Professor Timothy Garton Ash discusses the premise of his new book titled 'Free Speech: Ten Principles for a Connected World.'
Introduced by Warden Margaret MacMillan of St. Antony's, Professor Timothy Garton Ash presents his newest book, 'Free Speech: Ten Principles for a Connected World.' The work is based on the premises that the conditions of free speech are changing given movements of mass migration and the wide dissemination of the Internet, both of which make us all neighbors, both literally and figuratively. Professor Garton Ash organizes his book around what he argues are the ten main dimensions of free speech: lifeblood, violence, knowledge, journalism, diversity, religion, privacy, secrecy, icebergs and courage. Crucially, Professor Garton Ash argues that we must be able to agree on how we disagree and that issues of civility ought not to be mediated by the law.
University scholars Adam Roberts (Balliol), Patricia Thornton (Merton) and Faisal Devji (St. Antony's) address the new publication with contextual information on the cases of India and China as well as a debate on the existence of universal values.
Associated with the book is a website curated by Professor Garton Ash and graduate students of the University featuring information and contributions on the ten principles of free speech in 13 different languages including Turkish, Japanese, Urdu and Arabic. The website is available here: http://freespeechdebate.com.
