Table Of ContentPALGRAVE STUDIES IN CLASSICAL LIBERALISM
SERIES EDITORS: DAVID F. HARDWICK · LESLIE MARSH
International Comparative
Approaches to Free Speech
and Open Inquiry (FSOI)
Edited by
Luke C. Sheahan
Foreword by Greg Lukianoff
Palgrave Studies in Classical Liberalism
Series Editors
David F. Hardwick, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine,
The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada
Leslie Marsh, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine,
The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada
This series offers a forum to writers concerned that the central presuppo-
sitions of the liberal tradition have been severely corroded, neglected, or
misappropriated by overly rationalistic and constructivist approaches.
The hardest-won achievement of the liberal tradition has been the
wrestling of epistemic independence from overwhelming concentrations
of power, monopolies and capricious zealotries. The very precondition of
knowledge is the exploitation of the epistemic virtues accorded by soci-
ety’s situated and distributed manifold of spontaneous orders, the DNA
of the modern civil condition.
With the confluence of interest in situated and distributed liber-
alism emanating from the Scottish tradition, Austrian and behavioral
economics, non-Cartesian philosophy and moral psychology, the editors
are soliciting proposals that speak to this multidisciplinary constituency.
Sole or joint authorship submissions are welcome as are edited collections,
broadly theoretical or topical in nature.
Luke C. Sheahan
Editor
International
Comparative
Approaches to Free
Speech and Open
Inquiry (FSOI)
Foreword by Greg Lukianoff
Editor
Luke C. Sheahan
Political Science
Duquesne University
Pittsburgh, PA, USA
ISSN 2662-6470 ISSN 2662-6489 (electronic)
Palgrave Studies in Classical Liberalism
ISBN 978-3-031-12361-0 ISBN 978-3-031-12362-7 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12362-7
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Foreword: The Free Speech Slow
Motion Train Wreck
Even in 1999, when I interned at the ACLU of Northern California as
a law student, the free speech slow motion train wreck was looming on
the horizon. Freedom of speech had been improving both in terms of
law and culture through the last 50 years of the twentieth century but
seemed to be cresting and heading for a fall. It seemed clear to those of
us paying close attention that there were dark clouds on the horizon, but
it may have been a real surprise to casual onlookers observing the state of
the world at the turn of the millennium; indeed, one could be forgiven
for thinking we were entering a global golden age for freedom of speech.
After all, the 1990s began with the seemingly complete defeat of
communism, the second of the great threats to (“small-L”) liberalism—
the first being fascism. With the end of the Cold War and the fall of
the USSR, there was an explosion of liberal societies and democracies
arising all across the globe. Even China seemed to be inching toward
freedom. In Silicon Valley where I was studying, the scientific innovation
unleashed through what Jonathan Rauch dubbed “liberal science” was
manifest everywhere. Fortunes were being made with what seemed to be
the greatest free speech engine ever devised, the World Wide Web.
But within the ACLU, those of us who did free speech work already
seemed more marginal. The momentum was with other practice areas,
like gay rights or racial justice. Attorneys I worked with were trying to
figure out ways to “balance” freedom of speech against other important
values in a way that surprised me. And on the campuses of elite colleges
v
vi FOREWORD:THEFREESPEECHSLOWMOTIONTRAINWRECK
like Stanford (where I was attending law school), freedom of speech—
a value once held as exciting, transcendent, even romantic—had already
been pushed even further down the list of priorities.
Despite our proximity to UC Berkeley, the fabled “ground zero” for
the free speech movement just three decades prior, the fact that freedom
of speech had lost its sheen on campus was predictable. After all, freedom
of speech is the preferred argument of the underdog, or at least, of opin-
ions that couldn’t hope to muster a majority of votes. Historically, those
in power regard free speech as an inconvenience or a threat. In democra-
cies, the majority has the power, and most college campuses were already
decidedly left-leaning and had been for decades. By the late 1990s, the
majority left-leaning ranks of administrators and faculty were becoming
super majorities as viewpoint diversity and hiring began to plummet
dramatically. A lack of political diversity among faculty and administra-
tors is of great concern because as our epistemic institutions become too
homogenous, tribalism and groupthink become almost inevitable.
Groupthink often precedes disasters like train crashes. A quote astro-
naut Mark Kelly saw on a conference room wall in the wake of NASA’s
2003 Columbia disaster sums up the risk succinctly: “None of us is as
dumb as all of us.” A diversity of viewpoints is a cushion against human
error, and on campus, the myriad offices devoted to protecting diversity
have not yet developed an interest in that critical variety.
It is also absolutely true that both freedom of speech and the First
Amendment protect bigoted and sexist speech just as much as they
protected (and continue to protect) the speech rights of the gay rights,
women’s rights, and civil rights movements. And yet, in the 1980s,
people who wanted to restrain free expression on campus justified speech
codes by arguing they were necessary to protect the rights of women
and minorities as if none of these civil rights movements had flour-
ished precisely because of the speech environment these codes sought to
prohibit. While campus speech codes lost in both the court of law and
the court of public opinion by the early 1990s, they set the groundwork
for greater skepticism of free speech in the very place that is most reliant
on an open marketplace of ideas: higher education.
The 9/11 attacks took place just as I was starting my position as legal
director of The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (now, the
Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression) (FIRE), a free speech
organization. Interestingly, the attacks seemed to serve as a reminder—
on and off campus—of the importance of free speech. Whenever people
FOREWORD:THEFREESPEECHSLOWMOTIONTRAINWRECK vii
realize that their own speech can get them in trouble, there is a natural
tendency for them to suddenly rediscover the value of freedom of speech.
Thankfully, there were also still many liberals on campus who subscribed
to the older school of thought that freedom of speech is a transcendent
value of critical importance to higher education.
Unfortunately, the old school would soon retire, die off, or eventu-
ally change their minds in the face of pressure from a new cohort of
professors, students, and administrators who took for granted that free
speech was part of the problem, not the solution. But the free speech
train hadn’t come off the rails yet. For my first dozen years working at
FIRE, the students remained the best constituency for freedom of speech,
defending everything from edgy comedy to vulgar or violent hip-hop
lyrics, and recognizing the important role played by free speech in the
movements for justice. But that changed abruptly around 2014 when a
more free speech-skeptical generation hit the campus, a phenomenon Jon
Haidt and I examined in our book, The Coddling of the American Mind:
How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Set Up a Generation for Failure.
Another predictable change that had already happened on campus was
that some on the right would come to see themselves as defenders of
freedom of speech. And at least when it comes to the more libertarian
threads of the right, that was true and largely remains true. Unfortunately,
over the last decade, a more nationalistic brand of conservatism arose
which sees free speech as only useful in some instances. As I write this,
Republican-led statehouses across the country are passing bills that limit
clearly established free speech rights in education.
To an extent, the current climate conforms to the historical norm
of freedom of speech being a cause for oddballs, outcasts, and weirdos,
rather than being precisely situated in any one place on the political spec-
trum. One would think that the crackdown in Hong Kong or the war
in Ukraine—and Putin’s brutal, sometimes murderous consolidation of
power in Russia—would remind all Americans, particularly journalists and
students, that free speech is still a transcendent value. Few things have
been more disheartening than watching the weak reaction among young
Americans to people in Hong Kong standing up for their freedom of
speech, their press freedom, and the values of liberalism while, in the
United States, agitation for freedom from speech, both on campus and
off, continues unabated.
I call freedom of speech the “Eternally Radical Idea,” not because
it’s championed in every generation—I’m not even sure that it is—but
viii FOREWORD:THEFREESPEECHSLOWMOTIONTRAINWRECK
because it’s opposed in every generation. There is no guarantee it will
continue to survive and thrive. That requires vast numbers of individuals
making the decision to get up every morning and fight for it.
This extraordinary book stands alone among anthologies I have read
on freedom of speech as unusually clear, principled, thoughtful, and
topical. Other free speech anthologies I have read feature the same old
critiques of freedom of speech that they were making in the 1980s (or
even, like Herbert Marcuse, in the mid-1960s) as if they are new, radical
ideas, rather than the higher education dogmas that were once defeated
in the court of public opinion and continue to be defeated in the court
of law.
It is an extraordinary volume, in no small part, because of the impres-
sive catalog of authors my old FIRE colleague Luke Sheahan assembled.
Many of these authors, including Frank Furedi, Alice Dreger, and Tim
Shiell likewise saw the “free speech train wreck” coming, and we did all
we could to stop it. Only time will show if our efforts made a differ-
ence, but while I remain worried about the short-term health of global
free speech, I am more optimistic about the future of freedom of speech.
Why? Because societies that venerate freedom of speech gain huge advan-
tages over those that quash it: from releasing the collective genius of
your people, to providing an alternative to violence in encouraging social
change, to simply allowing those in power to know what the sentiment
of their country truly is. I hope I am correct, but to paraphrase Learned
Hand’s 1944 speech on the Spirit of Liberty, I am not too sure that I am
right.
I believe anyone who cares about freedom of speech will be impressed
and moved by this extraordinary book. It is filled with wisdom, insight,
and arguments from some of the best thinkers on freedom of speech alive
today. It is not just worth reading, it is worth rereading again and again.
Philadelphia, USA Greg Lukianoff
Acknowledgements
This volume is dedicated to David F. Hardwick who passed away as this
volume came together for all he has done for the Palgrave Studies in
Classical Liberalism series. Thanks to Leslie Marsh whose brainchild this
volume was, to the Institute for Humane Studies and the John Templeton
Foundation for financial support, and to IHS staff who provided helpful
support and insight throughout the process. Many of these chapters
benefited from an author workshop held on May 17, 2021.
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