Free speech is hailed as a universal right, but its boundaries and meaning are anything but clear. From its emergence in 18th-century Britain to today’s global debates over censorship, misinformation, and cultural divides, the story of free speech is one of struggle, reinvention, and resilience.
Historians William Dalrymple and Fara Dabhoiwala take us through the history and evolution of free expression, revealing how power, technology, and shifting cultural norms continue to challenge its very foundation. What does free speech mean in a world where cultural norms are shifting, media is evolving, and political values are being redefined?
We’ll examine the tensions between liberty and control, the impact of misinformation and censorship, and the enduring relevance of free speech in shaping democracies and societies. With a historian’s insight and a modern lens, join us to explore how history helps us understand the fight for free speech and what it means for our future.
Fara Dabhoiwala is Senior Research Scholar and Professor in the Department of History at Princeton University and author of The Origins of Sex: A History of the First Sexual Revolution. Formerly on faculty at the University of Oxford, he is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, All Souls College, and Exeter College.
William Dalrymple is one of Britain’s great historians and the bestselling author of the Wolfson Prize-winning White Mughals, The Last Mughal, which won the Duff Cooper Prize, and the Hemingway and Kapuściński award-winning Return of a King. His most recent book, The Anarchy, was long-listed for the Baillie Gifford Prize 2019, and shortlisted for the Duke of Wellington Medal for Military History, the Tata Book of the Year (Non-fiction) and the Historical Writers Association Book Award 2020. It was a Finalist for the Cundill Prize for History and won the 2020 Arthur Ross Bronze Medal from the US Council on Foreign Relations.
