By Peggy Sastre The excerpt below is a rough English translation. Read the original in French here. Jacob Mchangama, a Danish legal scholar and author of a notable history of freedom of expression from the time of Socrates to the era of social media, is now one of the most insightful analysts of this fundamental […]
Mother Jones staff highlight their favorite books they read in 2024. Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media (2022) By Jacob Mchangama Nonfiction The latest battle in the 2,500-year war over free speech came to a head during the vice presidential debate. “We actually do have a threat to democracy,” said JD Vance, as […]
By Jacob Mchangama via Eugene Volokh I’m delighted to pass along this book review by Prof. Jacob Mchangama (Vanderbilt), who is the author of Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media and other works on free speech; he is also the CEO of The Future of Free Speech and Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Individual Rights and […]
By Danielle Smith A recent study by Vanderbilt University found that Americans generally love free speech, but their views change occasionally. One instance of this occurred during the protests at U.S. universities about the Israel-Hamas war. John Geer, professor of political science at Vanderbilt University, said the study replicated a 1939 poll that asked about […]
By Jacob Mchangama “The Left started it.” That was the common retort from right-wing X accounts like Libs of TikTok and their supporters, who attempted and often succeeded at getting people fired for making tasteless social media posts about the assassination attempt on Donald Trump back in July. Most of their victims weren’t public figures […]
By Jeremy Schulman In December, Trump adviser Kash Patel set off alarm bells when he said that if the former president returns to the Oval Office, his new administration might prosecute media figures and others “who lied about American citizens.” “We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in government but in the media,” Patel told Steve […]
By Jacob Mchangama A recent spate of neo-Nazi demonstrations in Nashville has heightened tensions in an already polarized political environment. Fortunately, there has been bipartisan condemnation of these vile and obscene efforts to promote hatred in our community. However, some Tennessee public officials want to go beyond condemnation, claiming that “hate speech is not free […]
By Elizabeth Amato Reviewed: Liar in a Crowded Theater by Jeff Kosseff How can we defend free speech to those who show little interest in preserving an unfettered “marketplace of ideas”? In March 2020, Waylon Bailey posted on Facebook a joke about zombies, and how his local sheriff’s office in Forest Hill, Louisiana had orders […]
At WGCU Radio in Southwest Florida, Mike Kiniry recently interviewed Jacob Mchangama about current threats to free speech and his book Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media. ___ After the United States Constitution was ratified, Congress adopted ten amendments which were then ratified by three-fourths of the states, and these ten amendments […]
The article discusses the challenges of governing free speech, hate speech, and web censorship in the age of the internet, and cites the views Jacob Mchangama. Mchangama’s proposals for balancing the need to protect free expression with the harms caused by hate speech and misinformation are highlighted, and the article suggests that his principles could […]