The Bodley Head

Is Free Speech Under Threat? - Charlotte Lydia Riley, Suzanne Nossel

One big question. Two great answers. In Is Free Speech Under Threat? two leading thinkers tackle the issue at the very heart of the culture wars. Suzanne Nossel (CEO of PEN America) puts the case that even though there is an important rebalancing of power taking place in society today, rightly giving minority voices the space and prominence they have long been owed, even so the uncompromising intolerance of a left-leaning minority crosses the threshold of an important principle on which free speech relies. In the process, they play into the hands of outright censors, further harming free speech. Charlotte Lydia Riley (editor of THE FREE SPEECH WARS) argues that the right to free speech has always been enjoyed by the powerful and denied to the powerless. Accusations of cancel culture and defences of free speech are attempts to fuel a culture war and so inhibit an important progressive realignment in which the right to say hateful, offensive and harmful things is at last being called out for what it is. The THINK AGAIN series presents short books that address the big, divisive questions of our times in a uniquely constructive way: two expert, contrasting and equally persuasive views in a single volume that can be read from either end. Published in conjunction with Intelligence Squared, the world’s leading curator of debate.

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