 Good afternoon. It's 101 Eastern. Welcome to Vision, a show about the trends, ideas, and disruptions changing the face of our democracy. I'm Sam Gill, your host. A tacit undercurrent of this turbulent year has been a perennial issue in American democracy, which is the question of how free we are to express ourselves. It's implicit when we confront issues like quarantine protesters. They can protest, but should they? And would the health risk justify some kind of intervention? What about the protests about race still ongoing in many American cities? When does protest, the right to assemble, cross a line that warrants a response, a response sadly there's all too often militarized, if ever? Are there views we do not need to hear or that are downright harmful, as some allege during the controversy at the New York Times over an op-ed by U.S. Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, a controversy that ultimately cost op-ed page editor James Bennett his job? And an especially hot issue. What are we allowed to say online? Should platforms allow any speech, even if it's a lie or misleading, even if that misinformation comes from the U.S. president? Some of these questions implicate the First Amendment to our Constitution, which guarantees five freedoms of thought and expression, the right to believe what you wish, the right to speak what you wish, the rights of a free press, the right to peaceful assembly and the right to petition the government. But some of these questions have less to do with the law of free speech and more with its spirit. They are about how we as a society weigh the benefit of being able to speak up and out against the costs that such expression might have on others. Today's guest is one of the great scholars on the issues of First Amendment and free expression. Jeffrey Stone is a law professor at the University of Chicago, where he was formerly dean. And he has literally written the book on freedom in times of crisis twice over with 2004's perilous times, free speech and wartime, and 2007's war and liberty and American dilemma. It is my great pleasure today to welcome to the show Jeffrey Stone. Welcome. Glad to be here. Thank you for joining us. So I sort of want to jump right into it. I mean, you have written about free speech and freedom in times of crisis. And sort of before we get to the specifics of today, what are some of the big themes that you found in your research? Well, there's a tendency, pretty important tendency on the part of government to overreact in periods of perceived crisis, and particularly to take advantage of the opportunity to silence those who are critical of the people in power. We saw that with the Sedition Act of 1798, when the government acted legislation that prohibited individuals criticize the government during the Civil War, the Lincoln administration shut down hundreds of newspapers during World War One, the Wilson administration, passed the Espionage Act and the Sedition Act, which again made it a crime to criticize the war or the draft or the administration during the communist era, the MacArthur era. We saw the government fearing communist intrusion into American democracy shut down a broad range of individuals who were seen as supporting communism. So one thing we know is that there is a sense when there is a crisis or a perceived crisis on the part of those in positions of authority who want to shut down speech that they see as potentially harmful to the nation or to themselves. And it's important to note that typically this happens when they're shutting down people whose views are critical of them. And they're therefore using this in part because they're trying to forestall danger in a time of crisis, but also because they want to silence their critics, and those two things get conflated in these circumstances. And what are, did you, were there any, you know, you've named, even in the examples, the notable examples you've given, there are, our own audience is probably thinking, well, I'm a little more sympathetic to some of those encroachments on liberty and I'm a little less sympathetic to some of the other ones. You know, McCarthyism sort of notorious, the arbitrary in is perceived that way, whereas some of the Civil War and World War II encroachments, you know, our audience may have an intuitive sense right that there was the national security interest the goals were paramount did you, did you have you determined in your approach sort of better ways of assessing, you know, when that state interest is really compelling versus when that state interest is is is just about reducing friction in the system that leaders don't want. I think what the Supreme Court has learned over time, and I agree with this, is that we have to be extremely skeptical about government efforts to silence critics, even in times of crisis. Because, at the moment, it may seem like a reasonable thing to do. But with the benefit of hindsight, it becomes clear that it was not as necessary, as it was perceived, and that the motivations for doing it frequently had much more to do with political power and and continuing to be in political power, then with the nation's interest and so what the court has done is go from a position in which initially it basically said, if the government has a legitimate justification, we will defer to the government's decisions to a position now where the court says unless you can show a clear and present danger of grave harm, we will not allow the government to silence speech, even in times of crisis. And I think that's basically proved to be the right approach. How have you been thinking about these issues, you know, this year, because we've had, we've had two kinds of state interest issues that have come up around expression this year. There were a series of protests, you know, principally kind of from the right from sort of an anti establishment populist crowd on the right that that was skeptical of some of the stay at home orders, as a question of liberty and then took to the streets in some cases to protest them and then, of course, in May after the killing of George Floyd we had, we have and have an ongoing series of protests happening in American cities where there have been state interest both about health and the transmissibility of the virus but then also sort of the typical kind of state concern about, you know, about, about anxiety about when protest is perceived to no longer be, to no longer be peaceful, peaceful protest. So you've been thinking about about those issues in the context of what you've studied and with regard to free speech. The interesting question here is that these situations raise, at least from the standpoint of First Amendment doctrine, a very different question to the ones of the we gave earlier, because here we're talking about regulations that a are not necessarily addressed at speech at all. That is basically the government states and cities and so on, have adopted policies that prohibited people, at least in the earlier stages of COVID, from being in public without social distancing and without wearing masks. And the concern was that if people gathered together and particularly were not wearing masks they posed a serious health risk to themselves and ultimately to others. And that was not even about speech. That was about going to the beach that was about going to baseball games. And the impact on speech was incidental. And in that situation, the basic approach is to say would give much more deference to the government, because they're not trying to restrict the communication of particular messages. And indeed, they're not even trying to restrict speech necessarily. The application of those regulations of social distancing and masks has only an incidental effect on speech. It would apply to baseball games and to beaches and so on, without regard to whether somebody was engaging in speech. And therefore the reasons to be skeptical from a First Amendment standpoint are much less than they are when the government directly is regulating speech, or is directly targeting a particular message of speech. So the first issue there is how do you think about that from a First Amendment perspective. Generally the court has taken the view that when a law has only an incidental effect on speech, that the government gets a high degree of deference. And it's not absolute. There are circumstances where the impact on speech is sufficiently serious that the government has to show a very substantial or even a compelling justification for doing it. But the starting point is basically that if the government is not attempting to restrict speech, then the fact that the law has an effect on speech does not raise a serious First Amendment question, except in unusual circumstances. Let me, so let's drill down that a little bit more though because, you know, one of the things I got, so like I got my haircut a few weeks ago and I joke, this is the first time that getting a haircut was a political speech act, you know, in my lifetime I had to think about the politics of it. We had a great question from the audience just now that is on this which is at some point, I think we're already seeing this but at some point it's theoretically possible that someone will say, I mind not wearing a mask is a political statement that I'm making against what I see as a tyrannical government that's trying to constrain our liberty in other ways and given the kinds of polarization that we're now experiencing. I mean what what is bringing people to protest in the first place. This is if this isn't already happening it's it's likely to start you know schools you know universities will come back, and I'm sure there will be students who say this is a form of protest against what the university is doing so putting you know private universities it's a different system. Imagine this in a public context that someone is going again you know it's a public university let's say someone is, I'm not going to follow this rule, I believe this is a form of tyranny would you assess that sort of intentional act differently as a jurist. Again, the way the court is being court is analyzed these questions is illustrated by draft card burning case. Okay, though in a case called a Brian V United States, an individual burned a draft card to protest against the Vietnam War, and he was prosecuted and convicted for violating the law that prohibited any prohibited any person knowingly to destroy a draft card. And the government's argument about the reason for the law had nothing to do with burning draft cards as opposition to the Vietnam War. It was that if you were eligible for the draft it was important that you have a draft card in your possession. And the government's concern, arguably, was that you needed the draft card in your possession, because if you were subject to the draft, if there was an emergency, you need to look at the draft card and know what number to call to contact your draft court, or if you were stopped by an authority who said are you really not supposed to be in uniform, you could show them your draft card would show that you were, you were immune from the draft or whatever. And so the court upheld the prohibition and held that a Brian who burned a draft card to express his opposition to the draft and a protest against the Vietnam War could be punished for doing so. And the reason again was that the law was in the court's view not directed at speech. It had only an incidental effect on speech. So somebody speeds on a highway and then says I was protesting speed limits. Right, or somebody decides to bathe nude and says, Well, I was protesting laws against nudity. So every law can be challenged by people who maintain that my reason about violating the law was to express my opposition. And so the court's been very reluctant to open that door. Right, and that's my that's my usual strategy when I'm getting in trouble with the law but I but I but but I didn't put my recycling out as a statement against recycling but no but but I so I and I think that makes sense. I think the COVID issues. It's funny actually because I don't think there's anyone right now, accusing stay at home orders, besides the small group as some sort of instrumentality of like a, of an overly aggressive right it's the opposite actually because most people are really frustrated that there isn't sort of more state control in some cases over over our action, but there's a but there's a more complicated issue that is starting to come up that I kind of want to turn to now, which is, which is a question about the harm that speech engenders and some shifting about the sensibility about the material harm that speech can cause I know this has been a big topic on campuses around around speech with regard to race and identity, whether you know whether it's debates about trigger warnings, whether it's debates about restricting certain kinds of identity of identity based speech. I think as I alluded to in the top of the show, a part there was a lot about the Tom Cotton op ed that was about the process that was followed but fundamentally, I think there was an argument here that said, we not only do we not need this view it's arguably a harmful and that the zone of acceptable speech is maybe shifting away from this as a mainstream view so I'd love to, I'd love to talk a little bit about that I guess my first question would be, you're on a campus, you know, our polling shows that young people continue to affirm the value of free speech, but also really acutely affirm values of diversity and inclusion, and I'd be interested, you know what you're seeing and experiencing both as a scholar and as an educator. Well I think that the conflict between the values of free speech in an academic environment in particular, and the concerns about equality and fairness is a legitimate conflict. I think those are both legitimate values to be concerned about, but in a university in particular, I think it is especially important that individuals be allowed to advocate for any ideas that they think should be considered. And silencing ideas because they are wrong or undesirable or hurtful or painful is a very dangerous thing to do in an academy. If you look back at our history. Again, we would not have had an effective civil rights movement. If people in the south had been allowed to completely silence that movement because they thought the ideas that were being expressed, accusing them of being racist were completely or a women's rights movement would never have taken place if majorities with power were able to silence that because they thought those ideas were just ridiculous inappropriate and made no sense at all. Gay rights movement would never have occurred. So one of the things that I think we have to be aware of is not trusting ourselves to exercise the power of censorship wisely. But if we look back over our own history, what we can see is that it's essential to allow people to express views that the majority may find wrongheaded or hurtful or unpleasant, because those views may turn out to be right. And we should not be making definitive decisions about that for the future. Lots of things we believe today, I am confident our children and our children's children will look back on and say how could they have believed that to be true. And it's important that we have that we be open to ideas, even ideas that we find repulsive because we may try not to be wrong. What the thinking about some of the cases that have come up though, right, it, it, it, it, they're not always cases where a student say is forwarding a view that like, let's say I consider racially retrograde through, you know, an execution and reason and, and then in an argument at some length, I think some of the cases that we see coming up are where, where students who students of color, in many cases, students of color who are very much in the minority, even beyond proportionate levels at the university, lower income students who maybe if they're, they're the first generation to be getting a college education are, are in the vicinity of, you know, racial epithets that are that maybe tossed out thoughtlessly or intentionally, or are in situations where they may reasonably feel I, I, we are not entering this as an equal to that other person and we've got two views being pitied each other. I'm walking into this at a disadvantage. I'm walking into this on the other side of power instrumentalized against me. And this person has all of that, right, and we call it privilege. How do you, what do you think about those situations they may not it may not be within the preview of what First Amendment doctrine can tell us but it's certainly within the preview of some what some values about what expression should do, certainly. I think there are two, at least two responses to that completely legitimate concern that universities should take. One of them is to be aware of that reality, and to take steps to assist individuals who are feeling as if they are outsiders to to deal with those concerns to give them opportunities to strengthen their own confidence in their ability to be effective members of the community and to pay serious attention to that in a positive way. I think universities have learned that's much more important than they realized in the past. When I was a student, there were many fewer persons of color, for example, in our classes, and I've gone back in the last year or two and talk to some of the students I had 20, 30, 40 years ago, and asked them, did you feel at various times as if you were being insulted or degraded, either by other students or by faculty members, and they said, yeah, damn right I did. And I said, you just say anything about it. And they said, no, if I had done that at the time, I would have been looked at would have been terrible. And one of the things that's happened over time is partly because we've we have increased the diversity in the academic community is students have become much more confident about their ability to speak out and raise these issues. And that's been really educational for other students and for faculty members and for the institutions. And I think they have paid attention to how to how to address that in constructive ways. Another thing I think universities have to do is to encourage civility and mutual respect. That's part of the educational process, and to recognize that you don't want to be insulting and intimidating other people. That's not an appropriate way of engaging in academic discourse and dialogue. And so one of the things I think it's important to do is to make students aware of the fact that an important value is not only freedom of speech, but it's also the fact that you respect other people, and you recognize that things you're saying can be destructive in ways you don't understand, and to be aware of that learn that lesson and learn to make your points in a way that are not needlessly harmful and hurtful. So let's actually continue to go down this line of thinking to another another kind of environment where the questions of expression broadly are coming up which is in an employment context right so so I think there there is an argument that has new purchase in the way particularly in this moment of reckoning right which is that even well intentioned codes of professional practice that have implications for speech in a private employment context. Well intentioned codes of civility, there's an argument now being sustained right that those two are instruments, if not malevolent are sort of instruments of power and repression about certain views so like we have an example one of the one of the our viewers as to the question which is, you know, newsrooms broadly discourage employees from openly erring their political views in order to, for a good reason right which is that our audience are ideologically diverse audience should perceive that we're telling the story quote straight. And there's a substantive argument as you know being advanced right which is, we're not telling the story straight, if we're not actually sort of speaking truth to power about some really fundamental issues with regard to to race in this country. Do you, what should we be rethinking you know what kinds of, what kinds of restrictions employers can impose on employees in a world where these pretty elemental values oriented arguments are being made against such restrictions. And one interesting thing is that the civil rights acts in this country, certainly the federal civil rights acts prohibit discrimination on the basis of race religion gender and sex and so on, but they don't prohibit discrimination on the basis of political beliefs. I've always wondered about why that's the case that is employers are allowed, if they want to defy our people, if they are supporters of Donald Trump or if they are supporters of Joe Biden. I've never understood why civil rights laws do not prohibit that kind of discrimination, but they don't. And I think part of the notion, which I don't agree with necessarily is that employers should have the freedom to decide what the political views of their employees are in their particular business. And I don't I do think that constraints on that are appropriate. And in the academic environment or in the in the journalist environment. I think that newspapers should be free to decide for themselves. What positions they want to take and what they mean by professionalism in terms of the, the types of columns or editorials that they want people to write because those people are working directly to express the views of the of the organization. So in a in a journalist context, I think, I think it's appropriate for an organization like the Wall Street Journal to have its own set of views that it wants to express or Fox News to express the views they want to express and MSNBC or the Washington Post to do that. So there I don't find that is problematic. I do think that they should be balanced as a general matter. But it's also the case that the ideas we have a wide range of these entities, and some of them take some positions and some of them take other positions. And I don't think that's a bad thing. Right. And then you don't and I suppose along that line. I mean, I think there are plenty who would disagree but you don't have to accept the implied neutrality of the employer which I think is a, if not a pernicious belief is just not plausible. I think to a younger issue this does raise a question for me and is I want to start talking a bit about online but before I get there, you know, as a scholar of the First Amendment, to what extent is, is the legal doctrine around the First Amendment a leading indicator versus a lagging indicator because I think this is a good example where irrespective of what you or I may think is appropriate from a juridical perspective. It's clear to me like a younger generation of employees just isn't going to tolerate a working environment at least in the knowledge workspace that that doesn't allow probably broader parameters around not only acceptable but to some extent encouraged political I look at the way some of the tech companies are a reeling, frankly, as their employee bases start to speak out in direct disagreement with company policy. Does does do you find the law sort of responds to the evolution of society or is ahead of and shows the way when it comes to First Amendment. I think that that law in constitutional terms can both evolve over time as social attitudes evolve as judges learn from experience and from the experience of the people generally. But at the same time, there are lots of instances in which the law or the courts can lead and can move people. So a brown reward of education is a good example of the courts going much further than the people in the third of the states. At that time, wanted to go. And it was appropriate, I think for the courts to take that role, or Roe v Wade is another example. There are many examples where I think the courts evolve partly because social attitudes have changed. The court would not have decided brown reward of education education that way in 1920, and it wouldn't have cited Roe v Wade the way it did in 1920. So part of or also gay rights for example, they would not have decided that way 50 years earlier. But at the same time the courts can lead because their own understandings of social values and aspirations are informed by evolution. of attitudes among the public. So in many of the courts, most important decisions. It is both the justice is both learning from social change. And again cases like Brown and Roe and a burger fell are great examples of that. But they're also ahead of the curve. They're also requiring the society to move in a direction in which many citizens in many states would not yet embrace. So, so let's talk kind of as a final area of discussion around one of the places where certainly kind of events are racing ahead and and and policy and more as they're struggling to keep up which is of course online speech. You know, even though these are these are these are of course private platforms with their own standards of conduct. I think they're also increasingly dominant public squares, where a lot, a lot of social political and commercial discourse is is happening where impacts on our other basic institutions are are real where some of those institutions are, you know, use these channels in order to in order to speak and where it strikes me that kind of the qualities of speech are in some cases the same as offline but in other cases, quite different The intensity of the experience I often think about, you know, one of the things our polling has shown is young people when they think about speech are thinking a lot about the digital experience where the experience of having 15,000 people criticize you is different than five people criticizing you. And as as some of your, you know, other legal scholars like Mary Anne Franks or Danielle Citrone have observed the internet has the unusual quality of converting a lot of acts into speech, you know, they kind of come out in the form of expression online. I'd love to, I'd love to know. First of all, you know what you think about a really dominant debate now which is that you have a president who's actually saying I think I'm being censored online, and that this is, this is wrong he's not alone a number of other, particularly leading conservative thinkers have made this made this accusation but what have you what have you made of the sort of the use of that term that this is about sort of censorship online. Well, I mean, I, first of all, I don't think there's a whole lot of evidence to support the proposition that the president's being censored online. The fact that there are a small number of instances where Twitter or whatever has has said, you know, maybe this is not a true statement is not the same thing as being censored online. I think the challenge of social media is a really difficult one. Initially, the government took the view that we don't want social media platforms to be under a legal obligation to censor what gets put on their platforms. This paper like the New York Times, or the Washington Post can be held libel if it publishes a an article that libel someone. And that's partly because they, they control exactly what they publish. They make decisions about it is a limited amount of material, they decide what they're going to publish. When social media came into existence, Congress decided that it's, it's not at all realistic to expect entities that didn't exist yet but like Facebook and Twitter to be held libel for everything that I put up or you put up on their platform that might be actionable because it's libelous or obscene or whatever, because that there's billions of things being put up and there's no realistic way that they could monitor all of this in a credible manner. And if they did so they would have enormous power. And so what section 230 of the communications act was meant to do was to basically say you're not like the New York Times, you're not going to be held libel, because somebody puts up something on your social media platform that happens to be defamatory, to be obscene or whatever. They may be libel for having put it up, but Facebook and Twitter are not going to be libel. So one thing Congress did was to insulate them from any liability, and basically say this is like a public forum. And they didn't prohibit them from censoring, but it said you're not libel if somebody put something up that is otherwise actionable. And now is whether they should in fact be engaging in screening and removal of material. There are good reasons for that because some of the material that gets put up there is in fact inappropriate and actionable. But on the other hand the question is do we want to trust a private entity like Facebook or Twitter to engage in censorship. And Facebook also goes up and once they begin to do that. How do we know they're not going to then turn political and then begin allowing things that advocate some positions and taking down things that advocate other positions and therefore having an even more effect on American politics. So this is I think a very challenging issue as we go forward. To require these entities to remove material is extremely difficult because there are billions of things being put up every day. And how can we really expect them to screen everything. On the other hand, to encourage them to take down things runs the risk that they will abuse that power, and that they will begin. If they're pro Trump, taking down things that criticize Trump, and if they're anti Trump taking that things that that are pro Trump. And we really want Facebook and Twitter acting in that way. So the idea of neutrality served legitimate concerns. And also the case that a lot of stuff that gets put up is wrong is false is misleading. And should we have some way of addressing that right now I think we haven't figured out the answer to that question. What I mean what are some I won't put you on the spot and say how would you solve the problem because I don't think it's fair and we don't know. But I'm interested in how you'd move the debate forward right because I think there's, I think two of the pressure points that come up are, are one, even those who might be ambivalent there are there are those who are ambivalent about empowering the companies to censor, but who will also acknowledge that they sort of are now anyway right, they will respond to political pressure they will there's an arbitrariness now that he leaves even certain real sort of free speech would say uncomfortable. And then there's sort of a second line of argument right which is that the that that neutrality has because because the harm is not neutrally distributed neutrality has a non neutral effect right because we now know that Russian state interference disproportionately targeted black Americans implied neutrality has a non neutral effects because you treat accurate and misleading information the same way you end up privileging misinformation and so are there are there kinds of questions that you think are the ones we should start to focus on if we want to find our way through this I mean I think what you just raised is is exactly right. I mean the problem is that having Facebook and Twitter and similar social platforms or some media platforms, not intervene, runs risks of creating harm to discourse in our society. On the other hand, empowering them to intervene and putting pressure on them to intervene raises very serious risks in the other direction that they will do so in a way that is not neutral. And the more you empower them to do this, the greater that risk becomes. So the question is, is there some sensible neutral way of doing this. Now one way to do it is to create a government entity. The old Federal Communications Commission, which regulated radio and television. And that overseas social media. And it to see if we can create an entity that does it in a responsible and fair minded way. So I don't think that we have reviews to take down processes to ensure that they are consistent with a set of standards that are articulated, but you know I don't think we're living in the same world today that we lived in when the fairness doctrine was in place. And so I don't know that we can trust government entities to do this. So it's, I don't think there's a simple solution. It's a real dilemma. I don't think this I don't think there's a simple solution. I do think we need to address it. And I do think we need to spend time on it. I think we are. I think there are lots of organizations and academics and and members of the journalist world, who were spending lots of energy thinking about how to get at this, but I don't think they've come to a satisfactory solution yet, but it's a great challenge for the future. Thank you. So what's kind of end on that note thinking about the future you, what are, you know, if you had to kind of boil down to a theme or a set of ideas, sort of what the last century was for freedom of speech freedom of expression. What what would it be and as you look ahead at the century we are now a fifth of the way through, you know what do you think will be the what what is this century for free speech what is what is going to be the coming theme or themes. So the last century was a learning experience. It was an experience in which we went from having virtually no legal or social understanding or concept of free speech to one in which we developed a very speech protective and pretty sophisticated set of principles about the importance of free speech, the dangers of allowing government to intervene in the realm of free speech, and basically trusting individual citizens to listen to read to learn and to come to their own conclusions about what's right and what's wrong. And I think that was a great achievement led by the courts in particular. In this century I think there is a concern about is there such a thing as too much free speech. And do we need more government intervention. Then we now have because the opportunities for manipulation and for misleading have grown much greater with changes in technology. And also I think it's an educational issue. I mean, I think that that we are not doing a very good job of educating young people today to the importance of free speech and how to deal with the dangers of free speech and how to think about them and how to think about American political systems and how to think about civics. And I think that was a much more central part of education. If you go back to the 20th century that it is today where a lot more is about stem. And I think therefore we've created a generation of individuals who are much less aware of much less thoughtful about the history about the dangers about the values of free speech, then they were the end of the 20th century. And I think that's something we should pay much more attention to in our educational process. I think we've lost sight of that. And we've so much more of our focus is educating kids about about stem type issues than about civics and governance. And I think it's a real problem for democracy. I mentioned before the show that you actually teach an undergraduate class on First Amendment free speech. Do you, is that something you think, let's not say it should be required but is that something you think ought to be offered, you know, at most universities. Are you getting that kind of response from the students. Absolutely, I think, I think it should be. And in high schools as well. I think it should be. And, yeah, I mean I agree to teach this First Amendment course free speech course to undergraduates in part because they think that it's become much more relevant much more important than it was 2530 years ago for the students to understand the complexity of free speech issues. And I would like to see that be made available much more broadly in the same way that I would like to see the history of equality. Taught in a much fuller and more direct way in high schools and in colleges than it is today. And I think these are the kinds of issues that we need to be understanding and addressing in order to have citizens going forward. Who are able to make more thoughtful more informed judgments about how they should think about the challenges that face our society. I'll take that as a closing note I hear is our sober assessment of the challenges of the century to come but hope that we have within our means, the ability to build a country that can, that can meet them. Jeff is an incredibly prolific author but two of his most recent books are the free speech century with Lee Bollinger. Also, a very important First Amendment scholar and democracy and equality, the enduring constitutional vision of the Warren court with David Strauss and then coming out next year will be national security leaks and freedom of the press also with Lee Bollinger. Lee Bollinger like the John Lennon and Paul McCartney of free speech kind of pre-white album. We've been clerks at the Supreme Court at the same time and so we've been colleagues and friends for almost half a century now. Fantastic. We'll have to get you both on some time and find the true points of disagreement that I know are lurking, lurking between you both and you could also follow Jeff on Twitter at stone underscore Jeffrey. And as always we'll send you these resources after the show but Jeff thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure. All right everyone before we go I want to tell you a little bit about what's coming up on vision we'll have a trio of shows extending these topics so next week July 2 Dr. Wayne Frederick President Howard University and Suzanne Nassle the head of Penn America will talk more about campuses and free expression on July 9 University of Miami law professor Mary Anne Franks will talk about online speech is one of the leading authorities I'm thinking about harm and online speech. And on July 16 American media technology learned to be a seed who will come on to talk both about online speech but also about freedom of the press in a digital era. As a reminder this episode will be up on the website tomorrow you can see this episode and any episode on demand at kf.org slash vision. Please stay for 30 seconds to take the two questions survey that just popped up. And as always we will end the show to the sounds of Miami singer songwriter Nick County, you can check out his music on Spotify. Until next week stay safe.