Free speech around the world today is in retreat. Authoritarian and nationalist figures from Narendra Modi in India to Viktor Orbán in Hungary are silencing dissenting voices in an effort to entrench power. Even in democracies, where it is hailed as the “first freedom” and a bedrock democratic value, the free speech debate is weaponized by the political left and right, as different groups aim to curtail it on college campuses, in classrooms, and on digital platforms—undermining the very culture of tolerance and open mindedness on which this freedom ultimately depends.

Jacob Mchangama offers a definitive account of free speech, from the ancient world to the digital age, and in the process establishes why defending free speech is so critical today. History shows that the free exchange of ideas is essential not only to the spread of knowledge and innovation but also to upholding the values so cherished by democratic nations. Moreover, despite contemporary debates, the practice and principle of free speech has been instrumental in ensuring the equality and dignity of marginalized and voiceless groups, while censorship and repression have been the weapons of choice of oppressors, authoritarians, and supremacists.

Please join us for this discussion with a leading free speech activist.

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• “Squelching Speech and ‘Shouting Fire in a Crowded Theater’,” Cato Daily Podcast
• “The Cato 2021 Speech and Social Media National Survey,” by Emily Ekins and David Kemp
• The Radio Right: How a Band of Broadcasters Took on the Federal Government and Built the Modern Conservative Movement (Oxford University Press, 2020), by Paul Matzko
• The Tyranny of Silence (Cato, 2014), by Flemming Rose
• The Mind of the Censor and the Eye of the Beholder: The First Amendment and the Censor’s Dilemma, by Robert Corn-Revere