By Jacob Mchangama Free speech pessimism is on the rise among America’s elites. “Free Speech Is Killing Us,” read a 2019 op-ed in The New York Times. Recently, an article in The New York Times Magazine concluded, “It’s time to ask whether the American way of protecting free speech is actually keeping us free.” George Washington University Law […]
By Jacob Mchangama Should J.K. Rowling face criminal charges for misgendering someone on social media? In March, transgender British TV personality India Willoughby reported the “Harry Potter” author to the police for posting that “India didn’t become a woman. India is cosplaying a misogynistic male fantasy of what a woman is.” Willoughby was about a month […]
By Martin O’Reilly The government of the Republic of Ireland is currently proposing a new hate speech law, as part of the Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill, which would update the Prohibition of Incitement to Hatred Act 1989. It is argued the existing law, particularly on account of the presence of social media, […]
By Jacob Mchangama 2023 was a disastrous year for free speech in liberal democracies. Unfortunately, 2024 only promises to deepen the free speech recession that has been sweeping open societies for years. On October 7th 2023, Hamas operatives carried out the deadliest single attack on Jews since the Holocaust. Some 1,200 people were killed including […]
Simon Tisdall mentions The Future of Free Speech’s new research on free speech developments in 22 democracies in the report “The Free Speech Recession Hits Home‘ “The principle of free speech, essential to fully functioning democracy, is also under attack, rights campaigner Jacob Mchangama argued in Foreign Policy magazine. “Even open democracies have imposed restrictive measures to […]
“Those who support silencing “dangerous” opinions coercively have failed to answer the question: Are we really safer when we know less about what motivates our neighbors?” – CEO Jacob Mchangama in Persuasion Access article
Free speech scholars and advocates have written about the general decline in freedom of expression that has occurred over the past two decades. Despite great technological advances that make communicating immensely easier—social media, encrypted communications, and ubiquitous computers and cell phones—many governmental policies and public opinion around the world have soured on the importance of expression. In this recession of free speech, […]
Freedom of expression—including the freedom to mistreat religious artefacts, however crude that may be as a form of protest—is a vital cornerstone of free societies. Below, we are pleased to publish an open letter featuring many prominent signatories denouncing the Danish government’s proposal to criminalize the “improper treatment” of religious objects. By drawing attention to […]
In 2017, then–Danish Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen proclaimed: “I’m proud and happy that we live in a country where we have abolished the blasphemy provision and where you’re allowed to be critical—even in satire and cartoons—of religious symbols.” Last week, however, Rasmussen, who is now the minister of foreign affairs, did an about-face. The Quran […]
In TIME, Jacob Mchangama explains how Denmark and Sweden’s plans to criminalize Quran burnings forebode a future in which democratic states willingly yield their fundamental principles to religious dogmatism. “On the one hand, there are good reasons to be critical of book burnings. It is a poor substitute for reasoned debate and will forever be […]