A central question of democracy is how to balance a government’s need to conduct national security operations in secret with the public’s right to know what their government is doing. The answer—debated to this day—is both a complex policy judgment and an equally complex judgment about the meaning of the First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and the press. Legal scholar Geoffrey Stone (coauthor of National Security, Leaks, and Freedom of the Press) convenes a panel with former director of the CIA John Brennan and Washington Post national security reporter Ellen Nakashima (two of the book’s contributors) to discuss secrecy, disclosure, security, and the First Amendment.

This program is the first panel in our new series Deep Dive: Speech, curated by Geoffrey Stone

This 3-part series curated and hosted by legal scholar Geoffrey Stone (Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor of Law, University of Chicago) will consider a variety of perspectives on free speech in the 21st century. We'll explore some of the forces driving wide-ranging debates around First Amendment rights in our moment, including freedom of the press and national security, the role of social media platforms and internet companies, and hate speech.

Read more at Chicago Humanities Festival