Dr. Yoko Ishigami Doyle is a research data analyst at Health Data Nova Scotia and the Faculty of Medicine's Department of Community Health and Epidemiology at Delhousie University. Yoko was born and raised in Shizuka, Japan, and moved to Canada, where she completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Victoria. As a multiple year Killon scholarship recipient, Yoko completed her PhD in Experimental Psychology at Delhousie. Her graduate research examined both basic and applied cognitive psychology throughout a person's lifespan, examining individual differences in visual attention. Yoko's postdoctoral training first included working at the Department of Psychiatry, where she investigated different ways attention functions change with age and age related diseases. Her second postdoctoral training was at the Department of Community Health and Epidemiology, where she is analyzing and evaluating population based data from the Canadian logistical study on aging. So welcome, Dr. Yoko Ishigami, and you can begin your talk. Hello, I'm Yoko. Thank you for inviting me to talk about study today. I'm going to talk about the first part of our study, meaning that the study to be continued. And I'm going to be mainly describing associations between assistive device use and some characteristics of Canadian people, as we are showing how the series data look like for these characteristics. I'm hoping that what I'm going to show you today will give some ideas about the series data for people who are interested in using the series data, give insights into profiles of assistive device users in Canada, inspire people for future assistive device related studies, or satisfy curiosity for those who are participating in the series data. As we all know, our population ages. This series is from 36 Canada and shows percentages of seniors in red and children in green for each year since 1951. You may already know that in 2015, for the first time, Canadian adults aged 65 years and older, numbered Canadian children aged between 10 and 14 years. And the proportion of seniors is expected to continue to increase. As you can see percentage of seniors steadily increases while percentage of children shows an opposite pattern. This is increased too. According to the 2012 Canadian survey on disability, the mean age of onset of disability is in the early 40s. This figures from statistics Canada shows the prevalence of disability by age group on the X axis for women in dark blue and men in light blue. You can see a dramatic increase of disability in the age here. Percentage of disability was about 60%. 60% for persons aged between 45 and 64 years. And rose to about 42% for persons aged 75 years and older. So the presence of disabilities of the latter group more than double for disabilities, the prevalence of more types increases with age. This figure is also from 2012 Canadian survey on disability showing prevalence of sensory and physical disabilities by age group on the X axis for different types of disabilities. These disabilities, disabilities involved with it and flexibility show greatest prevalence of prevalence followed by disabilities in hearing, disability and seeing. That Canadian population is aging and prevalence of disability is increasing. We may expect that prevalence of assistive device users is increasing too. But there are not a lot of studies looking at prevalence of device users, especially in Canadian context. It's from US study looking at mobility device use. By the way, I found that mobility device use is looked at most frequently among assistive devices in literature. And this figure shows percentage of mobility device users in the US increasing sharply with age. There is an increasing recognition that assistive devices support healthy aging or independent living. Independent living has both psychological and financial effects on individuals, caregivers and communities. For individuals being independent directly affects both work and social life as well as psychological living. Especially social participation was found to be a redefined determinant of health and successful aging. For caregivers who are also aging, caregivers independent affects affected in a similar way. We also found that depression and life dissatisfaction of caregivers increase with higher time intensity of care giving. For communities by emphasizing on independent living, support rather than care can be provided. This will involve radical change in policies and both individuals and their caregivers will be affected. Characteristics of assistive device users is a critical first step for informing future policy decisions as well as design developments so that provision of services and care can be efficient, appropriate and cost effective. But as I mentioned earlier, not many studies are looking at assistive device use of Canadian older adults. So the primary objective of the first part of our study is to describe profiles of assistive device users in Canada with regard to social demographic, health and social network characteristics. And the secondary objective is to show distribution of Canadian populations in the CSA for these characteristics. We tested, sorry, we used the data collected at baseline between 2010 and 2015 for a total sample of 51,338 older adults aged between 45 and 85 years. Our data both from CSA tracking and CSA comprehensive. CSA tracking were randomly selected from within the 10 Canadian provinces and provided information by a telephone interview and there were 21,000 participants there. And participants in the CSA comprehensive were randomly selected from within 25 to 50 km of data collection sites in 11 cities across Canada and provided in-depth information via face-to-face interviews at all, as well as physical assessments and by a fixed main collection at local data collection sites. And there were about 30,000 participants. We tested in the three territories in some remote regions, in federal post-nation reserves and other post-nation settlements in the provinces. I underline this criteria because this is important to note when we look at rates of assistive vice users across different ethnic groups. I'll show you distribution of Canadians for different ethnic groups in the CSA shortly. Full-time members of the Canadian Armed Forces, individuals living in institutions. And I underline this criteria too because it is more likely that people living in institutions are more likely to be using assistive devices and we may be missing those people. Individuals who are temporary visa holders all had traditional health coverage. Individuals unable to respond in English or French. I underline this criteria too to note that ethnic groups in the CSA may not be fully represented because of this criteria. And lastly, individuals with COVID-19 experiments at baseline. Vice users for hearing, vision and mobility. I'm going to explain how device users are defined in our study first. The measurement of assistive devices used for hearing was based on binary responses to a question. Do you use any specialized equipment or services or persons who are deaf or hard of hearing? For example, volume control, telephone, volume control, telephone or TV decoder. The response options were yes and no. Participants who answered yes were classified as hearing device users. I thought that some of you may want to know what kind of hearing devices we are talking about. Participants who answered yes were further asked to indicate types of hearing devices they used. I listed these devices in the order from used most frequently to least frequently according to participant responses. We can see that hearing aids were the most frequently used hearing devices as of all. The measurement of assistive devices used for vision was also based on binary responses to a question. Besides glasses or contact lenses, do you use any aids or specialized equipment or persons who are blind or visually impaired? For example, magnifiers or well-reading materials. The options were yes and no again. Participants who answered yes were classified as vision device users. And here too, I thought that you may want to know what kind of vision devices we are talking about. Participants who answered yes were further asked to indicate types of vision devices they used. The devices in the order from used most frequently to least frequently according to participant responses. Here, magnifiers were the most frequently used vision devices of all. Assistive devices for mobility was based on the question, during the past 12 months, have you used any of the following assistive devices? And there's a list of devices given to participants. And we used device options relevant to mobility from the list read to participants. The list of assistive devices include cane, walking stick, walker, leg raises or supportive device, wheelchair and motorized scooter. Just like hearing and vision devices, I ordered them in the order from used most frequently to least frequently. So cane or walking sticks was the most frequently used mobility device of all here. And participants were classified as mobility device users if they responded yes to any of the mobility devices listed here. We have measures for social demographic health and social network characteristics. We have ethnicity, mental status, education and total household income for social demographic characteristics. Number of chronic conditions, type of home care and perceived health for health characteristics. And in arrangement, social participation and social isolation for social network characteristics. The analysis is based on weighted cross tabulations to see and pick relationships between device users and selected characteristics and were appropriate by sex and or age groups. But I'm also showing the tradition of Canadian populations in the CSA for the characteristics to appreciate weights of device users. First, I want to show estimated Canadian population in the CSA. The figures show the estimated Canadian population for two age groups on the X axis. On the left, you see people between 45 and 64 years old, the younger group in the CSA. On the right, you see people between 65 and 85 years old, the older group in the CSA. Women are represented in blue and men are represented in green. Here, Canadians in the older group is about half of Canadians in the younger group. There are almost even number of women and men, even though there are slightly more women than men without less of an age group. And these patterns are consistent with statistic Canada 2017 database. Now, I'm going to show you percentages of assist device users in the CSA. Here on the left shows percentages of hearing device users with a function of age group on the X axis for women in blue and men in green. The figure in the middle is for vision device users and the figure on the right is for mobility device users. I'm going to show you how to read a figure by giving an example just in case. Let's look at women mobility device users in the younger group. About 10% of women in this age group use mobility devices, meaning that about 90% women in the same age group do not use mobility devices, which is not shown here. On the other hand, about 20% of women in the older group use mobility devices, meaning that about 80% of women in the same age group do not use mobility devices, which is not shown here. Okay, so let's talk about patterns of assist device users with CSA. The most obvious pattern you see here is that percentage of mobility device users are highest among all, followed by vision and hearing device users. You might recall the figure from the 2012 Canadian survey on disability I showed you earlier. According to that figure, the prevalence of disability for mobility was greater than disability for vision and hearing. So you can speculate reasons for higher percentages of mobility device users, differences in device use. There is a clear trend that percentage of device users increased with age regardless of types of devices, hearing, vision and mobility. But the differences seem to be most dramatic with hearing device users regardless of sex. This is in device use too, but 106 different acts of hearing, vision and mobility devices. In the younger group, there's not much difference between women and men regardless of the type of devices. But in the 65 to 85 years old group, percentage of vision and mobility device users were greater for women in blue than men in green. See in the hearing device users too, but the direction is opposite. Percentage of hearing device users was greater for men than women in both age groups. It is known that men have more hearing difficulties and again we could speculate why may use more hearing devices. Assisted device users were distributed for hearing, vision and mobility devices for women and men and for different age groups. That was not all. I'm going to show you more figures. So I want to tell you what I'm going to show so that you can distribute your attention accordingly because there will be a lot of information. As I briefly mentioned earlier, I'm going to show you distribution of Canadians for each characteristic as background information on the left side of my slide. On the right side of the slide, this is more important thing. I'm going to show you percentage of device users for the same characteristic for hearing, vision and mobility device users from left to right. What I try to do is to find common profile of device users across the three types of devices in terms of more frequent and more frequent users. But if I find something different, I will examine that particular device user in more detail. In my ethnicity, we use the question asking the participants their cultural background. Here the question asked in the CSAE, people living in Canada come from many different cultural and racial backgrounds. You and the list of cultural background was read to the participants. And then we categorized participants into four ethnic groups, white, Aboriginal, disabled minority and other. Since multiple responses were allowed, those who had multiple backgrounds across these four groups were categorized as others as well. And Canadians in the CSAE by ethnicity and sexes on the left side. As you see, we found that majority in the CSAE have white ethnic background, regardless of sex, and not shown here, but regardless of age groups as well. Perhaps all presented due in part to the exclusion criteria I talked earlier. Percentage of device users by ethnicity are on the right side for hearing in blue, vision in green, and mobility in yellow. To identify as Aboriginal has the highest percentage of hearing and mobility device users indicated by asterisks. Highest percentage of vision device users is seen in white Canadians. Highest percentage of vision, sorry, those who identified visible minority had the lowest percentage of all three types of device users indicated by dots. I'm supposed to examine vision device users more in detail here because the profile is different from hearing and mobility device users. But we have to look at these collapse data across sex and age groups because they are not a lot of vision device users in Aboriginal and visual minority groups. Now let's see how medical status is associated with device use. We used the CSAE question, what is your current medical partner status? So there are five response options to select. We combined responses for divorce and separated for our study. Distribution of Canadians in the CSAE by medical status sex in on the left. Married Canadians represented majority without less of sex and not shown here, but regardless of age groups as well. Percentage of device users by medical status are on the right side. Those who identified as videos had the highest percentage of all device users. While those who identified money had the lowest percentage of vision and mobility device users. Lowest percentage of hearing device users is seen in those who are single. Note that the Married Canadians use vision and mobility device recently, but percentage of hearing device users is not the lowest following the videos people. Let's see the profile of hearing device users in more detail.  The data across the age group because they are not a lot of hearing device users in the younger age group. We can see that same pattern we saw earlier. There are higher percentages of hearing device users in the widowed group regardless of sex. But again, the second highest is the married people. High percentage of hearing device users in marriage group, especially in men, may be something to do with importance of improving hearing for better communication when you have a partner. Let's look at the educational attainment. We use the CSA question, what is the highest degree certificate or diploma you have obtained? I listed six possible responses for the participants. There are participants into four categories of educational attainment by combining these as some post-secondary degree and these as post-secondary degree. An audience in the CSA by educational attainment and sex is on the left. In the CSA, connections with post-secondary degree or some post-secondary degree represent the majority regardless of sex. And again, not shown here by regardless of age groups. Sentences of device users by educational attainment are on the right side and lowest device users indicated by asterisks and dots. It's difficult to describe profiles in terms of four levels of educational attainment because profiles are different. I tried this. Those who had less than some post-secondary degree had higher percentage of all device users. Well, those who had more than some post-secondary degree had lower percentage of all device users. So all three devices seems to have similar user profiles by categorizing people into two groups. The last social development characteristic. Total household income was asked in the CSA and there are five response options for the participants. We include it unknown in our analysis because there are about 5% of people who either did not give an answer or refused to answer and we saw that it may not be appropriate to ignore them. In the CSA, income and age group is on the left. Family income is higher for the younger group in blue than older group in green, but the range between $50,000 and $100,000 seems to be the most common range. The percentage of device users by total household income are on the right side. The lowest income group had the highest percentage of vision and mobility device users. The highest percentage of hearing device users is seen in the income unknown group. On the other hand, the highest income group had the lowest percentage of all device users. With the profile is different for the hearing device users, so let's look at them more closely. Showing percentage of hearing device users by two age groups and sex. In the younger group on the left side, percentages of hearing device users are highest in the lowest income group. In the older group on the right side, skew this high percentage of users in unknown group, especially for women, that's in blue. But besides that, percentages of hearing device users are highest in the higher income group, regardless of sex. Interestingly, profile of hearing device users switch from lower income to higher income group with age. This has to explain that there are high percentages of hearing device users in the unknown income group in both age groups. Unlike vision and mobility device users, patterns of hearing device users seems to be a bit complicated. So we are moving from social demographic characteristics to health characteristics. The first health characteristic is number of chronic conditions. The participants were asked about long-term conditions, which are expected to last or have already lasted six months or more that have been diagnosed by health professionals. There are a lot of questions asked for the presence of chronic conditions, about the presence of subconditions for each condition listed here. For example, they are asked about osteoarthritis in the knees, in the hips, and in the hands. A participant was classified as having osteoarthritis if he or she responded yes to any of these subconditions, so knees, hips, and hands. Following this rule, number of chronic conditions was calculated for each participant, including other, their 11 conditions. So the maximum number the participants can get is seven, and the minimum number is zero. In the series C by the number of chronic conditions and age groups is on the left side. The common number of chronic conditions is higher for the older group. In green, then the younger group in blue. A pattern we could expect. Percentage of device users by the number of chronic conditions are on the right side. Those who reported to have more than five chronic conditions had the highest numbers, has the percentage of all device users. While those who reported to have no chronic conditions had the lowest percentage. You can see that percentages of assistive device users non-linearly increase with the number of chronic conditions, regardless of the device type. And not shown here, but also regardless of sex and age groups. Although the increase is sharpest with mobility devices. We also looked at types of home care as one of the health characteristics. We categorized home care into four types, informal, formal, both and not. We used questions for care receiving to identify formal and informal care receivers. The question you are looking at is for formal care. Asking about home care services, the participants have received. Excluding assistance from family, friends, or neighbors. I responded to any of activities listed at the end of this slide and considered to have received formal care for informal care. Asking about home care services, the participants have received. Excluding assistance from paid workers or volunteer organizations. And just like formal care. Participants who responded to any of activities listed at the end of the slide and considered to have received informal care. Tradition of Canadian in the series by types of home care and age groups is on the left side. In the series, the majority received no home care regardless of age groups as not shown here, but regardless of sex as well. Percentages of device users by types of home care are on the right side. Who reported to have formal care and informal care for both formal and informal care has the highest percentage of vision and mobility device users. Highest percentage of care device users is seen in the formal care group. Those who reported to receive no home care has the lowest percentage. The profile of device users are not identical. One common pattern is that high percentage of assistive devices is associated at least with formal home care. It's possible that formal home care is associated with accessibility to devices as health characteristics. The participants were asked to evaluate their health, excellent, very good, good, fair or poor. It is a subjective judgment for the participant's health. The distribution of Canadian that you say by passive health is on the left side. It's good to know that there are a lot of Canadians reporting good health. Both women and men are not shown here, but both younger and older groups. Percentages of device users by passive health are on the right side. Those who reported to health have the highest percentage of all device users. Well, those who reported excellent health has the lowest percentage. That is very similar to what we saw in the number of chronic conditions, including sharp increase of mobility device users as a function of passive health. A look that's subjective for health is associated with higher prevalence of assistive device users, especially mobility devices. We move from health characteristics to social network characteristics. The first one is reading arrangement. There's a question about reading arrangement in the CDC. How many people not including yourself currently live in your household? We define the participants as living alone if their response is zero. Otherwise, they are categorized as living with others. Distribution of Canadians in the CDC by reading arrangement and sex is on the left side. In the CDC, there are more people living with others, regardless of age, youth and also not shown here, but regardless of sex. Sentences of device users by reading arrangement are on the right side. Those who reported living with alone had higher percentages of all device users, while those who reported living with others had lower percentages. The difference between living with others and living alone is dramatic for vision and mobility users, but not a lot for sharing device users. In fact, the percentages of sharing device users are very close for people living with others and alone. Yet a really high percentage of sharing device users for those who live with others may be something to do with importance or improving hearing for better communication. You may recall that I said the same thing for married sharing device users. Look at social participation. In the CDC, there are a series of questions about social participation. The participants will ask if they participate in activities listed here in the past 12 months. Response option for the question is at least once a day, once a week, once a month, once a year, or never. We used Gilmore's method to categorize responses to frequent and infrequent social participation. Family or friends based, religious, sports or other recreational activities are done relatively frequently. So if participants answer that they participate in at least one of these activities at least weekly, it is considered as frequent social participation. Educational, service club, community or volunteer activities are done less frequently. So if participants answer that they participate in at least one of these activities at least monthly, it is considered as frequent social participation. Canadians by social participation and age groups is on the left side. In the CDC, both in younger and older groups, there are more people with frequent social participation. That is good. And not shown here both in May and May as well. Percentages of device users by social participation are on the right side. Reported infrequent social participation had higher percentage of vision and mobility device users. Interestingly, the frequent social participation group had a higher percentage of hearing device users. Again, hearing device users have different or robotic profiles. At least percentages of frequent and infrequent users are very similar. So let's do first and most closely. Here I'm showing percentages of hearing device users by two age groups and six. This one observation I want to note here. Percentages of hearing device users are not very higher for those with frequent social participation, especially in older groups. This is still a speculation, but hearing device may have a protective property with respect to social participation, especially in later life. The last characteristic of all in the study for social participation, the participants are asked how often they felt lonely in the past week. The response options were all of the time, occasionally, some of the time and really all level. We dichotomize levels of loneliness into two based on these responses. The vision of Canadians in the CSA by social isolation and age groups is on the left side. There are more people without social isolation regardless of age groups are not shown here, but also regardless of text. Percentages of device users by social isolation are on the right side. Those who reported lonely have higher percentages of all device users while those who reported not lonely have lower percentage of all these users. Again, hearing device users are bit different. Percentages of hearing device users are very close for people who are not lonely and people who are lonely. Very different from vision and mobility device users. It is again possible that hearing devices may have a protective property with respect to social isolation, files of assistive device users in Canada. Not surprisingly, we saw that the older we become, the more likely we use assistive devices. Consistent pattern that there is higher percentage of mobility device users than vision and hearing device users. It is possible that the greater preference of mobility device users may be simply reflecting the greater preference of mobility device users, mobility disabilities, as well as available funding. So far it's become common to all three assistive device users, like people with low education and poor health, as well as people who live alone and people who feel lonely. It looks like device users associated with negative characteristics, characteristics of device users who are unique to specific devices. When it comes to uniqueness, we saw that hearing device users have unique profiles and vision and mobility device users have more profiles in common. First of all, there was a greater percentage of men using hearing devices than women. Men typically have more hearing difficulties than women, so the preference of hearing devices may reflect the preference of hearing disability. There are more women who use vision and mobility devices than men. Women typically live longer and accordingly, more women suffer from disabilities, leading to aging. This may be reflecting the preference of vision and mobility devices. Importantly, we saw that people who get involved with frequent social participation use hearing devices slightly more than people who do not get involved with social participation. So when it comes to social connectedness, hearing devices may have positive properties comparing with other assistive devices. We can see that hearing devices are important to improve communication functions. Not the key profile that this could explain why being married is the second important maritime profile for hearing device users after being widowed, reflecting their own needs as well as others. Similarly, this may be why people living with others and also people who do not feel lonely had relatively high percentages of hearing devices. So I give an insight into the profiles of assistive device users among older adults in Canada, but there are some limitations too. Our study is a cross-section study, so we are investigating the dynamic nature of aging and assistive devices use across time. And also, we are limiting to studying how gender had an impact on this relationship. We are aware that there is an interest in distinguishing between sex that is biologically defined and gender that is socially defined. But the participants in the CSA at the baseline were simply asked, are you female or male? We make the assumption that it is a biological sex that is devoted here. And the issue of representativeness with a traditional participant was briefly mentioned earlier. Similarly, there is an issue of representativeness with a visible minority participant. So we need to be careful when interpreting the results. Talking today is the first part of our study, and the second part will involve determining the use of assistive devices among people whose health needs are unmet. We are also interested in looking at the association, this time, statistical rather than empirical between social devices and devices. Thank you very much for your attention. Thank you, Yoko. That was an excellent presentation. But now I'd like to open it up to questions. As a reminder, muting remains on, but you can enter your questions in the chat box in the bottom right corner of the WebEx window at any time. So Akeen says that the sample size is for too small to conclude much from the breakdowns by race. Do you want to comment on that? And also she mentions that a summary statistics cable sample included in the study may be helpful. Yes, and about the race, we are aware that this is very difficult, even though it's an interesting topic. But making conclusions is very difficult with such a small sample. So we try to include the variable, but try to be careful as much as possible about what to say, because we are aware of that limitation. And somebody said, yes, I think this is a good idea. Thank you. Yeah, so that was a question I was thinking as well. You were obviously trying to see if there were cultural differences in the adaptation or use of assistive devices. And that's a very interesting concept. Maybe cultural differences have to do with your living arrangements or who's giving you home care. Did you think about including any kind of personality differences on the uptake of assistive device use? I think this is an interesting concept, personality. But for now, for the first part, we haven't included that yet. But definitely this is something we can think about for the future step. Yeah, it may have to do with that big sex differentiation in some of these findings as well. Yes. So we have another question from Ben. Have you done any regression modeling to look at independent predictors? And he also has a second question. Were power wheelchair users included in the sample? In terms of pilot wheelchairs, I think the list of options related to the participants that include wheelchair and the scooter. So I think when they say yes, they talk about wheelchair, but the list doesn't say electric wheelchair. So probably we cannot differentiate between the minor wheelchair or electric wheelchair. And also, in terms of analysis, we haven't explored regression yet. So that will be our next study. So I guess the idea would be that power wheelchairs versus a cane would probably be a different group of people. So interesting idea. Yes, and also, that's the question, it's possible to say yes to multiple options. So some people might be using the cane as well as wheelchair at some different occasions. So it may be a little bit different to differentiate between the wheelchair user on one side and then cane user on the other side. Olive Brighton asked, was there a reason 85 plus were not included? Because in the TSA, the people, it's a maximum age of participants who are included. So I think the oldest person at the baseline for 85 years old. From Annie, presumably the most important determinants of use of assisted devices is the need for such devices. There may also be differences among the social demographic groups and hearing ability, vision and mobility. Do you have plans to adjust for hearing, visual acuity and mobility and the device use? So I think you kind of tried to get at that with some of your stratification work. But do you have any plans for being more sophisticated about the prevalence comparison to the future? Yes. This is something we try to improve in our next study. And this is a very simple analysis of the relationship between assisted devices users and characteristics. In our next study, we want to control for different variables, which we think is important, including those measurements here. Certainly. From Ed Gershpert, was there any attempt made to ascertain whether respondents required an assisted device but did not have access to or possessed the required device? The need for care versus use of assisted device. This is maybe something relating to our next step. We want to know what kind of people don't have devices, even though they need. But we maybe discuss to get the information if they have access or not. We may be able to get, for example, if a participant is receiving formal care and then it might be related to availability. And if they are receiving only informal care, knowledge about availability may be missing. Certainly. And Monica talks about the financial constraints addressed in the study. So I don't think you have a question about if financial constraints were a problem with using assisted devices, but you did look at that income. I wonder if this is related to the total household income with something relevant to the question. And in general, we saw that the low income people have used more devices. But you may notice that devices, especially mobility and vision are relatively inexpensive, like many five years or came. And when it comes to hearing devices, and specifically older people, people who have more financial resources can use hearing devices. Certainly. Well, thank you very much. We appreciate your participation in the CLSA webinar series. I'll go ahead and talk about our next webinar scheduled for next month, but we'll stay on the line afterwards. We want to continue the question and suggestion. I'd like to remind everyone that CLSA data access request applications are ongoing. The next deadline for the applications is on June 11. Please visit our website, the CLSA website under data access to review available data to find further information and to look at the details about the application process. Our next webinar is scheduled for next month. We'll be welcoming Dr. Yukiko Asada to discuss understanding inequalities and inequities and health and wellness among older Canadians. So please register soon and join us for next month webinar. And thank you to everybody for attending today's presentation. Thank you very much. Thank you.


Our Lady of the Way, ARH and Martin Kentucky held a ribbon cutting and open house for their ARH Senior Program on Friday, February 2nd. We're just excited to do the ribbon cutting, have a grand reopening and start with servicing our community. The Senior Program had previously closed during COVID but has since reopened and is welcoming community members to participate in the services they offer. Some of the services include group therapy, individual therapy and family therapy. With the community getting hit by COVID as well as the flooding, there's no better time to get out and find camaraderie than right now. At Audiology Associates of Prestonsburg, you can live your life the way you want and find the freedom of better hearing. With 40 years of being in the hearing care industry, you'll experience patient care that is specific to you with exceptional follow-up care that ensures your hearing and balance needs are being met. Audiology Associates at 1428 Northlake Drive in Prestonsburg. It's good to relate to people. That's a good benefit of group therapy and being able to come here and talk to different people, especially older adults. These unique challenges that come with aging and being able to talk to other people may be experiencing the same thing. And every sharing experience is a good part of the program. For more information about the Senior Program, you can visit the ARH Our Lady of the Way Hospital Facebook page. For Mountain Top News, I'm Kelsey Fidell.


Let me welcome you. Let me welcome everybody to the Future Trends Forum. I'm delighted that you can be here today. We have a vital topic with two really, really good guests. I'm looking forward to our conversation. We've been exploring what academic freedom might mean in the future for higher education for a few years now. We've had a lot of debate, a lot of really good references, some good research and some good discussion. And now I wanted to welcome two folks who have authored a really, really useful document. Stephen Bloom is with the American Council on Education. Jeremy Penn is with Penn America. Excuse me, Jeremy Young is with Penn America. And they've authored a resource guide to academic freedom. If you look on the bottom left of the screen, there's a kind of tan-coloured box.  It's about 30-page PDF, really concise, well-resourced. It'll keep you up to date on everything and give you a lot of good ways to think about this. And I'd like to ask them, what does academic freedom mean in higher education moving forward? How does it change under the impact of new technologies and new politics? So without any further ado, let me welcome them up one by one. And let me bring up Stephen Bloom. Hang on one second. Let's see if all the machines are connected. Hello, Stephen Bloom. Good afternoon, everyone. Hi, Brian. Good to see you. Good to see you too. Where are you today? Is that the home office? Yes, this is our home office, you know, like many of you. We have my wife often works above me and another child, the oldest daughter over there on the second floor. We're not zoned for a private office, but that's the way it is nowadays, working in a hybrid way at A.C.E. a couple days a week and then the rest of the time here at home. Nice. It's very similar to me when I'm at home, although I usually get overrun by some of the animals. And now I'm here in Georgetown's campus, so we'll see if one of the grad students stops by to say hi. My dogs are in their crates behind me, so hopefully they'll keep quiet. Oh my gosh, okay, but we'll understand. If we say something particularly provocative, they may respond. Yeah, that's possible. Or if you were the mailman. Don't say it. Don't say it. Stephen, I'm just curious. We have a customer on the forum of asking people to introduce themselves, not by talking about their life so far, but looking ahead to what you're going to be working on. And I'm curious in your position at A.C.E., what are the big topics that are ahead of you for the rest of the year and what are the big projects? Well, thank you, Brian.  As you may be familiar with it, so we all know. So Stephen Bloom, Assistant Vice President for Government Relations. I'm part of the lobbying team. I am a registered federal lobbyist here at A.C.E. I have been at A.C.E. more than 15 years. A.C.E. is not a hardware store. It's the convening umbrella organization for higher ed representing everyone from community colleges to the major research universities like Georgetown and public institutions and public and private and everyone in between in addition to our institutional members, we have about 150 higher ed related associations that either represent segments of higher ed like the research universities or the community colleges, et cetera, or administrative officials on campus. So what do I do? My portfolio includes this work on what we've labeled so-called divisive concepts, and we're going to spend a fair amount of time today talking about that. But in addition, I work on tax issues and have for many years those are sort of for things that are important to individuals and students and families like saving for college, paying for college, repaying the cost to college, things that are important to both individuals and institutions like charitable giving and endowments. And then other provisions that are really only the most hardened tax official on campus would care about. And I don't need to bore you with. In addition, I work on healthcare and healthcare reform issues. Some immigration issues, labor and employment issues have worked on other things over the years and at the moment a lot on free speech and this stuff on the so-called divisive concepts. Part of that is as a result of the fact that I'm a lawyer, we did practice for a number of years in Boston as a litigator and so have some skills and familiarity with sort of free speech and First Amendment issues from time in law school, I suppose. That's the usual route. Right, so what going forward this year? I mean, obviously this issue of divisive concepts, Jeremy and I will be talking, I think, at length and trying to answer your questions as best we can and how we got to this point in our work and the coalition that we've assembled, which is made up of not typical higher-ed associations, but many of the sort of the scholarly associations or their sort of coalitions of associations, so the Humanities Alliance, the American Historical Society and then also or associations, excuse me, American Historical Association and then also non-higher-ed folks like the ACLU and the ADL. And then in addition to that work, I have my other part of my portfolio and the biggest issue there are going to be, I suppose, on the tax side, endowments and that is a huge issue on Capitol Hill, I suspect, and that will be a huge challenge this year. I think there's likely to be focus on endowments and institutions of higher-ed, the more well-resourced ones, particularly in the house. And then maybe some issues are in the sort of healthcare trying to work for... I like student mental health, that's an issue I work on and Yellow Health, which was something that was a big deal during the pandemic and I'll continue to try and work on that too.  I mean, you're covering a huge amount of policy issues at the grand scale for higher education, I have to say. Yeah, I'm one among a number at ACE, so each of us has these kinds of portfolios and so it makes for an interesting job, I'll say that. It must, it must. Well, speaking of interesting, hang on for a minute, let me bring your co-conspirator, your partner in writing up on stage as well. And this is going to be Jeremy Young coming to us from Penn America. Hello, Jeremy. Hello, as Stephen says, I'm the better dressed of the two, so happy to be here. Yes. I'm not going to get into that. I mean, neither of you have beards, so I'm already dissatisfied. But welcome, where have we found you today, Jeremy? Well, according to the name of this call room I'm in, I'm in Toronto, Albania, that's the little photo up here, but actually I'm in our offices in D.C. at Penn America. We have an office in New York as well, which is the larger of the two. But yeah, I'm in our D.C. office. Well, excellent. Well, I'm just a few blocks away from you, and I'm physically, and I'm glad to see you, but I appreciate the image of Albania over your head. That makes me happy. That's great. Jeremy, you heard how we introduce ourselves here on the forum, and I'm curious, what are you going to be working on at Penn America for the next year? What are the big ideas and the big projects for you? Oh, gosh. Well, here at Penn America, which is, your listeners probably know, is a 100-year-old free expression organization made up of writers. We, I am involved in our education, our free expression education unit, which focuses on threats to legislative threats, in particular to free expression in higher education and also in K-12 schools. So, you know, the work I do in that area is, they are the leader of our team organizing against what we call educational gag orders, these legislative, maybe known to your listeners as anti-critical race theory bills or divisive concepts bills. You know, we do a lot of, we run legislative tracking and analysis of these bills. We put out a commentary every year and a report at the end of the year to see round up how these bills have progressed and hopefully haven't progressed. We, and we do a lot of coalition building work to try to bring higher ed leaders and stakeholders together to fight this legislation to keep it from becoming law. Well, that's a very, very close focus and one that's badly needed. And I'm really, really glad to hear it, Jeremy. Thank you. And by the way, if you haven't had a chance to read that PDF yet, there's a great appendix, which is just a sampler of the laws that the authors are worried about. And that's a really handy starting point. Well, here, let me just rearrange the two if you're here on the screen a bit so everyone can see you if they work carefully. Friends, what I'd like to do is ask our guests a couple of quick questions to get them to unfold their thinking about this report and their work. And then I'm going to open the floor up to all of you. So as we proceed, please start revving up your engines for your own questions and your own comments. I'm sure that we have a great deal to talk about. To begin with, I'm fascinated by a lot of the work that goes into just a few pages early on. It seems that you're drawing heavily on the Association of American University faculty for the key sensual definition of academic freedom, which is very distinct from the American tradition of the First Amendment. And I'm also fascinated by your reliance on the Chicago statement, the Chicago principles. And I'm curious if you could just say a few words, both of you, about how those two key documents fed into your thinking and how they inform your understanding of academic freedom. Stephen, you want to start on this one? Sure. Well, I think that when we were putting this document as our first resource guide, we thought that need to be a couple of basic concepts needed to be woven together. One was academic freedom and what we see are threats to institutional autonomy. And academic freedom, as many of your guests today know if they're on campus, is a longstanding principle in American higher education. In a lot of ways, it marks us as sort of, you know, it's certainly unique compared to institutions of higher education in some parts of the world, maybe not so much in Western Europe. But it's a bedrock principle, right? It's allowed us to create institutions that are enormously important that attract the world's smartest students and faculty that have led to, you know, dynamic society, a democratic society and, you know, a vibrant economy in a lot of ways because it allows faculty to engage in research in the way they deem most appropriate that generates all sorts of important outcomes that can and do benefit the larger society in the common good. And so we thought that it was important to go back and look at these founding documents, or statements, I suppose, the AAP, the early 20th century formative document, and then their update in 1940 of statements about academic freedom because they really are quite good. And we thought it was important to include that in there. And then the Chicago principles is, you know, a pretty prominent example of the way in which a very selective institution had a number of years ago made a very deliberate and, you know, important statement about the value of free speech on campus and that all views should be, you know, should be heard, even controversial views and some that folks on campus may not agree with, right? That that's an essential part of American higher education. So that was why we think we wanted to include that, right, Jeremy? I don't know if you agree. No, I agree. I mean, this is a document that is, you know, is intended for a wide variety of institutions and a wide variety of stakeholders. And so it was important that we find as many points of consensus or near consensus as we could. You know, these are documents that have been, have achieved if not consensus, particularly in the case of the Chicago principles, certainly wide application adoption at a variety of types of institutions in a variety of states and state with a variety of political orientations. So, you know, being able to find these touchstones is certainly valuable. And I would also add, you know, we did include one more source which is that Penn America has its own principles of campus free speech, which draw on some of the same concepts but which have additional, we like to think of them as being the most specific of the campus speech statements that are available. They provide specific practical guidance for how to address a variety of situations. So we draw on those as well. Oh, excellent. Excellent. And thank you for drawing attention to that third document. This is a topic that is obviously very, very controversial, very fraught and very deep. We've had two previous sessions on this, one with a couple of authors who had written a recent book on this, one from Portland State, one from Penn, and then we had a researcher from FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Right to Expression, I think is what they're called. And there was a lot of different angles, a lot of points. And I wanted to raise one right now which has been in the news for various events that have happened. And I'm not making this point. I'm ventriloquizing it because I've heard this and I might not do it justice. And anybody else who wants to ask this question better than I, please, please feel free. There's the argument that some speech is harmful in the sense that it may either do psychological harm to the people who witness it, who hear it or read it or see it. And that it may also tie into structures of inequality or even active violence. Or it may encourage people to act out on horrible ideas. We saw this, for example, most recently at the fracas at Stanford University Law School where one very conservative justice was speaking at the Invitational Campus Group. And students along with a dean protested this and saying that the speech was harmful to the student body. That was the language of harm. That was the angle here. And that ultimately it might not be worth having. And I'm curious. This seems to be, I think historically, a twist on an old concept. But it seems to be one that's very current. How do you kind of link these two or integrate these two? The defense of freedom of speech, academic freedom which leads to our great research enterprises with the idea of trying to protect vulnerable members of the academic community. That's a really good question. And the people you've had on before, it seems like you've had a lot of my friends on this show recently. Michael Barabay, Jennifer Ruth, some of those folks over at Fire. All people we, I talk to regularly and we have really good and spirited debates over these issues. I mean, I think our perspective at Penn America is that we do have to acknowledge that some speech can cause harm.  You can't just say that speech has no impact on people. Of course it does. But it's not the same thing as physical violence. It's not the same thing as a sort of physical actionable harm. And the problem that we run into when we talk about how to develop principles around speech is that it's very difficult to... Who gets to decide? What is the speech that causes harm and what is the speech that doesn't?  And if you create a regime where someone is empowered to rule some forms of speech out of bounds, you are creating a situation where who is able to speak and what is able to be said is really dependent on who is empowered. And that is not a good situation for a university to be in. It's not a good situation for anyone to be in or any society to be in. Our view is that the response to... The response to the speech of someone that is offensive, that is wrong is generally to speak in opposition to it. There's no restrictions on that. We don't think that universities, for instance, should hesitate to speak up against speakers on their own campus who are saying things that are manifestly offensive or racist or wrong. But to ban speech, to declare certain types of speech other than a clear threat of violence is out of bounds, is really creating a situation where those same rules that are being used against that harmful speech can be used against speech that amounts to the descent of marginalized groups just as easily. Yeah. I think ASEE, we would agree with that. I mean, this notion of the best response to bad speech is more speech. Sort of a classic liberal, not a political definition, but sort of Western liberalism, right? I mean, a good example of this, it's now a few years ago, but when Columbia hosted then President of Iran, who had a long history of engaging in anti-Semitic speech, and the President of Columbia, President Bollinger, defended the right of the department that invited him to do that because that's a core academic freedom, right? And he thought that was essential to an expression of what Columbia was all about. And then when the President of Iran came and gave the speech on stage, I think he introduced him or as part of that was extremely critical of his anti-Semitic statements because of the principle of you respond to bad speech with more speech, not censorship. And I think that is the position of ASEE on this. So today, we have a joint ASEE Pan-America op-ed that got published in Newsweek that makes that point very strongly and starts out with the first paragraph is censorship is something we associate with authoritarian regimes like China and Russia. It is an American tradition and it shouldn't be an American tradition. Thank you. Thank you, both of you. That's a full-throated explication and I really, really appreciate that. Friends, I'm going to ask one more question but then I would love to stop my speech so I can hear yours instead. And this is a question about technology. At this point in 2023, we're enjoying or experiencing a great deal of technological innovation. Most recently, people are excited about generated AIs such as chat GPT and Bing's bot but we also have the huge access to recording and sharing information and mobile devices and the sharing platforms of social media and others. And I'm curious right now, thinking about campuses where people can record each other, they can reach out to people live, summon up flash mobs, get support and host discussions, interpenetrate the physical and virtual realm. Do you think the modern contemporary technology has changed or challenged that understanding of academic freedom in any way? I admit I have never gotten a chat GPT question before. So while I turn this over, Steven, do you want to turn this over? Brian, you're way more sophisticated technologically than the two of us. Yes. I do think that social media makes it more challenging, particularly for academic leaders. You know, our members, the presidents and chancellors of institutions, I just think it makes it more challenging because the speed by which speech gets spread and sometimes bad speech gets spread and their tools for both responding and managing that are in some cases very limited. If you're a public institution, you can. They are precluded under the First Amendment from taking steps to, if it's a Twitter account as an example of a student or somebody else, they can't take steps to restrict that. So I just think it does create bigger challenges for campuses and campus leaders for how they navigate and manage. That's the use of speech to spread bad speech, so-called bad speech. Yeah, I think that's true. I think about my strongest feeling here is that it's just one of the things that leads to, there is a clear through line between controversies over speech and the increasing difficulty we have in our society and on college campuses with having civil dialogue and respectful conversation with one another. And social media makes that more difficult. There have been some studies recently in the University of Wisconsin system in the University of North Carolina system, which have indicated that conservative students do feel censored on campus, but they don't feel censored by their professors. They feel censored by their peers outside of class. And one of the key ways those studies, especially the Wisconsin one, said that they feel censored by their peers is on social media. They're terrified. They're going to say something. Someone's going to record them or write it up and post it on social media. Look at this awful thing this person said. It's going to go viral and their social reputation will be destroyed. And so it's social media is a wonderful opportunity for people to connect with one another when used well, but it's also something that makes it more difficult to have conversations in what seems to be the relative privacy of the direct interaction. The fact that everyone is watching makes it harder to have free and open expression. To pick up on that, I think that Jeremy's made a good point, which is the polarization of our society and the ways in which social media sort of exacerbated that. They've taken root on campus that our students have and the studies that Jeremy was referenced, we include references to those in the resource guide. There was an article in the Chronicle of Higher Ed yesterday. Unfortunately, I haven't had time to really read it, but talking about this very issue that it's students that are self-censoring because of fear about what other students may respond to what they have to say. That is a real challenge and it's a real problem for our institutions because it runs very counter to what our missions are. We bring people together, whether it's faculty, staff and students to debate ideas across a spectrum, including controversial ideas. That's how they learn students. That's how they learn to think critically, to confront ideas that are different than maybe their own. I was heartened to learn last week when I was at a conference on civic learning that there really is a growing movement on campus and there are some organizations that are very much engaged in trying to help this early sprouts to grow into a beautiful garden of teaching students and others on campus how to talk across difference. There are some organizations like Interfaith America that work sort of in the difference between students of different faiths and Campus Compact is working quite diligently to interpret America and I think maybe Pan America and others on teaching students giving them the tools to be able to talk across political difference and other differences on campus and that's essential because it goes to the core mission of our institutions and if students are censoring themselves and feel unable to engage in an honest dialogue it's a serious problem and it undermines what we're trying to accomplish. Thank you, thank you. That's a terrific, terrific answer. Let me get out of the way and just resume my facilitation role because there is more, there are a stack of questions that are just bubbling up and I want to make sure people get a chance to put them. And again, if you're new to the forum friends remember in the very bottom of the screen along that white strip or all the different buttons the question is to join us on stage and the question mark is to ask a question and I'm going to share one of those right now. This is from our good friend John Hollenbeck and he asks, doesn't every academic issue have a place where we can say we can't have that? See the flap at Stanford where students shout out Judge Duncan didn't those actions violate his academic freedom? So the, yeah, I mean yes but what's particularly remarkable about the Stanford case is not just what the students did something that we do oppose and we've seen in other places at Yale and other spots but the intervention of the dean who stood up ostensibly to calm the crowd and instead delivered prepared remarks denouncing the judge. I mean that's completely we do say that universities should feel free to criticize speakers on their campus but not during the speaker's own prepared remarks filibustering those remarks out of bounds. So yes, there are there are plenty of infringements on academic freedom that we see on campuses around the country and we I should probably clarify Pan-American's origin story on our education work. We initially developed a higher education initiative because we wanted to confront sensorious behavior in higher education emanating from the left things exactly like what you saw in Stanford and we do that, that is a huge part of our work. What we are seeing and what concerns us and what we wrote about in this report is a response to that to things like what happened at Stanford that is not simply to denounce it to call for action from the university but to as you mentioned the university did act they have apologized, the dean has been placed on leave her boss also with dean put out a fantastic 10 page letter defending academic freedom in great detail just yesterday but these responses instead call for government intervention to shut down parts of universities that they view as sensorious and there is no universe in which government regulation of speech is preferable to the regulation of to a sort of sensorious culture that appears on campus not only are you substituting one orthodoxy for another you are substituting a cultural orthodoxy for government orthodoxy for exactly what the founding fathers were thinking about when they wrote the first amendment the heavy hand of government power telling you what you can and cannot say so that is what I would say it is we should all be concerned about what happened at Stanford we should all be concerned about the culture around the country at campuses that leads to things like this but we should also be looking for effective solutions that don't make the problem exponentially worse it was great that after the fact that the president of Stanford and the dean took such a strong position in some word of free speech on campus it is a terrible unfortunate incident that happened there I particularly as a graduate of law school astonished that law students who are being trained with the skills to debate different sides of an issue including sometimes very troubling speech one of the famous cases around free speech when I was in law school was the Skokie case involving the Nazis getting the right to speak not speak but engage in a parade in Skokie, Illinois which at that time was a community outside of Chicago with a large Jewish population including a number of survivors of the holocaust and my view that was the right result that the supreme court said that they had the right to engage in parade which is a form of pure speech so for law students to not recognize that they are being taught the skills to manage but to navigate challenging issues and to debate and to confront situations where a client they may have they may not like that is doing things they didn't they don't support but they have the right to be represented well by a lawyer that they were engaging in a form of censorship is really troubling in some ways when we put the resource guide together that we were talking about earlier why we wove those two things together which is pushing back against the efforts to intrude on institutional autonomy and academic freedom by state policy makers primarily at the moment as well as a full throated defense or telling reminding institutions about the need for them to engage in a full throated defense of academic freedom and free speech on campus by citing the long standing principles that Brian you referenced earlier by AUP and others that I think is in some ways why we put all of that together in the resource guide well thank you both for a very very rich answer to John's great question we have more questions piling up which I think is a good example of more speech following and we have one from a professor at the new college of Florida what are you in the spotlight right now she asked an important question that circles back to a point that came up earlier put this on the screen about the solution to more speech what do we do with unequal access to speech there are mobilizations of social media that amplify some speech or false equivalences this is a great question for my dear friend Mary thanks for being here I think that we do need to consider unequal access to speech when we look at what we mean by free expression on campus this is one area where I think there is room for real creative thought within the free expression community particularly as it relates to higher education but also in other ways free expression is not just about what the people within academia are able to say and do it is also a question about who is in the room who is accepted to college who is able to complete college who is able to complete a graduate program who is on faculty who is on staff the inequalities of our society as they manifest within the structures of higher education do have an impact on speech free expression there are two sides of the coin one side is robust protections for people who have it and the other side is extending access to as many people as possible and that is absolutely central to this question I think when we look at these laws that we address in the resource guide I think that you don't have to believe what I just said is true in order to mount a defense of higher education against these laws you can think everything is fine in higher education and still oppose attempts to for legislators to get involved and restrict it and again we are looking at messaging here that has the widest possible application for the largest group of people who want to defend higher education but certainly if you are asking my opinion if you are asking Pan America's opinion it is a question of access to speech is one of two halves of free expression the other being protection for those who do have access okay I am glad that you two know each other Miriam and Jeremy and Miriam we are going through is hugely important and I think the word stressful doesn't say enough good luck and if you want to ask more questions or join us on stage please feel free we have more questions piling up and I want to make sure people get a chance to ask them this is from Professor Debra a professor of English at Tabor College and we put this up on the screen she asks do you guys say about the influence that donors seem to have on academic freedom at both private and public institutions how might we as professors deal with this concern I don't think we have mentioned donors so far Steven you may know more about this one I am not sure are you worried that donors are essentially telling an institution that they should or shouldn't have certain kind of speech on campus is that the nature I will tell you that to pick up the story I was telling earlier about Columbia with the I know that they heard from a lot of donors that that would be a terrible thing for the institution to host and I suspect that they also heard from donors that they would withdraw their donations but they went ahead because they believed it was the right thing to do and I think that that is what students ought to be doing which is to commit to the principles that have served us so well and to try to explain to donors that what academic freedom means part of the challenge here is that we don't know a very good job explaining it right some of us who work on campus and sounds like I am just a lawyer working as a government relations official for an association higher end association but I am sure that some of your participants today there are lots of faculty members they understand it in a much more intimate way than I do but I don't think we do a service to higher ed the concept of academic freedom we don't do a very good job explaining to the broader public what it means and why it is important to the broader public including donors and it isn't just the right of faculty to explore what they think kind of research they think and to test it against their peers and to teach it in a classroom so that students can test it as well that isn't just it it's also you know it has great benefits for the broader society and the common good we as a society have benefited enormously for the fact that this is a core bedrock principle on higher education and I think that's what institutions ought to be explaining to donors if they're trying to restrict the kind of speech that would take place on campus Steven you and Jeremy asked about examples of this for clarifications of Debra's question and in the chat Hal Heppner just said this quote Baylor University Texas can't show support for LGBTQ communities because of donors so I mean I think it was breaking up a little bit sorry the example was Baylor and LGBTQ communities and I mean I think certainly with Baylor there may be an issue with the university's mission statement as well but we've certainly seen this in Harvard where Ken Roth was briefly disinvited as a speaker or as a faculty member allegedly because of the involvement of a donor the truth is this does happen it is a problem donors do sometimes have too much influence but it doesn't seem to be as common of a problem as what we are seeing in this legislation where a single legislative body, a single law can shut down speech across institutions, across campuses donors will sometimes go after a particular issue or a particular individual certainly at a private institution their influence might be more pronounced and we don't certainly Pan America doesn't think that donors should be silencing speech on campuses, we spoke out of defensive Ken Roth, we tend to speak out on these cases thank you those are great answers and Deborah thank you for really really good question we have two questions coming up that are almost identical and I want to flash them both on the screen you'll see what I mean from our dear friend author and guest Tom Hames what about the impact of silent self censorship on campuses are we seeing more faculty not talking about or researching certain subjects because of either institutional or political pressures so hold that thought for a second because then we have a question just popped in from Heidi who asks what quieter and serious effects are you seeing from the efforts of legislators in Ohio, I'm thinking about faculty who preemptively cut controversial materials so they both have the idea of self censorship and they're speaking of faculty but I would include your earlier point about students who feel they have to self censor as well good question so self censorship does happen and it is caused by all of these phenomena we see conservative faculty conservative students censoring themselves because of in group pressure is essentially from students or faculty on the left we see left wing faculty or all faculty in some cases censoring themselves because of fear of what a law will do one of the arguments we make about these laws is that the chilling effect really is the point the laws are written in very vague ways so it's not clear what they ban and that amps up the self censorship because faculty only are faculty unsure what they can talk about but so are administrators unsure what their faculty can talk about and you will see administrators in some cases issuing overly cautious guidances where they magnify the effect of the censorship by arguing that by telling faculty they can't even touch a particular topic we saw one guidance from a college in Florida that said faculty want to discuss have a class discussion of the civil rights movement they have to start the class discussion with a verbal disclaimer that what the students are about to say does not reflect the views of the university which that just made me laugh because I'm thinking if ronda santa is sitting there in that classroom he's not going to think that what the students are saying reflects the views of the university and so yes there is a lot of fear there is a lot of self censorship and ultimately we want to encourage people to not engage in that type in self censorship I tell people teach what you're prepared to teach teach what you're trained to teach unless someone or something has specifically told you not to in many cases that won't be the case don't look at the law look at the climate assume that there may be some sort of censorship coming wait for it to actually come and with the Idaho case yes when you have a climate what is going on in Idaho where legislators have been frankly intimidating institutions we see this in Florida as well it creates a situation where people are simply afraid even if there is no specific policy or law that is attacking their institution or their teaching they just don't know where the next attack is going to come from this is one of the reasons that legislative attacks on academic freedom are so pernicious well I would add yeah I mean it has a really corrosive effect on the life of the campus not just individual faculty that are intimidated and self censor and others who might do that on a campus it just undermines the whole academic enterprise and it's part of the reason that we set out on this work that resulted in the resource guide I think we wanted to tell people to try and send a signal to people that we need to stand up for these principles and I recognize that there will be some on campus who are more vulnerable to political pressure than others and that those who have the ability to stand against political pressure ought to do it ought to use it in ways to defend these principles this isn't I mean we're not we are focused on a particular state a particular piece of legislation we're troubled by the trend right because it undermines the academic enterprise and attacks these basic bedrock principles of higher education and so I think that we kind of need to stick together on this and to push back and to talk about why intrusions on undermining academic freedom and intrusions on our autonomy is a bad thing for our society and try and explain it that way and you know one of the things we learned and we talk about it in our in the resource guide we did some public opinion research about the public's views of you know so-called divisive concepts and their willingness or their their support or not of elected officials telling campuses what they can and cannot teach and I will tell you the results are overwhelmingly across the political spectrum opposed to public officials telling institutions what should be taught and how it should be taught I think it's because Americans recognize that the core value of our society is free speech across the political perspective across the political perspective and they see that as troubling and that you know one side may say you can't say this today or teach this today and the other side the you know the opposite tomorrow and the results from both is bad right and so and un-American in a way so I think that's you know why we were motivated to do the work that we're doing and I think the public has a lot of skepticism about elected officials telling campuses what should be taught and how it should be taught that's good to know in a lower case democratic way friends we're coming up in the end of the hour and we have a couple of questions I want to make sure we get into Steven thank you these are terrific responses we have two questions from different angles that we haven't yet addressed and this is one from in Florida do you have some thoughts about professors at public colleges and universities being seen as extensions of the state and how that might imply parameters on what we can or cannot say this is something that we see a lot more often in the K-12 space where there are court decisions that suggest that teachers may not have maybe essentially working for employees first and teachers second there is some jurisprudence around academic freedom that is supposed to go is supposed to set this issue aside largely aside when it comes to higher education certainly there are appropriate restrictions on teachers in higher education speaking for their institutions without permission we see this a lot this is not well understood by faculty and there are violations of this and they are dealt with at institutions but the AUP's definitions are pretty strong on extramural speech that is permitted that it is you are able to express your views on issues of as a private citizen on issues of public concern and the other area where we often see restrictions of this type it has to do with pedagogy it is more if you're doing things that are undermining your students in the classroom there is more that can be done or said about that but generally speaking we try to we don't try to see faculty as extensions of the state that's a great question thank you so much again Shelby is at St. Petersburg college so I'm very glad to see Florida's academics represented here today we have another question that comes in from literally down the street for me about two blocks away from Georgetown University's excellent library and this is from Ryan Johnson who asks are these pressures reaching into the scholarly publishing arena I would prefer new laws in Oklahoma which potentially make librarians liable for the acquisition of controversial content that's a great question we've mostly been talking about teaching extramural speech but scholarly publication is a well-defined area what do you think about that it's an excellent question so the way this is happening is the K-12 version of these laws which we haven't spoken much about on this webinar the K-12 version has been reaching very clearly into school libraries and increasingly into public libraries what is primarily being targeted so far are books offered to K-12 students often young adult novels often picture books some adult books such as worked by Kimberly Crenshaw and other critical race theory scholars that can be found in school libraries have been targeted we haven't seen as much of this at the higher ed level we haven't seen as much of it yet in scholarly publishing I'm afraid it's only a matter of time there's no way people who want to ban books and censored teachers are going to stop at the university doors on this so I think it is coming but at this point it's entirely theoretical so I can't really say nothing's happened yet certainly I would be concerned if I were in that field thank you Jeremy Steven do you want to add to that at all not much I mean Jeremy said it quite well I do know that the librarians at higher ed are worried about this it's not surprising and we have to be vigilant to try and guard against scholars censoring themselves or institutions libraries within institutions being restricted in the kind of scholarship that they can make available on campus that is just really corrosive so we think that would be a terrible idea not to be opposed okay well thank you and I would like to take the moderators privilege and ask the last question before we completely run out of time which is we've been talking about the present very closely and the two of you have anchored your work very very nicely in recent history and of course as far back as the AUP statement I'm wondering if we turn your gaze around a little bit to the future what do you expect for the next few years Jeremy you just passionately spoke of the grim likelihood of more pressures on scholarly publication on scholars and librarians what else should we be anticipating in the whole area of academic freedom we have seen a set of bills proposed this legislative session that go far beyond even frankly what we're talking about within the report itself within the resource guide these are bills that one in Florida one in Texas we've seen one in Ohio there may be more with varying likelihoods of passing but these are bills that target not just classroom instruction but entire university governance systems that would hand control of core curricula approval and denial of majors hiring and firing of faculty over to politicians, political appointees rewriting of university mission statements and that sort of thing and so the fight for the autonomy and independence of higher education really is just beginning we are moving into an era that is very troubling in this area that really is in some ways without precedent and I don't know, I look at these bills I don't see a precedent for this anywhere in our history and that is this kind of vigilance this kind of coalition building awareness of the arguments that are effective on this is going to be very crucial just beginning yeah I think Jeremy it's it's bracing right and I think very troubling and I do think not just do we see this virus spreading across states I think we're likely to see more of this in Washington I know that the House Education and Workforce Committee is holding a hearing next week on defending free speech on campus I'll be curious to see what that hearing looks like but I imagine we'll start to see more efforts here in Washington unfortunately to impose these kinds of restrictions on our campuses that's a very very grim note to bring us to a close on I would like to say thank you both for that warning but also thank you both for your passion, your knowledge and your incredibly clear and elegant expression I'm grateful for your work and I hope that academics can benefit from it a great deal we are out of time and I'd like to end by asking you too quickly what's the best way to keep up with your work on all of this starting with giving, I mean you're covering a huge range of what's the best way to keep up with what you're doing well if you're on campus you can see what and you can go on ASE's website to see the work that we engage in on a range of policy issues including this one and I would just, on this particular issue that we've devoted so much time you probably would you might sign up for ASE's Twitter account and certainly Pan America's Twitter account I'm sure we'll be publicizing our work and the efforts in the future yes we also each have email newsletters you're welcome to sign up or to get to Pan America's go to our website pen.org and there's a list of email newsletters the one you want is called Educational Censorship News that'll send you a monthly report on the work that we're doing on this issue I also put my email in the chat jayyoung at pen.org you're welcome to email me directly if you have any questions I'm happy to talk to you further and our emails are in that report you can see in it Jeremy just gave you I'm happy to engage with anybody if they want to reach out to me too at ASE well excellent you both have been incredibly thoughtful incredibly engaged in a very generous way of your time and thinking thank you both so much and keep up the great work and but don't go yet friends I've got to point out where we're headed for the next few weeks of the forum and let me just thank you all for the great questions and discussion we've had so far just looking ahead just to remind you we have sessions come in educational technology and labor a session coming up on reimagining college metrics along with a session on some hairy guy who's got a brand new book coming out so just go to forum.futureofeducation.us to learn more if you want to keep talking about this we have all kinds of places to do that including master non including linkedin including twitter this use the hashtag FTTE or tweet at me Brian Alexander or even Shindig events we glad to hear from you if you want to go into our previous sessions including our two previous sessions on academic freedom just go to tinyurl.com slash FTF archive you can find those there and above all thank you all for a great great discussion a brave discussion on a very very tricky topic I hope you're all doing well hope those of you in the northern hemisphere are starting to enjoy spring depending on where you are and above all I hope you're all safe thanks for everything take care friends bye bye


Twitch drop. Oh, this is from watching the Logan Bowl Christian McCaffrey. What did I get? Garrett Wilson, there he is Kenny pick it 94 no not bad twitch pack boys. What do we say? This is a top tier twitch pack This is top tier. Oh, he was moving Was this through the sweat? It's kind of sweaty. Can't lie.  Jesus Christ. There's just no way. We just RP old right there, dude I Wanted to quit so bad when he kicked the wall. I swear to God. I want to quit. I swear. I want to go play MLB right now I want I don't want to play right now, but I can't let this guy beat me right boys. I can't do it. I gotta get a dub It is I gotta win God, I wish I had a conductor. I mean, I've been running this play for ten months now AIDS dude not a yellow zone. I like I love playing that last game to see if I'm getting me to something different every play This is just brain dead. Listen. I'm this is just That was just such a bad door right there side stuff Let's go. Good work. Good work. Good work. Good work. This guy's a rung committer He's not nice and I don't pick six Cuz he just ran spinner again. Okay, Bobby Wagner Is Wagner over earlacker is Wagner over earlacker? I don't know if I have that.  Come on boys. Like can we hold up blocking please for a second? Oh my god almost caught them off I didn't want I could have caught him if I would have risked the first down But I didn't want to risk that first down right there My man has just run stock spinner every single play. I'd let it work though. That's what's nuts about it That's what's even nastier Shady first down inside the five bro 72 how do you block nobody on that play? All right, so this guy has ran the ball twice and he's a run a RPO So we'll see what else he got for us. I pass committed like a dickhead right here This might get bad Good lurk good defense right there. We need a little better pass rush right there, though boys We need a little bit better pass rush. Oh Santé. Oh my god It's just miserable man. This is just miserable. Oh Man, this is tough right here boys. You know, I just come along with the RPO like what are we doing Merson's? How like are we serious 33 seconds left right now? You want to throw a flat pass right into a flat zone? Is that what we want to do? Like What am I playing right now? It's just not even like How was that a two-second runoff on a pet what a tell what terrible play calling who is this guy do once Like this is just I this is so goddamn boring. We got a window cuz I do that pick six Like I've never seen somebody play this god Yeah, where's that bro, we got to do an epic epic epic run together as squad Run the power.  This is dude.  This is miserable like you guys told me for down line We could stop the run and we can't at all Why would anybody play mutt and if we're chewing clock and just running the ball, dude? He won a million percent runs again. All right boys like one million percent Let's go man. Nolan Smith Jalen Carter about time you guys showed up He could run and just kick a fool How yo how does one do just get thrown on the ground? No, like come on was that Hassan Reddick like what? Oh my god highly questionable highly questionable decision there after conservative highly questionable conservative after that, you know, I mean Bro, I can't lie. We gotta do this. We have to do this. It just has to be done This is the problem with a theme team. I have one ability on every receiver But we could low-key milk this whole game. We could almost What do we think cuz like I don't he's gonna milk out for a field goal if I score. Oh, yeah That's oh my god. I mean number 42 just like Instant shed record like just it like like three people just instant shed that's that was just I've been Just had no shot on that play home boys Trey Lance look at Trey Lance. So inspirational. All right. We got two plays there.  It's gonna be spinner. Hollamala was on the running back here Of course, I don't have that detective. We're gonna have the Vonte Smith or we're gonna have Our Michael here. It's tough right there. That's bad. It's a bad situation Now that was a slant boys. Did that look like a slant or a post? What do we think did I get you slant poster of I wanted to catch that like the 15 Yeah, wow goal line. This is this is actually tough right here You know, I mean Carmichael just got absolutely mothered on an out route the short out elite route tech everything absolutely God man in goal line is I should be able to close my eyes and just throw in Soon as I got first in goal, I couldn't really take the whole clock That the fact he pressed that slant watch the RPO fumble right? Okay. Here we go There's one thing and one thing only we can do here. You got to set a tone here Just have to that's how it works. I'm run committing. He's doing a lot of hot rocks, dude Oh, man, let's go for two here. No, I want to give him a shot.  It's not like Henry and Dez are running RPOs, you know only people that use their crabs They're a crab offense Hassan Reddick Hassan Reddick So that's why we don't make fun of runners, dude. We really don't mean he's definitely runs RPO here like Here kick it deep here. I kick it deep five gift that he gets a money drive again five gift that he gets another shot Five gifted right now. You only got about 30 seconds.  Oh No, oh no Thank you Brown for not being absolutely Sidney Brown. I might have sure we might as we had to swap you out for Douglas here Can't have that again.   Fourth down what a personnel switch. I mean, I would do the same streak too. What's his other options right here? What do you think this guy got a deep playbook? You think this guy's got a deep playbook? I'd be honestly surprised if he didn't run RPO, you know, no match here. We're just gonna cover three We're gonna let a Sunday match nicely done deep knockout GG's the boys win the boys win it the boys win it Love to see it. Love to see it. Hope you guys like this mud game.  This is what you're getting boys. No holds bar pure sweat Pure vibes Pure sweat porch vibes W content W content fake feel low was questionable decision from him could have went up nine points there and late in the third quarter Decided to go for the fake tough