Four Westmont professors will explore the freedoms and limits of the First Amendment in a 7 p.m. lecture Wednesday, Nov. 1, in Hieronymus Lounge at Westmont’s Kerrwood Hall.
The panel discussion is titled You Offend Me, So Shut Up: Rethinking Free Speech in a Polarized Age
Panelists are: Jesse Covington, associate professor of political science; Chandra Mallampalli, Fletcher Jones Foundation professor in social science; Sandra Richter; Robert H. Gundry, professor in biblical studies; Jeff Schloss, director of the Center of Faith, Ethics and Life Sciences; and T.B. Walker, professor in the natural and behavioral sciences.
The Westmont Forum, a series of discussions on important issues, is free and open to the public.
“A number of recent cases, including NFL players kneeling during the national anthem, right-wing speakers at UC Berkeley, and the protests at Charlottesville, have sparked a national debate over free speech,” said Tom Knecht, professor of political science and lecture organizer.
“We hope you join us as we consider the state of public discourse in America,” he said.
Covington, who chairs the political science department, teaches and writes about political theory and constitutional law. He earned his doctorate in political science from the University of Notre Dame, an MA in religion at Westminster Theological Seminary, and BA from Pepperdine University.
Mallampalli, who earned a doctorate in modern South Asian history at the University of Wisconsin, studies a range of interests at the intersection of religion, law and society in colonial India.
His books include A Muslim Conspiracy in British India? Politics and Paranoia in the Early Nineteenth Century Deccan and Race, Religion and Law in Colonial India: Trials of an Interracial Family.
Schloss, iknown for his scholarship on interactions between evolutionary theory and religious faith, co-edited several books, including Understanding Moral Sentiments: Darwinian Perspectives.
He graduated from Wheaton College and earned a doctorate in ecology/evolutionary biology from Washington University in St. Louis.
Richter’s research includes economies of the Iron Age I, II and III; agriculture and animal husbandry in the Levant; military methods in the Ancient Near East; family systems in tribal communities; and the literary expertise of the biblical writers.
She earned a doctorate in Hebrew Bible from the Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations Department of Harvard University.
— Scott Craig for Westmont College.