Built Freedom from Speech.

Transcript context

…The following is a conversation with Greg Lukianoff, free speech advocate, First Amendment attorney, president and CEO of FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. He’s the author of Unleashing Liberty, co-author with Jonathan Haidt of Coddling of the American Mind. Co-author with Rikki Schlott of a new book coming out in October that you should definitely pre-order now called, The Canceling of the American Mind, which is a definitive accounting of the history, present, and future of cancel culture. A term used and overused in public discourse, but rarely studied and understood with the depth and rigor that Greg and Rikki do in this book, and in part in this conversation. Freedom of speech is important, especially on college campuses, the very place that should serve as the battleground of ideas, including weird and controversial ones that should encourage bold risk-taking, not conformity. This is a Lex Fridman Podcast to support it. Please check out our sponsors in the description. Now, dear friends, here’s Greg Lukianoff. Let’s start with a big question. What is cancel culture? Now, you’ve said that you don’t like the term as it’s been quote “dragged through the mud and abused endlessly” by a whole host of controversial figures. Nevertheless, we have the term, what is it? Cancel culture is the uptick of campaigns, especially successful campaigns starting around 2014 to get people fired, expelled, de-platformed, et cetera, for speech that would normally be protected by the First Amendment. I always say would be protected because we’re talking about circumstances in which it isn’t necessarily where the First Amendment applies. What I mean is as an analog to say things you couldn’t lose your job as a public employee for. Also, the climate of fear that’s resulted from that phenomenon, the fact that you can lose your job for having the wrong opinion. It wasn’t subtle that there was an uptick in this, particularly on campus. Around 2014, John Ronson wrote a book called, So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, it came out in 2015 already documenting this phenomena. I wrote a book called Freedom from Speech in 2014. It really was in 2017 when you started seeing this be directed at professors. When it comes to the number of professors that we’ve seen be targeted and lose their jobs, I’ve been doing this for 22 years and I’ve seen nothing like it. There’s so many things I want to ask you here. One, actually just look at the organization of FIRE. Can you explain what the organization is because it’s interconnected to this whole fight and the rise of cancel culture and the fight for freedom of speech since 2014 and before?…

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