(upbeat music) - Recently my colleague, Mary Gamba, in our sister series, "Lessons in Leadership" sat down and spoke with Dr. Alaine Arnott, who's the President and CEO of the National Liberty Museum.

The museum's all about free speech, protecting free speech challenges to free speech, why free speech is not just an important part of the Constitution in our country, but why we need to fight for everyone's right to engage in free speech that doesn't endanger anyone else.

Sounds simple enough, easy in theory, really hard to practice.

Let's check out that conversation.

Doctor, good to have you with us.

- Good to be here.

Thanks for having me, Steve.

- Put the website up.

Tell everyone what the museum is.

- The museum, we are a museum of ideas, not concepts.

And as we were just joining, it's really important now because of everything that's happening as a country.

So we look to bring people together that value freedom of thought, civil discourse, respect for all individuals in the essential pursuit of liberty.

- How'd you get into this work?

- I think I fell into it a little bit.

My background's bit of a hodgepodge, but I knew I wanted to be a leader within the cultural space, but I wanted to have the expertise in order to add true value.

So I dabbled a little bit in the tech startup world.

I went the MBA route, I was a teacher for a bit, but in the end, I think the work that the Liberty Museum is doing has culminated all of my background and my experience.

My husband asked me, "What are you gonna do after running a Liberty Museum?"

And I was like, I don't know, everything else would be pretty boring.

- Yeah, it's really important work.

And also wanna thank the folks at NJM, our good friends there for making the connection to your organizations.

Please, Mary.

- Doctor, talk a little bit about, you mentioned that it's a museum of ideas and not things and artifacts.

Can you give us an example?

We're taping this now in April.

It's gonna be seen May, June, July and we'll be repeating.

Share an example of what an exhibit would be like if someone were to visit the museum, which happens to be in Philadelphia.

- Correct.

So if you walked into the museum right now, our core concept for the year is the year of free speech, which I think couldn't be more timely with everything going on, whether you're at a university, whether you're in politics, whether you're in medicine.

So as you walk into the space.

- Or media.

- Or media.

Fair point.

So as you walk in, you'll see three different galleries that are focused on free speech in collaboration with our permanent gallery space.

So you'll see an exhibition that's focused on the foundation of free speech and what creates a culture of free speech.

The second we work with living artists to bring about a different way to approach how museums can create conversations.

Sometimes you don't need words, sometimes you need visuals in order to break that barrier of just having a hard conversation.

And then the last one is about the future.

And the future could be tomorrow, or it could be 20 years from now of free speech.

So the exhibition that we'll actually launch in May, we are building out our first ever AI conversation.

So you'll actually get in front of an AI with six different topics that are from easy to hard.

So it could be about the banana that was up on (indistinct).

I think it was four or $5 million.

- It sure was.

- Talk about that or we could talk about the monuments and why monuments have been taken down.

What does that mean from a liberty standpoint?

Even getting into the transgender athlete issues and how do we talk about that?

How can we as Americans in a liberal democracy embrace what it means to have free speech as it's the foundation of our country?

- Let me follow up on this, Alaine.

The Teacher as Hero Award.

There are many teachers, many educational leaders who want to hold on to the intellectual integrity of what they do, their independence, the ability to do what they're doing without being told what to teach and how to teach it.

What is that award and how is it connected to free speech?

- So the Teachers Hero Award are about teachers that are really embracing what it means to bring liberty, to bring civic dialogue, to bring civic education into the classroom.

And that can be from inspiring students to do what we do as a part of our Young Heroes program as well, is action projects.

How do we teach the next generation to have a voice?

And I think the teachers that are doing that are the ones that really step up for this award.

So that ties it back.

How do you empower the next generation to live those same values that we're looking for as the American society?

- Mary.

- You talked about our young adults, our future generations.

And I'm fascinated by the AI, the challenges that how young adults are using AI today.

How can we teach these young adults to really honor and embrace free speech, but also being respectful of others, especially with how some young adults are using or inappropriately using AI today.

- I think it's a learning- with any new tool that's introduced to our society, it takes a minute to figure it out.

I mean, if you think about social media as the prime example, and now I think with Jonathan Haidt's book that came out about the the next generation- - "The Anxious Generation?"

- Yep, Anxious Generation.

And I think things like that, we will go down rabbit holes, but we have to self-correct.

And I think that's a part of it.

I think it's also really critical in our time and I'll go back to civics education that we teach students civics education isn't just about the constitution, it is about creating citizens that value what we value as a country.

And in terms of AI, that's a respect.

We still have to be knowledgeable, we still have to be educated and see AI as a tool to help us become better citizens.

- Do you think, and this is anything but political, to me, this is about patriotism and loving our country.

In part, for the fact that we're supposed to be fighting for the rights of others who we disagree with to say what they believe without it being dangerous to other people, fighting for the right of free speech.

But in all honesty, there are a fair number of people who believe in free speech.

As long as your speech is consistent with what I think and if we agree you're fine.

If we don't, you're dangerous and need to be stopped.

Am I oversimplifying it, doctor?

- No, I don't think so.

And that's why I think the work that we do at the Liberty Museum is so important.

We bring together diversity of thought and perspective so that when you go to a speaker program or you see an exhibition, it's not about politics, it's not about us versus them, it's about looking through different lenses.

'Cause that's what makes America such a great country is that we have varied backgrounds.

We have the ability to look at things in multiple ways.

And if we ever lose that, then we become a one dimensional country that cannot have the creativity and the innovation and all of the other aspects that come with having those diversity- - One more quick follow up.

Isn't it scary for some in media, in higher education, other educational institutions, not-for-profit organizations to engage in this thing called free speech if in fact, much of their financial support comes from government sources who are saying, no, if you don't acquiesce, we're cutting off the spigot.

In theory, free speech makes perfect sense when you have to pay bills and everybody has to get a check every two weeks.

Easier said than done, no?

- Oh yes.

Actually, last night, at about six o'clock, I got the notification that our IMLS grant was terminated.

And this is a big hit for us.

But one of the things I think- - What grant is that?

Is that from the government?

- Yep, that's federal government.

So that happened last night.

And for me, it changes every four years.

You're not gonna know, especially at the federal level what's gonna happen.

So I think it's our job as nonprofits and cultural centers to really look at diversification of revenue sources.

And that's hard and it's challenging, but we also need to challenge the current generation, the next generation of givers and donors, that we can't rely on the government to be our funding source.

We've gotta value it as a larger society what cultural, the arts, sciences bring to us as citizens.

- It is more important than ever before.

Couldn't care less what your politics is, but protecting and fighting for people's right to engage in free speech, I think it's somewhere in the Constitution, it might be the first.

Who knows?

Dr. Alaine Arnott, President and CEO of the National Liberty Museum.

Thank you so much for joining us.

We appreciate it.

- Thank you so much.

- You got it.

Stay with us, we’ll be right back.

- [Narrator] One-On-One with Steve Adubato is a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Funding has been provided by Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey.

Hackensack Meridian Health.

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A Cape Resorts property.

And by NJM Insurance Group.

Promotional support provided by BestofNJ.com.

And by New Jersey Monthly.

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