By J.D. Tuccille We Need To Revive a Culture of Free Speech But, as Kirk himself warned, “when people stop talking, really bad stuff starts. When marriages stop talking, divorce happens. When civilizations stop talking, civil war ensues.” We’re not there yet. From the left, Van Jones called for more dialogue and less violence. From […]
By Nick Karmia and Tufan Neupane Jacob Mchangama, founder and executive director of the Future of Free Speech at Vanderbilt University, agreed that the First Amendment protects against government actions, not actions by a private employer. But he said, the lines blur when government officials pressure private employers to punish employees whose views don’t conform […]
By Naomi Lim Jacob Mchangama, executive director of the Future of Free Speech, told the Washington Examiner he “completely” understood why “people are repulsed” by those celebrating Kirk’s death, but underscored that “there’s a difference between moral condemnation and criminal persecution.” “What I think is particularly ironic is that this administration has been, and I […]
By Angele Latham Following the shooting, rhetoric surrounding students’ First Amendment rights has been heated. But one theme has been largely agreed upon by First Amendment experts on both sides of the aisle: speech is not violence, and violence is not an answer to speech. Jacob Mchangama, the founder and executive director of the Future […]
By Ashkhen Kazaryan and Ashley Haek A 2023 complaint filed by Missouri, Louisiana, and other individual plaintiffs against the Biden administration argued that executive branch officials “coerced, threatened, and pressured social-media platforms to censor disfavored speakers and viewpoints by using threats of adverse government action,” thus violating the First Amendment. That lawsuit alleged that the […]
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE NASHVILLE, Tenn. — July 14, 2025 — A sweeping new rule proposed by the Missouri Attorney General would turn state regulators into online speech overseers, warns The Future of Free Speech in a public comment submitted Monday. The rule, labeled as a consumer protection measure, in fact mandates ideological balance in content […]
By Ashkhen Kazaryan Each June, Pride Month turns our public spaces into sites of celebration and remembrance. But Pride is not just a cultural event; it is a constitutional exercise. At its core, Pride embodies the freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment: speech, assembly, press, and petition. Expressive acts of defiance wrote the history of […]
By Gabby Miller — By the numbers: The Future of Free Speech, an independent think tank at Vanderbilt University, kicked off its comments arguing that conservative voices — including accounts, influencers and news sources — outperform on social media platforms. “From engagement metrics on Facebook to favorable algorithmic treatment on X (formerly Twitter) … the […]
By Ashkhen Kazaryan Key Takeaways The First Amendment protects people’s, corporations’ and other legal entities’ free speech rights from government restriction, but no court has found that AI programs themselves have the same free speech rights. AI-generated content is generally afforded the same First Amendment protections as content created by people or corporations and other […]
By Jacob Sullum [ . . . ] The FTC’s authority under Section 5 “does not, and constitutionally cannot, extend to penalizing social media platforms for how they choose to moderate user content,” Ashkhen Kazaryan, a senior legal fellow at the Future of Free Speech, argues in a comment that the organization submitted on Tuesday. “Platforms’ content […]