So to Speak: The Free Speech Podcast

From Buckley v. Valeo (1976) to Citizens United v. FEC (2010), legal disputes over the constitutionality of campaign finance laws have captured the general public's attention for decades. At the heart of the debate is a question of whether money donated to political candidates or spent influencing elections is speech protected by the First Amendment. And, if it is, are there countervailing interests outweighing those core First Amendment interests? Even within the free speech community, the debate can be contentious. But for our guest on today's episode of So to Speak, the issue is straightforward: money spent in support of a political message is speech. Sam Gedge is an attorney with the Institute for Justice, a national public-interest law firm that puts its money where its mouth is, regularly challenging campaign finance restrictions in court. In this podcast, Gedge presents the basics of campaign finance regulation and makes his case for why money spent on politics deserves full First Amendment protection. www.sotospeakpodcast.com Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/freespeechtalk Like us on Facebook: facebook.com/sotospeakpodcast Email us: [email protected] Call in a question: 215-315-0100

New technologies and the censorship instinct seem to go hand-in-hand. From the first days of the printing press, to the rise of radio and the telephone, to the advent of the internet, innovations in mass communication are often followed by a fear of what will happen if these novelties are left unrestricted — or uncensored. On today's episode of So to Speak, we speak with former Federal Communications Commission chief counsel and current Davis Wright Tremaine partner Bob Corn-Revere about what it means for censorship to be the "bastard child of technology." www.sotospeakpodcast.com Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/freespeechtalk Like us on Facebook: facebook.com/sotospeakpodcast Email us: [email protected] Call in a question: 215-315-0100

Daryl Davis, a 58-year-old black man, has a question: "How can you hate me if you don't even know me?" For nearly three decades, Davis has been interviewing members of the Ku Klux Klan to find an answer to that question. However, in the course of his research, he found something he didn't expect to find: friendship. You see, while Davis was actively learning about the Klan members, they were passively learning about him, seeing that their prejudices were unfounded and becoming his friend. Today, Davis has dozens of Klan robes at his home that were given to him by former Klan members who shed their racist beliefs after meeting him. On today's episode of "So To Speak," we travel to Maryland to meet Davis and explore how open dialogue and debate have shown him a path toward a tolerant, multicultural future. www.sotospeakpodcast.com Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/freespeechtalk Like us on Facebook: facebook.com/sotospeakpodcast Email us: [email protected] Call in a question: 215-315-0100

In 1994, law student Rob Corry joined with eight other students to file a legal challenge to a Stanford University speech code. It was the first-ever lawsuit filed under California's recently-enacted "Leonard Law," which applies First Amendment protections to private, non-sectarian colleges in the state of California (like Stanford), and which the students argued made Stanford's restrictions on free speech unlawful. Winning wasn't going to be easy: Corry would be representing himself and his co-plaintiffs against one of America's richest and most powerful research universities. On Feb. 27, 1995—22 years ago this month—a California state court judge sided with Corry and struck down Stanford's speech code as an impermissible content-based restriction on expression. The victory earned Corry the title of "speech code slayer" in a campus newspaper. Today, on "So to Speak," we talk with Corry of Corry v. Stanford about the seminal lawsuit, how he overcame the challenges of representing himself in court, and why other students should feel emboldened by his victory to challenge their colleges' speech codes. www.sotospeakpodcast.com Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/freespeechtalk Like us on Facebook: facebook.com/sotospeakpodcast Email us: [email protected] Call in a question: 215-315-0100

Flemming Rose didn't set out to put himself at the center of one of the biggest free speech controversies in recent memory, but 12 years ago he found himself in just that position. In 2005, Rose commissioned and published what are now widely known as "the Muhammad cartoons." Protests against the cartoons resulted in an estimated 200 reported deaths; there were attacks on the offices of Rose's employer, the Danish newspaper 'Jyllands-Posten'; and Rose was placed on Al-Qaeda's hit list. To this day, he must be accompanied by a security detail when he appears in public. Flemming Rose is our guest on today's episode of "So to Speak." During the show, we discuss the cartoon controversy and how his thoughts on free speech are informed by his background as a western journalist in the Soviet Union. www.sotospeakpodcast.com Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/freespeechtalk Like us on Facebook: facebook.com/sotospeakpodcast Email us: [email protected] Call in a question: 215-315-0100

We continue our conversation about the Turkish government's crackdown on civil society with Middle East Studies Association (MESA) President and City University of New York Professor Beth Baron. MESA has sounded the alarm bells about the threat to academic freedom posed by the Turkish government. In August 2016, they sent a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry regarding persecutions and prosecutions of scholars and academics within Turkey. www.sotospeakpodcast.com Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/freespeechtalk Like us on Facebook: facebook.com/sotospeakpodcast Email us: [email protected] Call in a question: 215-315-0100

If you care about free expression, you should care about what's happening in Turkey. Since a failed July 15, 2016 coup attempt against Turkey President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the Turkish government has intensified the use of emergency decrees and laws against terrorist propaganda and insulting the president to purge perceived dissenters within civil society. On today's episode, we are joined by journalist Mahir Zeynalov. Mahir writes for "The Huffington Post" and "Al Arabiya," and was deported from Turkey in 2014 for criticism of the government. He faces arrest if he ever returns. During the show, we speak with Zeynalov about the mind-boggling number of journalists, academics, and civil servants purged from Turkish civil society, what the international community can do to help, and the confusing populist support that Erdogan has within Turkey. www.sotospeakpodcast.com Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/freespeechtalk Like us on Facebook: facebook.com/sotospeakpodcast Email us: [email protected] Call in a question: 215-315-0100

Ken White has made a name for himself in First Amendment circles for his particularly astute and often comical commentary on free speech issues for the popular "law, liberty, and leisure" blog 'Popehat.' An attorney by day, Ken likes to use his considerable legal chops—he's a 1994 graduate of Harvard Law School—to take a rhetorical axe to what he sees as facile arguments in favor of censorship. Ken is our guest on today's episode of "So to Speak." We talk with him about his list of the worst censors of 2016 and spend some time remembering the life of a giant in the free speech world, Nat Hentoff, who passed away this past weekend. Ken also explains how he successfully uses the "Popehat Signal" to rally attorneys to provide pro bono assistance to people wrapped up in free speech legal battles. www.sotospeakpodcast.com Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/freespeechtalk Like us on Facebook: facebook.com/sotospeakpodcast Email us: [email protected] Call in a question: 215-315-0100

A precipitous decline in the percentage of schools maintaining severely restrictive speech codes. A proliferation of bias response teams. "Security fee" or "speech tax?" Donald Trump. Milo Yiannopoulos. Penis drawings. These topics and more are covered in our recap of the fall 2016 semester, featuring Foundation for Individual Rights in Education vice presidents Samantha Harris and Will Creeley. Also, we take a listener question. www.sotospeakpodcast.com Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/freespeechtalk Like us on Facebook: facebook.com/sotospeakpodcast Email us: [email protected] Call in a question: 215-315-0100

In July, the ACLU tapped Georgetown University Law Center Professor David Cole to be its new national legal director. In that role, Cole will oversee nearly 300 lawyers and a docket of about 1,400 state and federal lawsuits. On today's episode of "So to Speak," Wall Street Journal Supreme Court Correspondent Jess Bravin interviews Cole about his new job and explores some of the hottest topics in the First Amendment world: flag burning, campaign finance reform, what can legally be done about rising concerns over "fake news," and more. Cole also speculates on what the future may hold for the ACLU and the First Amendment after President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration. This is the first podcast in our exclusive partnership with the First Amendment Salon. www.sotospeakpodcast.com Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/freespeechtalk Like us on Facebook: facebook.com/sotospeakpodcast Email us: [email protected] Call in a question: 215-315-0100

Attorney Martin Garbus' client list is a who's who of the world's foremost artists, politicians, corporations, scientists, and political dissidents. In a career spanning a half century, he's represented actors Sean Connery and Al Pacino, authors Tom Brokaw and Nancy Reagan, and even Nobel Prize winners Vaclav Havel and Andrei Sakharov. Although Garbus holds a diverse practice, he is perhaps most famous—and in some circles, infamous—for his work in First Amendment law. In today's episode of "So to Speak," we dive deep into some of Martin Garbus' most interesting—and sometimes scary—career moments. His smuggling a list of political prisoners out of the Soviet Union, his involvement with Daniel Ellsberg in releasing the Pentagon Papers, and his defense of the mercurial comedian Lenny Bruce are just some of the stories we will touch upon. This is the inaugural episode in a series that will profile the careers of some of the world's most prominent free speech advocates. www.sotospeakpodcast.com Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/freespeechtalk Like us on Facebook: facebook.com/sotospeakpodcast Email us: [email protected] Call in a question: 215-315-0100

In 1996, Emory University Professor Deborah Lipstadt found herself in a peculiar situation: she and a team of lawyers would have to defend the truth about the Holocaust against British historian and famed Holocaust denier David Irving. It was a quirk of the English legal system that allowed the battle to play out in court. In England, the burden of proof in libel cases rests on the defendant, not the plaintiff. So, when David Irving filed a libel lawsuit against Professor Lipstadt and her British publisher for critical statements Professor Lipstadt wrote about him in her 1993 book "Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory," it was up to Professor Lipstadt to justify her criticism. Sixteen years after Professor Lipstadt won her legal battle, the story of her encounter with Irving is now the subject of the recently released movie "Denial." Deborah Lipstadt is our guest on today's episode of "So to Speak." During our conversation, Professor Lipstadt revisits the Irving trial, explains its implications for free speech and academic freedom, and elaborates on the unique phenomenon of seeing one's life acted out on the big screen. www.sotospeakpodcast.com Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/freespeechtalk Like us on Facebook: facebook.com/sotospeakpodcast Email us: [email protected] Call in a question: 215-315-0100

The time of America's founding was full of raucous debate and widespread dissent. Americans built effigies, wrote pamphlets, sang songs, and gathered at liberty trees to protest British rule. But while citizens of the 13 colonies, and later America, might have acted like they had a right to express themselves in the myriad ways that they did, the spectre of seditious libel—illegal statements criticizing the government—often hung over their heads. In "Revolutionary Dissent: How the Founding Generation Created the Freedom of Speech," New York University journalism professor Stephen D. Solomon chronicles how early Americans such as Paul Revere, James Madison, Alexander McDougall, and others fought seditious libel laws and developed their understanding of the right to freedom of speech along the way. We sit down with Professor Solomon in today's episode of "So to Speak" to discuss his new book. We also learn why anyone who cared about free expression at the time of America's founding associated it with the number 45. www.sotospeakpodcast.com Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/freespeechtalk Like us on Facebook: facebook.com/sotospeakpodcast Email us: [email protected] Call in a question: 215-315-0100

"How do you make the case for freedom of speech these days?," asks Brendan O'Neill in the latest episode of "So to Speak." The question is a serious one for O'Neill. As the editor of the online British current-affairs magazine "spiked," he is on the front lines every day fighting to preserve free speech and a free press in a legal environment that doesn't have a First Amendment. In a part of the world that just last year imprisoned a man for four months for singing a controversial song before a soccer match, O'Neill says that there are many laws that can land people in hot water for speaking their minds in the United Kingdom. For example, he says that England has among the worst libel laws in Europe. In England, unlike the United States, the libel laws are greatly weighted in favor of the person who sues, says O'Neill, who notes that about 80 percent of libel actions go in favor of the person suing. As a result, he regularly considers the libel laws when editing content for "spiked." "It's a rich man's law, which is used to silence criticism, and political views, and difficult, awkward views that people don't like," he says. "spiked" counts as part of its mission the defense of "freedom of speech with no ifs and buts" because, as O'Neill says, "as soon as you give an inch on freedom of speech, they will take a mile." But, despite the United Kingdom's countervailing laws, O'Neill says that the argument in favor of freedom of speech "still has real purchase and real power." And until those censorship laws are struck down and threats to free speech are extinguished, O'Neill says "spiked" will keep making those arguments. www.sotospeakpodcast.com Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/freespeechtalk Like us on Facebook: facebook.com/sotospeakpodcast Email us: [email protected] Call in a question: 215-315-0100

"Two inflammatory words … one wild drink. Nectar imprisoned in a bottle. Let it out. It is cruel to keep a wild animal locked up." When artist and illustrator Ralph Steadman wrote those words for the label of Flying Dog Brewery's "Raging Bitch" Belgian-style IPA, he had no idea that cruel imprisonment would be precisely their fate. In 2009, the Michigan Liquor Control Commission banned the sale of "Raging Bitch" from store shelves in the state because the commission claimed the beer's name and its label, designed by Steadman, were "detrimental to the health, safety, and welfare of the general public." Any other company might have accepted the commission's justification for censorship. But Flying Dog Brewery isn't a company to just roll over. Flying Dog was founded in 1990 by George Stranahan, a close friend of journalist Hunter S. Thompson, who pioneered a style of journalism known as "Gonzo": first-person, satirical critiques on society and culture. The brewery has always maintained the critical, anti-authoritarian message embodied by Gonzo journalism. So, when Michigan banned the sale of "Raging Bitch," Flying Dog didn't back down. That's not its Gonzo style. Instead, it took the brew ha-ha to court and fought back with a First Amendment lawsuit. We wanted to learn more about Flying Dog's dog fight in defense of its art. Its lawsuit culminated earlier this year in a resounding legal victory, and the brewery created a First Amendment Society using damages awarded from the lawsuit, thus proving that every dog has its day. So, we headed down to Frederick, Md., where the brewery is located. What's the story? Nobody had bothered to say. So we would have to drum it up on our own. Free enterprise. The American dream. Horatio Alger gone mad on beer in Frederick. Do it now: pure Gonzo. www.sotospeakpodcast.com Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/freespeechtalk Like us on Facebook: facebook.com/sotospeakpodcast Email us: [email protected] Call in a question: 215-315-0100

"Unfortunately, Title IX has really become unmoored from its original intention," says Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) Executive Director Robert Shibley. Title IX is the 1972 law that prohibits sex discrimination in federally funded educational programs. The active part of the law is less than 40 words long. But in a forthcoming book entitled "Twisting Title IX," Shibley argues that these words have been "twisted" by an activist Department of Education to violate the free speech and due process rights of students and faculty members on college campuses. In this episode of "So to Speak," we talk with Shibley about his new book, and investigate how a short law passed without much fanfare in 1972 only recently ballooned into one of today's main threats to individual rights on campus. We also learn about those on campus who are fighting back. Plus, we take a listener question about anonymous speech. "Twisting Title IX" will be released on Tuesday, September 27 and is available today for pre-order through Amazon.com. www.sotospeakpodcast.com Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/freespeechtalk Like us on Facebook: facebook.com/sotospeakpodcast Email us: [email protected] Call in a question: 215-315-0100

Earlier this year, Jason Riley was "disinvited" from speaking at Virginia Tech due to concerns that his writings on race would spark campus protests. The Wall Street Journal columnist, Fox News commentator, and Manhattan Institute senior fellow wasn't alone in seeing an invitation to speak on campus be revoked due to concerns that his appearance might prove controversial. He was in distinguished company. Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, columnist George Will, International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde, and hip hop artist Common were all similarly disinvited from speaking on a college campus in recent years. These disinvitations are part of a troubling trend whereby individuals and groups seek to prevent controversial speakers from appearing on campus. According to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education's disinvitation database, since 2000 there have been 312 disinvitation attempts on campus. 128 of them have come since 2012. Our guest on today's show had a rare disinvitation experience. Jason Riley happened to be reinvited after he blew the whistle on his disinvitation in a column for The Wall Street Journal. The series of events that followed Riley's disinvitation is a case study not only in the power of mass media to expose risk-averse decision-making that stifles free expression on campus—but also in demonstrating the outsized influence just a few outspoken alumni can have in reversing those decisions. www.sotospeakpodcast.com Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/freespeechtalk Like us on Facebook: facebook.com/sotospeakpodcast Email us: [email protected] Call in a question: 215-315-0100

Every year, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education puts out a list of the 10 worst colleges for free speech. And this year, surprisingly, half of the schools on the list earned their spot because they threatened faculty's right to speak out in some way. One institution on that list was Northwestern University. Last year, Northwestern made headlines for its extraordinary attacks on academic freedom on two separate occasions. Once for its 72-day Title IX investigation into Professor Laura Kipnis' public writings and comments about sexual politics on campus. And on another occasion, for its censorship of a faculty-produced bioethics journal that it feared would damage its medical school's "brand." This episode of "So to Speak" is about academic freedom, and our guest is Alice Dreger. Dreger is an historian of medicine and science, a sex researcher, a mainstream writer, and what she calls "an (im)patient advocate." She also formerly held the position of full professor in Medical Humanities and Bioethics at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine, and she was a guest editor for the bioethics journal that Northwestern sought to censor. In this episode, we speak with Dreger about the importance of academic freedom at Northwestern and beyond, why the corporatization of the modern university threatens free speech on campus, and why we must use the word "formerly" when describing her tenure at Northwestern. www.sotospeakpodcast.com Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/freespeechtalk Like us on Facebook: facebook.com/sotospeakpodcast Email us: [email protected] Call in a question: 215-315-0100

His trials began with a police bust at the Jazz Workshop in San Francisco in October 1961, and ended with an obscenity conviction in New York in November 1964. Stand-up comedy legend Lenny Bruce underwent 35 months—1,062 days—of nonstop persecution and prosecution for the content of his act. It was 50 years ago this month that an autopsy would report that Bruce died of an overdose of morphine on August 3, 1966. But anyone who knows his story knows it was more complicated than that. Billboard's Phil Spector wrote in the magazine's obituary for Bruce that "America's foremost, and certainly most truthful, philosopher died from an overdose of police." This episode of "So to Speak: The Free Speech Podcast" commemorates the 50th anniversary of Bruce's death. We are joined by Ron Collins, a scholar at the University of Washington School of Law who co-authored with David Skover "The Trials of Lenny Bruce: The Fall and Rise of an American Icon," which carefully documents Bruce's career and free speech struggles. This episode explores the life, trials, and legacy of a man whom George Carlin said "opened the doors for all the guys like me," and in so doing, became a martyr for free speech in comedy and art. www.sotospeakpodcast.com Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/freespeechtalk Like us on Facebook: facebook.com/sotospeakpodcast Email us: [email protected] Call in a question: 215-315-0100

Kelly Carlin, Rain Pryor, and Kitty Bruce are the daughters of the godfathers of comedy. Their fathers, George Carlin, Richard Pryor, and Lenny Bruce, shaped the stand-up comedy you hear today. If you listen to any of their routines and none of them surprise you, it's because they influenced every comedian who came later. In this exclusive interview, the daughters speak out for the first time together about their fathers and the censorship fights that all three comedy legends combatted in their quests to stay true to their art. Transcript: https://www.thefire.org/the-daughters-of-comedy-carlin-pryor-bruce/ www.sotospeakpodcast.com Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/freespeechtalk Like us on Facebook: facebook.com/sotospeakpodcast Email us: [email protected] Call in a question: 215-315-0100

Nationwide polls on support for free speech are full of contradictions. Research conducted by Gallup, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and the Newseum Institute earlier this year found widespread support from college students for free speech in the abstract. However, the same poll also found tepid support when students were asked about specifics. According to the poll, a majority of respondents believed colleges should be able to restrict intentionally offensive speech and costumes that stereotype minorities. Another, more recent poll of the general population by the Newseum Institute and USA Today found a similar result. These studies, and others like them, have often confounded those of us in the free speech advocacy business. So, for this week's show, we decided to send the inimitable Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) summer interns to Independence Mall—adjacent to FIRE's Philadelphia headquarters—to conduct an unscientific survey of tourists' attitudes toward free speech and other First Amendment freedoms. Are the polls right? Do Americans generally support free speech ideals, and does that support fall off when, for example, it comes to college campuses and flag burning? If so, why? The results might surprise you. www.Sotospeakpodcast.com Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/freespeechtalk Like us on Facebook: facebook.com/sotospeakpodcast Email us: [email protected] Call in a question: 215-315-0100

He has a glittering civil liberties résumé: co-founder of Human Rights Watch, president of the Open Society Foundations for nearly 20 years, professor of civil rights law. But before all of that, Aryeh Neier was the executive director of the ACLU during one of its most turbulent moments: when it came to the defense of neo-Nazis trying to exercise their right to free speech and assembly in Skokie, Illinois in 1977. In this week's episode, we speak with Neier about that time and about his seminal 1979 book, 'Defending My Enemy: American Nazis, the Skokie Case, and the Risks of Freedom.' In addition to Skokie, the conversation touches on why the defense of civil liberties shouldn't be placed on the political spectrum, Neier's formative years fighting speaker bans on college campuses, and why free speech can't be blamed for the violence in Weimar Germany, Rwanda, and Bosnia in the 20th century. The conversation also veers toward what Neier sees as one of the greatest threats to free speech today: political correctness. This episode caps off our series on the topic of "defending my enemy," which explores why people who vehemently oppose certain ideas nonetheless staunchly defend the right of others to express them. The series was inspired by Neier's book. www.sotospeakpodcast.com Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/freespeechtalk Like us on Facebook: facebook.com/sotospeakpodcast Email us: [email protected] Call in a question: 215-315-0100

The 2015–16 school year was a headline-grabbing year for free speech on campus. Even President Barack Obama felt compelled to weigh in on the conversation. Multiple times. In this episode of So to Speak: The Free Speech Podcast, we chat with FIRE President and CEO Greg Lukianoff and FIRE Director of Policy Research Samantha Harris—two of FIRE's longest-serving employees—about what made this past year so unique. What were the biggest campus free speech stories? What did we see coming? What took us by surprise? And what do we anticipate for next school year? We tackle these questions and more in this week's show. www.sotospeakpodcast.com Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/freespeechtalk Like us on Facebook: facebook.com/sotospeakpodcast Email us: [email protected] Call in a question: 215-315-0100

Why did a black defense attorney, who fought against segregation in high school and battled racism in the courtroom, volunteer to defend the First Amendment rights of an Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan? David Baugh is a Richmond, Virginia-based attorney, who, while serving on the Board of Directors of the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia, volunteered to defend the Klansman Barry Elton Black's right to burn a cross at a Klan rally. The case would eventually make its way up to the Supreme Court of the United States and set important First Amendment precedent. Baugh believed Black's ideas were repugnant. But he also believed strongly in the First Amendment and that the freedoms enshrined in that amendment needed to be protected. "As I was growing up, my mother taught me that a principle or a moral isn't really yours until it's tested," he told us. This is the second episode in our two-part series on the topic of "defending my enemy," which explores why people who vehemently oppose certain ideas nonetheless staunchly defend the right of others to express them. sotospeakpodcast.com Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/freespeechtalk Like us on Facebook: facebook.com/sotospeakpodcast Email us: [email protected] Call in a question: 215-315-0100

In discussions about free speech issues, you'll often hear people say something to the effect of, "I disapprove of what you say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it." The quote is typically misattributed to the French Enlightenment thinker Voltaire. But proper crediting aside, the sentiment it expresses accurately reflects how many free speech advocates go about their work—including Glenn Greenwald. Greenwald is best known as one of the journalists who coordinated the 2013 National Security Agency revelations from whistleblower Edward Snowden. But before he became an award-winning journalist, he was a lawyer. And not just any lawyer: a First Amendment lawyer who, as a gay man of Jewish descent, defended the First Amendment rights of Neo-Nazis and white supremacists. This episode kicks off a two-part series on the topic of "defending my enemy" that will explore why people who vehemently oppose certain ideas nonetheless staunchly defend the right of others to express them. Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/freespeechtalk Like us on Facebook: facebook.com/sotospeakpodcast Email us: [email protected]

In 1993, a young Jonathan Rauch published "Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought." It was his response to what he saw as the West's lackluster and apologetic defense of the novelist Salman Rushdie's free speech rights. Since its publication, "Kindly Inquisitors" has never gone out of print and has been described by Foundation for Individual Rights in Education President & CEO Greg Lukianoff as the best modern defense of free speech and by "The Washington Post" columnist George Will as "slender and sharp as a stiletto." In this episode, Nico Perrino sits down with Jonathan, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, to talk about his book and its impassioned moral (not legal!) defense of liberal inquiry and criticism. They also discuss the role that free speech played in the gay rights movement, the life story of Frank Kameny, the state of free expression at Jonathan's alma mater (Yale University), and the heroism of Danish newspaperman Flemming Rose. Nico also chats with Greg about FIRE's recent work at Williams College and what happened during Greg's first meeting with Jonathan (hint: it involved comic book superheros). Don't forget to subscribe and rate this podcast! Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/freespeechtalk Like us on Facebook: facebook.com/sotospeakpodcast Email us: [email protected]

"So to Speak: The Free Speech Podcast" takes an uncensored look at the world of free expression through personal stories and candid conversations. Tune in on May 5 for the first episode of "So to Speak," featuring Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Jonathan Rauch and Foundation for Individual Rights in Education President & CEO Greg Lukianoff.