Kick Off Event
March 7, 2024
Watch the kick off of Penn AFSA with Greg Lukianoff, the President of FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights in Expression) and Dr. Jesus Fernandez-Villaverde about steps to reverse Penn’s trajectory toward speech restriction, and to re-establish Penn as a model of excellence and ideological independence for other universities.
Greg Lukianoff, President, Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
Greg is an attorney, NYT best-selling author, and the President/CEO of FIRE. He is the author of Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate, Freedom From Speech, and FIRE’s Guide to Free Speech on Campus. Most recently, he co-authored The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure with Jonathan Haidt. This New York Times best-seller expands on their September 2015 Atlantic cover story of the same name. Greg is also an Executive Producer of Can We Take a Joke? (2015), a documentary about the collision of comedy, censorship, and outrage culture; and of Mighty Ira: A Civil Liberties Story (2020), an award-winning film about the life and career of former ACLU Executive Director Ira Glasser.
Dr. Jesus Fernández-Villaverde, Co-Author, Penn Forward
Dr. Jesús Fernández-Villaverde is the Howard Marks Presidential Professor of Economics at UPenn, and serves as Director of the Penn Initiative for the Study of the Markets (PISM), where students learn about the historical performance, social impact, and philosophical foundations of open markets. He also co-directs The Business, Economic, and Financial History Project at Wharton. Dr. Fernández-Villaverde is one of the architects of Penn Forward –a current initiative led by a group of Penn faculty to recommit the University to the values of academic and intellectual freedom.
About Penn AFSA
The University of Pennsylvania Alumni Free Speech Alliance is a platform for Penn alumni to promote the principles of free speech at our alma mater, model what respectful debate and dialog is like for students, and provide support for all Penn stakeholders who are seeking to promote a vibrant marketplace of ideas at one of the world’s most important academic institutions. Events like this one are meant to raise awareness of the importance of free speech, provide perspectives that may not normally be presented on campus, and show that healthy debate and discourse is still possible in today’s world.