Join roundtable discussions and rotate between ten tables of your choice every twenty minutes from 11:15 AM to 12:15 PM. Engage in thought-provoking conversations and network with diverse professionals. At 12:15 PM, enjoy the lunch buffet and continue the discussions.

The Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment provides protections for exploring popular and unpopular speech on college campuses. The First Amendment also extends its wings of protection around a professor’s ability to teach and research without fear of reprisal, a concept known as academic freedom. This concept is fundamental to higher education today. In this way, one has to wonder how the First Amendment interacts with the speech of faculty, particularly unpopular speech, in the classroom. I explore the interaction of the First Amendment and academic freedom through the lens of race, sex, and gender-based epithets and slurs used in college and university classrooms by faculty under the guise of course instruction. I conceptualize the First Amendment by examining various theories of First Amendment jurisprudence. I correlate prominent First Amendment interpretive theories with case law on epithets and slurs in the classroom and categorical examples of pedagogical uses of slurs and epithets. Lastly, I offer important suggestions that create inclusive cultures for difficult classroom conversations, and I argue that faculty and administrators should consider the harm to students when engaging in or regulating protected harmful speech for pedagogical purposes.