Harvey Silverglate

And the idea is to be able to challenge those thoughts, those ideas.

And if you don't have free speech and academic freedom, those views get reified, they do not get challenged.

So it violates the fundamental role of higher educational institutions to have any restrictions at all.

That's number one.

Number two, as I think I said earlier, if people, students are not allowed to be frank with one another, they don't really learn about one another.

And

You know, I've given a lot of lectures in which I have said, and I think students now understand it, I'm much more interested in hearing from the people who hate me than the people who love me.

I'm much more interested in knowing who disagrees with me than people who agree with me.

That's how I learn, and that's how they learn, the clash of ideas, which is the theory behind the First Amendment.

that truth will somehow emerge, or if not truth, at least a better truth, a truer truth, a more useful truth, if ideas are allowed to clash.

You know, somebody asked me once about what books I would read

what I have is required reading in literature courses, and I listed Mein Kampf, and they were horrified.

And I said, well, it's one of the most important books of the 20th century.

Six million Jews died, an enormous number of other people died.

Because one guy wrote a book called Mein Kampf and took it seriously.

It's one of the most important books ever written.

How can an educated person not have at least breezed through Mein Kampf?

It's not a great read, though.

It's not a great read.

He was not a great writer.