Free speech is indispensable on college campuses. Allowing varied views and frank exchanges of opinion is a core component of the educational enterprise and the pursuit of truth. But free speech does not mean a free-for-all. The First Amendment prohibits “abridging the freedom of speech,” yet laws against perjury or bribery, for example, are still constitutional. In the same way, valuing freedom of speech does not stop a university from regulating speech when doing so is necessary for its educational mission. So where is the dividing line? How can we distinguish reasonable restrictions from impermissible infringement?

Cass R. Sunstein is the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard and the founder and director of the Program on Behavioral Economics and Public Policy at Harvard Law School. In 2018, he received the Holberg Prize from the government of Norway, and in 2020, the World Health Organization appointed him as Chair of its technical advisory group on Behavioural Insights and Sciences for Health. From 2009 to 2012, he was Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs and then served on the President’s Review Board on Intelligence and Communications Technologies and on the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Board. Sunstein has testified before congressional committees on many subjects, and he has advised officials at the United Nations, the European Commission, the World Bank, and many nations on issues of law and public policy. He has served as an adviser to the Behavioural Insights Team in the United Kingdom. Sunstein is author of hundreds of articles and dozens of books, including Campus Free Speech (2024), Manipulation (2025), and Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness (with Richard H. Thaler, 2008).

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