And started laying the groundwork for this relationship moving forward, and its something that if you dont know the work that pen does, its very linked to what we will be talking about tonight in many ways but pen is an Amazing Organization that advocates for authors, for freedom of the press, important things that are tied to the mission we have as well through magic city books and the tulsa literary coalition. Pen is a membership driven program, organization, and if you dont in the their work good to pen. Org and see everything that theyre doing, especially right now. Theres so much going on with limp additions to press limitations to press freedoms. Every day something is happening that we didnt probably know about, at least i wouldnt know about were it not for the work at pen. We have a special membership promo go to website pen. Org and use the code pen friend, all caps, penfriedn sketch and get 20 off membership. So support pen and the great work we as an organization do and more to come on that. Tonight well be talking with suzann nozzles noel and a friend i look up. To ive had the chance to talk to so many authors over the past months and im always thrilled win someone else wants to take that opportunity away from me and i actually get to watch and enjoy it. John is a huge advocate for the work we do through tlc and magic city books and its just a great all around guy and advocate for the arts and culture here in tulsa. So john will take the reigns. If you have questions put those in the q a on zoom if you dont have this book the book does something i love. It has something in it that pisses off everybody in the best upon way. If youre on one side of the issue there will be something that well challenge what you believe and what you think you believe, and to me that is a really powerful thing to do, to make us question what we think of as freedom and what we believe in as kind of the tenets so if you have not gotten the book we have links to buy the book from magic city and well do that several times through the talk. So i want to say a big, big welcome and thank you no Suzanne Nossel and john schumann. Fun to be in tulsa even though im not in tulsa. We wish you were here and some point when the pandemic recedes we want to get you here. I really like the book. It really made me think and congratulations because its very i was so impressed with the thoroughness. Im not in any way a lawyer or legal scholar which you are. And in some ways the second half of the book reads you cite many, many famous Supreme Court cases bought i thought where to start because i lead a college campus, that is one area that you focus on a little bit in the poock is College Campuses and freedom of speech and callout culture, and i could just start by saying, you taught me something which i sort of enough but didnt realize it was a term callin, and so i guess could you just differentiate between callout culture and what you hope people too is callin. Sure. We do a lot of work on campuses at pen america and becomes somewhat alarmed by the quitting that a rising generation seems to be increasingly skeptical pout free speech, and i can understand why. To them they tend to hear free speech principles invoked in relation to speech that is hateful for menacing or derogatory and as a professor, the other students, says its free speech. The university protects is because its free speech. But if you hear a free speech invoked only in that context you can see why someone might become dubious of the idea of free speech, and that is actually one of the reason i wrote the book is out of a concern were at rusk of losing a rising generation children it wams to believing in at the principle of free speech which i grew up seeing as a bedrock of the u. S. Constitution and our culture and what makes this society great, and so i think its extremely important that we find ways to reach this rising generation and when it comes to callouts and callins, i would say just to ground it a little bit, my interpretation of a lot of the controversials that go on, on campus, is there is a tension between the drive that students and many faculty have to render the campus a more equal inclusive and just place, and to eradicate the legacies of discrimination and exclusion that are so stubborn in the country and now reckoning at new level. Sometimes the effort as noble also it is can kind of veer across the doubleyellow line into a degree of censoriousness and seems the best thing to do to foster a sense of belonging among students from marginalized groups or to combat bigotry would to be ban or punish speech, and you can understand what why. In callingout and callingin analysis has to do with how you respond to speech that you find offensive, so if a professor this is a common scenario. A professor will verbalize the nword in class happening twice in this calendar year at the university of oklahoma. All over the country. They may be quoting James Baldwin or mark twain, teaching a Law School Class about the doctrine of fighting words and an example that will rile people up bull students have a strong reaction and think its objectionable no matter what. Doesnt matter that the purpose is ped googlal or the professor didnt many any offense, and so the question is what do you do . And a callout is to publicly shame the person. Can be a petition, through social media, face to face confrontation but something that is visible to everyone. A callinis a disapproach. Behind the scene. Approaching someone privately. The goal is to tell them you have offended me or other people or you may not realize how you words came across, but not to shame. And it really depends on the circumstance, whether you think you can get through to the person, was this intentional or unintentional, were people hurt and do they need to hear your allyship and that public segregation of support . I out line the public discretion of support. You mention apologies and you have a nice short chapter on that includes apologies. What are the component odd a good apology or true apology . Pause i think our culture and our media are replete politicians give what people consider insincere apologies. Its true and i think one result of that is that theres very little space for apology and forgiveness in some of these free speech battles. To me, a convincing apology is one that really accepts blame for what you did. Youre not apologizing just because someone else was hurt or bothered but rather because you acknowledge that you did something wrong. It has to be encompassing and cant clearly delineating and drawing sharp lines what you accept responsibility for. It has to be in the searching and you are willing to acknowledge what you said, if didnt intend consistent be racist. May intelout reach to a group with which you have limited contact. You dont really know much about the Lgbtq Community and theres some work to be done to get to know it getter so you dont stumble in into the same mistakes in the future. One example, just in recent days of what i call pseudo apology is alexandria ocasiocortez was call very nasty misogynist slurs by a representative from florida and purport evidence to apologize bit, anxious, denied having said it when there were witnesses and. , went on and on but the fought he has a daughter and wife and is good to women. And so she skewered that in her apology rebuttal on the floor of the congress. That was an impressive speech. Lets talk more but the broader culture and when you talk about callout, theres an idea of cancel culture where people we have these tools now, social media, twitter in particular, put other, facebook, where somebody says something offensive oranges intendly offends people and very quickly there can be what feel like a storm of protest and theres a cryout to cancel that person. And some of this of course is involved from the Metoo Movement. There has been legitimate legal calls to try people. But there are many examples you cite in the book and i wonder if you can talk but cancel culture and how we can protect free speech but also be mindful. Yeah. One problem with cancel culture is the term is used so elastic include. It can be invoked for everything from as you say instances in the Metoo Movement like a Harvey Weinstein or bill cosby and convicted of crimes and get exiled from the culture and other instances where someone tweets out something that is seen as contrary to the movements to defund the police or is construed as transgender individuals win that wasnt the intent. That lone singular act of speech can evoke this huge backlash and the person becomes almost untouchable and not only are they stigmatized but anybody who engages with them, the stigma carries over. And its sort of societally enforces isolation that extends to consent concentric sole social circled and that is destructive. Its excessive. It is draconian. Theres a kind of enforcement where if you dont adhere to it, you may become tainted and put your own reputation at risk as well, and so i think thats the level of cancel culture that concerns people. Its also indefinite duration and it may be one mistake that, for example, an editor makes publishing a piece, for example, the new york review of books pushing a piece on metoo that was highly controversial and then all of a sudden not only has he out as editor but publications to who the canted to years they couldnt push him anymore. He became untouchable. In his case i dont think its permanent and i also think its incumbent on institutions when that does happen to after a period of time create some onramp so people are not effectively silenced and marginalized forever, particularly on the basis of a single act of expression or decision. That doesnt warrant a harsh and lasting response. We rafe a very Current Situation the tulsa that id like to ask you about. I think its going on other places as well. Around the time of juneteenthth, President Trump was going to hold a rally that was controversial because of the pandemic and the idea of a large public gatherings, but what happened was there were many people in the black community and also allies who painted black lives matter on a stretch of greenwood avenue, the historic area where the Tulsa Race Massacre occurred 99 years ago. And then its been there for two months now, and its been a place of healing and gathering for many people until recently the head of the Tulsa Republican Party said he or the party wanted to paint it was back the blue or baby lives matter, and if you were going to allow uninstant of free speech you had to allow others, and then it went on where there was actually some defacement of the black lives matter with a blue line and then people came out to clean that off and repaint it, and then also the counterprotest. So, any city couple is stuck and the mayor what to do, and i guess if you could help us sort through that thicket. Its complications. It is a thicket. Sort of connections to the protests that have happened around the country in connection with monuments and names, for example, at yale where i know you went the debate over whether to rename the what messaging a city or an institution should be putting forward collectively and how those statements of value are who gets to decide what the statements or values and are when they should change . What is up for debate . I generally think those question are not really what matters. The community can change its mind if they decide they no longer want to have a statute to of robert e. Leech thats not infringing on anyones rights. This was a municipal decision. Im not sure it was. Know i was in other cities. In new york city the black lives matter banner outside trump tower and in washington if think whoever is in charge of the immuneil, whether its the mayor or city council should have the right to decide what expression is going to be conveyed in those public spaces that are under their control. Now, if a contingent its saying the messaging you chose neglects the role or importance of another institution, the city, we want that reflected in some way. I dont think that is a Free Expression right theyre asserting but maybe a right of a sort to be recognized and ang acknowledged. Thinked may may sense to find a way of doing that and to show a respect for thats a discussion here in new york as well, thats coming around. You want a level of equilibrium black lives matter and and police. Often times what this is confiscated by the pandemic is that if you can get people in a room in a conversation, to explain, here, heres why changing that blue line through our message was not something that is acceptable, and talk it through. Sometimes you ick fine a solution that will be acceptable. In the mayor and still coup is paralyzed. The city lawyer has actually declared its an illegal basically form of street art or graffiti and thats wherein some of trouble lies with the city ordinance. Thats a differentiation than the other cities. If its not something that was officially authorized but envelopes nonetheless the say may want to decide this not the moment, to paint over that message and that is symbolically given the history of tulsa and where you are, thats the note right answer for this moment. Town this whole idea of turn to this whole idea of information and state control and you talk both your work at pen america and also in the book, dare to speak, you talk but china. Interestingly i wasnt aware of the fact that china in its constitution does [inaudible] free speech but as you point out in practice couldnt but further from that and at pen america you have you published the list of 80 or so examples how china oppresses people, artists, journalists, people who try to tell the truth, and you dont see that really Getting Better anytime soon. Its getting much worse. This morning i was woken up by a message last night in hong kong, they arrested a major media tycoon who was a nope pro democracy advocate, jimmy law and that was part of this crackdown thats happening in hong kong with the inaction over the new National Security law that once democratic, very open i dont know how many people have been hong kong but a few years ago it feels like a very open place. Got wonderful universities, human rights lawyers, vibrant media escape, a lot of journalists, and it is historically been the place where the we were media organizes and newspapers would have their staff headquartered because with so much freer than in china, and beijing right now is just clamping down in a very harsh way and enacted a new law and rounding people up and ises walled cow journalists could get lawyers and International Legal assistance. So its a very sad situation, and what it reflects is beijings arm getting longer and longer. We issued a report last week on the influence that china wields in hollywood, because beijing the Chinese Government has through semi state owned investors that are major power brokers in hollywood as well as through access is control over access to the winds market which is huge. The worlds second and soon to be the worlds largest. So Hollywood Studios want their movies to be shown in china and theyre willing to give up a lot in exchange for that. If that means surrendering the right to criticize the chinese or depict the chinese negatively in any way, thats actually a bargain they are willing to make, and so we document this in a report and its just one example. There are other people have written to us how the same thing goes in the gaming industry and academia here in the u. S. , Chinese Students who pay full freight have become a major source of revenue for u. S. Universities universities and their Strings Attached to that. So the question of chinas not just what goes on inside china which at pep mrs. We have been pen america we have been concerned with and getting worse but their growing influence around the world as a super power and economic force. And bringing with them this approach to Free Expression that really takes the words on the page of their own law and International Law and just cancels all meaning from them. You mentioned how the hollywood movie studio are willing to make the compromise in order to access the china market. Similarly our technology comes, like facebook or google, agree also to chinese censorship in order to speaker the enter the Chinese Market and you talk at some loaning about the Technology Companies how both we can hold them accountable. I thought that was particularly interesting inch fact i wasnt aware i knee lot about the criticism of facebook and its founder and Ceo Mark Zuckerberg was not aware head ha in 2019 put forth the idea of an oversightboard which was Something Like 40 people to be on this you indicate another thing thats their preferred term but like a citizen Advisory Board where this board could essentially decide almost jahvid loading the responsibility to offloading to have facebook not promulgate hateful or false information. So, where is facebook in that discussion . I know that just last week i guess the four Big Tech Companies all testified remotely in congress, some for the first time. That that moved ahead of that. One small thing is those major u. S. Tech companies are not in china in any meaningful way because of he constraints on them when they tried to be there and the Chinese Government. The power it holds to requisition any user data. If you post this happened, 10 or 12 years ago when the companies were in china in the early days and a dissident would post something, and they wreckry wisconsin requisition is his permanent data from yahoo and that had to concern it over and the person was seven to jail so they were not able to figure out a way around that and they have exited china for now. They sort of make tentative forays and all want to get back in because its a huge market but have not been able to work it out. Do work at pen america downtowns scoring theres no way to have a shred of credibility on Free Expression issues while operating inside chin