Conflicts over free speech have become common these days, and they’ve become especially charged in discussions of campus controversies. This week at the University Missouri-Columbia, journalists covering the campus protests that led to the resignation of U of Missori system president Tim Wolfe were asked to leave public spaces and encountered resistance from not only student protesters but faculty members; some students and professors saw even the presence of student journalists covering campus protests as disturbing, indicating a lack of trust between minority students and the press. Free speech has also been at the center of a recent controversy at Yale University, where a residential college employee’s email pushing back against an administrative missive cautioning against racially-insensitive Halloween costumes in turn caused the students of that community to erupt in protest.

Salon speaks to Suzanne Nossel of PEN about the University of Missouri protests, free speech and the press