By Joel J. Miller
In America today, you can say almost anything—until you do. From college campuses to social media feeds, company Slack channels to city council meetings, the tensions over free speech have scarcely seemed higher, at least in recent decades.
But amid the noise, how many of us actually understand the long arc of free expression: where it began, what sustains it, and why it might slip away?
Last month, I had the pleasure of interviewing one of the nation’s premier free speech experts, Jacob Mchangama, at Landmark Booksellers in historic Franklin, Tennessee. The occasion? Celebrating the paperback release of his extraordinary book, Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media. Basic Books published the hardcover in 2022.
Jacob, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), is the founder and executive director of The Future of Free Speech, a research center at Vanderbilt University, where he also serves as a professor.
Comprehensive and engaging, intellectually rigorous yet accessible, Free Speech invites us to see free expression as a rare and hard-won achievement in human history.
The Landmark event drew a lively and thoughtful crowd. A few of you wonderful readers were able to attend, which was fantastic; it was great connecting beyond the comments!
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).