Laura Kipnis, professor of communication at Northwestern University, will speak on the culture of campus politics, free speech and how well-intended campus climate improvement efforts sometimes carry unwanted consequences when she presents ‘The Paranoid Style in Campus Politics’ for the 2023 SBS Freedman Lecture on Thursday, April 20, from 11:30 a.m. - 1 p.m. in Old Chapel. The event is free and open to the public.

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Kipnis, author of the provocative books Unwanted Advances and Love in the Time of Contagion, will discuss the difficulty in discussing “cancel culture,” which she says is “talking about something that is not there, an absence: of voices, arguments, contestation...in other words, an intellectual vacuum.”

Her speech will examine how on U.S. campuses, DEI functionaries call the shots on allowable inquiry under the banner of progressivism, with conservatives taking up the mantle of free speech and due process. The familiar left-right distinctions have broken down, she says, leaving ideological minefields and political paralysis. Kipnis will discuss how self-censorship has become the norm and the increasingly treacherous landscape for ironists or intellectual iconoclasts of any political stripe.

The Freedman Lecture series is funded by Robert Rosen ‘69 and Nancy Rosen ‘70, and is named for Ms. Rosen’s parents, Max and Ruth Freedman. Initiated in 2016, the Freedman Lecture brings scholars and practitioners to the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences (SBS) to engage contemporary societal issues from different vantage points, leaving the audience with a richer appreciation of differing viewpoints and an example of how reasonable people can disagree without being disagreeable. Previous Freedman lectures have tackled issues of immigration, universal basic income and free speech.

More details about this and past Freedman Lectures can be found on the SBS website.