Free speech, once seen as a core ideal of American democracy, has been under fire from all fronts in recent years. On the political right, politicians have taken to weaponizing governmental power to suppress protests and threaten and punish businesses that oppose their favored policies. Meanwhile, activists, students, and academics on the left have developed a reputation for wielding social and cultural power to mete out severe professional and personal repercussions for what they see as unacceptable speech.
These attacks are shrinking the space for robust debate, dialogue, and problem solving, but they also raise legitimate questions about the norms of free speech in the modern era. Meanwhile, the advent of new technologies has also raised thorny questions around the responsibilities of private companies in this area.
Join DFN to explore the role philanthropy and the pro-democracy movement can play in a principled defense of free speech. What are the most serious threats to free expression in America today? How can we support conceptions of free speech that appropriately balance free expression and preventing potential harms from dangerous speech? What parts of classical conceptions of free speech are still critical for our democracy to thrive, and what parts may need to be rethought in our current moment? How can we bring balance and nuance to an issue that is often seen as just one more battleground in a polarized political arena? And what are the risks if we don’t?
Featured Speakers:
Monica Kim, Program Associate, Piper Fund
Summer Lopez, Chief Program Officer - Free Expression, PEN America
Jonathan Rauch, Senior Fellow - Governance Studies, The Brookings Institution and author of The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth
Nabiha Syed, Chief Executive Officer, The Markup