Author and professor Philip Auerswald of George Mason University talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the rise of populism in the United States and throughout the world.

In 2007, then Dutch MP and critic of Islam, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, landed on American shores after a controversy at The Hague over the cost of her protection. America was to have guaranteed to her and many other Islamic dissidents that anonymity and pluralism of opinions where Hirsi Ali could work, talk and write, without fear of ending up as Theo van Gogh did, murdered on the streets of Amsterdam.

When one-fifth of college students believe it's fine to use violence to silence speech, we have a huge problem.

History tells us repeatedly that you cannot have a functioning democracy without freedom of speech and expression, a right guaranteed in this nation by the First Amendment to the Constitution. Yet a recent survey of student opinion on a large number of U.S. college campuses finds that “freedom of expression is deeply imperiled on U.S. campuses.”