On September 12, 2023, the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions hosted Keith Whittington, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Politics at Princeton University, and Myles McKnight '23, Public Discourse Fellow at the Witherspoon Institute and Research Assistant to Professor Robert George. To kick off the 2023-24 academic year, the two discussed the free speech rights of Princeton students.

After the speaker presentations, students in attendance stayed for a catered dinner and an open house, while Robert George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program, discussed the James Madison Program's Undergraduate Fellows Forum and how to join.

Keith E. Whittington is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Politics at Princeton University, the founding chair of the Academic Freedom Alliance and a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution. He works on American constitutional history, politics and law, and on American political thought. He is the author of Repugnant Laws: Judicial Review of Acts of Congress from the Founding to the Present and Speak Freely: Why Universities Must Defend Free Speech, among other works. He has been a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, and the University of Texas School of Law, and he is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He served on the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States. He did his undergraduate work at the University of Texas at Austin and completed his Ph.D. in political science at Yale University.

Myles McKnight ’23 graduated Phi Beta Kappa and Magna Cum Laude from Princeton with a degree in Politics. At Princeton, he was the President of the Princeton Open Campus Coalition, Managing Editor of the Princeton Legal Journal, and Concertmaster of the Princeton University Orchestra. He has worked for the Hon. Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain of the United States Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit and for the Appellate Division of the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts. He also served as the Concertmaster of the National Youth Orchestra of the United States. He now works as a Public Discourse Fellow at the Witherspoon Institute and as a Research Assistant to Professor George for the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. Part of the James Madison Program's Initiative on Freedom of Thought, Inquiry, and Expression.