This Week In Free Speech with Jacob Mchangama
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This Week In Free Speech with Jacob Mchangama
This Week in Free Speech is your weekly deep dive into the most cutting-edge global developments affecting the most important of human rights: freedom of expression. Each week your host Jacob Mchangama invites a guest with particular relevance or expertise to discuss a hot topic with global relevanc...
Recent Episodes
46 episodes
Special Edition - Suzanne Nossel
In this Special Edition, we will zoom in on current challenges to free speech – specifically in the US. With me to discuss this timely subject, I have...
Special Edition - Daphne Keller & Kate Klonick
“Internet Speech Will Never Go Back to Normal,” declared the headline of a recent Atlantic article by law professors Jack Goldsmith and Andrew Keane...
Special Edition - Dunja Mijatović
Since the coronavirus became a pandemic, governments around the world have adopted a wide range of measures affecting basic human rights. This include...
Special Edition - Monika Bickert
The coronavirus has disrupted life as we know it. Billions of people across the world are caught in varying degrees of lockdowns with severe restricti...
Episode 40 - The Age of Human Rights: Tragedy and Triumph
In 2014, Saudi Arabian blogger Raif Badawi was sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes for insulting Islam by promoting secular values on his...
Episode 39 - The Totalitarian Temptation – Part II - Der Untergang
In November 2019 German Chancellor Angela Merkel gave a passionate speech to the German Bundestag. Merkel said “We have freedom of expression in this...
Episode 38 - The Totalitarian Temptation – Part I
In George Orwell’s 1946 work, “The Prevention of Literature,” he wrote:
[O]rganised lying … is … integral to totalitarianism, [and] would … con...
Episode 37 - Expert opinion: The History of Mass Surveillance, with Andreas Marklund
In 2013 the NSA contractor Edward Snowden sent shockwaves through the American government when he leaked information exposing a number of vast mass su...
Episode 36 - Expert opinion: Thomas Healy on how Oliver Wendell Holmes changed the history of free speech in America
On March 4, 1801, Thomas Jefferson, the newly elected president, gave his first inaugural address. Jefferson eloquently dismissed the logic behind the...
Episode 35 - White Man´s Burden: Empire, Liberalism and Censorship
During the mass protests that have rocked Hong Kong since June 2019 pro-democracy protestors have waved Union Jack flags and been singing God Save the...
Episode 34 – The Age of Reaction: The fall and rise of free speech in 19th century Europe
The 18th century ended with free speech in full retreat. With the French Revolution, the call for “Enlightenment Now!” was no longer seen as the harbi...
Special Edition - A conversation with Professor David Kaye, UN Special Rapporteur
In this special edition of Clear And Present Danger we leave the past and jump into the present for a discussion on how international human rights sta...
Episode 33 - Counter-Revolution: Dutch Patriots, Tom Paine´s Rights of Man and the campaign against Seditious Writings
Faced with bloody terrorism democratic Europe has often reacted with tough measures. The UK Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act of 2019 criminal...
Episode 32 - Policing opinion in the French Revolution with Charles Walton
On Aug. 26, 1789, France’s National Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. Article 11 of the Declaration proclaime...
Episode 31 - The Old Regime
In Nov. 2018, French President Emanuel Macron declared war on “offensive and hateful content” on the internet. Subsequently, France adopted strict law...
Episode 30 - Northern Lights, The Scandinavian Press Freedom Breakthrough
In the 1760s and 1770s, Sweden and Denmark-Norway shortly became the epicenter of press freedom protections in Enlightenment Europe.
In 1766,...
Episode 29 - The Philosopher King - Enlightened Despotism, part 2, Prussia
In his famous essay “What is Enlightenment?” the Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant declared: “[E]nlightenment requires nothing but freedom … to make...
Episode 28 - Writing on Human Skin - Enlightened Despotism, part I, Russia
The Enlightenment´s emphasis on science, progress, tolerance and rationality not only attracted philosophers. Even absolute monarchs dreamt of “Enligh...
Episode 27 - How Enlightening
data-contrast="auto">After a brief detour into the present, we return to Ground Zero of the Enlightenment in 18th century Europe, with this recap of p...
Episode 26 – Oslo Freedom Forum Special with Megha Rajagopalan and Yuan Yang
June 4th, 2019 marks the 30th anniversary of the bloody culmination of the Chinese government´s Tiananmen Massacre of pro-democracy students and activ...
Episode 25 – Oslo Freedom Forum Special with Larry Diamond
Today´s episode is going to be a radical departure from the chronological timeline of the general podcast so far. I´m currently in Oslo for the annual...
Episode 24 – Expert Opinion: Stephen Solomon part two - The Sedition Act
In 1787, the newly authored U.S. Constitution was sent out to the states for ratification. Despite fierce objections from Anti-Federalists, the Consti...
Episode 23 – Expert Opinion: Stephen Solomon part one - The First Amendment
The First Amendment of the US Constitution was adopted as part of the Bill of Rights in 1791. This “Great bulwark of liberty” provides that
“C...
Episode 22 - Fighting Words - Free Speech in 18th Century America, Part II
In the second half of the 18th Century American, Patriots showed that freedom of the press was a potent weapon against authority. Not even the world´s...
Episode 21 - The Bulwark of Liberty - Free Speech in 18th Century America, Part I
18th century America was impacted and influenced by the so-called Glorious Revolution in the Motherland. And no-one had a bigger impact on American at...
Episode 20 - The Seeds of Enlightenment
1685 was a watershed year for events that would lead to what we call the Enlightenment. France´s Sun King Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes and in...
Episode 19 – Expert Opinion: Steven Nadler on Spinoza’s ‘book forged in hell” and the right to “think what you like and say what you think”
Baruch Spinoza (also known as Benedict de Spinoza) was born in Amsterdam in 1632. While his given name means “blessing” in both Hebrew and Latin, Spin...
Episode 18 - Colonial Dissent: Blasphemy, Libel and Tolerance in 17th Century America
Americans are more supportive of free speech than any other people. 95 % of Americans think it’s “very important” to be able to criticize the governme...
Episode 17 - Global Inquisition
In the 16th Century Spain and Portugal globalized the inquisition by spreading the fight for religious orthodoxy and against heresy, blasphemy and apo...
Episode 16: Expert Opinion - Michael Shermer
In this episode, we join up with historian of science Dr. Michael Shermer to investigate the cross-fertilization between science and free speech.
Episode 15 - Paper-bullets and the forgotten martyrs of radical free speech
Episode 15 returns to Europe and formative events in 17th Century England, where a mostly forgotten group of radicals demanded a written constitution...
Episode 14 - ‘Universal Peace’: Religious tolerance in the Mughal empire
Episode 14 leaves the West and heads to 16th and 17th Century India and the Mughal empire. In particular, the rule of Akbar the Great.
A centur...
Episode 13: Expert Opinion - Jonathan Haidt
In this episode, we do a bit of time travel and leave the 17th century for a discussion of free speech on American college and university campuses tod...
Episode 12: Expert Opinion - Teresa Bejan
We enter the early modern age with an expert opinion featuring Teresa Bejan, associate professor at Oriel College, Oxford University and author of “Me...
Episode 11: The great disruption - Part II
In episode 11 we continue to survey the wreckage after hurricane Luther was unleashed on Europe with the Reformation. When the Reformation mutated and...
Episode 10: The great disruption - Part I, the printing press and the viral Reformation
The disruptive effects of the internet and social media on the spread of information are unprecedented. Or are they?
In episode 10 of Clear a...
Episode 9: Expert Opinion - Christine Caldwell Ames
Our last stop in the Middle Ages is an interview with professor Christine Caldwell Ames, who is an expert on medieval heresy and inquisition in Judais...
Episode 8: The hounds of God - medieval heretics and inquisitors
From the High Middle Ages, Europe developed into a “persecuting society,” obsessed with stamping out the “cancer” of heresy. But questions about how t...
Episode 7: Expert Opinion - Peter Adamson
In our second expert opinion episode, Jacob Mchangama talks with Peter Adamson, who is a professor of philosophy at Ludwig Maximilian University of Mu...
Episode 6: The not-so-Dark Ages, medieval intellectuals, and freethinkers
In episode 6, we get medieval!
Find out why the Middle Ages were as much a period of reason and inquiry as inquisition and superstition.
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