Episode 41 - Free Speech and Racial Justice: Friends or Foes?
In May 2020, protests erupted all over the U.S. after a video emerged of a white police officer killing a black man named George Floyd. Mill...
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Clear and Present Danger - A history of free speech
Why have kings, emperors, and governments killed and imprisoned people to shut them up? And why have countless people risked death and imprisonment to express their beliefs? Jacob Mchangama...
Episodes
20 of 47 episodes
Special Edition - Suzanne Nossel
In this Special Edition, we will zoom in on current challenges to free speech – specifically in the US. With me to discuss this timely subje...
Special Edition - Daphne Keller & Kate Klonick
"Internet Speech Will Never Go Back to Normal," declared the headline of a recent Atlantic article by law professors Jack Goldsmith and Andr...
Special Edition - Dunja Mijatović
Since the coronavirus became a pandemic, governments around the world have adopted a wide range of measures affecting basic human rights. Th...
Special Edition - Monika Bickert
The coronavirus has disrupted life as we know it. Billions of people across the world are caught in varying degrees of lockdowns with severe...
Episode 40 - The Age of Human Rights: Tragedy and Triumph
In 2014, Saudi Arabian blogger Raif Badawi was sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes for insulting Islam by promoting secular val...
Episode 39 - The Totalitarian Temptation – Part II - Der Untergang
In November 2019 German Chancellor Angela Merkel gave a passionate speech to the German Bundestag. Merkel said " We have freedom of expressi...
Episode 38 - The Totalitarian Temptation – Part I
In George Orwell's 1946 work, "The Prevention of Literature," he wrote: [O]rganised lying … is … integral to totalitarianism, [and] would …...
Episode 37 - Expert opinion: The History of Mass Surveillance, with Andreas Marklund
In 2013 the NSA contractor Edward Snowden sent shockwaves through the American government when he leaked information exposing a number of va...
Episode 36 - Expert opinion: Thomas Healy on how Oliver Wendell Holmes changed the history of free speech in America
On March 4, 1801, Thomas Jefferson, the newly elected president, gave his first inaugural address. Jefferson eloquently dismissed the logic...
Episode 35 - White Man´s Burden: Empire, Liberalism and Censorship
During the mass protests that have rocked Hong Kong since June 2019 pro-democracy protestors have waved Union Jack flags and been singing Go...
Episode 34 – The Age of Reaction: The fall and rise of free speech in 19th century Europe
The 18th century ended with free speech in full retreat. With the French Revolution, the call for "Enlightenment Now!" was no longer seen as...
Special Edition - A conversation with Professor David Kaye, UN Special Rapporteur
In this special edition of Clear And Present Danger we leave the past and jump into the present for a discussion on how international human...
Episode 33 - Counter-Revolution: Dutch Patriots, Tom Paine´s Rights of Man and the campaign against Seditious Writings
Faced with bloody terrorism democratic Europe has often reacted with tough measures. The UK Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act of 201...
Episode 32 - Policing opinion in the French Revolution with Charles Walton
On Aug. 26, 1789, France's National Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen . Article 11 of the Declaration...
Episode 31 - The Old Regime
In Nov. 2018, French President Emanuel Macron declared war on "offensive and hateful content" on the internet. Subsequently, France adopted...
Episode 30 - Northern Lights, The Scandinavian Press Freedom Breakthrough
In the 1760s and 1770s, Sweden and Denmark-Norway shortly became the epicenter of press freedom protections in Enlightenment Europe. In 1766...
Episode 29 - The Philosopher King - Enlightened Despotism, part 2, Prussia
In his famous essay "What is Enlightenment?" the Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant declared: "[E]nlightenment requires nothing but freedom...
Episode 28 - Writing on Human Skin - Enlightened Despotism, part I, Russia
The Enlightenment´s emphasis on science, progress, tolerance and rationality not only attracted philosophers. Even absolute monarchs dreamt...
Episode 27 - How Enlightening
data-contrast="auto">After a brief detour into the present, we return to Ground Zero of the Enlightenment in 18th century Europe, with this...