So to Speak: The Free Speech Podcast

FIRE
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Feb 9, 2017 • 59min

Ep. 22 Flemming Rose, Editor of ‘the Muhammad Cartoons’

Flemming Rose didn’t set out to put himself at the center of one of the biggest free speech controversies in recent memory, but 12 years ago he found himself in just that position. In 2005, Rose commissioned and published what are now widely known as “the Muhammad cartoons.” Protests against the cartoons resulted in an estimated 200 reported deaths; there were attacks on the offices of Rose’s employer, the Danish newspaper ‘Jyllands-Posten’; and Rose was placed on Al-Qaeda’s hit list. To this day, he must be accompanied by a security detail when he appears in public. Flemming Rose is our guest on today’s episode of “So to Speak.” During the show, we discuss the cartoon controversy and how his thoughts on free speech are informed by his background as a western journalist in the Soviet Union. www.sotospeakpodcast.com Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/freespeechtalk Like us on Facebook: facebook.com/sotospeakpodcast Email us: sotospeak@thefire.org Call in a question: 215-315-0100
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Jan 27, 2017 • 35min

Ep. 21 The ‘Turkey Purge’ w/ Prof. Beth Baron

We continue our conversation about the Turkish government’s crackdown on civil society with Middle East Studies Association (MESA) President and City University of New York Professor Beth Baron. MESA has sounded the alarm bells about the threat to academic freedom posed by the Turkish government. In August 2016, they sent a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry regarding persecutions and prosecutions of scholars and academics within Turkey. www.sotospeakpodcast.com Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/freespeechtalk Like us on Facebook: facebook.com/sotospeakpodcast Email us: sotospeak@thefire.org Call in a question: 215-315-0100
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Jan 26, 2017 • 58min

Ep. 20 The ‘Turkey Purge’ w/ Mahir Zeynalov

If you care about free expression, you should care about what’s happening in Turkey. Since a failed July 15, 2016 coup attempt against Turkey President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the Turkish government has intensified the use of emergency decrees and laws against terrorist propaganda and insulting the president to purge perceived dissenters within civil society. On today’s episode, we are joined by journalist Mahir Zeynalov. Mahir writes for “The Huffington Post” and “Al Arabiya,” and was deported from Turkey in 2014 for criticism of the government. He faces arrest if he ever returns. During the show, we speak with Zeynalov about the mind-boggling number of journalists, academics, and civil servants purged from Turkish civil society, what the international community can do to help, and the confusing populist support that Erdogan has within Turkey. www.sotospeakpodcast.com Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/freespeechtalk Like us on Facebook: facebook.com/sotospeakpodcast Email us: sotospeak@thefire.org Call in a question: 215-315-0100
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Jan 12, 2017 • 50min

Ep. 19 Ken White of ‘Popehat’ Talks Nat Hentoff, Worst Censors of 2016

Ken White has made a name for himself in First Amendment circles for his particularly astute and often comical commentary on free speech issues for the popular “law, liberty, and leisure” blog ‘Popehat.’ An attorney by day, Ken likes to use his considerable legal chops—he’s a 1994 graduate of Harvard Law School—to take a rhetorical axe to what he sees as facile arguments in favor of censorship. Ken is our guest on today’s episode of “So to Speak.” We talk with him about his list of the worst censors of 2016 and spend some time remembering the life of a giant in the free speech world, Nat Hentoff, who passed away this past weekend. Ken also explains how he successfully uses the “Popehat Signal” to rally attorneys to provide pro bono assistance to people wrapped up in free speech legal battles. www.sotospeakpodcast.com Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/freespeechtalk Like us on Facebook: facebook.com/sotospeakpodcast Email us: sotospeak@thefire.org Call in a question: 215-315-0100
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Dec 29, 2016 • 58min

Ep. 18 Campus Free Speech Round Table: Fall 2016 Semester in Review

A precipitous decline in the percentage of schools maintaining severely restrictive speech codes. A proliferation of bias response teams. “Security fee” or “speech tax?” Donald Trump. Milo Yiannopoulos. Penis drawings. These topics and more are covered in our recap of the fall 2016 semester, featuring Foundation for Individual Rights in Education vice presidents Samantha Harris and Will Creeley. Also, we take a listener question. www.sotospeakpodcast.com Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/freespeechtalk Like us on Facebook: facebook.com/sotospeakpodcast Email us: sotospeak@thefire.org Call in a question: 215-315-0100
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Dec 15, 2016 • 1h 12min

Ep. 17 ACLU National Legal Director David Cole

In July, the ACLU tapped Georgetown University Law Center Professor David Cole to be its new national legal director. In that role, Cole will oversee nearly 300 lawyers and a docket of about 1,400 state and federal lawsuits. On today’s episode of “So to Speak,” Wall Street Journal Supreme Court Correspondent Jess Bravin interviews Cole about his new job and explores some of the hottest topics in the First Amendment world: flag burning, campaign finance reform, what can legally be done about rising concerns over “fake news,” and more. Cole also speculates on what the future may hold for the ACLU and the First Amendment after President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration. This is the first podcast in our exclusive partnership with the First Amendment Salon. www.sotospeakpodcast.com Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/freespeechtalk Like us on Facebook: facebook.com/sotospeakpodcast Email us: sotospeak@thefire.org Call in a question: 215-315-0100
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Dec 1, 2016 • 49min

Ep. 16 Free Speech Profiles: Attorney Martin Garbus

Attorney Martin Garbus’ client list is a who’s who of the world’s foremost artists, politicians, corporations, scientists, and political dissidents. In a career spanning a half century, he’s represented actors Sean Connery and Al Pacino, authors Tom Brokaw and Nancy Reagan, and even Nobel Prize winners Vaclav Havel and Andrei Sakharov. Although Garbus holds a diverse practice, he is perhaps most famous—and in some circles, infamous—for his work in First Amendment law. In today’s episode of “So to Speak,” we dive deep into some of Martin Garbus’ most interesting—and sometimes scary—career moments. His smuggling a list of political prisoners out of the Soviet Union, his involvement with Daniel Ellsberg in releasing the Pentagon Papers, and his defense of the mercurial comedian Lenny Bruce are just some of the stories we will touch upon. This is the inaugural episode in a series that will profile the careers of some of the world’s most prominent free speech advocates. www.sotospeakpodcast.com Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/freespeechtalk Like us on Facebook: facebook.com/sotospeakpodcast  Email us: sotospeak@thefire.org Call in a question: 215-315-0100
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Nov 17, 2016 • 39min

Ep. 15 Denying the Holocaust

In 1996, Emory University Professor Deborah Lipstadt found herself in a peculiar situation: she and a team of lawyers would have to defend the truth about the Holocaust against British historian and famed Holocaust denier David Irving. It was a quirk of the English legal system that allowed the battle to play out in court. In England, the burden of proof in libel cases rests on the defendant, not the plaintiff. So, when David Irving filed a libel lawsuit against Professor Lipstadt and her British publisher for critical statements Professor Lipstadt wrote about him in her 1993 book “Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory,” it was up to Professor Lipstadt to justify her criticism. Sixteen years after Professor Lipstadt won her legal battle, the story of her encounter with Irving is now the subject of the recently released movie “Denial.” Deborah Lipstadt is our guest on today’s episode of “So to Speak.” During our conversation, Professor Lipstadt revisits the Irving trial, explains its implications for free speech and academic freedom, and elaborates on the unique phenomenon of seeing one’s life acted out on the big screen. www.sotospeakpodcast.com Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/freespeechtalk Like us on Facebook: facebook.com/sotospeakpodcast Email us: sotospeak@thefire.org Call in a question: 215-315-0100
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Nov 3, 2016 • 44min

Ep. 14 NYU Professor Stephen Solomon’s ‘Revolutionary Dissent’

The time of America’s founding was full of raucous debate and widespread dissent. Americans built effigies, wrote pamphlets, sang songs, and gathered at liberty trees to protest British rule. But while citizens of the 13 colonies, and later America, might have acted like they had a right to express themselves in the myriad ways that they did, the spectre of seditious libel—illegal statements criticizing the government—often hung over their heads. In “Revolutionary Dissent: How the Founding Generation Created the Freedom of Speech,” New York University journalism professor Stephen D. Solomon chronicles how early Americans such as Paul Revere, James Madison, Alexander McDougall, and others fought seditious libel laws and developed their understanding of the right to freedom of speech along the way. We sit down with Professor Solomon in today’s episode of “So to Speak” to discuss his new book. We also learn why anyone who cared about free expression at the time of America’s founding associated it with the number 45. www.sotospeakpodcast.com Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/freespeechtalk Like us on Facebook: facebook.com/sotospeakpodcast Email us: sotospeak@thefire.org Call in a question: 215-315-0100
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Oct 20, 2016 • 45min

Ep. 13 spiked’s Brendan O’Neill on the Fight for Free Speech Overseas

“How do you make the case for freedom of speech these days?,” asks Brendan O’Neill in the latest episode of “So to Speak.” The question is a serious one for O’Neill. As the editor of the online British current-affairs magazine “spiked,” he is on the front lines every day fighting to preserve free speech and a free press in a legal environment that doesn’t have a First Amendment. In a part of the world that just last year imprisoned a man for four months for singing a controversial song before a soccer match, O’Neill says that there are many laws that can land people in hot water for speaking their minds in the United Kingdom. For example, he says that England has among the worst libel laws in Europe. In England, unlike the United States, the libel laws are greatly weighted in favor of the person who sues, says O’Neill, who notes that about 80 percent of libel actions go in favor of the person suing. As a result, he regularly considers the libel laws when editing content for “spiked.” “It’s a rich man’s law, which is used to silence criticism, and political views, and difficult, awkward views that people don’t like,” he says. “spiked” counts as part of its mission the defense of “freedom of speech with no ifs and buts” because, as O’Neill says, “as soon as you give an inch on freedom of speech, they will take a mile.” But, despite the United Kingdom’s countervailing laws, O’Neill says that the argument in favor of freedom of speech “still has real purchase and real power.” And until those censorship laws are struck down and threats to free speech are extinguished, O’Neill says “spiked” will keep making those arguments. www.sotospeakpodcast.com Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/freespeechtalk Like us on Facebook: facebook.com/sotospeakpodcast Email us: sotospeak@thefire.org Call in a question: 215-315-0100

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