 Awesome. Well, after waiting the required two minutes, I'll get started. I'm so just like so thrilled and excited to be here today and to be part of this conversation. And I think that's probably going to come across in a variety of different ways. But my name is Kendra Albert. I'm the director of the Initiative for Representative First Amendment, which is a joint product project of the Cyber Law Clinic and the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. And this is the first of what we hope will be many conversations about sort of the First Amendment, critical race theory, and how we can sort of better understand sort of free expression as something that's in the US at least intimately connected with race and other axes of oppression. And for that, I'm super excited to have Justin and Khaled here. I'll introduce them by reading their bios and then we're going to dive right into it. So they'll, I'll ask them some questions about their work and their thinking hopefully they'll riff on each other and no doubt say brilliant things. And then sort of partway through we'll turn over and to sort of questions that you might have about either their work or sort of their thinking in this space more generally. And I would be remiss if I didn't mention now as I will again at the end that applications for our Initiative for Representative First Amendment fellowship where we provide law students from backgrounds underrepresented in First Amendment law with money to spend a summer at a law school clinic are open now until next Monday, January 11. So if you're a law student and you're interested at all in the work that we're talking about here, please please apply we'd love to love to get to know you. So without further ado, Justin Hansford is a Howard University School of Law Professor of Law and Executive Director of the Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center. Professor Hansford was previously a democracy project fellow at Harvard University, which I believe I've heard of, a visiting professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center, and an associate professor of law at St. Louis University. He has a BA from Howard University and a JD from Georgetown University Law Center, where he was the founder of the Georgetown Journal of Law and modern critical race perspectives. I'm also thrilled to be joined by Khaled Badun, a leading thinker on national security civil rights and constitutional law and not, I didn't just steal that off his bio on his website, I also believe that he has published a series of books, including the critically claimed American Islamophobia understanding the roots and rise of fear, and his insights have been featured in the New York Times and the Washington Post. He serves as a law professor at the University of Arkansas Fayetteville School of Law and senior affiliated faculty at UC Berkeley. So yeah, incredible thinkers, a great topic, and me, you're you know humble moderator. So let's start a little bit with sort of your work, Justin. My introduction to your work in the space was your incredible piece on the First Amendment and freedom of assembly as a racial project. In my opinion, you argue I'm just going to quote you that the First Amendment's past and present has proven that it is a racial project that redistributes the freedom of assembly to white and away from black. Can you tell us about how you came to write that article and what that sort of investigation of the First Amendment's past taught you really well. Thank you for inviting me first of all really excited to be able to have this conversation with you all scholars I really respect a great deal. And of course my friend Khalid. For me, this entrance into the exploration of how the First Amendment has been inter interrelated to the question of race. The history really came first with me happening to happening to live 10 minutes away from where Mike Brown was killed in Ferguson, while I was a professor at St. Louis University, and I showed up and tried to help the people there. I was a member of the Maryland bar but not the Missouri bar so I was sort of stuck trying to find ways to think about how the law could be helpful outside of simply filing a lawsuit, or representing someone and and I started to have these conversations with people who consider themselves movement lawyers who really try to find ways to uphold the power of movements and specifically protesters, using the law, and doing so in a way that involves integrated advocacy is a term we use different different types of understandings of how the law can be helpful. In that process I started to learn more about the First Amendment, really I was upset to be honest I was mad because of how horribly the protesters in Ferguson were treated I'm sure everybody remembers the tanks on the street the tear gas. In 2014 we saw a replay of that in 2020 this piece that you referenced first the First Amendment as the First Amendment Freedom of Assembly as a racial project was written before the course what happened this past year. But you saw in the headlines might have seen it on Twitter, people again were outraged by the treatment of the protesters and even more recently in December of 2020, you might have seen in November of 2020 you might have seen the response to how how much of a contrast there was between the way that the white supremacist groups to proud boys and other groups were treated by police a came out to exercise their their freedom of speech. And that that but that narrative is one that is very much prevalent. Right now as we're talking before the event right now we have proud boys assembling here in Washington DC they've made very clear that they plant the carry firearms and break all types of laws. You know we haven't seen the same types of responses so so that caused me to think about this idea of the freedom of assembly as a racial project, understanding a racial project basically to mean any, any endeavor that creates hierarchy on the grounds of in the tradition of enslavement and Jim Crow and other types of ugly parts of our history or constitutional history in fact that have allowed that type of hierarchy to endure and it was and you get is really almost a, you know, empirical project if you will you want to look at the different outcomes and as a critical race theorists, you know we don't, we try to understand the law from the legal realist position of looking at the outcomes and then thinking backwards right so we don't, you know we there's a lot of about American exceptionalism exceptionalism and how the First Amendment is the crown jewel of that access access exceptionalism, how it applies equally to everybody and all these things. But when we actually start to look at the outcomes and starts reasoning backwards from the outcomes as legal realists. We see the clear distinction there. You know it's interesting because race has been in specific particularly the black liberation struggle has been central to the construction of First Amendment law in many ways. One of my mentors Cheryl Harris is always talking about the mutually constitutive nature of race in the law meaning that the questions of race are impacted by legal decisions and statutes and legal, legal power being used communities of color but also the actions of people fighting for racial justice has over time helped to shape different elements of the law. The First Amendment is actually a core example of that. You think of as you know some of the most important cases in First Amendment. Of course New York Times for Sullivan is the one that people may think of first, first of all Martin Luther King and you know the freedom of the press. But even if you think about some of the important cases around the First Amendment freedom of association. And of course you can even go to first the First Amendment freedom of assembly, all of these areas of law were impacted by what happened during the civil rights movement and the Supreme Court opinions that regulate these areas of law were written in response to civil rights protests. That that fact not withstanding seeing as this application has not been one that has upheld this or been been used consistently to even be on the equal footing between the actions of neo Nazi protesters the proud boys and racial justice protesters in terms of some sort of measure of equality let alone uplifting the movements that would seem to be providing an avenue for more speech you know I one of the things I talk about in my work is this understanding that for specifically for communities that are locked out of the political process historically, you know we've seen that also by one of your Harvard Law School scholars who wrote a wonderful book about the taming of free speech we've seen that on questions of labor organizers and you know other groups that have historically been locked out of the political discussion who have been able to only get their voice out there through using free the freedom of assembly First Amendment tool to do so and of course civil rights activists and racial justice protesters are also an example of a group that is locked out of democracy and as a result of that they've had to take to the streets to really get their political point across. So you would think that if the First Amendment was what we thought it was, then that would be one of the groups as we'd want to have their speech amplified. Unfortunately, the empirical evidence suggests that that has not they've met with fierce fierce physical opposition and so much so if you actually sit down and you do the research and you look at the trajectory of that fierce opposition, you'll see that there is enough evidence to argue that it is indeed a racial project in the sense that it is upholding racial hierarchy because it is locking the voice of racial justice protesters locking them out of the discussion. At least through the avenue of protests as political speech, whereas other groups that want to use protests as political speech are actually protected by the police and by these other avenues of law. They've been protected on that on those grounds think about the Nazis and Skokie all the way to the Proud Boys they've been protected on this grounds that while they deserve to have their voices heard, but we didn't see that same discourse and Ferguson we haven't seen you didn't see that in 2020. One thing that I want to throw this link here. To the chat. There is a group that has put together a protest law tracker, the International Center for not not for not for profit law. If you track the protests laws around the country. You'll see that as opposed to there being a movement to make it easier for people to engage in their protest rights. In the aftermath of 2020 is there's been an effort to push back on the as you might expect by, you know, political groups that oppose that particular type of speech. There's been an effort to push back and to create more laws to make it easier for those groups to advocate and we filed an amicus brief this past year. On behalf of derate McKesson black lives matter protester, who is threatened with a negligence claim based on actions of people who were in the box during a protest and because he tweeted about the protest he was he was found. They tried to make it the case that he'll be found liable. So anyway so that so my work that I want to just I can tell I can talk about this all day but as my work is really focused on this intersection between race and the First Amendment with understanding that although racial justice movements have been central to the construction of the First Amendment freedom of assembly. And still, even today in 2020 2021, we've seen the application of the First Amendment freedom of assembly happen in such a racially unjust way that you can make the argument and defend the argument that it is a racial project that it is a it is applied in a way to uphold racial hierarchy in the ability for people to engage in their free speech rights and as a result their ability to be part of the American political project. I love so many parts of that so it's difficult to sort of figure out which thread to pull on but I want to. I just really love, I think both the way you talked that you talked about sort of that that scholarship that empirical scholarship about the First Amendment as a, or as a racial project came out of watching sort of and seeing your experiences and the experiences that sort of on the ground of like wait, how does the, how does do my experience as a fee protest how do and what I seeing a protest for racial justice map a lot on to or not map on to the queens that we're making about what the First Amendment is doing and the value of each and political participation. There's this quote I really love from Julia Hernandez who's at SUNY School of Law, where she sort of, I think for me summarizes a lot of that kind of critical race theory per legal realist perspective as the law means what it means to those subject to it. And I think that's like a really, I love that idea of focusing, I mean I'm really, it's, it's awesome to hear how you were able to turn from your own experience to sort of doing that, be having the time and space to work that out into scholarship and sort of producing more empirical work. So, thank you for that. It was incredible to change gears in direct substantive focus but I don't think thematically call it I'd love to hear a little bit about sort of your work kind of in this space. More specifically, I know that one of the things you focus on is sort of surveillance of Muslim communities in the US. And of course I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that like the First Amendment also cause it was freedom of religion and I don't want us to merely like to just sort of throw that to the side as we talk about speech and assembly although to be honest. If first focus tends to be a little bit more on the speech stuff so I want to own what I know and don't know. But yeah call it I'd love to hear you talk a little bit about both your work sort of on the First Amendment as a sort of racial or anti-Milkland project I guess those are words my words not yours. But also sort of how that relates to the broader convert conversations that have happened about surveillance and specifically like countering violent extremism programs within the US. Yeah, thanks Kendra and thanks to the initiative for holding this event it's always a great joy to be in conversation with Professor Hansford on issues, you know he focuses on he focuses on issues that definitely intersect with my work. So the genesis of my work really rises from the post 911 11 moment in the war on terror becoming, you know this really transformative catalyst and racializing Muslim identity in very dynamic and nefarious ways for the first time in the United States. And this you know rising legal but also political moderation of a free exercise of religion of Muslim populations that really converges and clashes with speech. We do know those of us who study the First Amendment that the tension and the dialectic between free exercise of religion the religion clauses at large assembly and free speech, really converge and have a really you know intimate relationship and oftentimes communities of color and clearly even when not speaking speeches imputed upon them based on the way the exercise their religion. So to put that simply in theoretical terms. A Muslim subject who maximizes her hair is religious identity in ways that are conservative or that you know sort of aligned with ominous caricatures of terrorist identity. And they presume specific political speech coming from them, even when they aren't speaking right so Muslim woman who wears the Islamic face covering the Nicob, or a Muslim man who dons a really long beard, traditional clothing, without uttering a single word when walking into a space on looker specifically surveillance and Kendra you mentioned counter radicalization policing which I'm happy to talk about more specifically in a bit. So the connections between free exercise of religion and speech are really key. And really, you know, again, they, they commence after the 911 moment and the sort of new, you know, grand sort of American history. So the connections between free exercise of religion and speech are really key. And really, you know, again, they commence after the 911 moment and the sort of new, you know, grand sort of American narrative of good and bad Muslims. Texas law professor Karen angle wrote a great article law review article I think was published in the Colorado law review, called good Muslims bad Muslims were the post 911 moment you sort of became. You saw the rise of this new sort of speech binary, where Muslims who engage in specific forms of political speech speech for instance that you know endorse the war on terror, or sort of, you know endorse or commercial profiling and religious profiling the Muslim communities, Muslims who engaged in patriotic acts like you know putting a flag up on their porch. You're rising up for the national anthem that kind of thing. That kind of political speech and political expression would essentially temper the state's perception that those individuals would could be could be or could be terrorists right. So that political performance and speech allayed the state's fears that individuals who engage in that kind of expression were terrorists however on the other side. If you were somebody like me, or like Justin, who was engaged in sort of critical advocacy activism. That was questioning state policy individuals were demonstrating the religious PD through visible signals or symbols like the hijab or you know a beard, so on and so forth. That kind of activity would quote unquote be dubbed bad Muslim identity that would invite very robust and pernicious forms of surveillance into that individuals life. So you saw the rise of I mean in post 911 obviously you saw the, the establishment of the modern surveillance state with the creation of the Department of Homeland Security enactment of strident policy like the Patriot Act. Other policies that sort of supplement alongside the Patriot Act. In my opinion you saw the rise of the most nefarious form of surveillance in modern American history with counter radicalization policing which ironically enough is established by the Obama administration, and is based off based off two things so you know a connection was mentioning earlier, even before the NYPD spying on Muslims program that was seated in 2002 I believe a coincidental pro right so the program that was established by Jed Gerhoover in the 60s with seated informants, not only to Islam this is one sort of misnomer where we sort of look at counter radicalization and very myopic terms that the objective is in the short term to surveil black Muslim and dissident communities, but the ultimate objective is far more devastating than that right the real clear objective of the state is to destroy these communities. And we saw the destruction through surveillance of organizations like the Black Panther Party we saw the destruction of the segments of the nation of Islam, the brown Berets Puerto Rican and Latin X, active, activist movements in places like New York City. And that was the, that was the genuine ultimate objective of counter radicalization was to bring down segments of the Muslim community that the state believed to be too conservative to dissident to activists in nature. And that was a way to sort of, you know, fight and counter terror. So, you know, again, not to, I don't want to rain on anybody sort of political parade but this happened under a democratic administration. And in my estimation is going to happen again with the coming of the Biden administration so we'll see a shift from explicit Islamophobia is what I call it with the Trump administration to more late in Islamophobia structural Islamophobia, which is advanced by these programs that the Democratic Party has been very keen and effective in spearheading. So I'll close with this note when when Justin says very incisively that the first amendment is a racial project that definitely echoes for the broader Muslim population and one thing I you know I talk about often in my work is not to think about the Muslim in the black communities as distinct populations there's really intimate overlap but you know obviously the biggest difficulty of the Muslim population remains black Justin and I have talked about how distinct surveillance programs today. Black identity extremism counter radicalization actually works symbiotically to please black and Muslim populations. So, the reason I'm really happy to have Justin in this conversation is that his work doesn't come down alongside my work. They converge really dynamically to victimize our communities in very destructive ways and they're both racial projects that work in synchrony. Thank you. Again, so many different threads, threads to pull on I think two things I'm really struck by about about your comments college. One is the way in which that sort of good, good Muslim bad Muslim dichotomy that you're sort of aligns. I've been reading a lot of Foucault lately so you're just going to have to forgive me for like one second, which is to say that like, you know Foucault talks a lot about sort of surveillance with the the core goal of being like internalized discipline rather than sort of like surveillance, like the idea of surveillance eventually resulting in people disciplining the subject disciplining themselves and I really when you talk about sort of the way in which anti Muslim surveillance operates within the US and that goes good Muslim bad Muslim dichotomy. What I'm hearing is also the ways in which particular acts of surveillance may end up with communities both surveilling themselves but also disciplining themselves right and how that can be in some ways. And it's a scary long term development because you may no longer need the full external surveillance apparatus once people start engaging in self discipline. Anyway, okay. Brief side note about Foucault we're now going to go back to the law, which is to say, I think the other point call it that you brought up that I think is really important to talk about is the way in which sometimes we talk about surveillance as if that was the end goal, like, oh, like, they're engaged in surveillance of these communities well that's not the end goal right like the, you know, the destruction of the community, or you know suppression of particular forms of speech or even thinking right is much more the actual end result of the surveillance the surveillance is a means to it and Justin I saw that you are unmuted so if you want to jump in and correct my misunderstandings. I was going to build up because I had ideas just filling my head when you're talking about that in Ferguson, and even even now in 2020 and the Floyd protests you've seen protests and charges and the desire to as you may see in the protest law tracker, the desire to create a felony regime and oftentimes what ends up happening is in the plea bargaining stage. There's a agreement that well, we're going to let you stay out of jail as long as you agree not to protest anymore. And that has been a very explicit use of the law to stifle speech. But, you know, as you said there's also the implicit use of the law as an intimate intimidation to keep people from engaging in this type of speech, which has, you know, it's always been the case I think some my earlier work on Marcus Garvey and Michelle pro and all these different processes that it was the FBI and Jacob Hoover at that time all those processes processes were made usable on the ground that these people were dangerous. And so the, whether it's political speech that is not favored because it's dangerous whether it's racial identities and really political identities that are made to be seen as dangerous. Once you allow the, the government through whatever mechanisms that is trying to use surveillance or, you know, charges felony charges or even just aggressive policing and tanks and tear gas and the threat of physically harming a person or if they're out there with their kids, but the threat of physical harm whatever tools that the law uses to try to stifle these the speech and it never says that we're trying to stifle speech right it's always saying that we have some other justifiable reason for this and it's not just justifiable but it's an urgent reason like you know we're going to be in danger, you know, these, you know, these Muslims are going to be, you know, they're going to be terrorists these black people. You know, they're caught up with socialism, Dr King of course, was that was part of that, you know, even Garvey the Garvey movement even at that point also was accused of socialism and you see that even now black lives matter is seen as, as a socialist so that so there's always a, a, another justification that is used. And so in that sense it's very interesting to think about the First Amendment's role and how easy it is to create a fig leaf to make people ignore the fact that the First Amendment is being suppressed and just look, look the other way and I think that's, one of the problems with the First Amendment is, you know, how strongly are we going to stand up for it. And that's, you know, and that's really the question is oftentimes just opposed with this idea that well we have to balance public safety with the right to engage in free speech and freedom of assembly and as if this intricate balance like these two things are separate and you have to balance one or the other you have to sacrifice a bit of one to get the other. But you know that's that maybe that dichotomy itself is one of the false dichotomies that we need to interrogate. And I think that, you know, two things strike me there one is the question of like who, who is safe in public under the existing regime, right, like, you know, and the answer is not usually the people who are protesting in the first place. The other thing that sort of strikes me there is the way in which theoretically to your to your point Justin earlier, theoretically we do have First Amendment tools that are meant to deal with laws that incidentally burden speech right you know we can have this whole conversation about burning draft cards and you know the those First Amendment tests, but somehow much like you can only recognize prior restraint if it literally literally comes labeled as prior restraint, right, like, don't get me started. The, you know, labels like even something like counter countering violent extremism which I just which I used and I shouldn't know, right, or the black identity extremist label that you two have written about are sort of deployed to things that would otherwise clearly be government suppression of speech or government interference with people's speech rights into a different categories that have like anti terrorism or public safety and I think that like, it's really, you know, it's valuable to see even to reflect on how the language that like is used to describe these programs. It is in some ways endemic of a particular viewpoint about what they're doing that is well a not necessarily evidence based but be you know forecloses the possibility of First Amendment challenges. So I want to, if you have any thoughts on this before we sort of jump to because I want to talk about hate speech for a hot second because it's not going to be a conversation about race in the First Amendment unless we, you have to at least answer one question about hate speech but I hope I hope it's a good one. But Colin any like thoughts on the sort of extremist language or this kind of issue of kind of accidental suppression of speech before we before we move on. I'm really glad you brought up the code right so if you go has this beautiful quote where he says that in any calls at the disciplinary society that we're in right so where the subject becomes a principle of our own subjugation which really highlights, you know, kind of a third level of speech regulation that we seldom talk about right we talk about legal regulation and moderation talk about political moderation but there's a third dimension that's really salient with Muslim and black populations which is, you know self moderation right the idea that should I put up this tweet should I wear my hair in this way should I don the hijab. So this sort of perpetual negotiation of identity performance and identity expression, which scholars like Nancy Leong and Devin Carvalho ever in about four years is sort of this, this unseen third dimension of speech regulation that is chilling effect we talk about it, you know, oftentimes very narrowly is chilling effect, but to me it's a lot more intrusive than just chilling effect because it's burdening these stigmatized communities daft entirely redo their identities and perpetually moderate their genuine routine daily expression in activity, which can be really difficult. You said Foucault as if he were separate from the law, but in disrespect, he lives within the law. I'm just going to take, I'm going to take and bank the one person who has ever said I'm so glad he brought up Foucault, and just like put that put that put that aside for later so thank you if we get nothing out of this else out of this know that I am reassured. Just, you unmuted so I wasn't sure if you wanted to say cool. So, you know, I want to, I'm going to pose a hate speech question that is something I personally struggle with so I'm curious as your thoughts and for people who are kind of mystified by my sort of joking reference to talking about hate speech. And sort of what I'm drawing on is the history of critical race theorists engaging very thoughtful ways with the First Amendment sort of protection of hate speech. You know, I don't want to say starting with but prominently with words that wound which is a collection of essays by authors, including Kimberly Crenshaw who sort of engage with this question of like, okay, should the first amendment protect each beach and how, how, how does that work and what's missing here from these stories. Marie Matilda there are others I could pull the full list and every one of them would just be as amazing as Kimberly Crenshaw. So, but something I part of why I bring this up is to say that there have been, I think robust critiques of the idea of including heat of protecting hate speech from First Amendment protections from those on the left, who would also probably consider themselves quite engaged with critical race theory from based on the idea that potential criminalization of hate speech might increase the tools available to like a racist carceral system so you know dean spade has made this critique among others. And in his particular focuses on the context of hate crime legislation that I think the critique holds. So I'd be curious as to how either of you think about sort of how we might think about increased regulation of hate speech or anti racist or anti Islamophobic or anti Islamophobic Islamophobic slurs. In the context of cars of sort of racist carceral system that historically has been an oppressive force in the lives of black folks Muslim folks black Muslim folks, you know, and all kinds of folks from marginalized background so that's the small question I'll tee up for whichever one of you wants to tackle it first. Let's start off. There's a there was a case, and I'm also going to put another link in the chat there's a case that the Lawyers Committee for civil rights was involved in recently that that was a case where there was a black woman who was a student at American University she won the election for student body president, and then there was a campaign led by the daily stormer which was a white supremacist website to harass her and threaten her, threaten it and they actually were able to, in some way shape or form, create this. I forget what the term is but they were able to get more and more people to troll her on social media and threaten her. So it wasn't just that organization itself but they were getting more people as well. This example of hate speech on the grounds of race, really reaching a fever point to the extent that she didn't feel safe on her campus, and a lawsuit was brought by the Lawyers Committee you can see on the grounds that the online scrolling constituted interference with her opportunity for equal enjoyment of public accommodations. And they were able to obtain $700,000 in damages, and were able to really harm the daily daily stormer to the point where I'm not sure if it still exists on the grounds that the hate speech made her feel unsafe. Because of the specific threats that made her feel unsafe in her attempt to use the campus. So it was I thought it was very interesting because it did show that there is certainly there are non-carceral ways to move forward. I mean, some of the scholarship has proposed in the past a possible tort for hate speech, as opposed to thinking about, you know, increased hate crime legislation, which would which would a toward or a process like this would be something that could be in line with abolitionist politics. I think that it's a, it is a, it's an interesting way to approach the issue. You know, we, we get confused because, you know, they this there's this whole narrative around political correctness right now that's been, you know, it's a horrible poisoning of the discourse where people create this marketplace of ideas narrative and sort of Jeff tried to create more space for hate speech online moves and we've all seen it and we've seen it grow. Not just in the comment sections. But now you know we see it everywhere. And, you know, this idea that, and where's that wound is something that's a great, a great book and then there was a follow up called understanding of the discourse that wound that Delgato and Stefan kick I think we're involved in writing, but there's been scholarship which is actually shown the physical toll the psychological toll, all the different harms that a crew from hate speech on communities of color. And this has always been a problematic element of First Amendment discourse to, and, you know, I'm going to have to shout out the ACLU even though they do great work. Historically, they've been taken to position that, you know, we have to have this in order for the First Amendment to continue to protect us and do all these great things for us to be able to take to the streets. We have to sort of suck it up and be willing to endure hate speech at the same time because that's the deal that we're making that's sort of the exchange that has to happen. And unfortunately, that sort of First Amendment fundamentalism still is the, the normative understanding of the First Amendment in liberal circles. And I think that it's important for us to start to interrogate that, again, thinking about it from a legal realist outcome based perspective, understanding the harms that are taking place and understanding that, you know, other countries around the world, this scholarship will tell you there are other countries around the world that take different approaches to free speech and hate speech. And those societies have not fallen a part of falling into authoritarianism, probably could make the argument that we are closer to authoritarianism, than, you know, most other countries that regulate hate speech in many parts of the world, and that regulated through fines and other types of tools that don't rely specifically on carceral options. So I think there's a lot, there's a long way for us to go on that on the hate speech question. I think that there's, we're just beginning to use these other tools. I'm excited about the lawyers committees engagement here. And I think it doesn't move us a little bit closer to the possibility of retort against hate speech. I think it's such a good point, right, the sort of present the presentment of kind of it as an either or either, you know, like this sort of false dichotomy of like either, you know, hate speech is criminalized or hate, you know, or hate speech is entirely protected because of the First Amendment, even like is a is a good thing to push back on. I also Justin just want to sort of tell a very brief anecdote about your point about other countries so I've taught a kind of I've taught a couple of sort of critical or First Amendment like new issues and classes, and every time I teach it there's at least one LLM who's like, so LLMs are international students, often at Harvard Law School, who's like, yeah, we fan hate speech in my country and it all seems to be going fine, which I think is a very useful especially for you, United States JD students and law students to hear because Justin to your point about that kind of First Amendment fundamentalism. Khaled, I want to make sure you have a chance to share thoughts, thoughts on this question or push back on the framing of this question, you've always appreciated before we before I hop to the next topic. No, I'll just, I'll just talk briefly about so when the question was posed I thought about speech on campus right so you had the you know sort of this big. This hysteria around you the invitation of really radical right speakers a couple of years ago, people like Milo Unopolis and not even right individuals are people like Bill Maher, for instance, and a whole wide range of different speakers were being invited to to use and movements on the left but also student movements on the right, pushing hate speech as a way to sort of preempt them from speaking and I think that what you and Justin talked about this idea of free speech fundamentalism that oftentimes misses the mark is with regard to institutional power right so oftentimes when it's elements on the right that want to engage in political speech that feels like hate speech and speech that you know was immediately tied to the prospect of violence against black undocumented sexual minority group students and so on and so forth. Being analogized or likened to hate speech from left leftist based movements is the right overwhelmingly with, especially with regard to the university space has the real history and president of institutional power backing them. Right, which isn't the case for student movements on the left, especially student movements of color on the left. So, when I think about speech broadly and also political speech which obviously you know is intimately tied to hate speeches. I try to gauge how much power is behind the speech, and oftentimes that variable can determine the likelihood of violence. Give you a quick example so I taught at the University of Arkansas for a couple of years which has a very big Greek element, and some of the Greek fraternity and sorority element has interesting ties to former slavery racist sort of traditions in the deep south. Many of them tend to be conservative or libertarian so when when they put on events that lean toward the right in a place like Arkansas where students of color are very few and far far between especially Muslim and immigrant students. There's a real history and institutional backing of power behind those events that can stir up different factions of the student body. And make life very scary for the handful of black Muslim Latinx and sexual minority students on those campuses. So, I really appreciate the sort of theoretical conversation about sort of maintaining and the difficulty of finding a bright line rule for moderating for moderating political speech but like Justin says it's important to have sort of the the real strategic conversation with how protecting speech symmetrically on both sides, oftentimes only leads to victimization of vulnerable communities that don't have that institutional backing of power that elements on the right typically have. So, I'm so glad you made that point because I think one thing that historically first amendment doctrine is not good at doing it all is considering those kinds of power differential questions right we often don't. We are, you know, lawyers or law students or judges are encouraged to think about those as kind of about questions about really who holds power and who holds alternate access to alternate means of speech, like all of that is kind of outside the point unless maybe you're in time place in manner restrictions maybe but like. So I think color the point about like okay like wait hold on like what's the actual power structure like, like what is the actual situation like is so important to think about and I think that that you know it speaks to the kind of question of like looking at the really what's happening on the ground of critical race theory that critical race theory does as we were going to earlier, rather than sort of just imagining that this is a process of articulating those beautiful bright line rule about what constitutes hate speech and what doesn't that we can possibly imagine right and you know much more of our question is about right what is this doing in the world. So first I take questions from the audience, and I have so many questions. So we're going to, I'm going to engage in a balancing test of those two. Two different, two different issues. And sort of combine Bob ozang's question and one of mine, which is, I'd be curious to think about sort of like either, you know, Bob asked how has the pandemic changed your thinking about freedom assembly or state surveillance. It has at least a little, but maybe it hasn't. But I'd also be curious if I can combine this question with like sort of what are y'all thinking about now like what's on what's on your mind what sort of your, what, what's the, what are the questions that you're kind of wrangling with or the things that you're focusing on or paying, paying attention to I guess one thing that that is on my mind is the, well, there are a couple of case there's a case in California recently where a black lives matter sign or mural excuse me black lives matter mural was the face and it was done on video. And there was a hate crime enhancement brought against this this couple and their defense has been that well what they were doing by the facing this black lives matter sign was not it was not a race based action it was it was about the political position of black lives matter as a political organization. And so this was, this would be political action and should be protected. And we've also this is also come up around the country. And in situations where people are being tried oftentimes protesters are being tried for, you know, trespass or even more serious sort of protest related charges. And there have been efforts to strike jurors who acknowledge that they support black lives matter. The question at hand is was black lives matter is your affiliation with black lives matter racial affiliation or is it a political affiliation. In other words, should Batson be involved if you're striking striking jurors for saying that they support black lives matter. Is there is a race based elimination of that juror from the juror from the pool, or is it based on political views and the same thing with this, this family, or this couple in California is this is their opposition to black lives matter political or is it racial with this idea that if it's political then it should be much more protected and they should be able to speak out against anything black lives matter related as violent as they want to and it's not it should not be seen as a racist hate speech action because it's just a political difference. And I think that's really, that's one of those things that is it's one of those slippery slope arguments, because if you do allow opposition to people to be seen as a political to be framed as political and therefore always never to be framed as any sort of racial any sort of racially related outburst. Then why not, why not just describe political views to, and I'm sure people do that they, they say well I don't I don't oppose Muslims because of their religion, I oppose them because of terrorism or something ridiculous like that right. And so it's laughable when it's in the discourse when it's in on the media but unfortunately, these are now becoming arguments that are being made in the court, and we don't know what the courts are going to say to this yet we don't we don't know yet. The courts are coming down on this question of whether opposition to black lives matter signage or anything is race based hate speech, or whether it's purely political in nature. So I'm interested I'm a bit worried about how that's going to play out. And my anticipation is that it's going to be different and different jurisdictions. I'm going to start to think about how that that seems to be the current framing of folks who are opposing these movements to say that well we're not we're not really opposing you on your identity we're opposing you on our understanding or stereotype of what of the political positions that people of your identity hold. So that's what's one thing that's on my mind right now. Call it before I turn to you one brief reaction Justin which is it really deeply reminds me of conversations around religious freedom and queerness, and sort of use it the use of religious freedom excuses to justify discrimination against like queer and trans folks. I think, you know, when one thing I always think about in that context is. I'm forgetting the name of the case is embarrassing in that you know you actually see historically in opposition to the Civil Rights Act claims that you know treating black folks equally to white folks was against folks and I think the case is piggy park enterprises and the Supreme Court just and the courts in that in in the 1960s just kind of just we're like nope. We're just not going to, we're not going to engage with that question like we're just we're just going to know there's a lot going on here and we don't want to deal with that. So in some ways just into your point about like how our courts going to answer this question like part of it is, you know, one of the, one of the things I always think about is sort of how seriously do courts take those kinds of this kind of these kinds of claims, you know, and how, you know, how much are they are judges persuaded by the this attempt at drawing distinctions between sort of racist racist speech and certain kinds of political speech. And you know, honestly, I got to admit, given the current makeup of the judiciary that doesn't make me feel like a good thing to reach for, but it is one of those sort of interesting questions about like how do judges engage with this. And really and really briefly the one thing that's interesting just this I think this may be over the Christmas holiday. There was a judge in Virginia, who took down the pick the pictures of the former judges and I think there's article about this in New York many times. Virginia courtroom state courtroom, all of these judges, white judges, and the judge, the one of the litigants was arguing that this was racially biased and intimidating because it sent this message that this was a white court for white people. And the judge actually took down the paint paintings and said that, you know, the cost benefit analysis you know it doesn't, there's no not enough benefit to justify the cost and that this did have this message, and as and he used as a basis for that is reading of this this novel by this now I'm gonna be embarrassed I'm reading the name of this book, but this this guy who was wrongfully incarcerated. And wrote this book recently talking about how when he was a defendant, he saw all these white judges pictures in the courtroom and he knew that this that he was going to lose. And you know it may not be that it's just the whiteness of the judges also this is Virginia most of those judges going back to the 18th century meant many of them were enslavers or slave owners or segregationists as well. But the acknowledgement of the messages that are being sent by some of the elements that are present in the courtroom. I thought that was fascinating that the judge actually was listening to that and I'm going to I'm going to find the name of that book that the judge referenced so I can put that I'm going to retell the Yale law school people because I don't know if you've ever been in the classrooms at Yale law school. But there's like, it's just like white dudes portraits on every wall. Anyway, we have 100 questions I still haven't let college sort of it speak to what what he's thinking about these days which is just clearly a sign we need to do another follow up on this, but college we have three more minutes. So please feel free to sort of talk about what you're thinking about what's on your mind these days and bring us maybe home, home with any final thoughts you might have and then I'll turn back to Justin and just close us off and I'm sorry to everyone who asked great questions in the chat will but you know fodder for a future conversation to be sure. This has been a great conversation and so much to comment on really really quick I want to comment Kendra on a point you made. It's about how the state in proxies to the state weaponized First Amendment liberties in ways that you know bludgeon the rights of identity minority identity based groups right so you talked about riff riff for instance in the religious freedom statutes being used to suppress sexual minority populations across the country so there's a reciprocal sort of discussion we're having with regard to how the state has been really clever in weaponizing First Amendment liberties and ways to suppress already suppressed groups. Moving on. And one of the reasons why I'm really excited to be working with the initiative is, which is really tied to the pandemic right so now, you know activists and individuals can go to public squares, and have to engage in political speech and assembly online and typically on online platforms which are privately held where, you know rights and liberty liberties that were theoretically afforded in places like parks sidewalks roads aren't afforded on places like Facebook, Instagram, so forth and so on, which is is really concerning because obviously we have this prevailing era of surveillance capitalism, where you have huge corporations like Google, Twitter, Facebook, and we're collecting our data, you know and consuming our data in ways that maximize their economic interests, but then transfer that data to nefarious actors like the state and these corporations are a lot more efficient a lot more effective in surveilling us, and oftentimes we're surrendering the information in ways that hasn't been the case before. This new era and age of surveillance, far more frightening in many ways than it was in in areas before, even though we're sort of living in this moment of you know presumed racial progress in harmony. You know I'm thinking a lot about how you know algorithmic policing predictive policing social media platforms are becoming the lead actors in surveilling our speech assembly in free exercise of religion rights online, which, and obviously there's a monopoly online now because of the pandemic and its negation of being able to engage in traditional forms of activism. Thank you. So I see we're at 1pm and I want to be respectful of our panelists time of our attendees time of our ASL interpreters and captioners time. So just join me in virtually thinking call it and Justin, a professor by doing and Professor Hansford for joining me in this conversation, I know I've had a blast I hope that hope that y'all have found it interesting and clearly just judging based on the open questions and chat, you know, met much to return to you know the. So thank you everyone for for joining us. And just a reminder, Justin, did you want to mention that you're recruiting for an attorney. Yes, so I'm looking for attorneys who are interested in doing First Amendment defense of protesters on freedom of assembly grounds. We have a Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center here at Howard Law School and we are hiring as soon as possible, received a grant to help hire someone who is interested in doing First Amendment and also environmental justice as well as First Amendment litigation so I'm going to put my email here in the chat and feel free to give me a shout or reach out to the university to find out more about this. Awesome. Thank you. Yep. And one more time I'll just close by saying we're recruiting for our current if for cohort if you want to have. Oh, Justin I think that just went to panel. I'm going to have more conversations like this one be part of be part of sort of thinking about what the sort of cutting edge future of this work looks like and answer some of the hard questions that people post in chat. I hope you'll reach out to to me to the IFRA team so jazz daughter civil, consider submitting an application if you're a law student. But yeah, thank you so much everyone for your time and for joining us. Take care.