The Hoover Institution Center for Revitalizing American Institutions webinar series features speakers who are developing innovative ideas, conducting groundbreaking research, and taking important actions to improve trust and efficacy in American institutions. Speaker expertise and topics span governmental institutions, civic organizations and practice, and the role of public opinion and culture in shaping our democracy. The webinar series builds awareness about how we can individually and collectively revitalize American institutions to ensure our country’s democracy delivers on its promise.
The sixth session will discuss How Foreign Speech Restrictions Affect American Free Expression with Jacob Mchangama and Eugene Volokh on Wednesday, April 30, 2025, from 10:00 - 11:00 am PT.
Much of our speech to each other uses technology created by companies that operate throughout the world such as Google, Meta (Facebook), X, Microsoft, Amazon, and Apple. Because these companies operate worldwide, they are potentially vulnerable to pressures from the countries in which they operate—if Google has assets or people in Germany or Turkey, then the German or Turkish government can force them to comply with German or Turkish law.
So long as countries have tried to regulate what tech companies do in their countries (e.g., what information Google shows to readers in Germany or Turkey), foreign restrictions end up having relatively little effect on what Americans can say to other Americans. But foreign countries are increasingly asking for worldwide restraints on things that are said on various multinational platforms (for instance, anything said anywhere about those countries’ citizens or politicians), sharply risking undermining American’s free speech rights.
WATCH THE WEBINAR
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Jacob Mchangama is the Founder and Executive Director of The Future of Free Speech. He is a research professor at Vanderbilt University and a Senior Fellow at The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). He has commented extensively on free speech and human rights in outlets including the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy. Jacob has published in academic and peer-reviewed journals, including Human Rights Quarterly, Policy Review, and Amnesty International’s Strategic Studies. He is the producer and narrator of the podcast “Clear and Present” Danger: A History of Free Speech and the critically acclaimed book Free Speech: A History From Socrates to Social Media, published by Basic Books in 2022.
Before coming to Hoover, Eugene Volokh spent 30 years as a professor at UCLA School of Law, where he taught First Amendment law, copyright law, criminal law, tort law, and firearms regulation policy. He is a member of the American Law Institute and of the American Heritage Dictionary Usage Panel, and the founder and coauthor of The Volokh Conspiracy, a leading legal blog. His work has been cited in more than 350 court opinions, including ten Supreme Court cases, as well as over 5,000 academic articles. He has also filed briefs (mostly amicus briefs) in over 200 cases and has argued in over 40 appellate cases in state and federal courts throughout the country.
