Is Free Speech Under Threat?

Two leading thinkers present alternative answers to one of the most difficult and divisive questions of our times: Is free speech under threat?

Suzanne Nossel, CEO of PEN America, the leading free expression organization, argues that alongside the necessary and long-overdue elevation of minority voices in recent years, there has also arisen an uncompromising intolerance – most notably on university campuses and online – that wrongly equates a wide range of offensive speech with violence and seeks to shut it down. This has led to an escalating free speech arms race, from which everyone loses.

Charlotte Lydia Riley, historian of empire and editor of The Free Speech Wars, argues that accusations of cancel culture and defenses of free speech are too often disingenuous attempts to fuel a culture war and so inhibit an important realignment in which hateful speech is at last being called out for what it is and the right to free expression is being extended to more people than ever before.

Published in conjunction with Intelligence Squared, the world’s leading curator of debate, this book is part of the THINK AGAIN series: short books that present two expert, contrasting but equally persuasive views in a single volume that can be read from either end.

Charlotte Lydia Riley is a historian of twentieth-century Britain at the University of Southampton, specialising in questions about empire, politics, culture and identity. She is editor of The Free Speech Wars and author of Imperial Island: A History of Empire in Modern Britain. Her writing has appeared in a wide range of publications including the Guardian, New Statesman, Financial Times, Washington Post and History Today. She tweets @lottelydia.
Suzanne Nossel is the CEO of PEN America, the leading human rights and free expression organisation, and is a key voice on free expression issues in the United States and globally. During the Obama administration, Nossel served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Organisations. She has also served as a senior leader in global human rights organizations and as a media executive. She is the author of Dare To Speak: Defending Free Speech For All and has been widely published in outlets including the New York Times, Foreign Affairs, Guardian, Foreign Policy, Wall Street Journal, TIME, Washington Post and more. She is a Member of the Meta Oversight Board which applies human rights principles to shape high impact content moderation decisions on social media.