FREEDOM OF SPEECH: Suzanne Nossel

in order to facilitate a meaningful public conversation. And yet, at the same time, many people in our society have the feeling, the intuition, the view that free speech may have gone a little bit too far, that speech can sometimes be abused and used as a forum or mechanism for suppressing people, subordinating them, and expressing views that have real world bad effects on the equality of other human beings, whether because of their race, their sex, their sexual orientation,

their gender orientation, or a host of other potentially vulnerable characteristics. How should we think about the difficult questions that arise at the intersection of speech, liberty and equality of all people. This is one of the most profound questions of our time, or of any time. And here on Deep Background, we're going to be thinking seriously about this question over the

course of the summer. Kicking off our series of conversations about freedom of speech, today, I'm joined by Susanne Knossel. Susanne is the CEO of pen America, the organization devoted to protecting the free expression of writers in the United States and around the world. Before joining pan America, Susanne

was COO of Human Rights Watch. She was executive director of Amnesty International USA, and she worked in both the Obama and administrations as a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Organizations and as Deputy to the US Ambassador for United Nations Management and Reform at the United States Mission to the United Nations. She's the author of a brand new book, Dare to Speak, Defending Free Speech for All, in which she explores the full panoply of free expression

issues that exist today. Suzanne, thank you for joining me. Let's start with why you decided to write a book about free speech. You're the CEO of pan America, so you have free speeches one of the aspects of your day job. But you know this is a topic that enormous amounts have been written about, and lots of people have thought about and you know, there are reams and reams of legal materials on it and arguments, and you know, every philosopher from Milton to mill has weighed in on

the topic. Why did we need a new book and why did you want to write one? Well, it really grew out of a couple of different experiences I had had. The first was when I was at the State Department and I was working on representing the United States at the UN's Human Rights Council in Geneva and the UN

General Assembly in New York. And one of the contentious issues there wasn't debate over the so called defamation of religion, and it was a concept that Islamic delegations from around the world had brought forward in the wake of if you remember the Danish cartoon controversy, where there had been these images of the Muslim prophet Muhammad that had been published in a Danish newspaper, and in the wake of that, there was a very harsh reaction and there were protests

outside of Danish diplomatic installations around the world, and people lost their lives, and there was a sense that Mohammad's reputation had been sullied, and it was an insult to Muslims everywhere, and so Islamic countries kind came forward in the wake of that and wanted to get a UN resolution, and ultimately they sought a binding treaty that would have banned the defamation of religion. When I arrived at the State Department during the first term of the Obama administration,

I sort of got read into this issue. And you know what struck me was that these Islamic delegations were really concerned about religious intolerance and hostility toward Muslims that was running pretty rampant in the years after nine to eleven, and that that was a legitimate concern on the part of the United States and our European allies and countries like Canada and Australia. There was a grave concern that banning or punishing the defamation of religion would be an

infringement on freedom of speech. And so twice a year, once into New York, once in Geneva, we would go to battle over this resolution and be marshaling votes and getting our embassies and capitals to go in and beg countries to vote with us. And it struck me as

just a very pointless exercise. It seemed to me that at the heart of it, we're legitimate concerns on both sides, that we were against religious intolerance as well, and I wasn't so sure the Islamic countries weren't entirely indifferent to free speech concerns that are embedded in international law, and so what we decided to do was kind of take a different tack, and we approached the organization of the Islamic Conference at the time and asked whether they would

consider an approach to tackling the issue of religious intolerance through means other than restrictions on speech, and we proposed things like dialogue between experts, taking prosecutors from the Justice Department who knew how to go after hate crimes and bringing them to seminars with international counterparts where they could share best practices and educate one another and really look into what works in practice in terms of eradicating hostility

on the basis of religion. And look, it didn't happen overnight, but gradually we brought them around, the Islamic delegation around to the idea that this would be a more constructive approach, and ultimately we came to a consensus resolution that replaced this kind of notorious resolution on the defamation of religion.

And you know, for me, what that underscored was the idea that in debates over free speech, there can be a propensity for the two sides to talk past one another and for considerations of how to create a more just, equal and inclusive society to be pitted against robust protections for free speech. And years later at Pan America, a similar phenomenon in certain respects reared its head around the

controversies on college campuses over free speech. And you know what occurred to me in the context of those controversies and many that would follow, is that it really hinged pretty centrally on questions of race and inclusion and equality and the unfinished business on these campuses of making them into places that were truly hospitable to people from all backgrounds, and that was sometimes manifesting as calls to suppress or punish speech, but that you know, at the heart of

it was really a drive for greater equality, and that push was necessary and essential and could be accomplished without compromising robust protections for free speech and academic freedom. But Susan, can I push back there? I mean, because now you're getting to what, to me at least is the heart of the matter for some of these debates, and that is the situation where there is a real tension and maybe even a conflict between ideas about equality and ideas

about free expression. And in the abstract, most people in a liberal democracy like the United States are committed to equality, and most people are committed to the idea of free speech. But then when they directly come into conflict, we often

have pretty different intuitions. And so when there's speech that some people perceive as impinging on their equality, and the speaker says, well, I didn't mean to impinge on your equality, and then the listener says, well you did, then we often get one of the versions of controversy that you're describing, where one side says, listen, free speech is about words. It doesn't reduce your equality to hear an opinion you fundamentally disagree with. We're for free speech. And then the

other side says, no, you got it wrong. You know that speech does impinge on my equality, and that ought to trump your ability to speak. Not that we're saying you ought to be arrested, but we think that you within the context of this institution, let's say it's a private university, ought not to have said that, Or if you're in a position of responsibility or importance where you are in charge of me in some way, I don't want you to say these kinds of things, and I

really think you shouldn't. How can it be to say that those are like resolvable within some creative alternative framework.

Those seemed like genuine conflicts to me between liberty and equality. Yeah, I think there are some instances where you have a fundamental clash, but that a lot of the time what manifests says that is actually something different, and that, for example, if the speech is looked at in context and if people understand what the intent is, that they recognize that it's not necessarily racist or sexist, and that, you know,

censoring it or punishing it isn't the only answer. So I think a certain number of the cases that can be resolved that way. There are other instances where someone says something that comes off to others as let's say, racist or sexist, and you know they didn't mean it that way, but you know the interpretation of others is quite legitimate. You know, it reflects changing morais, or you know, a term that used to be considered acceptable but now isn't.

I might I use the example in the Book of My Mother and the term Oriental to refer to Asian Americans, you know, which for many years was commonly used, and then at a certain point it really fell into disfavor and it carried certain connotations, and not everybody cottoned onto that.

At the same moment, you know, where something like that happens, I think we need to have some room for apology at a you an apology and willingness to hear out why something you've said your whole life that never seemed objectionable you know now maybe objectionable, and you've got to listen to the other person and understand why that's the case.

You know. On the flip side, forgiveness, you know, if this is a person who genuinely didn't know, you wouldn't have necessarily expected would know, given their own background of the malia that they operate in, have some space and some willingness to consider whether forgiveness is appropriate. So I don't argue that there is no clash. I just argue that we can manage these clashes much more constructively. Let me ask you, Suzanne, about a chapter in your book.

It's chapter twelve, which has a fascinating and perhaps provocative title. The title is don't Equate Speech with Violence? And in the chapter you start by quoting a Northwestern University psychologist, Lisa Feldmanbarratt nor relation to me, who's argue that biological stress induced by menacing speech renders that speech literally a form of violence, and then go on to disagree with this argument pretty vociferously. So why do you find this

argument unconvincing? You know, I have another chapter in the book that is about the harms of speech, and that argument is that we have to acknowledge and come to grips with those harms. We can't fall back on the idea that sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me. We know that's not true, and that there especially as research on certain kinds of speech that genuinely can cause psychological damage, can undercut people's

opportunity for a equal education, can constitute harassment. So the harms are real. But I do think it is a mistake to equate speech with violence. I think the call to equate speech and violence really comes from is born of a sense that those harms are underacknowledge and that the right answer is to fully recognize the harms that certain kinds of speech can cause, but reject this equation with physical violence. And you know that's for a couple

of reasons. I mean, one, if if my speech is the equivalent of physical violence, how are you not then justified and responding by punching me in the nose? If I've committed an act of violence, your violence and response is justifiable, And that's an invitation to violence and to escalation. I think that's dangerous. You know. Another reason is that you know, in most societies, the state, of course has

a monopoly on the use of force. And so if you underwrite and accept this argument that speech can be a form of violence, that protesting in the streets peacefully can itself be a form of violence because of the words use, the chance that are said, the posters that are displayed, then you're justifying the state clamping down on that speech through violence, through harsh policing, arrests, tear gas, and worse. And so I think it's just a dangerous

false equivalency to draw. That doesn't mean even necessarily that there aren't categories of speech that cause harm that you know, in some jurisdictions are less protected than they are here in the United States. I think that's a discussion you can have, you know, should we be more restrictive in certain times of certain kinds of hateful speech? You know, I tend to think not, and that the downsides outweigh the plus sides. But I think that's a discussion you

can have. But I don't think it's helpful in any instance to draw this equivalency between pure speech and physical violence. I have many, many things to say and response to this line of argument, but let me just say one narrow one here. It's not the case in the law that it's always justified for me to respond to your violence with violence. Sometimes it is, but sometimes it just isn't. So I don't think that could be the argument against it.

And you know, there are circumstances when I think we would all acknowledge that words can be much more harmful than physical violence. So two kids are playing in the playground and one pushes the other. That's physical violence, and the adult wants to step in and say you shouldn't do that, and maybe some punishment or time out is appropriate.

Now the same two kids are playing, and instead of one pushing the other, one bullies the other with some verbal epithet that we think is terribly offensive, a racial

slur or a slur associated with sexual orientation. There, I think we have the intuition, at least I have the intuition that the amount of adult intervention and punishment is appropriately greater than in the case of a mild push, And that to me is because of the moral wrongfulness of the statement, but also because of the damage that it's capable of doing through bullying to the child who's being bullied, which seems to me potentially much greater than

being pushed again, depending on how hard the push was. So doesn't that suggest that there are circumstances where admittedly a word is not the literal same thing as a push, but it could be much worse than the push under

some circumstances. I don't disagree with that. I just think they're categorically distinct, and that it's important to hold that distinction because I hear the equation of words and violence used pretty loosely, that expressions or comments that really fall far short of a slur that may be inadvertent that may reflect a reasonable difference of opinion on an issue that should be a legitimate subject of debate, sometimes labeled

as violence, and it's a real conversation ender. You know, if something you said is labeled as violent, how do you come back against that? It sort of shuts down the potential for discourse. So I agree with you. I think there are instances where a slur or an expression of bigotry can be far more damaging than violence, but that we're better off just recognizing that their distinct categories and each needs to be dealt with in its own way, and that I don't find it helpful to equate them.

We'll be right back. Let me ask you about the free speech adjacent let's say, controversy that's been going on publicly in recent weeks and months surrounding a public letter by a group of public intellectuals in Harper's I believe you did not sign that letter, correct, No, I did not tell me what your thoughts are about the letter and the public response and their reaction to it. Yeah, Look, I think there are a number of things going on

at once. We're in this moment of reckoning on systemic racism. And police brutality, and what it's going to take for us to push forward to the next level of inclusivity, equality and justice in this society. And I think that's very important, and many people are rightly focused in a deep and searching way on what needs to be done

to dismantle barriers to eradicate racism, you know. And I think this impulse to drive forward a more equal society is a very positive one, but that we need to be vigilant that it not cross over into sensoriousness or an overreaction to the expression of views and free speech.

And so I think that's what the writers of the Harper's letter we're trying to say, and it triggered an outsized reaction, kind of an inferno on Twitter, with people suggesting that this was the outcry of people who are privileged objecting to sort of the undercutting of their platforms, that this is a distraction from this seminal moment of racial transformation, and so, you know, it sort of reflects, I think this problem in our discourse, that we have

a propensity to talk past one another, and that you know, at times the drive toward racial and gender based equality can be kind of pitted against the robust protection of free speech, and we understand why that happens. But I think through is in discourse we can and we must recognize that ultimately we need these principles to come together. They're both so fundamental to our constitution, to our democracy. We want to be an equal society and we want

to be a society that respects free speech. So how do we make those things coincide and reinforce one another. I think there are many examples of how they do, but they're also instances in this Harper's letter was a vivid one of how they're sort of seemed to clash. And the effort really in the book is to explain,

here's how these things can fit together. You go to some lens in your book to say that you're against cancelation or cancel culture, but you do support what you call calling out culture as long as it's done with caution. Say a bit about your approach to these very delicate and sensitive questions. Yeah, I think it's very context intensive. And now the term cancel culture, I think it has sort of taken on a new meaning and a very

elastic meaning. We really can refer to everything from a perfectly legitimate give and take an argument and debate often online to harsh draconian punishments for speech by an institution, And to me, those are very different things that should not be lumped together. What I talk about in the book is the idea that in calling out, it should be done conscionably, thoughtfully, and you should consider whether there's a possibility of doing what I call a call in,

which is more of a private approach. Is this, you know someone who you think maybe well intended, someone you know well, someone who may have just aired or been unaware or didn't get the memo, and by sort of tapping them on the shoulder or sending them email, giving them a call, they may retract the tweet or the Facebook post or apologize for something, and what could become a huge dust up is avoided through that private approach, So I think that's worth considering. I also think they're

in instances where a callout is appropriate and necessary. It can be an instance where somebody says something publicly that is hurtful and offensive, and it's important to ally with those who are on the receiving end, who may feel stigmatized or victimized, so they need to hear that they have support out there, that other people heard this, that they're not alone in defending themselves. So I think in

instances like that, it's important to jump in. Sometimes the speech has reverberations right away and the damage is done, and so calling in is really not an option. And you know, the only recourse is for an institutional leader to express dismay, even contempt for offensive speech, and that can be perfectly appropriate. So I think what we struggle with is these questions of intent and context, which I stress in the book. And unfortunately, our social media driven

culture move so quickly. We see so much divorced from its context. We may not even know who originally posted it. It may be snipped out and juxtaposed with something else, and so there's an impulse to react to just what you see on the surface. But sometimes probing a little bit further will reveal that the intent or the import

was something else entirely. So I advocate kind of taking a pause and making sure you really know what you're seeing and what you're reading before you react, and particularly before you react strongly. You know your approach, which calls for reason and logic and calm. It can only be welcomed, and I profoundly agree with it. Do you ever wonder if we are capable of achieving such things in this moment? As you mentioned, social media is not exactly conducive to

this kind of calm, thoughtful, rational engagement. People seem to be raring for a fight on all sides of these issues, and often it is about political power. So I guess I'm wondering what would you say to a respondent from the progressive side who says, you know, luxus and it's all nice and well and good for you as the CEO Pan America to say, well, you know, just a call would really help, And they say, well, we're the powerless, not the powerful. We can't just make a call and

tap someone on the shoulder. What we can do is motivate our base to speak publicly, to go on social media to make their point, and that will enhance us to a position where we will have the power to make sure that then we can call people privately. You know.

I think that can be sort of a fair point, you know, and other points that get made that are related, you know, when I talk about forgiveness, that sort of some people are always on the end of this where they're being asked to forgive again and again, and that's

not fair. And it's often people of color who are on the receiving end of these slights and aggressions and hostile speech, And so I think it is important to recognize that we're in this moment of reckoning, that people are amassing power and mobilizing their voices and speaking out in some instances, either for the first time or with newfound strength, and that represents a wound for free speech.

You know, when you have an environment or society or campus where a certain portion of the population feels de facto silence because they're in the minority, because others are derisive toward them, because they don't see anybody looks like them on the faculty, and they feel on the outside of the dynamic in the classroom where other students are more favored or mentored by their professors. That's an impingement

upon free speech. That's something less than the truly open discourse that I think is the ultimate goal of the free speech protections embedded in the Constitution. So I think it's very important to recognize that a moment like this ultimately drives forward the cause of free speech, and that it's not appropriate to ask everybody to be reasonable one

hundred percent of the time. I actually think if sort of ninety five percent of us could be reasonable ninety five percent of the time, we could deal with those instances where a very strong, intense reaction to speech is instinctive or justified. You know, there are those cases. I also think the President of the United States has played

a role in this. He's embolden hateful speech. He's sort of the poster child for lack of accountability for saying all kinds of noxious and demeaning things to so many different groups, and so sort of in the wake of that, there's this impulse across society to try to police speech more strongly in realms that we can control, whether that's

the classroom or a magazine or a particular community. And I think if we're able to look to a time where his influence leaves the scene, we should really be thinking about, you know, how is it that we want to live together? And some of the taboos that he has undercut and eroded, I think need to be brought

back up to strength. And if they are, if people feel they can be more comfortable here in this country, that they're not going to be targeted because they're black, or because they're a Muslim, because they're an undocumented immigrant, and that there's more respect. I think that will create more space for free speech, even when on occasion we'd bump up against one another's sensitivities and there may be

some sense of offense. But if you feel more at home and welcomed in society at large, I think you're a better place to tolerate that. Susan. I want to thank you for your work and for this fascinating and thought provoking book, and for your practical guidance to all of us how to be a little more reasonable and calm and are talking about the very fraught issues around freedom of speech, and I just want to thank you for joining me, Thanks for having me. There's a lot

of fun to talk with you. This conversation with Susanne was I think an excellent introduction to some of the very hard free speech related issues that we are going

to be grappling with in future weeks. Here on deep background, Susanne is advocating a calm, rational, thoughtful approach to free speech questions characterized by charitable interpretation of the other side, by efforts to listen closely, by efforts to be gentle and to be cautious, and above all not to exercise power too overtly or profoundly in trying to silence your interlocutors.

And yet there may be circumstances where, for reasons of the gathering of political power and the march to try to achieve greater human equality, people don't accept the idea that they should tread lightly when it comes to free expression. That's a challenge that all free speech advocates are going to have to engage, and it's one we will continue to explore in our future episodes. And now for our playback, where we take a moment from the news and play

it back in order to make sense of it. Those are the sounds of protesters clashing with the police in Seattle this Saturday. There were similar demonstrations across the country this weekend. These protests began as part of the Black Lives Matter movement, but they've taken a turn recently as a result of Donald Trump's provocative decision in Portland, Oregon, to send Federal Department of Homeland Security officers frequently in paramilitary gear and unmarked uniforms in order to quote, protect

federal property and enforce federal law. To be sure, the president of the United States does have the constitutional authority to protect federal property if it's genuinely in jeopardy, and federal officers like those in the FBI or the d EA enforce federal law all the time. What's happening, however, in Portland, and what Donald Trump has said may happen elsewhere,

seems to be rather different. Of course, the protests have in some instances concentrated on federal buildings, giving Trump an excuse to send federal officers and making it hard for a court to say that those officers cannot be present. Yet there seems to be no doubt in terms of public perception that what Donald Trump is trying to do is use the opportunity of sending these officers to send a message to his supporters that he is in a

position to protect his constituents against protesters. It's very noteworthy in this context the Trump is not sending the officials whose job it actually is to enforce federal law, people like the officers of the FBI and the DA And it's telling and a little frightening. The Trump is sending people who work for the Department of Homeland Security, whose job is in fact to focus on illegal entrance to the United States, who happen to be engaged in crime.

There is no credible way to describe protesters, even if they sometimes cross the line away from being perfectly peaceful protesters, as domestic terrorists, and there is no reason whatsoever to think that any of the protesters are people who in any way are connected to unlawful entrance to the United States. This is pure bootstramping by the Trump administration, and it's appropriate to point out that it violates the statutory norms to tell us which officials of the government go where

and do what. Will Trump in fact extend the sending of federal officers to other major cities, as he has threatened to do. It's certainly possible. Has he discovered a new way to draw the ire and attention and frustration of anti Trump protesters. Indeed, he has will that ultimately play into Trump's hands or into the hands of his critics. That is a much more difficult question, but it's certainly worth keeping in mind that many of Trump's supporters themselves

have libertarian tendencies. They at least in principle, should not want federal officers with a questionable legal mandate deploying around the country grabbing up people who are exercising their First Amendment rights and holding them, as has been alleged in Portland without charge. Trump is playing election season politics. He's playing fast and loose with the constitution. That means the

proper response is vigilance, precision, and objection. But almost certainly it would not be a good idea for protesters to play into Trump's hands by allowing their protests to be anything other than clearly peaceful and within the exercise of their First Amendment rights. Until the next time I speak to you, be careful, be safe, and be well. Deep background is brought to you by Pushkin Industries. Our producer is Lydia Gene Coott, with mastering by Jason Gambrell and

Martin Gonzalez. Our showrunner is Sophima Kibben. Our theme music is composed by Luis GERA special thanks to the Pushkin Brass, Malcolm Gladwell, Jacob Weisberg, and Mia Lobel. I'm Noah Feldman. I also write a regular column for Bloomberg opinion, which you can find at bloomberg dot com slash Feldman. To discover Bloomberg's original slate of podcasts, go to bloomberg dot com slash pot Asks and one last thing. I just wrote a book called The Arab Winter, A Tragedy. I

would be delighted if you checked it out. If you liked what you heard today, please write a review or tell a friend. You can always let me know what you think on Twitter. My handle is Noah r Phelp. This is deep background