After tabulating the votes, the winner of my first EXCESSIVELY Prestigious Award for book of the year is @jon_rauch’s Kindly Inquisitors, what I've called the most important on #freespeech of the last 50 years! 1/6 thefire.org/jonathan-rauch…
For the honor, I had @TheFIREorg’s @aaron_reese make this dope gif, explaining Rauch’s Commandments — two core tenets of liberal science! 2/6
With Rauch’s book The Constitution of Knowledge coming out in June, the timing might seem TOO convenient, but I swear on Spider-Man’s aunt May that’s just how the vote worked out! (BTW The Constitution of Knowledge is the most important book of 2021!) 2/6
ZERO TWEET: While you’re here, click the link below to check out my responses to common, bad arguments against #freespeech, or keep reading for the More Than Sufficiently Prestigious book award winners. 0/6
Two books tied for second place, my More Than Sufficiently Prestigious Award. The first is @JoHenrich’s The WEIRDest People in the World, a book so profound it actually made me hate Plato less. 3/6
The other is @mgurri’s The Revolt of the Public, a book that fundamentally changed my analysis of the trends we examined in The Coddling of the American Mind. (BIG thanks to @kmele & @wethefifth for the rec!) 4/6
Congratulations to the winners, & THANK YOU to everyone that voted! Next month I’ll be returning to my cozy, yet merely Prestigious book awards, & in 12 months we’ll see who wins the next EXCESSIVELY Prestigious award! 6/6
BONUS: @jon_rauch discussed his new book with me & @NicoPerrino on @freespeechtalk. Listen to that, or sign up to participate in Rauch’s webinar to FIRE’s Faculty Network (you don’t need to be a member to register!) 7/6
THREAD: My latest Eternally Radical Idea newsletter responded to @DavidColeACLU’s review of my & @RIKKISCHLOTT’s newest book, The Canceling of the American Mind in @nybooks. 1/16
David says Rikki & I claim #CancelCulture was worse than McCarthyism. The closest comparison we make is between Cancel Culture on campus & the 1st & 2nd Red Scare. We found that neither Red Scare threatened profs or students as much as Cancel Culture (check out the post for the numbers) & nothing comes VAGUELY close to it since the law was established between 1957 & 1973. 3/16
THREAD: With FIRE’s expansion to off-campus work, I’ve gotten a lot of questions about #freespeech philosophy. My series with former ACLU President, the great Nadine Strossen answers common arguments against free speech. 1/18
Part 1: Free speech does NOT equal violence. We discuss whether freedom of speech rests on a false notion that words & violence are distinct. SPOILER: It doesn’t!. 2/18
Much virtual ink is spilled over the term “cancel culture.” Conservatives complain about it while perpetuating it, some progressives deny that it exists. @TheFIREorg’s @Komi_Tea & I explain in our recent piece for @thedailybeast. 1/12
Last week, @nytimes published an editorial on America’s “#FreeSpeech problem,” citing a poll that showed that over the past year, 55% of respondents self-censored for fear of retaliation or harsh criticism. 2/12
Former @TheFIREorg intern @emmma_camp’s @nytimes op-ed on self-censorship at @UVA provoked some unhinged reactions, demonstrating the censorial behavior Emma warned of. 3/12
THREAD: Free speech culture didn’t come out of nowhere, it’s been built on the foundation of centuries of conflict, philosophy & law. If you want to brush up on the history, look no further than my #FreeSpeech Culture Study List. 1/18
With a unique & international perspective, @JMchangama’s timely & thorough “Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media” shows how ancient & global the fight for free speech has been. 2/18
The most important book of 2021 IMO was @jon_rauch’s Constitution of Knowledge. Jon covers crises in our knowledge producing fields, higher education & journalism, & reveals the true value of The Enlightenment: the discovery of our profound ignorance. 3/18 amzn.to/2RyyxtS
THREAD: Former @TheFIREorg intern @emmma_camp_ published a terrific essay in @nytimes about the stifling climate on college campuses. As if to prove her point, her piece was met with outrage & denial in a predictable culture war pattern. 1/16
As @JordanmHowell & Sean argue, most of the critiques of the survey data @emmma_camp_ cited are baseless. The detractors misrepresent the cited campus free speech survey’s methodology. 3/16
THREAD: This week I am in @reason Magazine with a feature on ‘The Second Great Age of Political Correctness.’ By the mid-90s “PC” had become a joke, derided across the political spectrum See: the (not good) Jeremy Piven movie PCU. 1/14
Many students stopped calling it “PC,” but the trend it described didn’t disappear, it just went off the public radar in the “ignored years” of campus #freespeech. During that time problems persisted & got worse. 2/14
Stanford’s infamous speech code banning insults & stigmatization was struck down in court in 1995, one of a half dozen losses for speech codes, but they STILL proliferated. By 2009 74% of universities had extremely restrictive speech codes. 3/14