Negotiating Difficult Conversations: When Free Speech is in the Job Description

Four panelists from different fields — higher education, media, advocacy, and law — discuss the role “free speech” plays in their careers. This discussion is the result of a collaboration between BMCC and Pen America.

The aim of the panel is to push the national debate around “free speech” in new, productive dimensions. How can we move away from more abstract conversations about free speech, to focus instead on the practical work of engaging across lines of difference? By hearing from people who do it in their daily work, we hope to provide practical ideas about how people can hone these skills for their own professional futures.

Some of the questions we will consider in this discussion include: What strategies can a person employ to negotiate with someone they otherwise dislike? How can such conversations be productive and useful? What are some of the common mistakes people make when approaching conversations across ideological differences, and how exactly are they counterproductive? How does “free speech” impact your professional work? And, what does your personal experience tell you about the value of free speech as a civil liberty?

Emerson Sykes: Emerson Sykes is a staff attorney with the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology
Project where he focuses on First Amendment free speech protections

Simran Jeet Singh: Dr. Simran Jeet Singh is an educator, writer, activist, and scholar who speaks
regularly on issues of diversity, inclusion, religion, race, equity, and hate violence.

Merav Ben-Nun: Dr. Merav Ben-Nun received her PhD in International Education from New York
University, and her BA in Political Science and Sociology, from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Jonathan Friedman: Jonathan Friedman is the project director for campus free speech at PEN
America. He oversees PEN America’s advocacy, analysis, and outreach in the national debate around free speech and inclusion at colleges and universities.

For more information, contact Dr. Vincent (Tzu-Wen) Cheng of the BMCC Speech, Communications, and Theatre Arts program at tcheng@bmcc.cuny.edu.

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