The History of Free Speech with Jacob Mchangama [S3 Ep.11]

Welcome to another episode of Conversations with Coleman.

My guest today is Jacob Mchangama. Jacob is a lawyer and writer based in Denmark. He's the founder of Justitia, a think tank focused on human rights and freedom of speech. Jacob is also the producer and narrator of the excellent podcast called Clear and Present Danger.

Jacob and I discuss his brilliant new book: Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media. We talk about the Danish cartoon controversy and Charlie Hebdo. We also discuss the so-called "Milton's curse"; which is the habit of hypocritically defending free speech for some, but not for others. I think this point is relevant to some of the bans that we've been seeing on Russian state news.
We talk about the notion of power relations and its relationship to free speech, the relationship between censorship and human nature, the importance of having a culture of free speech in addition to having laws that nominally protect it. We also talk about the origins of what Jacob calls "egalitarian free speech" in ancient Athens, the First Amendment and its evolving interpretation over time, and the alleged exceptions to protected speech such as hate speech or shouting fire in a crowded theatre.

We go on to discuss whether censorship actually works, big tech companies and their role in censoring speech, similarities between the rise of the printing press and the rise of the Internet, cancel culture, the threat to free speech posed by China and the CCP, and much more.

This was one of my favorite conversations that I've had so far this year, and I hope you enjoy it.

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FOLLOW JACOB
Twitter - https://twitter.com/JMchangama
Website - http://jacobmchangama.com/
Justitia - http://justitia-int.org/om-justitia/jacob-mchangama/
Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media - https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/jacob-mchangama/free-speech/9781541620339/
Podcast - https://www.freespeechhistory.com/

Image Credit: Chris Kjobech, photographer. Gelatin silver print. Collection of Oakland Museum of California. The Oakland Tribune Collection. Gift of ANG Newspapers.

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