About 30 minutes. [applause] thank you. Thank you. Hello, salman. Great to see you. [applause] its great to be here for the event and thank you so much to steve and jeff and everybody who has made it possible. So somewhere to begin, i think of the incredibly inspiring moment in your first appearance publicly since the attack. You came to the pan america gala and inspired us with your work and talked about those who helped save your life when you were attacked last summer and you ended your remarks saying, putting your fist up in the air and it was just sort of this rousing moment, a reminder that we are in this fight for the long term. To begin with, i just your overview of the horizon and what you see major threat for free speech and press today here in the u. S. And around the world . Well, first of all, let me just say im really happy to be part of this important event and thank you for having me. You know, the First Amendment was one of the reasons why i decided to come live in america. It was one of the Great American values that made me think thats the place id like to live if those are the values of the society and i and i had always assumed that that would be something which which all americans would so to speak hold sacred and you ask about what the problems nowadays are. If youd ask me ten or 20 years ago, i would have probably have said that the main problems facing freedom of expression emanate from religious extremism and from of all kinds. From islamic extremism which i have personal experience and hindu in india and christianism in this country. The destruction of roe v. Wade being a destruction of what that could do. Im not sure that i would give that answer in the same way now because in a way it feels it feels like 18th century answer. It feels like we are still fighting the enlightenment, the enlightenment fighting what was the main enemy of Free Expression which was the church more than the state. And i think now we are facing another old enemy which is authoritarianism. Theres a real rise in authoritarian in the world and coupled with that willingness amongst some part of the population to cease the values, democratic value in the First Amendment and i think the problem is i would now say political more than primarily religious. And how do you make sense of the ways in which even in this country these authoritarian tend eveningies and readiness to, for example, ban books, enact laws, how has that taken hold in this place that you came to as a beacon not so long ago. How do you explain it and how do we get past it . I find it bewildering and i think it has to do with two kinds of attacks that have been unleashed not unsuccessfully not n recent years and one is on the education itself. And i remember seeing some years ago survey carried out amongst Republican Voters in which Something Like twothirds of them subscribe to the idea that universities were bad for america because there were places that people were indoctrinated with communism and so forth. Thats one thing. The other thing is the thing that you and i susan have talked about a lot has the thought on the idea of the truth because one to have preconditions for the rise of authoritarian strong men is the people sees to believe in the truth. What they have been told is a lie and internal that and at that point, can say, i am the truth. Believe me because i am the truth. Thats how dictatorship start. Thats how tyrannies rise and we are seeing phenomena like that in this country but around the world as well and those two attacks on education, on the value of education and on the absolute value of the truth, unfortunately have been have been some degree successful. I want to talk about stories emanating from the left. At pan america we spend a lot of time and energy trying to set out how the values of diversity, equity and inclusion can and must be reconciled with free speech and to us it seems crucially important because the rising again ration in this country too often see free speech and the First Amendment as smoke screen for hatred and we movements that young people are waging. But, you know, in dialogue with you sometimes over the years, i wonder, you know, whether you feel thats the right approach or whether you think its something of a distraction or or a distraction from the unflinching free speech. Do you ultimately think these values can be reconciled . I hope so. I hope so. And i do think the problem that you describe, the problem, the progressive attack on on free speech is so far anyway, seems to be province of the very young. So theres a me that thinks they will grow out of it. I do think Different Countries define Free Expression differently. For example, when i was living in the uk for a long time, the uk has a thing called the Race Relations act. The Race Relations act makes it illegally to make racially charged remarks. You can be prosecuted and sent to jail and when i lived in england, i didnt see anything much wrong with that. I thought, okay, racism is against the law, why not, you know. First amendment defines speech more broadly than that. And when i moved to america i came to appreciate that. I came to think, okay, lets hear all the voices so that we can we know where they are, you know, we can fight back against it. But i can argue both arguments. To this day in the uk people on the left and the right value Race Relations act. Its seen as being worth it. So i think one of the things that maybe might be worth debating in this in this convention is that question about whose definition of Free Expression works best in the current climate. For example, in germany, its a crime Holocaust Denial is a crime and you can see why given the history of germany. I still my view is that its a real mistake. Holocaust denial doesnt appear by being made illegal and in some way it acquires kind it acquires the glamor of taboo, forbidden things are glamorous and i think Holocaust Denial should be presented as being unglamorous which it is. So all im saying is that there isnt simply a thing called Free Expression. Theres individual western societies have made up their own minds about where the line should be drawn and ive always liked the very broad definitions of the United States. I do think there are problems arising out of new technology. There are problems based on what the internet makes possible and there are problems based on what social media makes possible. So the abuse is of Free Expression that are ramped on social media. But its something that we need to seriously need to think about. When you mentioned Holocaust Denial one thing that comes to my mind is in addition to the point you raised about why its problematic to try to suppress it and how that doesnt ultimately work, it also becomes a template and when i worked at the u. S. State department we tried to fend off efforts on the deprivation of religious and many countries Holocaust Denial is banned and if youre going to ban that which is offensive to jews or ban antisemitism why dont you ban what is offensive to us and antimuslim sentiment and we in the u. S. We have a good argument we wouldnt permit banning of Holocaust Denial in this country. That ultimately i think made a big difference. It would have been a much harder fight to win if that prohibition was universal. I want to come back the question of social media because i think this is a real dilemma. I think we all basically accept far more restrictions, the notion that far more restriction of speech on social media is legitimate. The kind of Community Standards that a platform like facebook or instagram has or the rules of the road that twitter traditionally has allow those platforms to be functional, allow a real give and take that doesnt become just a race to the bottom in terms of visit rail and misinformation and taking over the platform and what you describe in underpinning of societies where you cant fair out the truth. Theres no root to the truth and flooded with information and no one can figure out what to believe. But the question is theres been staunch kind of backlash against those restrictions people arguing that speech is being suppressed on conservative versus liberal lines that important topics about the vaccines and covid and the origins of covid have been suppressed, the interplay between government and social media companies, so i wonder, you know, elon musk is sort of throwing those rules out the window and making his a free for all. Is your instinct that thats the right answer or that we somehow have to muddle through and develop these kind of ever more elaborate rules what is and isnt permissible in social media and i ask someone who is active on twitter and on facebook and does engage in dialogue in this forum. I engage a little bit. What i have found is that increasingly its become unpleasant place to be. I feel whatever you should call this x, you know, feels like a room you dont want to be in, a room full of people you dont want to talk to and so i i go on relatively little. I do sometimes think that all other Media Broadcast or print, all other media are subject to a certain kind of regulation which is to say editorial regulation. Thats to say that books, television programs, radio, films are held to be editorially responsible for their content, you know, and this is why Publishing Companies have book editors as opposed pushing out anything that anybody sends them. This is why newspapers have book editors. For example, in the fight that we were involved about the murders the editorial decisions of magazine like that are often disagreed with by members of the magazine. The buck stops somewhere. Editors desk have to make choices and that is true every single other median print or broadcast. Now we have this new thing which functions like the wild west. But you can ride into dodge with a gun because, hey, we believe in freedom. So the question is whether some of the principles that that govern all other media can somehow be applied to these new media and and i by no means equipped to answer how because its a really difficult problem but i do think that is something that needs to be thought about because its not true in any other form of expression that you can just shoot your mouth off without consequences. If you go back to early days to have internet, shoot your mouth out immediately and reach and audience, you know, sometimes hundreds of thousands or even millions if who whats you said or what you have shown is potent enough. That was seen as a great Free Expression, the barriers, the New York Times oped or the or get publishing and it was celebrated and has enabled amount of expression and now we face not just with social media but with ai, large language models, the very nature of these services is that that theres no intermediary, no editor that you send to. The posts are not reviewed before they make it out into the world with chat gpt its automated. You could never execute on that in any other way. So, i guess, what do you think about that balance . Do you think theres still something to that idea that the accessibility of these platforms and and the reach that you can obtain is a positive that as a society we need to try to preserve or has it tipped over and so that its really more negative than pausive at this point and we ought to try to make them look like book or magazine publishing . I think both things are true. It is true that things like twitter have value. For example, with a rapidly breaking news story you very often find out what is happening faster on Something Like twitter than you do any other source. Also in various moments of upheaval, like, for example, the arab spring, the use of twitter was incredibly important to the demonstrators in that moment. And got the news out to the rest of us in the world about what they were trying to do and what they stood for, et cetera. So theres no question that there is value. The question is how that can be protected from drowning in a kind of sea of vitriol and lies. And this is the question that we face because i think its a question that has enormous democratic consequences and i wish i knew the answer but at least i can ask the question. I want to ask you a little bit about institutions and, you know, both how you see these threats to free speech affecting our Democratic Institutions elections, the functioning of a body like United States congress, the role of the executive branch and a presidency kind of amid these tensions and the erosion of truth. You know, what what is at stake and how can we fortify our institutions. Sometimes i get frustrated because the conversation about democracy often doesnt even seem to reference free speech. All about free and Fair Elections and, of course, thats incredibly important and Voting Rights and yet free speech is underpinning that i feel is almost sort of being lost in this mortal debate of how we save our democracy. Yeah, well, it is a moral debate and i think one of the problems is that you have essentially only one Major Political party that seems to believe in Democratic Values now. And you have another one that seems to be doing everything that you can oh to undermine them and when you have the large majority of Republican Voters believing that the last election was stolen as they do every time. Very large majority of Republican Voters believe that donald trump won the last election. And that he was cheated of his victory. Now, if the assault on the truth has reached that level of success then we are in real trouble. And and ive always believed and i think just about, i still believe that the answer to speech is more speech. The answer to wrong speech is better speech. And i do think that thats what we have to get better at doing. We have to get better at combating this this title wave of misinformation, disinformation by telling the truth. When we had our meeting at the united nations, one thing that i was trying to say there is what is happening is actually its quite a literary thing. Its a battle of narratives. That you have all over the world false narratives being propounded quite coldbloodedly in order to make possible certain kinds of actions in the present moment and make America Great again has always made me want to ask, when exactly was that. What was the date to which we are looking backwards. Was it, for example, when there was slavery . Was it before women had the vote . Was it before the Civil Rights Movement . Exactly which is the America Greatness to which we return . Of course, its just simply its a golden age myth. And the thing about the golden age is it never existed and the myth of the golden age is always used to justify actions in the present. In england, the brexit catastrophe was result of another golden age myth and england was glorious country and could be glorious if only we could get rid of the foreigners and that didnt work very well because they neglected to mention to the population, election that the reason it was prosperous it took 200 years plundering the rest of the world. In india now theres golden age myth which india was a wonderful place before the muslims arrived and that if it could go back to those that purely hindu nation everything would be better. This allows all kind of violence taken place in the present day. Where ever you look, you see narratives being pushed which are dangerous narratives and we are the keepers of narratives and its our job journalists and writers and we have to just become a whole lot better at providing kind of narratives. We have to wrap in a minute but i want to push you a little bit on that and ask, what what does it actually look to construct and promulgate a narrative that can, i take your point about the golden age but i also think about how we began this conversation. Youre saying that you came here in part because of the First Amendment and, you know, this hall this museum is about the constitution and i think we are all here in part because we actually do believe theres something valuable. Maybe there was no Perfect Moment but there were some ideas and some institutions that worked better than just about any alternative that you can imagine when they were working at their best so how do we, as we look forward, what is the narrative that we can construct about the future that has some hope of getting people beyond, you know, what youve called me you described to me as people being defined by what that which offends them. What is the affirmative narrative or where should we look, where do we begin to construct that . I dont know, its very hard to get people to celebrate the positive much easier to get them to denigrate what they think of as negative. And to do that its not gg to be overnight. It might be a generational thing and you have to persuade young people that its worth it. It seems to me the danger is young people ceasing to believe and First Amendment values into andspeech should be prevented because they dont like it or it represents values which they dont hope but the whole point the defense of free speech begins when somebody says something that you dont like. Its perfectly easy to defend speech which you agree or that keeps you irrelevant but when you discover is precisely when somebody says something you dont like so its the defensive speech you dont like and we have to persuade people of that in this age of outrage that has to come to an end. Its too easy to define yourself by what outrages you. Its necessary for us to understand that you have to allow the speech of those you d