Global Free Speech Summit 2024, Today and Tomorrow (Vanderbilt + Virtual)

Should be a very interesting program; registration is free, and you can attend virtually. The event is put on by Vanderbilt's The Future of Free Speech program, which is in turn led by free speech scholar and historian Jacob Mchangama.

Speakers will include novelist Salman Rushdie (attending virtually), Iranian journalist and women's rights activist Masih Alinejad, Taiwan's first digital minister Audrey Tang, Hong Kong democracy activist Nathan Law, Washington Post columnist Rana Ayyub, former ACLU president Nadine Strossen, New York Times columnist David French, The Economist senior editor James Bennett, and PEN America CEO Suzanne Nossel, and many more.

Comments

[Dr. Ed 2]

Free Speech in higher education, particularly by students, is now largely irrelevant because punishment now largely comes via the open-ended mental health laws which theoretically are not punitive in nature.

Where an undergrad once would have been expelled for saying things the college admin didn't like, the student is now given an indefinite involuntary medical leave on mental health grounds.

The mental health grounds being saying things the admin didn't like.

It's the same thing as the Soviet concept of "Sluggishly Progressing Schizophrenia" -- defined so widely that it covered all dissidents.