By Jacques de Saint Victor ESSAY — In Free Speech, the Danish jurist and essayist Jacob Mchangama investigates 2,500 years of liberty and its many enemies. In 1644, the English poet John Milton, the celebrated author of Paradise Lost, published one of the finest pleas ever written against censorship and in favor of freedom of […]
By Natalie Alkiviadou Political discourse increasingly unfolds within digital environments structured by algorithmic recommendation systems, viral dissemination mechanisms, and engagement-driven visibility metrics. Platforms such as TikTok do not merely host political and social debates; they shape their circulation, amplification, and public impact. Further, the speed and scale of dissemination in algorithmically mediated environments exceed those […]
By Jacob Mchangama Earlier this month, Amnesty International asked Britain’s charity regulator to review the status of 117 organizations whose views on sex and abortion it dislikes. It received the public thrashing it deserved. But the threatened libel campaign now being bankrolled against it risks converting a victory for counter-speech into a cautionary tale—one in […]
By: Jacob Mchangama At this year’s Munich Security Conference, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen stressed Europe’s “long tradition in freedom of speech.” Then she drew a redline. “We are very clear with digital sovereignty . . . that what is forbidden offline is forbidden online,” she added. Von der Leyen’s maxim would have […]
By Rym Momtaz, ed. The battle over free speech has taken center stage since U.S. Vice President JD Vance accused Europe of censorship. From travel bans to social media regulation, especially around the Israel-Palestine conflict, are liberal democratic governments weaponizing free speech? [ . . . ] Natalie Alkiviadou Senior Research Fellow, The Future of […]
By Joan Barata [Editor’s note: this is a review of Dr. Natalie Alkiviadou’s new book, Hate Speech and the European Court of Human Rights (Routledge 2025)]. The notion of hate speech has always been a problematic legal artifact in international human rights law. Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) provides a […]
By Katrina Gulliver Last week, I had the great pleasure of welcoming to Atlanta Jacob Mchangama, who came to talk to me about his book. We had a standing-room-only crowd of Freeman readers as I asked him what he thought about the past—and future—of free speech. (The conversation below has been edited for length.) One […]
By Jacob Mchangama In 1977, the Danish film director Jens Jørgen Thorsen was turned away at Heathrow on the orders of Home Secretary Merlyn Rees, after a campaign by the Christian campaigner Mary Whitehouse. Thorsen was carrying the script for a long-planned film about the sex life of Jesus — a project that had already […]
By Jacob Mchangama and Jeff Kosseff This essay is adapted from The Future of Free Speech: Reversing the Global Decline of Democracy’s Most Essential Freedom (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2026) European democracies hold free and fair elections, ensure peaceful transfers of power, and maintain a vibrant media landscape. Their independent judiciaries hold governments accountable if they […]
By Peggy Sastre There is censorship that is obvious: it hits, locks up, banned, cuts the Internet, throws journalists in jail and does not bother with big words to make you understand that it prefers silence to freedom. And then there is the sweetest in her manners, cleaner on her, more satisfied with her reasons, […]