’s block he says, but he’s also having a hard time writing after this, and it’s forced him to kind of reevaluate his security situation because for many years, he’s kind of lived a normal life. He spoke at FIRE’s gala in 2019, and we said, “Do you need security?” And he said, “No, I don’t need it.”

Will Creeley: He did. That night, I had the honor and privilege of speaking with him a little bit before and after the event, and then taking him after his speech down the elevator to catch a cab in New York, and I never thought twice about it, just because there we were, making small talk with this revered literary figure. And only reading this article did I realize what kind of a phenomenal, act of courage that had been. Or in the immediate aftermath of the stabbing, to think, “Yeah, he was really putting himself out there.” It’s amazing.

Aaron Terr: And putting himself out there and being such a strong advocate for free speech.

Will Creeley: Right. Coming off the stage, saying, “Don’t be afraid.” And then going out into the New York night that night. Yeah, it’s a powerful image.

Aaron Terr: Yeah. And the message is that much more powerful, right, when it comes from someone in his position who, when he started living a normal life, the [inaudible] [00:51:13] was very much still in effect. He still had this bounty on his head from the supreme leader of Iran –

Will Creeley: Well, thank goodness he’s alive.

Nico Perrino: Yup.

Aaron Terr: Yeah, so…

Nico Perrino: I wanna just close by asking you about a survey that FIRE recently conducted in partnership with the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, where we asked 1,140 Americans if they could name any of the specific rights protected by the First Amendment, and almost 1/3 of Americans could not name a single numerated right protected by the First Amendment, and another 40% could only name one. Surprising?

Will Creeley: No. I mean, we got work to do. Every time I go out to talk to students, faculty, whatever. High school students, graduate students, whomever, general public, I’m struck by the fact that there’s a long and arduous road ahead for civil libertarians and folks who care about free speech. Just the educational component of the work we do is probably the most important thing.

Nico Perrino: Yeah, this is pretty consistent with some findings from, I believe, it’s the Annenberg Center?

Will Creeley: Yeah. I feel like you see one of these –

Nico Perrino: Annenberg Constitution Civics Day Survey.

Will Creeley: I feel like you see one of these every year, or every couple of years. And it’s not surprising, it’s depressing, but it’s also an opportunity is the way I look at it, right?

Nico Perrino: Yeah.

Aaron Terr: One of the concerning parts is when you see the generational difference to it. It’s the younger generation that tends to have less understanding, or less confidence in free speech as an important principle. And like you said, I think it just underscores the importance of education because we often talk about how free speech isn’t an intuitive idea, right? In some ways, it goes against human nature, because there’s a strong impulse to just shut up people that you disagree with.

Will Creeley: You might call it an eternally radical idea, right?

Aaron Terr: An eternally radical idea, as CEO Greg Lukianoff calls it. So, yeah, the idea of tolerating even speech that you find reprehensible can seem crazy at first blush, until you take the time to learn about the reasons why it’s important, and really process that. So, it makes me wonder, how much is the first amendment being taught, and free speech principles being taught, in K through 12 schools, and high schools, and stuff.

Will Creeley: We have work to do. I wanna give a special shout to that three percent of America that could name all five.

Nico Perrino: I’m not surprised that the right to petition consistently comes in last.

Will Creeley: Yeah, yeah, that’s right, I wouldn’t put petition there. We could rank our favorites, we’ll do it next time. Yeah, I would just say work to do, not a surprise. But also, it underscores the importance of finding people’s self-interest, right? Say not just the first amendment protects these rights, but the first amendment protects your rights.

Aaron Terr: Yeah.

Nico Perrino: Mm-hmm.

Will Creeley: Yeah, that’s the –

Nico Perrino: Personalize it for them.

Will Creeley: You got it.

Nico Perrino: To put a data point to what you were saying there, Americans aged 18 to 29 were significantly less likely to name free speech than any other Americans as protected by the First Amendment, and those age 60 and older were 70% likely to name one of those rights versus the younger cohort, it was just 55%, so kind of a 15% difference between the likelihood of naming free speech as being protected by the First Amendment between those 18 to 29 and those older than 60.

I will say, as someone who works in the communications field, this teaches me something. If when we’re talking about freedom of expression, it’s not enough to just name the First Amendment. There’s a third of our potential audience, for example, that doesn’t know what that means, what that protects, so in our messaging, we have to say, “Freedom of Speech is protected as a right under the First Amendment,” or something like that as kind of just an educational process, if not a clarifying one.

But a word of optimism is that the Freedom Forum, which has conducted surveys on these issues in the past as well, has consistently found that high school students who have taken classes that include content about the First Amendment, are more supportive of free speech rights, and know that free speech is protected under the First Amendment.

Will Creeley: We’ve got a good story to tell. It’s a proud and uplifting history, and it makes me happy to work here because, as I say, we really should look at it as an opportunity. And people find it in different ways. If each of us can reach somebody every day, we’ll make some movements on these numbers.

I remember being eight and listening to 2 Live Crew, Banned in the USA, and the rap is “The First Amendment gave us freedom of speech. So, what are you saying, it didn’t include me?” And if you can get that to everybody, maybe not that particular song, but that sediment. Because 2 Live Crew won’t reach everybody, but that’s the work , that’s the work we’re doing every day. That’s the work that waits for us in our inboxes when we’re done recording this podcast.

Nico Perrino: That’s a good note to end on. Will, Aaron, I want to thank you guys for coming onto the show again –

Will Creeley: Yeah.

Nico Perrino: – hope to do it again sometime soon.

Will Creeley: It’s been a pleasure.

Aaron Terr: [Inaudible - crosstalk] [00:56:06].

Nico Perrino: I have to record the outro from my phone because I forgot to print it up. Or I did print it up, and I forgot to take it off the printer.

Will Creeley: I’m surprised you can’t do it by heart, Nico.

Nico Perrino: The outro I can’t because there’s too many URLs –

Will Creeley: Right, right.

Nico Perrino: – too many things to remember. The intro, I can. This podcast is hosted and produced by me, Nico Perrino, and edited by my colleagues Erin Reece [inaudible]. To learn more about So To Speak, you can subscribe to our YouTube channel, which is linked in the show notes. Most of our episodes, including this one, feature video conversation. Please subscribe to us on YouTube. You can follow us on Twitter or Instagram by searching for the handle “Free Speech Talk”. Like us on Facebook at facebook.com/So To Speak podcast.

And you can also email us feedback at sotospeak@FIRE.org. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving us a review, Apple Podcast, Google Play, Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts through. New reviews help us attract new listeners to the show. Until next time, thank you all again for listening.