Getting started

The new semester is almost here and I am about to begin teaching this free speech and responsibility course again. This is one of my favorite courses, which I teach every spring, and as ever it presents me and my students a great opportunity to think about the legal, political, ethical and social dimensions of "freedom of expression," particularly in the United States. Because I teach this course every year, I am able to revisit issues which, a few years back, might have been a glimmer in the future of free speech controversies. For example, this term I am especially interested in campaign finance and the impact of the Citizens United case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court last term, around this time. It was too late for me to really engage deeply with the issue last spring and I had attempted to introduce the issue several semesters back, but have not revisited it recently. So, I am glad I get to work through my own thinking about the impact of the case with my students.

As ever, in a cash-strapped public university, the class is larger than I would like. While some of my colleagues might balk at the idea that 45 students is a large class, for my own pedagogy and that this is an ethics course as much as a history, law and politics course, always gives me pause. I always struggle with the question of how to provide students the opportunity for developing their ideas about interpersonal communication ethics when the numbers seem to defy the possibilities. So, as I have been doing for several semesters, students will work in small seminars as well as a large cohort, giving them a chance to think about what it means to deliberate, in both small and larger settings, issues of pressing concern where we may disagree, in a way that is productive and ethical. Now, despite that gridlock and inability to communicate across differences seems to be the "new normal" in politics today, I still maintain that these kinds of deliberative spaces are possible, and I owe it to my students to help them think about what it takes to create them.

So, as I begin to chronicle this semester's free speech adventure, I am as ever optimistic and hopeful.

Image courtesy of Mellowbox