The health of free speech depends more on a culture of free speech than on laws.
By Jacob Mchangama and Jonathan Rauch.
Is free speech under threat? What do we even mean when we talk about free speech? Jacob Mchangama, a Danish lawyer and human rights advocate, tackles those questions in his new book, Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media. In February, Cato hosted a book forum in which Mchangama explained what he found in the history of this important concept, with commentary from Jonathan Rauch, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and author most recently of The Constitution of Knowledge.
Jacob Mchangama is the Founder and Executive Director of The Future of Free Speech. He is also a research professor at Vanderbilt University and a Senior Fellow at The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE).
Jonathan Rauch is a senior fellow in the Governance Studies program at Brookings Institution and the author of eight books and many articles on public policy, culture, and government.