The Free Speech Recession and How to Reverse It: Five Lessons from History featuring Professor Jacob Mchangama

Join us on October 7, 2024 for the 39th annual Silha Lecture as Professor Jacob Mchangama explores the ongoing decline in free speech and offers five key historical lessons to address this pressing issue. How have elite fears, from the printing press to Generative AI, shaped our current landscape? Can decentralization and a robust culture of free speech turn the tide? These lessons underscore the importance of learning from the past to safeguard free speech today and in the future. Discover how history can guide us in preserving this fundamental right in the 21st century. The 2024 Silha Lecture will take place at Cowles Auditorium on the West Bank of the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities campus.

Professor Mchangama is CEO of Justitia, Denmark’s first judicial think tank, and directs Justitia´s Future of Free Speech Project. He is also a research professor at Vanderbilt University and a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE).

Professor Mchangama has written and commented extensively on free speech and human rights in international media outlets including the Economist, L.A. Times, Washington Post, BBC, CBS News, NPR, CNN, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The Wall Street Journal, Politico as well as top-tier academic and peer-reviewed journals.

Professor Mchangama is the producer and narrator of the podcast “Clear and Present Danger: A history of Free Speech” and author of the critically-acclaimed book Free Speech: A History From Socrates to Social Media published by Basic Books in 2022. His book will be available for sale at the Lecture, and a book signing will follow. To learn more about Professor Mchangama’s book, click here.

The lecture is free and open to the public; no registration is required. The event will also be available livestream as a Zoom webinar. Register for the webinar.