TRUMP SAID HE’D RESTORE FREE SPEECH IN AMERICA. Halfway through his second term, the question is whether his actions have matched that promise.

A FREE SOCIETY SHOULD BE VERY CAREFUL ABOUT GIVING GOVERNMENT MORE POWER OVER SPEECH: Nadine Strossen and I explain why censorship is often sold as protection, but history shows that vague power to punish “harmful” ideas rarely stays confined to the people you want silenced.

THE CONSTITUTION WAS WRITTEN IN PHILADELPHIA, BUT THE ARGUMENT OVER AMERICA HAS BEEN EVERYWHERE SINCE. Beverly Gage joins Jeffrey Rosen for a road trip through the places where Americans remember, reinterpret, and fight about their past.

HORSESHOE THEORY MAY HAVE A FREE SPEECH EDITION. FIRE’s latest survey finds very liberal and very conservative Americans are much more comfortable discussing controversial issues than moderates, even as most Americans remain deeply reluctant to speak freely on the toughest topics like Israel/Palestine and ICE.

CANADA, FRANCE, AND BRAZIL ARE SHOWING HOW QUICKLY SPEECH RESTRICTIONS CAN GO TOO FAR. This week’s stories include a Canadian social-media bill, France shutting a mosque over religious texts, and a Brazilian influencer convicted after misgendering a politician.

ACADEMIA’S FREE SPEECH PROBLEM DIDN’T DISAPPEAR. PEOPLE JUST GOT BETTER AT PRETENDING IT DID. Tyler Harper explains why he left the tenure track, Tuskegee polices student dress codes, and a suspended student wins in court.

IF YOU’RE GOING TO ARGUE ABOUT AMERICA, YOU MIGHT AS WELL KNOW WHAT YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT. The Blessings of Liberty digs into the ideas, cases, and historical fights behind the Constitution with Jeffrey Rosen and guests who know the material cold.

BAD IDEAS GET MUCH HARDER TO KILL ONCE THEY ACQUIRE CREDENTIALS. A shaky claim becomes a study, the study becomes a textbook lesson, and the lesson becomes conventional wisdom. Kitty Genovese and the Stanford Prison Experiment show why we need better ways to trace bad claims, broken citations, and everything built on top of them.

TWO OF THE MOST FAMOUS LESSONS ABOUT HUMAN NATURE WERE BUILT ON BULLSHIT. The Kitty Genovese story and the Stanford Prison Experiment helped teach generations to see people as more cowardly and cruel than the evidence justified. The Reality Test Project is about finding claims like these before they harden into “knowledge.”

HATE SPEECH LAWS DIDN’T STOP THE NAZIS. Weimar Germany tried censoring them before they took power. The laws failed, and the lesson is a grim one: censorship is no substitute for defeating bad ideas.

CONSTITUTIONAL NERDS DESERVE THEIR OWN CONTENT TOO. The Blessings of Liberty is Jeffrey Rosen’s deep dive into the Constitution, the Founding, and the arguments that still shape American self-government.

ORIGINALISM IS WHERE HISTORY BECOMES ARGUMENT. In the Court’s latest term, Jeffrey Rosen, Nina Totenberg, and Joanne Lipman show how fights over the Fourteenth Amendment can turn on which text, era, and historical evidence the justices think should control.

MONTY PYTHON’S JOHN CLEESE HAS SPENT A CAREER PUNCTURING POMPOSITY. So naturally, I had to ask him about free speech, cancel culture, Life of Brian, and why comedy needs room to offend.

A PROFESSOR INVESTIGATED FOR SAYING “WORD SALAD” Hofstra investigated a professor over a phrase that belongs in roughly every faculty meeting in America. When ordinary criticism can trigger a harassment process, the policy has become the problem. More in this week’s Free Speech Update.

GERMANY’S HIGH COURT GETS FREE SPEECH RIGHT! The high court ruled that comparing Israel to Nazi Germany can still be protected speech, even when the comparison is deeply offensive. Free speech protections matter most in the cases that make people want to abandon them.

A REPUBLIC CANNOT SURVIVE WHEN POLITICAL OPPONENTS BECOME TRAITORS AND EVERY DEFEAT BECOMES A PLOT: Stephen Knott examines how conspiracy mongering corrodes free speech, constitutional restraint, and the shared reality self-government requires.

WHEN ACADEMIA TREATS CONSERVATIVES AS A PROBLEM TO BE MANAGED RATHER THAN PEOPLE WHO MIGHT HAVE A POINT: Serious institutions need people willing to challenge fashionable assumptions and steel-man unpopular arguments. Universities will not regain trust while treating conservatives and other dissenters as defects rather than intellectual participants.

THE CONSTITUTION DOES NOT MEAN WHATEVER FIVE JUSTICES CAN FIND WITH CTRL-F: Jed Shugerman and Ilan Wurman debate executive power, birthright citizenship, and whether originalism constrains judges or merely gives them a historical scavenger hunt for the result they already prefer.

ACADEMIC REFORM HELD BACK BY ACADEMICS: Viewpoint diversity does not require importing extremists into the room. It requires someone willing to question the evidence, test the consensus, and fairly state the argument everyone else would rather dismiss.

THE CONSTITUTION BEGINS WITH “WE THE PEOPLE” FOR A REASON: Jesse Wegman explains how forgotten founder James Wilson championed popular sovereignty, direct representation, and a national government deriving every legitimate power from the consent of the governed.

THE AAUP’S MESSAGE TO CONSERVATIVES IS CLEAR: They will oppose your candidates, insult their critics, and still insist they are neutral guardians of academic freedom. That is not principled independence, it is partisanship with institutional branding.

THE AAUP’S PARTISAN TURN: The organization made its first-ever national political endorsement for Abdul El-Sayed, then its president reportedly called critics “clowns” in a now-deleted post. An academic-freedom organization cannot act like a political campaign and still expect everyone to trust its neutrality.

HOFSTRA INVESTIGATES PROFESSOR FOR CRITICIZING A COURSE, THEN INVESTIGATES HIM AGAIN FOR CALLING FIRE: Academic freedom apparently means keeping quiet when administrators come after you. Tell Hofstra to end the investigations and drop the charges.

“FIGHT FIRE WITH FIRE” JUST PRODUCES A BIGGER FIRE: David French warns that right-wing censorship is repeating the left’s worst mistakes, from cancel campaigns to government speech codes, while weakening the liberties conservatives once defended.

THE SUPREME COURT IS SUPPOSED TO CHECK POWER, NOT JOIN THE TEAM: Sarah Isgur and Melissa Murray debate executive overreach, birthright citizenship, originalism, gun rights, and whether the justices defended the constitutional order or expanded their own authority.