The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
The First Amendment remains the gold standard globally when it comes to protecting speech. But our guest says free speech protections cannot be guaranteed without strong support from those who it protects — including supporting others’ right to express ideas you might strongly disagree with.
Jacob Mchangama is the director of the Future of Free Speech think tank at Vanderbilt University, a Senior Fellow at The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression in Philadelphia, and the author of “Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media.”
Mchangama has spent his career tracking free speech trends globally and understanding how it has ebbed and flowed over the course of recorded history. We talk to him to get his sense of the threats free speech is facing during our current place and time in the U.S.
Click here to listen to our conversation with Mr. Mchangama in March of 2024.
Guest:
Jacob Mchangama, director of the Future of Free Speech think tank at Vanderbilt University, Senior Fellow at The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) in Philadelphia, and the author of “Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media” published in 2022.
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