Free Speech

at the Heart of Boston

The Ford Hall Forum is the nation’s oldest continuously operating free public lecture series. Its mission is to foster an informed and effective citizenry and to promote freedom of speech through the public presentation of lectures, debates and discussions. Forum events illuminate the key issues facing our society by bringing to its podium knowledgeable and thought-provoking speakers, including some of the most controversial opinion leaders of our times. These speakers are presented in person, for free, and in settings, which facilitate frank and open debate.

“Happy is the age in which one can think what he please and say what he thinks.” This is the ideal for which the Ford Hall Forum has striven through thick and thin. It is the key to out survival as a democratic society in the difficult years ahead. Long may the Ford Hall Forum flourish.”

- Arthur M. Schlesinger, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian