I’m delighted to report that Profs. Jacob Mchangama (Vanderbilt) & Jeff Kosseff (Naval Academy, moving this year to Minnesota) will be guest-blogging Monday to Wednesday about their new book, The Future of Free Speech: Reversing the Global Decline of Democracy’s Most Essential Freedom. Here’s the publisher’s summary:
A concise assessment of free speech’s worldwide retreat and a blueprint for safeguarding expression in democratic societies.
The Future of Free Speech faces a hard reality: the freedom to voice one’s thoughts is under threat. Once hailed as a cornerstone of liberal democracies, open expression now encounters rising suspicion and backlash globally. Mchangama and Kosseff offer a broad overview of the forces that have brought us to this pivotal moment.
The authors survey a century when speech rights expanded significantly—through postwar democratic shifts and broad protections like the First Amendment—only to see those rights fray under new political, technological, and cultural pressures. Today, liberal democracies install speech restrictions, authoritarian regimes cloak censorship in democratic rhetoric, and digital platforms command extraordinary influence over global conversation. The book traces the backlash against free expression from multiple directions: governments criminalizing dissent in the name of national security; legislators and activists pressing for tighter bounds on misinformation, hate speech, and harmful content; and AI systems erasing speech at a scale and pace that far surpasses past forms of censorship. Simultaneously, confidence in free speech itself is eroding, even in societies that once championed it.
The Future of Free Speech makes the case for a renewed, worldwide pledge to open dialogue. Mchangama and Kosseff promote nonpartisan, citizen-centered remedies that resist both governmental overreach and private-sector censorship. They present a persuasive argument for how free expression can confront contemporary challenges while preserving its core function in upholding democracy, human rights, and shared understanding.
And the jacket blurbs:
Free speech is facing mounting pressure in today’s world. In their timely and significant The Future of Free Speech, Jacob Mchangama and Jeff Kosseff champion the protection of speech and offer a convincing case for optimism.
―Tyler Cowen, George Mason UniversityA rigorous and inspiring defense of the freedom that safeguards all others. Mchangama and Kosseff powerfully refute alluring but misguided calls for censoring even the most controversial speech, such as disinformation and hate speech. They demonstrate that open debate is essential for protecting human rights and democracy, and resisting authoritarianism.
―Nadine Strossen, Former President, American Civil Liberties UnionIn The Future of Free Speech, Mchangama and Kosseff take readers on a bracing global tour of the free-speech recession, documenting how governments are dusting off old tools to police expression in new ways. Clear, principled, and empirically grounded, this book offers realistic strategies for keeping open societies genuinely open.
―Greg Lukianoff, Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE)A broad-ranging and powerful analysis of the recent wave of speech restrictions all over the world, coupled with thoughtful and promising proposals for the future. Very much worth reading.
―Eugene Volokh, Stanford UniversityThe Future of Free Speech is a brilliant defense of our most essential freedom. Mchangama and Kosseff prove that free expression isn’t a threat to democracy—it is its foundation. A vital roadmap for anyone who recognizes that once we lose the right to speak, we also lose the power to defend every other right.
―Yascha Mounk, Johns Hopkins UniversityOne of the finest books addressing the so-called global free-speech recession by two of the leading analysts and champions of First Amendment values.
―Nick Gillespie, Reason
