Free Speech and its First Amendment protections have rarely been as controversial and central to public discussion in the United States as they are today. After a brief introduction to free speech as understood before it became enshrined in the Constitution’s First Amendment, we’ll examine and trace its history in the U.S.—legally, politically, philosophically and socially—from 1791 to the present day.
Topics explored will include such longstanding issues as dissent and censorship, flag burning, prior restraint, “fighting words,” and obscenity. More recent controversial matters include hate speech, free-speech zones, trigger warnings, offensiveness, “snowflakes,” online trolling, free speech on campus, regulation of social-media platforms, and whether free speech, traditionally a value fought for by the Left, is now more commonly embraced by the Right.
Fall 2026
During times that seem politically bleak, you might ask: how is it possible to create lasting social change? What does it mean to organize? What can justice look like in practice? This course examines how change is created incrementally, in the everyday, and in response to structures of oppression, and how it is possible to renew the power of the collective and of the imagination. We will read Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba’s Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care to examine how organizers enact the hard work of transformative social and political change. Through theoretical, historical, ethnographic, and practical examples, students will gain an understanding of political mobilization and movement building across different contexts. Student research will focus on contemporary movements for justice, articulating their analyses for different audiences through their white paper and op-ed projects.
Fall 2026
How smart are you? How smart is your dog? We often measure intelligence by human standards – testing parrots on their ability to name shapes or timing dogs while they solve puzzles. Through this course, we’ll flip the script and put ourselves in animals’ shoes. We’ll mainly read Ed Yong’s recent book examining what various animals actually take in through their senses. Students may focus their research on the sensing, cognition, or communication of a specific species, or on the adoption of new tools, like AI, for improving our understanding of animals. Writing assignments will focus on articulating the recent findings, as well as gaps, within animal intelligence research.