Clear and Present Danger - A history of free speech

Episode 14 leaves the West and heads to 16th and 17th Century India and the Mughal empire. In particular, the rule of Akbar the Great. A century before John Locke’s “A Letter Concerning Toleration,” Akbar developed a policy of “Universal Peace” repudiating religious compulsion and embracing ecumenical debate. We’ll also discover why the history of the Mughal empire still tests the limits of free speech and tolerance in modern India.

In this episode, we do a bit of time travel and leave the 17th century for a discussion of free speech on American college and university campuses today. Our guest is New York University professor Jonathan Haidt, who is a author “The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure,”. We do also try to draw parallels with older controversies in order to determine whether the psychological mechanisms at play are similar.

We enter the early modern age with an expert opinion featuring Teresa Bejan, associate professor at Oriel College, Oxford University and author of “Mere Civility: Disagreement and the Limits of Toleration.” In this episode, Jacob and Teresa will discuss political thought on tolerance and the limits of religious speech in early modern England and colonial America. The episode investigates the writings of intellectual rock stars John Milton, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke.

In episode 11 we continue to survey the wreckage after hurricane Luther was unleashed on Europe with the Reformation. When the Reformation mutated and spread across the continent a burning question arose: Can people of different faiths live together in the same state? Should social peace be based on tolerance or intolerance?

The disruptive effects of the internet and social media on the spread of information are unprecedented. Or are they?   In episode 10 we cover the invention, spread, and effects of the Gutenberg printing press: What significance did this new technology have for the dissemination of knowledge and ideas? Why was the printing press instrumental in helping a German monk and scholar break the religious unity of Europe? What happened when new religious ideas raged through Europe like wildfire?

Our last stop in the Middle Ages is an interview with professor Christine Caldwell Ames, who is an expert on medieval heresy and inquisition in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The discussion highlights the similarities and differences between Christianity, Catholic and Orthodox, Judaism, and Islam when it comes to defining and policing orthodoxy. And much, much more.

From the High Middle Ages, Europe developed into a “persecuting society,” obsessed with stamping out the “cancer” of heresy. Why was human choice in matters of religious belief considered a mortal threat to Christendom itself? Are inquisitions a thing of a past and dark hyper-religious age, or a timeless instrument with appeal to the “righteous mind” whether secular or religious? What are the similarities between medieval laws against heresy and modern laws against hate speech?

In our second expert opinion episode, Jacob Mchangama talks with Peter Adamson, who is a professor of philosophy at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and host of the podcast “History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps.” We’ll discuss medieval freethinking and freethinkers from both the Islamic world and the Latin West. What was the impact of Muslim philosophers like Avicenna and Averroes on European thought? And finally, who makes Peter’s list of the top three boldest European medieval freethinker

Find out why the Middle Ages were as much a period of reason and inquiry as inquisition and superstition. Why was the famous medieval intellectual Pierre Abelard castrated, forced to burn his works, and condemned to silence by the church? How did the combination of Aristotelian philosophy and the development of universities institutionalize reason and science? What are the parallels between clashes over academic freedom in the 13th and 21st centuries?

Why did the medieval Abbasid Caliphs have almost all ancient Greek works of philosophy and science translated into Arabic? How did the long list of medieval Muslim polymaths reconcile abstract reasoning with Islamic doctrine? Who were the radical freethinkers rejecting revealed in favor of reason? And why are developments in the 11th century crucial to understanding modern controversies over blasphemy and apostasy, such as the Salman Rushdie affair and the attack on Charlie Hebdo?  

In our first expert opinion segment, Jacob Mchangama talks to Emeritus Professor of Greek Culture at Cambridge University Paul Cartledge. With his intimate knowledge of ancient Greece, we dive deeper into the concepts of free speech and democracy in Athens that were discussed in episode one. What are the differences between free speech in the Athenian democracy and free speech in a modern liberal democracy? And was the trial of Socrates mostly religious or political?

Why did the polytheist Ancient Romans persecute the followers of the new Jewish sect of “Christians” in the first three centuries AD”? And why did the Christians persecute the pagans – and each other – once Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire? Find out when we discover how religious persecution and violence impacted lives, learning, and liberty of conscience in the period from the trial of Jesus to the age of Justinian.

Rome was the most powerful empire in antiquity. But were the Romans free to speak truth to power? Did history’s first successful Women’s March take place in Rome? And who came out on top when the words of Cicero clashed with the ambition of Caesar and armies of Octavian? Why did historians and astrologers become endangered species when the Republic became an empire?

Jacob Mchangama explores how the democracy of Ancient Athens was the birthplace of equal and uninhibited speech. And of course: the trial of Socrates: Was he a martyr for free speech or an impious and seditious enemy of democracy?

In this Prologue, Jacob Mchangama explains his motivation and core beliefs on why and how he will take on this endeavor to explore the history of free speech.