By Jacob Mchangama Growing up in Denmark in the early 2000s, I rarely worried about my right to free speech. In this cozy haven of liberal values and secular democracy, speaking freely felt as natural as breathing. Few contested this state of affairs, least of all religious groups, whose influence had long since faded. That […]
By Jacob Mchangama In 1742 David Hume boasted that: “Nothing is more apt to surprise a foreigner than the extreme liberty which we enjoy in this country of communicating whatever we please to the public”. Voltaire saw 18th-century Britain as a paradise of tolerance and freedom that stood in stark contrast to despotic France. Today […]
By Jacob Mchangama In 1649, a group of English radicals sent a petition to the House of Commons. In it, they lamented the licensing of printing — which allowed the government to “pre-censor” books and pamphlets — as well as the harsh punishments for publishing unlicensed or “scandalous” ones. The radicals warned that this kind […]
By Madeleine Lacsko This week, São Paulo will host a historic masterclass on freedom of expression . The event, organized by a diverse consortium of institutions, will bring together legal experts, journalists, researchers, parliamentarians, and civil society representatives in a debate environment that has become increasingly rare in Brazil: one where dissent is possible with […]
Jacob Mchangama was a young lawyer and blogger in 2005 when his country, Denmark, was thrust into the global spotlight after a Danish newspaper printed cartoons depicting the Islamic prophet Muhammad—a practice widely considered taboo among many Muslims. Mchangama’s fascination with free speech began as a worldwide conversation erupted about a complicated topic made even […]
By Jacob Mchangama How one Dane views free speech in America. wo years ago, I moved to the United States to found a think tank devoted to defending global free expression. What better place to launch than America, which is, according to the law professor and First Amendment expert Lee Bollinger, “the most speech protective of any nation on […]
By Abhishek Saha . . . Over the Christmas break, I read Free Speech: A Global History from Socrates to Social Media, Jacob Mchangama’s magnificent chronicle of free speech through the ages. What struck me most was how the debates we face today—about academic freedom, censorship, and the limits of expression—are far from new. The same […]
By Jacob Mchangama How a cartoon crisis transformed a local debate into a global reckoning over censorship and religious sensitivities – one whose aftershocks continue to shape Western democracies two decades later In Sept. 30, 2005, the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten ignited a global firestorm when it published 12 cartoons – some depicting the Prophet Muhammad – under […]
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE March 18, 2025—NASHVILLE, Tenn.—Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media, the critically acclaimed book by Jacob Mchangama, has returned in a new paperback edition. Originally released in 2022, this celebrated work is hailed as “the best history of free speech ever written” by P.J. O’Rourke and called “smart, insightful, and […]
By Alejo Schapire In 2022, Danish lawyer Jacob Mchangama (Copenhagen, 1978) published Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media (not yet translated into Spanish), an essay that traces the erratic and bloody struggle for freedom of expression in the East and West, from ancient Greece to social media. In both the book and his podcast , Mchangama […]