Person to see all of your faces and to convene here in this significant spot with a crash of applause for the amazing tablet that is shimmering behind us. The words of the First Amendment that are now gracing the sacred American Freedom and this is the first convening about the meaning of free speech under the tablet in this space across from Independence Hall where the constitution and declaration were written and its meaningful to do with you and this Extraordinary Group of free speech he rose. Lets begin as always by reciting together the National Constitution centers mission statement, and i know you can do it by o heart and our friends ae listening so lets do it clearly enough so everyone can think about these words. The National Constitution center is the only institution in america chartered by congress to increase awareness and understanding of the u. S. Constitution among the American People on a nonpartisan basis. I knew you could do it. Friends, its so meaningful and important to bring together people with different perspectives, liberal,ve conservative end of every other stripe imaginable with thoughtful dialogue and debate about the meaning of the declaration of independence and the constitution. Leadingg up to 2026 the 250th birthday of america, we will spend many convenings talking about American Values and embodied in the words of the declaration, the quality, liberty, any legal rights and the o consent of the governed ad we will also talk about the constitution and the bill of rights. The firstum and the freedoms enumerated in the bill of rights is of course freedom of conscience represented by the First Amendment. What Thomas Jefferson called the freedom of the human mind, the freedom to think as we will and to speak as we think which the framers believed to be an unalienable right that we possess by nature of being human beings. We are created with his likes that come from god our nature cannot be alienated or surrendered to government and the only just governments are those that to secure these rights rather than threatening them. But we are going to do today is talk about the meaning o of the freedom of conscience in an international context. And by hearing the way that its threatenedar around the world we will better understand and be galvanized to defend it at home. So let me begin by saying how thrilled we are to present todays program with the renewed Democracy Initiative whose partnership is invaluable and the center for constitutional design at Arizona State universitys sandra day college of law that is just a wonderful friend. Epstein from the renewed Democracy Initiative is here as well as Carol Mcnamara the center ofco design so grateful o them and also to Stephanie Lundquist for making this collaboration possible. And now i will introduce our extraordinary panelists and then we will jump right in. Gary is the chairman of the renewed Democracy Initiative, both a former world chess champion and one of the worlds great free speech he rose he is the author of books including winter is coming why Vladimir Putin and the enemies of the free world must be stopped and no one has called the attention to the urgent need to stop putin more eloquently. Its an honor to welcome you back to the constitution center. We are also honored to convene yvonne, the director of education at the renewed Democracy Initiative where he hosts the front lines of freedom podcast and is the founder of this flag a Citizen Movement in zimbabwech that was instrumental in unseating robert and is a reagan fellow at the National Endowment for democracy, former fellow at Stanford Center for Democracy Development and the 2020 Yale University world fellow. On its wonderful to welcome you here as well. And another great free speech hero is suzanne, chief executive at ten america. Shes to speak on free speech for all and also a great friend of the center. Its wonderful to have you back as well. Lets begin with the question posed by that powerful title of your book why Vladimir Putin and the enemies of the free world must be stopped. The speech was oppressed by putin and you are now watching the speechyo during his invasion of ukraine. Why among his many autocratic murderous tendencies why is it that free speech is a special evaluation to be concerned about attacking and tell us about the ways hes attacked your free speech and others. Thank you. I can start by saying i was born and raised in the soviet union sow i knew what life would look like without the speech and i saw throughout my life. Where the free speech didnt exist then appears and then disappeared again and reflected the political changes in russia so free speech is not accidental. It is the first victim of the russian democracy under boris yeltsin. We could criticize president s. As the main obstacle on the ideal the first attack on the ground and many others that speech institutionally the russian democracy was feeble. Thats why whenn i saw the risei wanted to share my experience. For me it was the other side of the iron curtain and i felt that was a time for me and my fellow dissidents to help america by sharing our experience. To prevent people from expressing themselves. Itss cannot be a success without recognizing. You just gave a graduation address where you said how wonderful to be in a land where dissent is possible. Tell us about the context of that and the story of your remarkable arrest and fighting back in zimbabwe and what it can teach. Its a huge honor to be here and speak about this very important aspect of the u. S. Constitution but with the citizens of the countries are longing for. Especially the status quo set by the government of the day. It collapses economically and socially. In 2008 the economy crashed so badly that we ended up with a 100 trilliondollar note, the largest bank note at the height of inflation with 286000000 . It wasnt enough to buy a loaf of bread. So this is a country that ended up in that situation because the government and the people that were in government literally made to the country and it became t a legal to challenge te dictatorship concerning that collapse. My parents who were in their late 60s had saved up a little bit and had their retirement to speak up about that and so we broke the Citizens Movement over four years. I was arrested eight times and was locked up in a maximum security prison for that but its that experience when we stood up as ordinary people and gathered ourselves and looked at our constitutions and found out that it gives us the right to challenge. To teach and train how to speak to power that is still remains a crime. We marveled how intentionally crafted it is to be able to empower the citizen of the country tohi participate in the governance. Humbled to speak at the commencement and just before i spoke, the students were graduated just protested against one of the speakers who had spoken at the event and it was a pretty awkward moment as you could imagine after this kind of moment that happened and parents dont understand whats happening and students were also quite posed by what they had just done. I said before i speak i want to acknowledge the miracle of what has just happened here because where i come from if students would have protested like that, two things would be certain. Number one, you would not graduate and he would be going not home, but straight to prison. So i want to congratulate the students for protesting because they have done what a free nation allows, to protest but equally i turn to the university and also said i want to thank the university that recognizes this right and respected it because where i come from that would have been completely disallowed and at the same time the young lady protested against for speaking i would also say to her i want to congratulate you for having the bravery to know inin a free society indignation this is how democracy is dispensed and that statement for me comeshe from the work i do wh the new Democracy Initiative, which is to bring our front lines of freedom together, the ones gary was talking about. We have over 120 democracy defenders and Freedom Fighters from around the world who are part of the front lines of freedom, each of us live in exile, journalists, they are loyal, Movement Builders like myself whove stood up against different autocrats. We try to speak to american audiences about number one what youre democracy means to People Like Us as an example. We admire it and we see for it and long for it. We also then tried to get the citizens of the nation to understand why the democracy is invaluable to you because there is no democracy without the challenges and we say with its challenges protected because theres few like this left across the world so thats what we do at front lines of freedom is try our best to if i can use the word break partisan shields. We all have them, yes . And to try to say we get it what youre concerned about but i wanted to let you know that what you have that you had for so long is what we long to have and we fight for it therefore you should not lose it so that the citizens of the world still have something that they can look to to copy for their own regions back home. That is so inspiring to hear you talk so eloquently about being inspired by the text of the First Amendment itself and looking at it and reading it and holding it up as an inspiration for people fighting for freedom around the world. Its meaningful to be talking about free speech in this space across from where the First Amendment was drafted. Let us now, if you will, just look to Independence Hall and think aboutt those people drafting the words of the First Amendment and, praying for freedom,t protesting and then thinking of these words here and just feeling the light beaming between these two spaces to inspire ourselves through the rest of the discussion. Such an honor to be in this space and feel floodlight. Suzanne issued an important report about repression of riders and authors around the world. Its a daunting report, which in a granular way he talks about te volume of repression and the way that its exercised around the world including with what you call the long arm of authoritarianism were the regimes are chasing dissidents in america and free societies to try to rid their oppression. To tell us about that report and what we can learn. Thank you for having me. Its great to be part of this panel and discussion about the connections between freert speeh and around the world. In the report we call the freedom to write index and we do an annual count each year of the riders who are imprisoned around theis world. This w year, 2022 we counted 311 thats on top of another more than 500ro riders around the wod who may not be in prison but theyve been prosecuted or persecuted, hounded in some way over the last year because of the crime of expressing themselves. We saw the biggest fight in 2022 in your on not surprisingly a lot of women riders talking about the protest, participating in the protest being rounded up and in prison. We just gaveav an award last wek to a leading womens rights defender and dissident. She spent her whole adult life in and out of prison. She has a 16yearold twins who she hasnt been able to touch for i think seven years and has only talked to episodically. Her husband came to receive the award and spoke about what it is like for those who are on the front lines soge courageous. Shes organizingng in prison, educating other women. She wrote a book about the horrors of solitary confinement. So shes taking every minute even under the most repressed conditions to express herself, to breakthrough, to challenge herself. She smuggled out a message tole deliver to us on the occasion of this award. People like that for us are inspiring. Em they are a reminder of why we do the work that we do and we are seeing now around the world increasing and innovative tactics of repression surveillance that can unbeknownst to you you dont have to click on anything or open upan anything. It can take over your phone and drain every message that youre sending, everyry website that yu look at and provided that to a Security Service and that capability has been rolled out around the globe. The United States is now trying to rein it in. They can barely. So whenom it comes to our own national Security Services. For those who are taking the risk of challenging the governments, the work is more dangerous. At the same time we are part of an International Organization with centers and more than 100 countries around the world and the whole premise is the very kind of solidarity we are yvtalking about. The idea that riders who are free to express themselves have a kind of duty to use their voice to speak out on behalf of others so that those who are at the most difficult and perilous situations know that at least they are not going to be alone, they wont be forgotten. If they take risks we will advocate and demand their freedom. We will rally. Riders and artists who have International Profiles and can make these names known and put pressure on governments to release them so thats the premise of our organization. But the American Branch of course a we have a special responsibility when it comes to the defense of free speech in our own country and i think you very eloquently talked about how important our own freedoms and Constitutional Values are here not just because of the society they enabled for all of us but also because of what they represent around the world so for us its become important to take on what we see as a new and intensifying threats to free speech in our own country and we recognize the kind of an morning of free speech on both the right and the left that it takes on different forms. It can be informal outrage culture that takes certain topics of discussion almost off the table, because if you dare mention them, what youre going to get in response may be vilification, threats, intimidation affecting our College Campuses, the media, corporations, and there are pressing issues that we need to be abled to talk about as a society. We need to be able to talk about Racial Justice and about gender. We need to be able to talk about israel and palestine. We cant take these things off limits. On the other side, we see a really unprecedented pattern of the book banning and legislative eprohibitions on what can be taught a and studied in american classrooms. These are tactics when i came i thought they still work on book bands, that seems oldfashioned. I didnt realize anybody was banning books anywhere. Its now become a pretty ferocious National Trend where weve documentedha more than 4,0 books over the last year. Even if you feel like some things are going wrong in classrooms or that certain discussions have gone too far or maybe we ought to pull p back hw we are treating certain issues, the resort to ban and legislation to me if w we look t whats behind us it cannot be the right answer. We need to beap able to grapple with of these difficult ideas and send our children the message that books b are not dangerous. They are teachers and librarians and school administrators. They shouldnt be intimidated. That we need to cultivate a democratic citizenry and atmosphere of openness to all people and ideas even those difficult that may make us uncomfortable. So to me theres a very powerful lens between what we are trying to address here in our own country and the work we do around the world. Thank you for giving us a sense of the work and for distinguishing between the threats to free speech ranging from the cancellation on the left to book banning on the right. Give us a sense of the ways that free speech has threatened the authoritarian regimes like russia and elsewhere. It seems obvious but its important for all of us to hear you talk about the ways that its threatened. Help us understand the way its written. If you go in jail for two years, nine years for facebook posts, and thats what we do for expressing their views and social media, so here sitting in the great hall the greatest foundation of democracy built. 65 of people on the planet if you come into the democracy by the way. There still 65 freedom of speech is the first target. Thats how it starts whether its nazi germany, putin, china were trying just to speak their mind. By the way, i couldnt lose this opportunity to extend the story, the commencement speech in Georgetown University whose appearance called this and its a motto singlestory. Arguably the most famous political prisoner now in the world but many of his statements regarding the politics have enraged people especially ukrainians. They diminishing comments about crimea and occupation in some parts of georgia. With many individuals and organizations recently under the samesi attack. It was a little different i will explain it since you brought it up if thats okay. We had a situation we joined. I had been in ukraine in december of last year and was talking to some of my colleagues at an organization we partnered with and they were telling me about russian authors fighting on the front lines and i thought it would be interesting to get them here in the United States. It cann to be an event of russn dialogue if we knew. Wed talke