Skip to main content
Book Forum

Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought, Newly Expanded Edition

(University of Chicago Press, 2013)

Watch the Event

Join the conversation on X using #CatoEvents. Follow @CatoInstitute on X to get future event updates, live streams, and videos from the Cato Institute.

Date and Time
-
Location
1st floor/Wintergarden
Share This Event
Featuring
Featuring the author Jonathan Rauch, Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution; with comments by Greg Lukianoff, President, Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE); and Brian Moulton, Legal Director, Human Rights Campaign; moderated by John Samples Director, Cato Institute Press.

In 1993, when Jonathan Rauch’s landmark book Kindly Inquisitors was first published, the idea that minorities need special protection from discriminatory or demeaning speech was innovative. Today, it’s standard operating procedure–routinely enforced by universities, employers, foreign governments, and even international treaties. In a newly expanded electronic edition of his book, Rauch, an openly gay advocate of same-sex marriage and of gay equality generally, argues that suppressing hateful speech does minorities more harm than good, and that the gay civil rights movement of the past two decades dramatically illustrates the point. Join us as the author explains why gays and other minorities are better off if government protects bigoted speech than if government protects them from it.