Dare to Speak: Defending Free Speech for All
4/5
()
Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this ebook
"A must read."—Margaret Atwood
A vital, necessary playbook for navigating and defending free speech today by the CEO of PEN America, Dare To Speak provides a pathway for promoting free expression while also cultivating a more inclusive public culture.
Online trolls and fascist chat groups. Controversies over campus lectures. Cancel culture versus censorship. The daily hazards and debates surrounding free speech dominate headlines and fuel social media storms. In an era where one tweet can launch—or end—your career, and where free speech is often invoked as a principle but rarely understood, learning to maneuver the fast-changing, treacherous landscape of public discourse has never been more urgent.
In Dare To Speak, Suzanne Nossel, a leading voice in support of free expression, delivers a vital, necessary guide to maintaining democratic debate that is open, free-wheeling but at the same time respectful of the rich diversity of backgrounds and opinions in a changing country. Centered on practical principles, Nossel’s primer equips readers with the tools needed to speak one’s mind in today’s diverse, digitized, and highly-divided society without resorting to curbs on free expression.
At a time when free speech is often pitted against other progressive axioms—namely diversity and equality—Dare To Speak presents a clear-eyed argument that the drive to create a more inclusive society need not, and must not, compromise robust protections for free speech. Nossel provides concrete guidance on how to reconcile these two sets of core values within universities, on social media, and in daily life. She advises readers how to:
- Use language conscientiously without self-censoring ideas;
- Defend the right to express unpopular views;
- And protest without silencing speech.
Nossel warns against the increasingly fashionable embrace of expanded government and corporate controls over speech, warning that such strictures can reinforce the marginalization of lesser-heard voices. She argues that creating an open market of ideas demands aggressive steps to remedy exclusion and ensure equal participation.
Replete with insightful arguments, colorful examples, and salient advice, Dare To Speak brings much-needed clarity and guidance to this pressing—and often misunderstood—debate.
Suzanne Nossel
Suzanne Nossel is the CEO of PEN America, the foremost organization working to protect and advance human rights, free expression and literature. She has also served as the Chief Operating Officer of Human Rights Watch and as Executive Director of Amnesty International USA; and held senior State Department positions in the Clinton and Obama administrations. A graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, Nossel frequently writes op-eds for the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other publications, as well as a regular column for Foreign Policy magazine. She lives in New York City.
Related to Dare to Speak
Related ebooks
The First: How to Think About Hate Speech, Campus Speech, Religious Speech, Fake News, Post-Truth, and Donald Trump Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Speak Freely: Why Universities Must Defend Free Speech Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Case Against the New Censorship: Protecting Free Speech from Big Tech, Progressives, and Universities Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDemocracy and the Problem of Free Speech Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Speech Matters: Getting Free Speech Right Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFaking the News: What Rhetoric Can Teach Us About Donald J. Trump Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Breakdown of Higher Education: How It Happened, the Damage It Does, and What Can Be Done Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Free Speech on Campus Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Debunking a Moral Landscape Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCancel This Book: The Progressive Case Against Cancel Culture Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCancel Culture: The Latest Attack on Free Speech and Due Process Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Free Speech: And Why You Should Give a Damn Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Silencing: How the Left is Killing Free Speech Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The free speech wars: How did we get here and why does it matter? Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHollowed Out: A Warning about America's Next Generation Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Delusion of Disbelief: Why the New Atheism is a Threat to Your Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Them: Why We Hate Each Other--and How to Heal Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Smallest Minority: Independent Thinking in the Age of Mob Politics Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Reclaiming Common Sense: Finding Truth in a Post-Truth World Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Trigger Warning: Is the Fear of Being Offensive Killing Free Speech? Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government Is Smarter, Second Edition Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Vindication of the Rights of Woman Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Talking about Politics: Informal Groups and Social Identity in American Life Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBlur: How to Know What's True in the Age of Information Overload Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Imagine There's No Heaven: How Atheism Helped Create the Modern World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Identity Capitalists: The Powerful Insiders Who Exploit Diversity to Maintain Inequality Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Politics For You
The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Republic by Plato Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Son of Hamas: A Gripping Account of Terror, Betrayal, Political Intrigue, and Unthinkable Choices Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5On Palestine Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Capitalism and Freedom Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Daily Stoic: A Daily Journal On Meditation, Stoicism, Wisdom and Philosophy to Improve Your Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on the U.S.-Israeli War on the Palestinians Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Closing of the American Mind Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fear: Trump in the White House Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 1]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Disloyal: A Memoir: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ever Wonder Why?: and Other Controversial Essays Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Letter to Liberals: Censorship and COVID: An Attack on Science and American Ideals Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for Our Democracy Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Girl with Seven Names: A North Korean Defector’s Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Humanity Archive: Recovering the Soul of Black History from a Whitewashed American Myth Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
Reviews for Dare to Speak
8 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A lot of good stuff about free speech, but a little too mixed up with progressive movement politics for my taste. I’d rather a book about free speech remain above the political fray, or at least be even-handed. Also the book was a little like a handout for a speech, lots of little listicles and summaries.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A solid defense of free speech from a liberal point of view. Nossel is a member of PEN America and served in the Obama administration. She has a long history of representing people around the world whose rights of self-expression have been violated, and brings her experience to bear in the book. I appreciated the organization of the book into short chapters and sections, the extensive endnotes, and the bullet points of takeaways at the conclusion of each chapter.Nossel is a super-clear thinker and writer. If her writing were a running stream, you could count the scales on the fish. I was surprised and pleased to find thorough coverage of the myriad responsibilities that accrue to speakers in our society, including the importance of carefully listening before speaking and how to listen properly, the duty to not only include but to amplify marginalized voices and strategies for doing so. The author also argues that simply saying "more speech" or "counterspeech" is the answer to free speech conflicts is insufficient and goes a long way toward illustrating what speech-counterspeech exchanges might be productive and which are likely to be unproductive. The author includes the history of U. S. jurisprudence around speech, but the parts about the law never become boring or pedantic. A brilliant treatise. I received an advanced readers copy of this book from the publisher and Netgalley and was encouraged to write an honest review.