Festival Friend Recommendations: Suzanne Nossel on Free Speech

Suzanne Nossel is the author of Dare to Speak: Defending Free Speech for All and CEO of PEN America, an organization working to protect human rights, free expression, and literature. Nossel shares her recommendations for people to follow, books to read, and organizations to check out that advocate for free speech without compromising on a commitment to equality and inclusion in a diverse society.

PEOPLE TO FOLLOW:

Ibram X. Kendi

Nadine Strossen

David Kaye

BOOKS TO READ:

The Soul of the First Amendment, Floyd Abrams

Abrams is a renowned First Amendment lawyer. In this book, he examines how fundamental the First Amendment is to the United States and how the U.S. has the most protective approach to free speech. He argues that robust protections for free speech are essential to democracy.

The Free Speech Century, Lee C. Bollinger and Geoffrey R. Stone

This series of essays offers an indispensable guide to how the First Amendment has been reinterpreted over time. The contributors are ideologically diverse, and there’s a great essay by Catharine MacKinnon about how First Amendment doctrine fails to protect lesser heard voices from being shouted down.

Words That Wound: Critical Race Theory, Assaultive Speech, and the First Amendment, Mari Matsuda

This collection of essays from the 1990s by law professors who were pioneers in the field of critical race theory explores how to deal with damaging, degrading, bigoted speech and the real harms that hostile speech can cause. They examine how to remain faithful to the Constitution while also fighting against hateful speech.

ORGANIZATIONS TO SUPPORT:

PEN America

Free Expression Network

Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights

Read Dare to Speak: Defending Free Speech For All by Suzanne Nossel

Suzanne Nossel currently serves as the Chief Executive Officer of PEN America, the leading human rights and free expression organization. She is a leading voice on free expression issues in the United States and globally, writing and being interviewed frequently for national and international media outlets. Her prior career spanned government service and leadership roles in the corporate and nonprofit sectors. She has served as the Chief Operating Officer of Human Rights Watch and as Executive Director of Amnesty International USA. During the first term of the Obama Administration, Nossel served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Organizations, where she led U.S. engagement in the United Nations and multilateral institutions, on human rights and humanitarian issues. During the Clinton Administration, Nossel was Deputy to the U.S. Ambassador for UN Management and Reform at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, where she was the lead negotiator in settling U.S. arrears to the world body. During her corporate career, Nossel served as Vice President of U.S. Business Development for Bertelsmann and as Vice President for Strategy and Operations for the Wall Street Journal. Nossel is a featured columnist for Foreign Policy magazine and has published op-eds in The New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, and dozens of other outlets, as well as scholarly articles in Foreign Affairs, Dissent, Democracy, and other journals.

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