Professor Watchlist

Dr. Laura Beth Nielsen is a Professor of Sociology at Northwestern University. She wrote in an op-ed that there are good arguments for restricting free speech rights. She said that racist hate speech has been linked to higher rates of smoking and obesity, for example. Supporting her argument for restricting speech, she pointed out that recently the Supreme Court ruled that a music group (“The Slants”, a band made up of Asian-Americans) was allowed to use a derogatory name as their band name, although she did not point out the band was using the name to mock people who use the name in a derogatory fashion.