In our American Politics course, we recently examined the turbulent year of 1968.  My students were aghast to see the events unfold with the assassinations of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Senator Robert F. Kennedy, the Tet Offensive, and then the unbelievable political conventions held in Chicago.  “How could that happen?” They asked, after viewing scenes from outside the Democratic National Convention.  Students were chanting, “the whole world is watching” in 1968 and my students were glued to the screen.  In August of 2017 white nationalist marched across the campus of a state university in Charlottesville, Virginia.  Watching the images of people full of hatred and narrow-mindedness on the grounds of a university founded for the diffusion of knowledge was difficult to tolerate.  Ten members of the crowd were ultimately banned from the University’s grounds with the university noting its decision was “based on a differentiation between free speech and violence.”  On the other side of the political spectrum, in late June 2019 a far left anti-fascist organization, the Antfia protested on the streets of Oregon and attacked a conservative homosexual member of the press, “milk shaking” him with cement filled cups, stealing his camera, and sending Andy Ngo to the hospital bleeding, visually beaten and with trauma to his skull.  Is “the whole world” still watching? Can “freedom of assembly” coexist with violence?  In 1968 the answer was clear, if unjust.  Mayor Daley had refused to grant protesters the right to assemble in “his” city.  That brings us back to the question of who has the right to assemble and/or protest?  Should government authorities protect no matter how abhorrent they may view their message all who lawfully gather and defend all who are violently attacked? Our founding fathers seemed to think so as embracing the belief that even though “I wholly disapprove of what you say” they would “defend to the death your right to say it.”  It has been over fifty years since 1968, yet there are still, in my opinion, lessons to be learned from that tempestuous year. – Christine C. McDonald, Dean of Academics