Over the course of Monday, November 5th and Tuesday, November 6th, 2018, Director john powell participated in the annual Tanner Lecture at the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, UK. Established in 1978, the Tanner Lecture series is meant to explore scholarship in the advancement of human values. The lecture is conducted in a lecturer-respondent format. The topic of 2018’s lecture was an exploration of free speech where Columbia University President Lee Bollinger gave the main lecturer and powell served as one of three respondents. Bollinger’s remarks surveyed the first one hundred years of Supreme Court jurisprudence interpreting the First Amendment of the United States Constitution and considered the role and direction of free speech in the future as technological advancements in communication, demagoguery and intolerance, and a host of other issues become more pressing and urgent. Director powell’s response addressed whether free speech absolutism always serves the values it purports to uphold and if narrow regulations of hate speech in critical institutions would more soundly secure the, at times, dueling values of equality and liberty. The other respondents included Professor Rae Langton (the Knightbridge Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge) and Professor Fred Schauer (David and Mary Harrison Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Virginia).
For more information on this event visit https://www.clarehall.cam.ac.uk/tanner-lectures
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