During his tenure as chancellor at UC Berkeley, Nicholas Dirks navigated some of the most challenging free speech controversies in the contemporary United States. In one of the most telling episodes, a February 2017 speech by the right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos was shut down amid a riot by left-wing "antifa" protesters. In this talk, Dirks will reflect on challenges such as these as well as the ideological challenges to the liberal norm of free speech and the threat posed to universities by these contemporary disputes.