Professor Michael Glennon’s 2025 Commencement Address upon Receiving the James L. Paddock Teaching Award

Professor Michael J. Glennon, Professor of Constitutional and International Law at The Fletcher School, was honored with the James L. Paddock Teaching Award at Commencement 2025. In his speech, Professor Glennon delivered a powerful, unflinching defense of free speech and intellectual courage in the face of political and social pressure. 

Glennon’s remarks come at a time of heightened tension around freedom of expression on college campuses and in public life, both in the United States and abroad. Referencing recent events at Tufts and beyond, he challenged graduates to uphold open discourse and resist the temptation to silence differing views – even, and especially, when those views are unpopular. 

Below is the full text.

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His Excellency Ambassador Rudd, Trustee Tarlow, Chairwoman Puth, Dean Gallagher, faculty colleagues, parents, families, friends and honored graduates: Thank you for this award and thank you for the great honor of speaking to you here today. I very much appreciate it.

The smiling faces all around us, I think, reflect what all of us are feeling: this is a day of triumph – triumph for you graduates, for whom today culminates long years of dedication; triumph for your families and loved ones, who have seen you through it all; and triumph for my faculty colleagues, for sending 220 highly educated graduates into this world who can do it a great deal of good. It’s been a long hard grind, and I share your joy when I say, You’ve made it! Congratulations – nice job!

I need hardly tell you that this has been a tough year to finish up. Your families and friends may have heard the word “Tufts” on television for the first time when they saw those viral images, streamed around the world, of one of your fellow students surrounded and whisked away by a masked group for nothing more than writing an op-ed in your student newspaper. What that video did not show was that she was placed in chains, denied needed medicine, given no access at the time to her lawyer, and held with 24 inmates in a filthy cell built for 14 people, 1300 miles away. It is no exaggeration to say that that video and her appalling treatment were chilling; some of you have lived in fear that, because of something you may have written or said, that same fate could befall you. I am so sorry you had to endure this.

Grace under pressure has been a rare commodity in this country lately, but we recently saw an example of it here on this campus. Sunil Kumar, the President of Tufts, personally declared to the federal court that that student violated no Tufts policy and that she should be released – as she finally was last week, by court order. His declaration was an act of courage. It made me proud to be here at Tufts and I commend President Kumar for it.

There is, however, more to be said about this event. Let me share three thoughts with you.

First, we protect freedom of speech, in education and in self-government, because it’s the one right on which all other rights depend. We rely on free speech every day to make our lives better – to help us avoid mistakes – to shine light on new possibilities that we may have overlooked – to open new doors to social, political, medical and scientific progress – to keep change peaceful. Our ability to speak freely sets us apart as human, it helps us define who we are, it individuates. This is why keeping open the channels of political communication is the central mission of a democratic government. And it does not matter whether the views and information we receive come from Americans or from our international visitors – in fact, it’s the views of our guests that we often need to hear most, because their perspective can be more detached. When the government punishes someone for communicating her opinion, therefore – not for her conduct, but merely for expressing her opinion – it defeats the very purposes that government is intended to serve. 

Second, it’s not only the government that has fallen short. Let’s be honest with ourselves: This nation’s universities have themselves done far too little to encourage independent thought. This is one reason why only 30% of the American people have confidence in higher education today. Too many students and too many faculty at too many universities, convinced of their absolute righteousness, have – intentionally or not – stifled the speech of those with whom they disagree, and this needs to stop. Let’s remember why we have defended Rumeysa Ozturk’s freedom of speech: not because we necessarily agree with her, but because we know that there is more than one legitimate vision of social justice – because we know that if her vision can be suppressed, so can ours – because we may be wrong, and we need to hear what she has to say. So let’s not ignore the illness because we may dislike the doctors: There is no place on any American college campus for either secret police or speech police or anyone else who aims to coerce the thinking of students or faculty.

Third, some governments and some universities try to suppress speech for a well-intentioned reason – to prevent nations and groups and individuals from suffering harm. That is a natural human instinct. It’s true here in this country and even more so in Europe, where free speech is now under an all-out attack. More often than not, however, this protective impulse is short-sighted, because suppressing mere advocacy that is anti-American or anti-German or anti-Israel – or anti-anything else, for that matter – generally sparks a backlash, and the repression ends up fueling the very animosities it is intended to extinguish – animosities that are best addressed, Justice Brandeis wrote, not with enforced silence but with more speech. 

Let me close on a personal note. I’m worried for the future of our country. For 236 years, the genius of our system has been its ability to equilibrate. Our framework of checks and balances has caused extremists on the left and the right to cancel each other out. Today, however, on the crucial issue of free speech, the two extremes are not opponents: they are allies – they both want to rein in speech that they don’t like. A victory for one is a victory for both. The courts can keep their thumbs in the dam for a while, but they will not hold out for long without a legislative backup – and we barely have a Congress anymore. As a meaningful check on presidential power, Congress for some years has largely ceased to exist. This is hard to admit and it’s a source of great sadness to me – I used to work there – but it is what it is, and if the courts follow suit, we will be left with one last line of defense: a corps of sensible, level-headed people who are savvy enough to understand what’s at stake and gutsy enough to stand up and defend it – namely, you.

I promise you: this will not be easy. Some of you will soon settle into large bureaucracies and they will put your principles to the test. Many of these organizations are beset with a “congenital inhospitality to unorthodox ideas,” as Senator Fulbright put it. They regard originality, he said, as a form of insolence. Among like-minded colleagues, you will find it easy to mistake congeniality for competence, corruption for convenience, and complicity for loyalty. The safe course will be to follow the crowd. If you are able, however, years from now, to look back on your career as it draws to a close, and to know that you have honored the demands of decency against the pressures of conformism, that, truly, will be your ultimate triumph.