Date: Thursday 23 April 2026
Time: 18.00 - 19.30
Location: Edmund Burke Lecture Theatre, Arts Building, Trinity College Dublin.
To request a place, please complete the booking form here.
The Trinity Centre for Constitutional Governance is hosting the Inaugural TriCON Verdon lecture ‘Campus Free Speech’ by Professor Cass Sunstein.
Free speech is indispensable in college life, because varied views and frank exchanges of opinion are 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 of the US Constitution 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? In this lecture, Cass Sunstein will offer some answers to these thorny questions. At a time when universities are assailed on free-speech grounds from both left and right, this lecture will cut through the noise and explore some of the deeper issues animating the debates.
Further details on the lecture are available on the School of Law website here.
For further information please email lawevent@tcd.ie.