【正文】 one that has provoked debate, dissent, confrontation, andeven violence on campuses across the country, and one that has attracted widespread publicattention and am, of course, talking about issues of free speech on university meaning andlimits of free speech are questions deeply embedded in our legal system, in interpretations ofthe First Amendment and its am no constitutional lawyer, indeed no lawyer atall, and I do not intend in my brief remarks today to address plex legal ,clearly, can I in a few brief minutes take on even a fraction of the arguments that have beenadvanced on this , I speak as one who has been a university president for adecade in order to raise three questions:First: Why is free speech so important to and at universities? Second: Why does it seem under special challenge right now?And, third: How might we better address these challenges by moving beyond just defensivelyprotecting free speech – which, of course, we must do – to actively and affirmatively enabling itand nurturing environments in which it can thrive?So first: Why is free speech so important to and at universities? This is a question I took upwith the newly arrived firstyear students in the College when I weled them at Convocationlast centuries, I told them, universities have been environments in which knowledge hasbeen discovered, collected, studied, debated, expanded, changed, and advanced through thepower of rational argument and pursue truth unrelentingly, but we must neverbe so placent as to believe we have unerringly attained is inspiration assume there is always more to know and discover so we open ourselves tochallenge and must always be ready to be wrong, so being part of a universitymunity requires courage and must be places open to the kind ofdebate that can change ideas and mitted to standards of reason and evidence that formthe bases for evaluating ideas or basking in intellectual orthodoxy independent of facts and evidenceimpedes our access to new and better ideas, and it inhibits a full and considered rejection ofbad at least the time of Galileo, we can see how repressing seemingly hereticalideas has blinded societies and nations to the enhanced knowledge and understanding on whichprogress more recently, we can see here at Harvard how our inattentiveness to thepower and appeal of conservative voices left much of our munity astonished –blindsided by the oute of last fall39。 claim to be sources and validators of fact depends on our willingness toactively and vigorously defend those we must remember that limiting some speechopens the dangerous possibility that the speech that is ultimately censored may be our words are to be treated as equivalent to physical violence and silenced or evenprosecuted, who is to decide which words? Freedom of expression, as Justice Oliver WendellHolmes famously said long ago, protects not only free thought for those who agree with us butfreedom for the thought we need to hear those hateful ideas so our society is fullyequipped to oppose and defeat the years, differences about the implementation of the University39。t always gotten it long ago as 1939,an invitation from a student group to the head of the American Communist Party generatedprotest and the invitation was ultimately canceled by the Russell39。no one should be mocked as a snowflake for finding it , but important and , we believe, for every member of the price of free speech cannot be charged just to those most likely tobee its must support and empower the voices of all the members of ourmunity and nurture the courage and humility that our mitment to unfettereddebate demands from all of that courage means not only resilience in face ofchallenge or attack, but strength to speak out against injustices directed at others as speech doesn39。s speech is encouraged and taken freedom of speech is not just about allowing is about actively creating amunity where everyone can contribute and flourish, a munity where argument isrelished, not of speech is not just freedom from censorship。listen 39。take the risk of being is the best way to learn and build a culture ofgenerous listening so that others may be emboldened to take risks, munity in ashared search for Veritas – that is the ideal for which Harvard must need it nowmore than ever.