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A panel discussion about the current state of free expression on college campuses featuring Greg Lukianoff, Dr. Sigal Ben-Porath, and Dr. Jacqueline Pfeffer Merrill. Moderated by Prof. Kevin Marinelli, Executive Director of the UNC Program for Public Discourse. A part of #UNCResearchWeek, our panelists will discuss the "Free Expression and Constructive Dialogue at UNC-Chapel Hill" report composed by UNC Profs. Jennifer Larson, Mark McNeilly, and Timothy Ryan. You can read more about the study’s conclusions and find a link to the full report on The Daily Tar Heel. Profs. Larson and McNeilly also discussed the report with the James G. Martin Center earlier this year.

Greg Lukianoff is President and CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, FIRE, and co-author of the New York Times best-seller, The Coddling of the American Mind. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and elsewhere. He has also testified before the U.S. Congress regarding the state of free speech on college campuses.

Sigal Ben-Porath, Ph.D., is a professor in the Literacy, Culture, and International Education Division of the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education. She is an executive committee member of the Andrea Mitchell Center for the Study of Democracy and is the Penn Press faculty advisory board chair. Her published works include Making Up Our Mind: What School Choice is Really About, Free Speech on Campus, and more.

Jacqueline Pfeffer Merrill, Ph.D., is Director of the Campus Free Expression Project at the Bipartisan Policy Center. She has served as a faculty member at St. John’s College and the College of William & Mary and taught at Duke University, the University of Calgary, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, and the college program at Maryland’s only women’s prison. Her writing has appeared in several publications, including Society, Law & Liberty, and Philanthropy.

Kevin Marinelli is the executive director of the Program for Public Discourse and an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at UNC. He is a rhetorical scholar who previously served as director of the Speaking Center at Davidson College for three years before joining the Massachusettes Institute of Technology to teach rhetoric in 2019. He has also taught at Young Harris College, the University of Georgia and San Jose State University. He holds a Ph.D. in speech-communication from the University of Georgia and an M.A. in the same subject from San Jose State. He also holds bachelor’s degrees in both communication studies and political science from the College of Charleston.