 As a university, we have the obligation not only to protect free speech but to protect the safety and security of our community. I now want to talk about why at least to me free speech is important. I believe that it's fundamental to our democracy. Democracy requires arguments. You have to have differences of opinion about issues, about candidates for it to function. The first thing authoritarian regimes do is to restrict speech. Now the history of speech restrictions shows that they're most often used against marginalized communities and minority interests. They can McCarthyism, for example, or after it's to criminalize protests against the draft in the Vietnam War, flag-burning, for example. A speech that denigrates groups, blacks, Jews, lesbians, gays, transgender people, immigrants, Muslims, women, to just give just a few examples is loathsome and odious. It violates our values as a nation. It violates our values as a university. It violates our values as a community. Some people feel very strongly that we should shout it down. Not let such hateful speech happen at all through what's sometimes called platform denial. I don't believe that this is the right course and let me explain my reasons. I think it colludes in the narrative of the far right that universities do not support free speech. Hence, it undermines the university. More speech, I think, is the most important counter to hateful speech. How do their arguments show how raw and bigoted they are? Invite your own speakers, ones that are far more compelling than some of the really pretty dismal and trivial speakers that some groups have invited. Find safe space. Find solidarity with those who support you and support your community. What can we do as a community? We can give platforms to voices that have been historically denied voice. In this regard, we provided funding to equity and inclusion for a speaker series and will be collecting student input for who we should invite. We can express our views forcefully, repeatedly, about speakers that we feel are bigoted or racist, that espouse views that are contrary to our values as a community. What happened in Charlottesville would not have justified canceling the rally in Boston. In fact, the rally in Boston turned out to be a wonderful statement, a nonviolent statement of solidarity against hate, against bigotry. This is a very much evolving area in the law, but I'm deeply committed to keeping our community safe, but also protecting the right of free speech that is our DNA, is our heritage. What I meant by the year of free speech is not that we didn't have it beforehand, but we haven't had lots of opportunities as a community to think about what are the genuinely hard issues about free speech. What do you do with the tension between free speech rights which permit abhorrent, hateful, odious speech and our values as a community? When is it justified to cancel an event because of the threat of violence? At what point do you do that? What constitutes a novel threat? This is really what issues I think the community has to engage, not only in the beginning of my career, but through much of it. I was very much a minority when I came to this campus, 3% of the faculty were women. We didn't see a lot of female faces in any faculty gathering, and I was often one of very few women administrators who was used to hearing a language that was hurtful, that was highly critical and demeaning of women. And in thinking about this over many years, I realized that the surest sort of source of strength, which admittedly I think is easier, the older you get, is a kind of inner strength, a sense of self-worth. I don't mean that it's trivial, I don't mean that it's simple, but I think ultimately that's the one kind of the surest kind of strength we can all develop.