Op-eds etc.
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 Natalie Alkiviadou On 8 July 2026, the European Parliament adopted a Resolution on the Impact of the 1974 Turkish Invasion on Cypriot Women and Girls and the Crimes Committed by Turkish Forces and Consequences on Gender Equality. The Resolution acknowledges that Cypriot women’s experiences of violence during 1974 are “often being excluded from official historical, […]
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 Jacob Mchangama Irakli Miladze, a food courier in Tbilisi, spent long shifts dodging not only the weather, but also fines for using bus lanes. They were the same bus lanes that government officials sped down in their fancy vehicles with impunity. In late 2022, Miladze did what citizens in a modern democracy are supposed […]
By Dr. Natalie Alkiviadou and Katia Pau Recent controversies in Bangkok, Cyprus, and the United Kingdom demonstrate that disputes surrounding artistic expression remain deeply embedded in contemporary political, religious, and social life. In Bangkok, criticism and public backlash emerged following the display of artworks considered offensive to religious and cultural sensibilities, triggering debates about the limits of artistic freedom […]
By Jacob Mchangama and Jeff Kosseff On March 4, 2022, two days after the European Union banned the Russian state media outlets Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik, Russia blocked access to Western media such as the BBC, Deutsche Welle, and Voice of America. The Russian government declared this was “only the beginning of retaliatory measures in an […]
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 Jacob Mchangama Three days after securing a landslide victory in Hungary’s parliamentary election, incoming prime minister Peter Magyar appeared on the country’s state broadcaster for the first time in 18 months and labeled it a “factory of lies” peddling “propaganda” worthy of North Korea and Goebbels. Magyar’s hostility reflects the well-documented media capture that […]
Germany built aggressive systems to combat hate speech, but the line between defending democracy and undermining it may be beginning to blur. Excerpted from The Future of Free Speech: Reversing the Global Decline of Democracy’s Most Essential Freedom by Jacob Mchangama and Jeff Kosseff. Copyright 2026. Published with permission of Johns Hopkins University Press. By Jacob […]