The History Of Free Speech
A free course by The Nomadic Professor
Created in partnership with FIRE
Free Expression Across Time and Technology
Find out what the history of free speech has to say about free speech today with a free course in the subject from FIRE and The Nomadic Professor. If you’re here, FIRE probably needs no introduction: the premier free speech defense organization in the country. FIRE has recently expanded its mission from the college campus to the broader public, with three main areas of focus: litigation, public education, and research. We hope this course will go some way toward the goal of public education about free speech and its role in the structure and development of past and present societies.
Like any good history course, we don’t start with the answer (“free speech is always clear and good”) and then develop a narrative that supports that answer. Instead, we start with much more open-ended questions:
“What is free speech?”
“How did ancient and premodern societies conceive of speech?”
“Is vulgar speech “free speech?”
“What modern developments have impacted free speech in the Western world?”
“How well do free speech values hold up in the internet age?”
“How can speech be violent, if indeed it can be?”
Answering questions like these should give us some perspective on new free speech questions raised by 21st-century technologies. We hope you’ll find that the answers we put forward contain all the rigor, nuance, and possibility you’d expect.
Voltaire
A Story Told in Four Parts
The complete course is hosted by FIRE. The course includes four chronological Units making up a ½ credit history elective:
The Ancient Roots of Free Speech
Including: Socrates, Ashoka, natural law, Demosthenes, Cicero, the Great Persecution, Al-Mansur, Carolingian Renaissance, universities, Magna Carta, heresy, Gutenberg, Petrarch, Luther, Index of Prohibited Books, Synod on the Freedom of Conscience, the Enlightenment, The Mistery of Iniquity, Areopagitica, Levellers, Leviathan, John Locke, English Bill of Rights of 1689
The Enshrining of Free Speech
Including: Voltaire, Encyclopédie, Cato’s Letters, Essay on Freedom of Expression, Freedom of the Press Act, town meetings, Roger Williams, Concession and Agreement, House of Burgesses, Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick, John Peter Zenger, Boston Massacre, “Orations on the Beauties of Liberty,” Boston Tea Party, Common Sense, Virginia Declaration of Rights, Declaration of Independence
Slavery, War, and Free Speech
Including: Articles of Confederation, ratification conventions, U.S. Constitution, Declaration of the Rights of the Man and of the Citizen, The Law of Suspects, Reign of Terror, Alexander Radishchev, “Belisarius Letters,” Sedition Act, Klemens von Metternich, Carlsbad Decrees, Springtime of the Peoples, Press Law of 1881
Nationalism and Free Speech
Including: Freedom’s Journal, Illustrations of Masonry, , American Civil War, Vladimir Lenin, Espionage Act of 1917, Eugene Debs, Abrams v. United States, American Civil Liberties Union, Herndon v. Lowry, glasnost, National Fascist Party, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, gulag, Glavlit, Office of Censorship, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, hate speech, Second Red Scare, Brandenburg v. Ohio, iron curtain, Helsinki Accords, Cultural Revolution, Charter 77, Democracy Wall, Tiananmen Square Massacre
