Chelsea Follett: Joining me today is Sarah McLaughlin, a senior scholar in Global Expression at the foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. She is a regular guest on podcasts, hosts a series on FIRE’s YouTube page highlighting various anti speech incidents across the globe, recently appeared on C Span’s Book Talk, and has been published in the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, MSNBC and more. And she has a new book out from Johns Hopkins University Press entitled Authoritarians in the Academy how the Internationalization of Higher Education and Borderless Censorship Threaten Free Speech, which examines how higher education has entangled institutions with demands of to censor materials and intimidate critics here in the United States and explains how colleges can protect themselves against these threats. Thank you so much for joining me, Sarah, how are you?
Sarah McLaughlin: I am great. Thank you so much for having me. The book came out this week, so it’s been a busy time and I’m really grateful to be here talking about it.
Chelsea Follett: So before we dive into the book and its arguments, let’s zoom out to the big picture. Why does freedom of speech even matter? What does it do for humanity? How is it good for democracy, governance, scientific advancement, progress? What is the point of having this form of freedom?
Sarah McLaughlin: I think there are two main tracks that you can look at it from. One is just what freedom of expression does for societies, what it does for progress. A lot of the most fantastic political and social movements that have helped protect our rights are because people spoke out, spoke their minds, and were able to draw attention to a problem that was taking place. And then scientifically, there’s another question about free speech. And it’s understanding that sometimes we might be wrong about things. And if you don’t have the freedom to question what everyone believes to be true, you’re going to be living in a world with bad science. You’re not going to truly understand the world you live in. And you’re really trapped if you can’t understand the world you’re in as the way it is. And so, I think a lot of us might have thought that the, the Earth was still the center of the universe if we didn’t have free expression. So know there’s a humility to it. And it’s this idea that sometimes human beings are fallible creatures and they’re going to be wrong. And we need to have some space where we can question what everyone says to be true.
Sarah McLaughlin: Because when you don’t have that space, really horrific things can happen. And the other aspect of it is that, I just believe that freedom of Expression is innate to who we are as human beings. And if we don’t have the ability to express ourselves, not only do we feel trapped by that, but we also can’t fully learn who we are. If we can’t engage with the world, and if we’re not allowed to speak, if we’re not allowed to read new things, it really stunts our growth and limits who we are and what we can become. So I think it’s important for society and it’s also just important for the individual because we need free speech to find out really who we are.
Chelsea Follett: But you’ve given some great examples there regarding progress in general, with so many different human rights movements relying on freedom of speech to challenge existing orthodoxies, scientific advancement, you gave the example of heliocentrism, Galileo. Well, what about democracy and governance and policy? Why is it important to be able to freely criticize those in authority or to openly debate contentious, even controversial policy issues?
Sarah McLaughlin: Well, because, people who are in positions of authority are ultimately still just people. And like I said, human beings are fallible. They’re going to get things wrong, and people who are in power are going to get things wrong, and maybe even at a higher rate than people who are not in power. And, the more authority and more power you have, the more you need to be challenged, because, you can have so much of an effect on a mass number of people’s lives because of the choices and decisions you make. So it’s really probably the most important place that, free expression needs to be protected. And I think that’s something that the U.S. its history has understood for the most part, that political speech needs the most protection because we need to be able to have some control and some insight and some participation in democratic process. And if we can’t speak out, you fundamentally don’t have true participation in the world you live in, in your society, whether it’s your state, your city, your country, your zip code. Without being able to express yourself, you really aren’t represented at all.
Chelsea Follett: So, on this theme of politics, my understanding is that FIRE, like Cato actually, is a nonpartisan organization. Can you tell me about that decision to be nonpartisan as opposed to align your organization with a political party?
Sarah McLaughlin: Well, I think it’s really fundamentally the best way to protect freedom of expression. Because when you start picking and choosing who you want to represent, whose rights you want to defend, you’re no longer really defending the principle of freedom of expression, because the principle of free speech is about everyone being able to participate, and use their rights. And when you start saying, these are the groups that we want to defend, these are the groups that we don’t, then suddenly you’re not defending free speech, you’re defending just political views that you agree with. So once you start taking, once you start putting partisanship into it, it’s hard to defend it as a principle anyway. And I also think it just makes you better free speech defenders anyway, because I think it helps you make the case to people when you say, you may not like the viewpoints of this person that we’re defending in X case, but in Y case, we’re helping this person who you do agree with. So you can see how the same principle that defends one person also defends you. And so it’s vitally important that that person has the rights because it’s the same underpinnings to your rights as well.
Chelsea Follett: So from what you’re saying, it sounds like in the course of your career at FIRE, you have seen people being censored for their speech on all sides of politics and the political divide. Could you give some examples that show that this really is a nonpartisan issue and that attacks on freedom of speech can come from the left or the right?
Sarah McLaughlin: Yeah, so absolutely. Years ago, I used to work directly on our campus case team. And there was one day where I had on the same day, a case where I was defending a pro-Israel student group and a Students for Justice in Palestine chapter. And I was arguing to defend both of their rights. And these are groups that would fundamentally disagree with each other. But it’s like this all the time. We have people who want to advocate not just for different political views, but differing religious views, sometimes things that are even relatively apolitical. Actually, an interesting thing is that we find that a lot of cases aren’t necessarily political. They tend to be the ones that get the most attention because that’s what people want to see. But there are a lot of cases where it’s not particularly political. It’s someone perhaps disagreeing with their university administration. But they might not get the same attention. But not everything’s right versus left. There’s a whole wide world of speech cases out there. And a lot of them can’t even necessarily be put onto this easy left or right spectrum. And so I think sometimes Americans have this, who are wary about free speech, sometimes have this idea that it’s like a limited resource, that only some people can have. And if some people have it, that means others don’t. And that’s not really the way it works. And in fact, the more people it’s protected for, the more we can ensure it stays protected for everyone. So that’s something I try to remind people. If you defend one group, you’re actually not hurting your own cause, you’re helping it in the long run.
Chelsea Follett: That makes sense. I definitely agree with you that the left-right conceptualization of politics is an oversimplification in any case. But let’s move on now to your book. So you have worked at FIRE for quite some time and on freedom of speech issues from many different angles. What inspired you to write Authoritarians in the Academy? What gave you the idea for this book?
Sarah McLaughlin: Yeah, so as I mentioned earlier, for the first few years that I was at FIRE, I was working with students and professors because at one point, for most of its history, FIRE only worked on campus free expression cases. We recently expanded. But at that point, we were only doing campus work. And so I was working with students and professors who were dealing with censorship issues, whether it was because of a book they were teaching that their university didn’t like, they posted a tweet that 300 people on Twitter didn’t like or 300,000 people didn’t like. They started a protest, what have you. And so these are very traditional. You could probably guess what a lot of these cases were about. Speech about abortion, guns, race, Israel, the standard starting points of censorship and controversy here. But I was starting to see over time that I was hearing more and more about cases of people who felt like they couldn’t speak freely about foreign authoritarian governments, most often the Chinese government. But there were also problems that were arising from universities’ relationships with the Gulf States and the really unique free speech challenges that are created when you have higher education as a global industry.
Sarah McLaughlin: And I think people understand what happens when an industry is global. I think viewers have probably seen stories about these sometimes outlandish apologies that companies have issued to the Chinese government because they have accidentally said, Tibet or Hong Kong or countries. And so there are these groveling apologies. And so, people can see in those cases what happens when an industry is global. There are pressures on it to abide by foreign government’s preferences. But when higher education is that global industry, there are really unique concerns that we need to worry about. As we were talking about the beginning of this conversation, freedom of expression is very important for the production of knowledge and Truth seeking higher education is the industry that we look to. If higher education is not a place where people can speak openly in every case about foreign authoritarian governments, what does that mean for the state of global discourse research? There are effects on that that we’re feeling now, and we’ll be feeling years in the future, I don’t know how long. But this is a problem for today and it’s also a problem for the future.
Chelsea Follett: And it’s especially sad because one of the benefits that you would hope to get from a globalization of education is this greater exchange of knowledge and ideas from people around the world. The exact opposite of a stifling of speech. But could you tell me a bit about some of the incidents that you witnessed that really inspired you to write this book and tell this story?
Sarah McLaughlin: Yeah, so exactly what you said. We’re hoping to foster a global exchange of ideas. I especially write about the status of international students in the United States who are coming from authoritarian countries, coming to the United States, a country that, for good reason, is proud of its history of free expression, and it’s a place for dissenters of the world to come and be able to breathe freely for the first time. And so what I’ve seen is that dissident students from these countries have come to the United States and have found that the promises of, this free and open space don’t really fully apply to them. So one of the more disturbing examples I’ve seen over the years was in 2022 at George Washington University in D.C. Home of the country, there was a group of students who put up posters by a Chinese Australian artist ahead of the Beijing Winter Olympics. And the posters were meant to criticize human rights abuses in China and perhaps ask whether it was appropriate for the Olympics to be held there. And some students, student groups complained to the university. They said the posters were offensive, hurtful, that they insulted China and that the university needed to act. And to my surprise and the surprise of many, the university did. The president at the time, he said he was personally offended by the posters, that he was going to take them down, that he was going to conduct. Conduct an investigation to find the students who posted them at George Washington University. Yeah. That’s incredible.
Chelsea Follett: That is intense. Can you describe in more detail the content of these posters? Obviously, it was something that had the potential to cause offense, but how graphic were these posters?
Sarah McLaughlin: They were not particularly graphic. The interesting thing is, from a bit of a distance, they were actually sort of designed to look like promotional posters for the games. But when you got closer, you realized that it was kind of faceless, anonymous members of China’s team engaged in surveillance or violence. The implication being that this is what the Chinese government does to minorities in its country. And to be clear, the president of George Washington University, after criticism, relented, and he said, I made a mistake. And that’s a good thing. University leaders need to be able to acknowledge when they’ve made a mistake. But I wrote about it at the time, and I pointed out that if these students had been international students from China, the university would have been using its own staff to unmask critics of the Chinese government who could potentially be from China and put them in really serious legal peril. And that’s exactly what the case was. And I interviewed those students afterwards, and they were, they felt really betrayed by their university, and they felt like the university was picking and choosing who was allowed to have rights and who it would listen to and which students had a voice on campus. For political purposes, they were picking and choosing. And so to me, that was a good example of how bad this can get because it’s not just about, ripping down a poster. I think some people can say, oh, big deal, they tore down a poster. But it’s really a lot more than that. It’s students from a foreign country expecting to be able to come here on a college campus, meant to be one of the freest places in the world, and speak their mind. And not only did that not happen, but they had very good reason to fear that their university would be responsible or a part of them facing legal trouble at home. And as I discuss in the book, this is a really major fear for dissident students here in the United States. If you are a vocal critic of the Chinese government and you’re a Chinese student, there’s a very good chance that at minimum your family will receive visits from Chinese officials and have security or state officials warning them that they’re going to face the consequences for what their kids do here in the US. I’ve spoken to students who have faced exactly that. Some of them have courageously come forward under their real name and said, my father was brought in for questioning because I attended a protest here in the United States. And so that’s a responsibility that universities need to be aware of. They have large numbers of international students coming here who have very specific and unique threats to their free speech. And the universities need to make sure that they are helping protect those students, not playing part in the repression against them.
Chelsea Follett: That is a very chilling story, certainly, that you’ve just told. But let’s try to understand the incentives that are driving this kind of cooperation with censorship as practiced in China and other countries. Why do you think the president of George Washington University initially supported tearing down these posters? What sort of incentive structure caused that to come about?
Sarah McLaughlin: It’s hard to mind read. And in that case, I think it’s just as likely that a university president received reports from students that there was hurtful and offensive speech on campus and that the university was not a welcoming place for them. And the reflex is to ensure that students think that their campus is a diverse place. But again, that’s something that needs to be treated with care. Because actually one of the major themes that I discuss here in the book is that I think there is a trend of students who support foreign governments or authoritarian governments making these kinds of bad faith claims that speech is hurtful, offensive, biased, and that a university needs to act against it to protect these students. And I have examples in the book of students calling for censorship of speakers who are coming to talk about being victims of horrific abuse by the Chinese government and students saying this is hate speech, this is hurtful, the university needs to act because this is disrespectful to a large number of students here. And so that’s part of it. And then just the broader question of universities’ relationships with China, part of it is international students, but another part of it is the funding that universities have been pursuing.
Sarah McLaughlin: And I think universities more and more are seeing themselves as corporations, as businesses, than perhaps as institutions of academic freedom, free expression, dissent. And so when you act more like a business than a values-driven institution, you’re going to make business decisions. It’s just simple math, I think. And so they’re going to seek to protect their relationships. There was a pretty disturbing example from about a decade ago at Harvard Law, where a Chinese scholar who was at the campus at the time, as a visiting scholar, he intended to hold an event about human rights in China. And a vice dean at Harvard Law contacted him and said, I don’t want you to hold this event because it’s going to coincide with a trip that Harvard’s president is making to China to work on the university’s relationships there and meet with Xi Jinping, and it’s going to embarrass us if you’re holding this event while our leader goes to China to try to advance the university’s dealings there. And so I think sometimes you can see very clear business decisions being made, where it’s what’s best for our brand, for our institution. And sometimes commentary and criticisms of the Chinese government is not very good for that aspect of a university.
Chelsea Follett: I’ve seen some data suggesting that students, university students, think of it less of freedom of speech than perhaps in prior generations, or there’s been a decline or erosion in support for freedom of speech, a rise in the view that speech itself can be harmful and certain speakers should not be even allowed to voice their opinion. Do you see the same kind of erosion of a belief in freedom of speech among college administrators, university leadership, or is this at least primarily student driven?
Sarah McLaughlin: So I think there are perhaps different incentives on the side of students versus administrators, but I’d have to check out to see if there’s polling specifically of administrators, that would be interesting to look into. But more broadly, I think we’re just in a really bad time for free expression globally. If you look, not even just at polling, but if you look at legal protections, there is, I think, a mass scale effort around the world to make people less free to remove their ability to speak, especially on the internet. And you can look at what’s happening in the UK right now. And there is a mass internet censorship effort led against harmful speech. And so I think, unfortunately, young people may be drawing the wrong lessons, but the lessons that their governments are giving them that speech is harmful and that there must be some kind of action taken against it. Because, there’s a pretty large scale effort to censor what’s subjectively perceived as harmful speech right now in the world.
Chelsea Follett: So we’ve talked a bit about China, and you probably have other examples related to it as well. But I also wanted to talk about some of the examples with the Gulf States, which you say are also quite dramatic. Can you provide some examples of censorship in academia related to the Gulf States?
Sarah McLaughlin: Yeah, absolutely. So universities have been looking abroad for funding, because, there have been a lot of funding challenges here in the US. And so they’re looking for new sources. And where have they looked? Wealthy nations. And those wealthy nations have most often been Qatar and the UAE. And one of the most large scale forms of influence or forms of expansion that universities have looked into is satellite campuses. And so we’ve had a lot of satellite campuses popping up in Qatar and the UAE from American universities. And that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s good for people to work together across borders to share knowledge. There’s kinds of research and advancement that can be done in different countries that can’t be done just the United States. These things are important. But what’s also important is transparency and honesty about what actually are the legal restrictions on the ground there. And that’s something that’s been entirely lacking. And you can see in some of the issues that have arisen on these satellite campuses, why honesty and transparency matter. One of the more disturbing examples was a few years ago, Northwestern’s Qatar campus, they invited a rock band to an event on campus. And the lead singer of that event is openly gay.
Sarah McLaughlin: And so they soon after cancelled it. And they said that there were security concerns, kind of amorphous security reasons. And they were going to cancel it, but they would instead maybe have it on their home campus in the US. But the Qatar Foundation, which is a state-linked institution, which funds these universities and which is foreign universities partners in Qatar, they came out and they said, that’s not what happened. They said, this event was canceled because it didn’t accord with Qatari laws and social customs. And so that’s the big divide here. Universities are opening these campuses and making very flowery promises about freedom of expression, about what they can provide there. But they’re not really willing to admit, the chasm between their commitments to free expression and local law. And do I think that those institutions are, offering what you might want to call pockets of freedom relative to the rest of the country? Yes. And there is value to that. But you also have to be honest and transparent. There was a similar issue at Georgetown’s campus where there was a panel, a debate about female depictions of God. It went viral on social media.
Sarah McLaughlin: A lot of people were angry. I think there was a hashtag Georgetown insults God. And you’ll be surprised to learn, except for conversation. But Georgetown said, they didn’t have permission and this was a security issue. You probably heard that before. And so at the time, I criticized that of fire and I said, I think there’s some disconnect between what’s happening on your campus, what you promise and Qatar’s blasphemy law, which restricts these kinds of censorship issues. And so Georgetown then admitted, yes, events must be held in accordance with Qatari law. And so that’s the issue here. I think they’re inviting students and scholars from around the world to these campuses promising them a very specific kind of protection and education, but not really acknowledging to them what the limits of local law are. And so I think they need to be honest and transparent about what they can really provide, because it doesn’t do anyone any good. But what it does do is offer, people might want to call whitewashing These countries can point to these, noble institutions that are known for free expression and say, if our country was so illiberal and so censorious, would we really have an American institution opening up here? And so I think, that’s sort of been a PR victory for countries that are able to entice American universities to open there because it’s kind of a data point in their favor. How bad or how oppressive are we really if NYU is going to open up its doors here?
Chelsea Follett: This is fascinating and disturbing. Do we ever see the reverse where an American university will open up a satellite campus in a country with more restrictive speech laws and will try to impose our laws there? Or is this purely a one-way phenomenon?
Sarah McLaughlin: Well, I think there’s probably the argument that what happens in these institutions can in some ways be creating more freedom. A lot of people like to point to American universities in China. Some of them have greater access to libraries and VPN and internet access than other people in China would be able to get. And so there is an argument that there is some kind of gain on the university side, too. But, I think it’s difficult. You can’t exactly make that an easy mathematical equation. How much was gained? How much was lost? But at minimum, I think there needs to be honesty that so far I just have not seen on the part of universities about the mismatch between their values and local laws. And I think there’s a little bit of cowardice there. I think probably a safe rule is if you’re not willing to talk about what legal restrictions are in a country, you probably shouldn’t be opening a campus there.
Chelsea Follett: So your book, it describes both incidents in classrooms where professors are scared to discuss controversial topics, this chilling effect, and boardrooms where administrators are terrified of offending oppressive regimes and many, many examples of student voices being silenced, including international students. Can you give us some more vivid examples of this rise in censorship?
Sarah McLaughlin: Yeah, there have definitely been a lot of concerning issues on campuses. And so at George Washington University, the example I mentioned earlier, one of the student groups advocating for censorship was the Chinese Students and Scholars Association. And these chapters, CSSA chapters, they pop up a lot in these stories. And there’s nothing inherently wrong with a student group forming to advocate around shared interests or values. That’s what most student groups are. But unfortunately, CSSA chapters have advocated for censorship at a number of campuses in ways that I found to be disturbing. So George Washington was one. There’s one at Brandeis University a few years ago where there was going to be a panel about Uyghur rights and about the human rights violations in Xinjiang. And the CSSA chapter lobbied unsuccessfully to get the administration to cancel the event. They said that the university should not allow one-sided events about China that were unfair, that were too critical of the Chinese government. And that effort failed. But the event, which was held during the early pandemic days, was over Zoom. And it was repeatedly interrupted over Zoom. Students played the national anthem of China over speakers.
Sarah McLaughlin: They interrupted the slides. And so there are these efforts to try to limit what other students are allowed to hear. A similar effort was tried at University of Chicago, where Nathan Law, who was an exiled Hong Kong democracy activist, he was invited as part of a speaker series. And students, the CSSA chapter there, also demanded his disinvitation and said that his speech was outside the bounds of the speech protections, very much not so, and that the university was insulting its student community by allowing him to come there and speak. And I think this kind of goes to a broader issue that some of the dissident Chinese students that I’ve spoken to feel that these chapters try to represent themselves as the voice of Chinese students here in the US. And so administrators might feel like they have to respond because these students are representative of a large group of students here. And it’s unfair to these other students who say, wait, they’re not the ones who decide what I’m allowed to say and hear. There was actually even some charges that have come against students because they engaged in violence.
Sarah McLaughlin: This isn’t related to a CSSA chapter, but at Berklee College of Music, there was a student who was posting very simple flyers just demanding human rights in China. And a student was found guilty of stalking, threatening, and harassing her. He was sentenced to nine months in prison because of various things he did, including threatening to chop her hands off if she posted more of these flyers on campus advocating for democracy in China. And so, I think there’s a lot of different threats here that these students have to deal with. There’s, rare but deeply worrying threats of violence. There’s the feeling like maybe you’re being surveilled, you’re being watched, whether in the classroom or on the Internet, and that maybe the decisions you make might harm your family, not just yourself. One of the students at George Washington, who I interviewed, one of the stories that really stuck with me was that he said that his father had been an activist during the Tiananmen protests in 1989, that he’d been a student activist there. And he thinks that his dad would be proud of his son for being an activist here in the U.S., human rights in China. But he didn’t tell his dad. He tried to keep what he does here a secret from him because he doesn’t want to put his dad at legal risk. And I think that’s kind of one of the heartbreaking things about authoritarianism. It’s not just the way it silences people from expressing themselves, but it also puts barriers between people and their families. I mean, how sad is it that a student here can’t be honest with his family about what he believes, even if he thinks they would be encouraged to hear it, just because he wants to protect them.
Chelsea Follett: That is very tragic. And I love how nuanced you are in your examination of this. You show both examples of international student voices being silenced and also, in some cases, those pushing for the censorship are international student groups, right? People can end up on either side of this. I do think there might be some people who would hear your words about international student groups promoting censorship and would say, well, isn’t that a reason why we should restrict international students from U.S. Universities, especially in the current climate, which I don’t think is what you’re saying at all. Can you speak a bit to these immigration issues with regards to universities?
Sarah McLaughlin: Absolutely. Yeah, that’s not at all what I advocate. And what I want is for our campuses to be a place where students can come from abroad and feel that they can finally speak freely. And I think there are a lot of reasons why that might not feel accessible to these students in the U.S. right now. But, the solution to censorship, to these kinds of concerns, is never more censorship. We are never going to create a freer world by trying to restrict freedom even more. Even if people thought that would solve one kind of problem, it just creates new ones. So I think what we were talking about at the beginning of this call, just protecting freedom of expression, not picking and choosing who’s allowed to speak, that’s the way out here. Ensuring that students come here are able to express themselves and have protections either from, in some cases, the government, if they’re facing actual acts of transnational oppression from the Chinese government, or protected from the university administrators themselves or their peers who may wish to silence them. I don’t think we will ever solve a problem of a lack of freedom by creating more lack of freedom. So that’s what I hope. I hope people understand the solution is more protection, more speech, and never more restrictions on it.
Chelsea Follett: Your book also offers some practical advice for those who are in academia and would like to see a return of strong free speech norms. Can you talk about how those in higher education can protect against this rising censorship and authoritarian influence?
Sarah McLaughlin: Yeah, I think there’s a lot of different ways. One on the side of university administrators. One, I think they need to reinvestigate their dealings abroad. And that doesn’t mean that they need to end them, they need to cancel all the partnerships, but it does mean that they need to reconsider the basis on which they started them. Because we’ve had a lot of the universities started this engagement 15, 20 years ago. And the sad truth is, the facts on the ground in China and some of these other countries have significantly worsened in that time period. So the political environment that you opened up a satellite campus in in 2005 might not be the same one as today. So they need to look at that and consider whether the program is still appropriate and whether there are protections on the ground for academics and what those protections are. And I think they also need whistleblower protections because a lot of the academics I spoke to very understandably feel that they do not have protections should they choose to speak out about these issues at their campus and that they could be fired and become unemployed in a field where jobs are scarce and the market is very brutal.
Sarah McLaughlin: So I think there needs to be protections on that side. I think they need to be bringing in faculty members more. Faculty are going to do the best job advocating for the protections needed in these environments. So make faculty more of a part of that process. When it comes to international students, make sure they understand what their rights are. Obviously in the US in the past six months, those rights now seem significantly in flux. So they need to understand what they can do for these students. They also should be making sure students know what resources are available to them if they feel like the Chinese government is knocking at the door, what can the university do? And on students themselves and academics, I think they need to know their rights. They need to learn to advocate for them. And I think there’s especially a role to play for student journalism. Some of the more interesting reporting about these issues on campus come from student journalists because local news is not in the best space right now. But student journalists are still doing a really good job of shining a light on what’s happening at their institutions. So I think we all have a role to play. Alumni should be getting involved, should be pressing their universities to take this issue seriously. And when it comes to legislators, politicians, we need to be encouraging them to pursue speech policies that are actually helpful and useful and are not destructive to either the rights of immigrants or Americans.
Chelsea Follett: Absolutely. And if people are curious how their own university measures up in terms of freedom of expression, I believe that your organization provides some tools to help them do that. Is that correct?
Sarah McLaughlin: Yes, the FIRE has rankings and we also look at universities, individual universities, speech codes, so people can go and get a good sense of how free their campus is and what policies need to be changed. And FIRE’s policy reform team does a fantastic job of working with universities to try to revise these policies at both public and private universities. So if you think your university has a speech code that needs reform, give us a call and we’ll be happy to help.
Chelsea Follett: Thank you so much for highlighting all of these stories. I do think it is very tragic if universities lose their tradition of freedom of speech, because historically they’ve been so important to scientific progress and the advancement of knowledge. And there do seem to definitely be some very troubling trends. Because this is a human progress podcast and we usually try to end on a positive note, are there any trends that you’ve seen that do give you hope for the future of freedom of speech on university campuses?
Sarah McLaughlin: I’m hopeful that, obviously, I think as I made clear, the situation for free expression right now is definitely troubling and disturbing in the United States. I’m hopeful that people will start to see once again why freedom of expression is so important, why it’s so necessary, and that we can take this moment to all agree to fight back for our rights, because the loss of rights for any one person is a loss of rights for all of us. So I really hope that we can see the necessity of speech protections. And something I say in the book is that I think that free campuses are a building block of free societies. So I think if we figure out a way to better defend and protect rights there, we will better defend rights in civil society more broadly. And so if we can start to fix things there, I think we can fix things more broadly too. So that’s as hopeful as I can be.
Chelsea Follett: Thank you so much, Sarah, for speaking with me on that note. I think that’s a good place to end. Check out the book, Authoritarians in the Academy, How the Internationalization of Higher Education and Borderless Censorship Threaten Free Speech. Thank you again.
Sarah McLaughlin: Thank you so much.