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Fara Dabhoiwala, joined in conversation by Jane Manners, presents his new book, "What is Free Speech? The History of a Dangerous Idea." Registration requested, but not required.
About the book (from the publisher):
Every premodern society, from Sumeria to China to seventeenth–century Europe, knew that bad words could destroy lives, undermine social order, and create political unrest. Given the obvious dangers of outspokenness, regulating speech and print was universally accepted as a necessary and proper activity of government. Only in the early 1700s did this old way begin to break down. In a brief span of time, the freedom to use words as one pleased was reimagined as an ideal to be held and defended in common.
Fara Dabhoiwala explores the surprising paths free speech has taken across the globe since its invention three hundred years ago. Though free speech has become a central democratic principle, its origins and evolution have less to do with the high-minded pursuit of liberty and truth than with the self-interest of the wealthy, the greedy, and the powerful. Free speech, as we know it, is a product of the pursuit of profit, of technological disruption, of racial and imperial hypocrisy, and of the contradictions involved in maintaining openness while suppressing falsehood. For centuries, its shape has everywhere been influenced by international, not just national, events; nowhere has it ever been equally available to women, the colonized, or those stigmatized as racially inferior.
Rejecting platitudes about the First Amendment and its international equivalents, and leaving no ideological position undisturbed, "What Is Free Speech?" is the unsettling history of an ideal as cherished as it is misunderstood.
In Conversation:
Fara Dabhoiwala is Senior Research Scholar at Princeton University and author of "The Origins of Sex: A History of the First Sexual Revolution." Formerly on faculty at the University of Oxford, he is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, All Souls College, and Exeter College.
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Jane Manners is an associate professor at Fordham Law and a legal historian who teaches Torts, Legislation and Regulation, and American Legal History. Her scholarship centers on 19th Century constitutional history, specifically focusing on congressional and presidential powers. She has written on the development of congressional petitioning, early American understandings of the president’s war powers, and the evolution of laws governing officer removal. Her scholarship has appeared in both the Fordham Law Review and the Columbia Law Review, among other publications. Prior to joining Fordham Law, she was an assistant professor at Temple University and served as a fellow at New York University School of Law, Columbia Law School, and The New York Historical. Manners earned her J.D. and B.A. from Harvard University, and she holds a Ph.D. in American history from Princeton University. She clerked for Chief Judge Mark L. Wolf of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. In 2023-24 she was a visiting research scholar and UCHV Fellow in Law, Ethics, and Public Policy at Princeton University's University Center for Human Values.
Presented with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this programming do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
AGE GROUP: | Adults |
EVENT TYPE: | Humanities | Civic Life | Author Talks | *Registration Requested |
