Angry debates about polarizing speakers have roiled college campuses. Conservatives accuse universities of muzzling unpopular opinions, betraying their values of open inquiry; students sympathetic to the Left advocate for some regulation of speech, asking for “safe spaces” and protection against visiting speakers and even curricula they feel disrespects them. Some even call these students “snowflakes”—too fragile to be exposed to opinions and ideas that challenge their worldviews. How might universities resolve these debates about free speech, which pit students’ welfare against the university’s commitment to free inquiry and open debate? This book provides a new way of looking at this dilemma. It explains how the current dichotomy is false and is not really about the feelings of offended students, or protecting an open marketplace of ideas. Rather, what is at stake is our democracy’s commitment to equality, and the university’s critical role as an arbiter of truth. The book shows how and why free speech forges an otherwise uneasy alliance of liberals and ultraconservatives, and why this First Amendment absolutism is untenable in law and society in general. The book draws on law, philosophy, and the author’s extensive experience as a university administrator to show that the lens of equality can resolve this impasse, and can allow the university to serve as a model for democracy that upholds both truth and equality as its founding principles.