Podcast: Keith Whittington Tells Why Free Speech Can't Be Taken for Granted
On this episode of Inside Yale Law School, Professor Keith Whittington sits down with Dean Heather K. Gerken to discuss his recent books, including one on academic freedom and free speech, and his work heading a new center at the Law School focused on these issues. He also describes how the intense interest in these topics on university campuses is “a little bit like drinking from a fire hose at the moment.”
Keith Whittington is the David Boies Professor of Law at Yale Law School, where he also directs the Center for Academic Freedom and Free Speech. He joined the Law School in 2024 after spending most of his career at Princeton University. Whittington’s teaching and scholarship span American constitutional theory, American political and constitutional history, the presidency, judicial politics, and free speech and the law. He earned his M.A. and Ph.D. in political science at Yale University.
Defending academic freedom (1:24)
Whittington discusses the Law School’s new Center for Academic Freedom and Free Speech and why the center was founded:
“Unfortunately, I think academic freedom and free speech broadly are things that can no longer really be taken for granted and need to be talked about and also defended. And for much of my career, I really did sort of assume that these were background norms that I didn't spend much time thinking about, certainly didn't spend much time worrying about. That no longer feels very true.”
Read More:
New Yale Law School Center Seeks to Safeguard and Promote Academic Freedom and Free Speech
What can be taught in classrooms? (9:09)
In his 2024 book “You Can’t Teach That! The Battle Over University Classrooms,” Whittington examines the rise of legislative proposals that dictate what can be taught at public universities.
“To what degree is there a reasonable First Amendment case to be made that there are real constitutional limits on what state legislatures can do relative to classroom teaching in public universities? I think that's not an easy problem. The court has provided a little guidance on these issues, but not nearly as much as one might like.”
Read More:
The New Culture War on American Campuses
Living in an age of impeachment (14:20)
Impeachment was part of Whittington’s dissertation work at Yale, and he returned to the subject in his 2024 book “The Impeachment Power: The Law, Politics, and Purposes of an Extraordinary Constitutional Tool.” He discusses how the topic has become newly relevant today.
“What we now see, I think, is a lot of politicians who can fundraise off the threat of impeachment. They get a lot of support from their own base supporters from threatening impeachment, and that creates new incentives to think about these kind of hardball tactics that once would have been viewed as quite extraordinary and in some ways we've sort of routinized in recent years.”
Read More:
Professor Keith Whittington Explains the Power of Impeachment
Topics
1:08 Introducing Keith Whittington
1:24 The new Center for Academic Freedom and Free Speech
5:07 The growing interest in academic freedom issues
9:09 Book: “You Can’t Teach That! The Battle for University Classrooms”
14:20 Book: “The Impeachment Power: The Law, Politics, and Purposes of an Extraordinary Constitutional Tool”
18:47 His work on originalism
26:08 His journey from political science to law school
30:16 How he became a scholar
33:04 Attacks on higher education and what he worries about
