Related Reading and Resources

Columbia University is committed to providing a learning, living, and working environment free from unlawful discrimination and harassment and to fostering a nurturing and vibrant community founded upon the fundamental dignity and worth of all of its members.

Our ability to sustain the exceptionally robust freedoms that we have worked to build is more important than ever. - Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger

It has long been recognized in constitutional law that the suppression of speech in order to appease disruptive, hostile, or threatening members of the audience can be as much a threat to rights of free expression as government censorship.

Case studies and the PEN America Principles offer a way to address some of the most polarizing campus unrest in decades over issues such as sexist speech, racial epithets, controversial campus speakers, trigger warnings, and so-called “safe spaces” and “microaggressions."