Fara Dabhoiwala - "What Is Free Speech?: The History of a Dangerous Idea" - Jennifer Pitts
Fara Dabhoiwala will be discussing his new book What Is Free Speech?: The History of a Dangerous Idea. He will be joined in conversation by Jennifer Pitts. A Q&A and book singing will follow the discussion.
At the Co-op
In Partnership with 3CT
About the Book: What Is Free Speech?: The History of a Dangerous Idea delves deep into the complexities of free speech, offering a provocative rethinking of an idea we all take for granted. No one wants to oppose free speech, yet Dabhoiwala challenges us to reckon with its true impact. This book shatters the illusion of free speech as a universal right, revealing how it has always been shaped by power, politics, and profit—from its early roots in the 1700s to its role in today’s struggles over misinformation, social media, and censorship.
About the Author: Fara Dabhoiwala is Senior Research Scholar 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.
About the Interlocutor: Jennifer Pitts is Professor of Political Science and the Committee on Social Thought and Chair of the Department of Political Science; her recent work in the history of political and international thought includes Boundaries of the International: Law and Empire (2018), a volume in the Cambridge History of Rights co-edited with Dan Edelstein (2025), and a volume co-edited with Adom Getachew, W.E.B. Du Bois: International Thought (2022).
Related Titles
"A brilliant history of a weaponized mantra." --The Guardian
A leading intellectual historian shows how free speech, once viewed as both hazardous and unnatural, was reinvented as an unalloyed good, with enormous consequences for our society today. Every premodern...