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Is the principle of free speech being weaponized to legitimize harmful ideologies like racism, sexism, and transphobia?

About Anthony:

Anthony Leaker is a principal lecturer in cultural and critical theory at the University of Brighton. His academic work primarily focuses on political philosophy, critical theory, and issues surrounding free speech and its societal implications. Leaker is best known for his book Against Free Speech (2020), where he argues that the traditional liberal defense of free speech is often co-opted to serve right-wing political agendas and justify the marginalization of oppressed groups.

In Against Free Speech, Leaker critiques the way free speech is invoked in modern political debates, particularly how it has been used to legitimize reactionary movements and suppress marginalized voices. He explores contemporary events such as the Charlie Hebdo attacks, Brexit, and the rise of Donald Trump to analyze how free speech is frequently framed as a neutral right, when in reality, it can be a tool of power structures.

Episode Transcript

John Tomasi: John Stuart Mill in his classic book on liberty writes, quote, he who knows only his own side the case, knows little of that, close quote. Today on Heterodox Out Loud, we'll be talking with a prominent critic of free speech, Anthony Leaker. Let's see what Anthony might teach us about that side of the case. Anthony Leaker, welcome to Heterodox Out Loud.

Anthony Leaker: Thanks for having me.

John Tomasi: It's really a pleasure to have you on. I think I told you that you wrote this, I think, kind of remarkable book called Against Free Speech in 2020. And I first heard about your book when I first joined Heterodox Academy in 2022. And I read it and it really kind of, it just, it really, that deep in my understanding of things raised lots of questions for me and we're going to talk about your book and your other ideas in this episode. So I just want to really thank you for joining us and I really appreciate the chance to talk with you. That's really very kind. Thank And so just let me begin by talking a bit about you and who you are and how you got to be where you are. So you're a senior lecturer in cultural and critical theory at the University of Brighton.

Anthony Leaker: Can you tell us about how you came to be a professor? Did you always know? What was the path? No, I didn't always know. I did my undergraduate in a kind of normal way and I did a master's after that and it was literature and philosophy. So that was up until I was about 22 years old. And then I went to Paris ostensibly to learn French so that I could potentially do a PhD on Samuel Beckett. So I thought if I'm going to write about Samuel Beckett, who kind of, I wrote my master's on Samuel Beckett. I thought, right, I need to read him in French. But then I just stayed in Paris and I forgot about the PhD and I lost interest in Beckett. No, I mean, I'm still interested, but I lost interest in a PhD. And then seven years.

John Tomasi: Can I ask, how old were you then, roughly, in your 20s?

Anthony Leaker: I'd say, yeah, early 20s, 22 to, yeah, I stayed in Paris at 27, so I think, yeah, I think I must have been 22, 23.

John Tomasi: Right.

Anthony Leaker: And I was teaching in Paris, but like as a language assistant, so it wasn't that academic. It was just, I think French people at university speak English, have someone in the room who's a native English speaker, right? So, and that was good, and then I kind of just drifted around, and then maybe 10 years later when I was about, I can't remember now, I decided to do a PhD and it was on Don DeLillo, the American novelist, and at Wittgenstein. So it's looking at how the ordinary and the extraordinary interplay in Wittgenstein and DeLillo. So using Wittgenstein to read DeLillo. So nothing to do with free speech, nothing to do with the kind of cultural politics that I got into. And that was done at the University of Sussex. So I'm in Brighton. Sussex is placed based in Brighton and a teaching opportunity came up here at the University of Brighton and that's more or less how it happened. I mean I guess once I started the PhD I did think yes I do want to become an academic or a professor but that that wasn't till I was kind of in my 30s.

John Tomasi: Prior to that I wasn't really sure. I was interested when I read that you'd worked on Wittgenstein and DeLillo. I studied Wittgenstein, my background's in philosophy. I discovered DeLillo just very recently, just maybe seven or eight years ago and started reading around Mao II and some of his other pieces. I love that author. I think it's just fabulous.

Anthony Leaker: Yeah, DeLillo's great.

John Tomasi: He came to Brown as part of a conference a few years. I taught at Brown for years. And he came, he deliberately came to Brown for a conference. Oh, I don't know. Around the time I started reading him, maybe five or six years ago. And I have a drawing that I did of him sitting up in front, giving his lecture. I sketched him out because I'm kind of a fanboy.

Anthony Leaker: way. That's great. So now, what kind of courses do you teach now? You teach across the curriculum, I think. Yeah. So it's an interdisciplinary kind of program. It's a humanities program, almost like a liberal arts program. Yes and no. But we teach kind of thematically. So I might do something on cultural conflict, which looks at the ways in which cultural texts can both kind of help us understand conflict, can legitimize conflict, but also So maybe contest it, so Northern Ireland, South Africa, Middle East, those kind of places where cultures played a significant role in both during the kind of conflict but also post-conflict, you know, how can cultural texts, novels, films help us kind of understand conflict in a different way than traditional politics, I guess. I teach kind of philosophy and literature, which is, you know, my background. So just examining the kind of philosophical nature of literature and the literary nature philosophy, so Wittgenstein kind of embodies that for me. It's very literary kind of writing. I teach about Islamophobia, so kind of race and resistance. That's probably the one that's closest to the ideas in the book, actually. I teach kind of ethics, some ethics, like transhumanism, stuff like that. So, quite diverse. It's quite a diverse portfolio, really. Yeah.

John Tomasi: Nice. So I want to talk about your book against free speech. And as part of the conversation, you should feel free to talk about applications of the contemporary issues on campus. There's a lot going on in the UK and in the US over the past year, especially. There's the Office for Student Initiative in the UK that we've been following on this podcast. So we're interested in a variety of things we can talk about. Well, let's start with talking about the book. What I'd love to do is get some of the main ideas out on the table. I'm just going to start with a question you asked on the first page of your book, and you write, what rational person could possibly object to a universal value such as free speech? Without it, without free speech, what would our society look like, an authoritarian police state? So, what rational person could possibly Can you tell us something about what your worries are about free speech?

Anthony Leaker: Okay, so the title really should have been against free speech in inverted commas, but that would have been too annoying, I think, to have an inverted commas in the title. But effectively, that is what I'm arguing against, is the way free speech is used. it isn't free speech as a principle, because yeah, on paper, in theory, free speech is essential, incredibly important, as everyone who defends it argues, you know, it underpins democracy, it underpins our ability to engage in civilized discussions. I mean, it's so many things that we could kind of list that free speech does for us. But I think that's largely mythical that it doesn't actually operate like that in our liberal, let's say neo-liberal capitalist society because there's so many divisive power imbalances. So I wanted to think historically, and by historically I mean situate free speech as a historical principle that operates in practical terms. So it's quite a pragmatic approach of saying, well, how does it actually operate when we look at the way free speech is used, the way used as a kind of slogan, the way it's used as a tool, the way it's used as a set of arguments, does it actually do what its defenders thought it does? And I would argue that in a lot of cases, in the UK, in the US, in France, they have the most kind of obvious examples, it doesn't actually do that, but supports those in power. It supports and upholds the status quo, which is, is, I would argue, the same kind of white supremacist. And by white supremacist, I don't mean in the sense of extremists. I just mean a kind of ideology that makes whiteness normative so that it defends a kind of blindness to the racialization of white people, right? It would position non-white people as Muslims or as black or as this, that, and the other. But it presumes whiteness as a norm.

John Tomasi: I want to ask you about the connection of free speech and racism and alt-right movements too. But let me just, again, just store it as an intro. Another line from yours, up from the book, again, right from the beginning, page four. I have a heavily marked up top of your book, I read it, I think, three times, I've learned so much from it. But you say, on page four, there are two main reasons to be against free speech, first because of the way it has been weaponized, legitimized racist, sexist, transphobic, xenophobic, and Islamophobic speech and action. Second, because of the ideological role that plays in legitimizing liberalism as a ruling or hegemonic ideology. So those are sort of two main theses. One about the way it's used, it's been weaponized, that it's something practical, but that doesn't make it less important, obviously, but potentially a practical concern about the way it's actually used. But then there's something deeper, right? The idea that free speech is widely thought to be central to the whole idea of governance, and you've signaled some worrying about that whole form of governance. Is that what you mean by that?

Anthony Leaker: Yeah, so, I mean, this is why I'm flattered that you've even read the book, let alone taken time to think about it and said such nice things about it.

John Tomasi: Because obviously- Anthony, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I've done more than that. I mentioned this to you in an email, but when I read the book, I started telling all my free speech friends about it, so Nadine Strossen, Greg Lukianoff, John Knight, I sent them a message saying, you have to read this book, and they said, it's against free speech? Well, that's right, we're supposed to be learning things and trying to understand our own view better, discover our hypocrisies if we have them, and so anyway.

Anthony Leaker: The reason I'm so flattered is because exactly the main argument is against the views outlined in the Heterodox Academy, right Greg? Those people you name, they make very strong, clear, powerful arguments, but they are the people I'm most interested in arguing with, so I'm deeply flattered that you've engaged with it.

John Tomasi: Because I'm not interested in an argument with the extremists, with the kind of libertarians or with Tommy Robinson in the UK or any of the people in that first category that you gave two reasons. One, the way it's been used. So the way it's been used by Geert Wilders, Tommy Robinson, Trump, a whole load of people in these different, in the context of the US, UK, Australia as well, probably. They've been banging this free speech Trump, Nigel Farage in the UK, who's just become more and more successful, right? He's now an MP and it just got elected for government and people. But your objection on that weaponization side is not just that some people use free speech to defend reprehensible positions. Your view is stronger, I think. You're saying that there's an entire pattern we can look at. And this is one of the things that struck me about your book. You had this description early on where you say that there's kind of a strange version or an audit. Look, if you add power to the equation, what we often find is that the most well-known advocates of free speech are people in positions of considerable power. And the people who criticize free speech on the campus context, for example, are typically either are or they're claimed to be speaking for people with much weaker social positions, for example. Would you want to Do you want to say more about that? So it's not just there's a few bad actors using the free speech, right? You're saying it's only more pervasive than that, I think.

Anthony Leaker: Yeah, absolutely, and it reinforces the kind of power imbalance. The strongest, most well-known advocates for free speech have been establishment white men who've gained incredible platforms by doing so. Geert Wilders has also become an incredible... in Holland, in the Netherlands, he was banging the free speech drum probably 15 years ago in relation to being able to say things that everybody wants to hear about Muslims, right? He's been banging the kind of Islamophobic drum for years and he won the Dutch elections whenever it was six months ago. But yes, all of these people using these arguments, they infer the existing power structures by portraying themselves as the victims. I've been silenced or me, I'm not allowed to say these truths, which has the impact or the effect of actually silencing the people in minority positions, the people who are trying to kind of make themselves heard. So that might be trans people just trying to kind of point out to the wider society that life might be difficult or challenging in certain spaces, in university spaces or in other kind of spaces in society that haven't kind of got the awareness of what it's like to be a trans person. So this is my point. It just seems to me they're trying to kind of get themselves heard, right? And they immediately get silenced, usually by people in a very, very strong position, who then say, oh, no, if there's a backlash, they're being silenced and it's a threat to free speech, etc., etc. So they use free speech to defend their position, which is the position of the strong already. And it operates to, I mean, to me it's an almost like an industry, you know, it operates to amplify their profile, amplify their voices. It legitimizes the arguments they're making that may or may not be transphobic, but certainly in some cases there has been a lot more acceptability, I would say, in the mainstream of say racist views being heard on mainstream networks. Not that the mainstream network is necessarily advocating it, but they're saying, well, these people have these views, Nigel Farage, Donald Trump, et cetera. They are very popular. We need to give them a platform. That's kind of almost the BBC's official policy. We need to have balance. So if we have someone who's against trying to raise awareness about climate change, we need to have a denialist on there. Now, to me that's nuts. We don't need to have a denialist on there because it's not up for debate. Likewise, we don't need to have someone who's racist on a given a platform because it shouldn't be up for debate. I mean, I would at some point in this discussion, hopefully we can borrow down a bit into what the Heterodox Academy means by controversial ideas, right? So it's quite a neutral kind of language that the Heterodox Academy use. I think it's very convincing in itself, but I worry about, okay, but what are those controversial ideas? Because that's the issue for me. If the controversial idea, I don't know, some controversial ideas, I think, maybe deserve a platform other stone. That's what I would have reservation about this kind of, let's call it, neutral approach that the Heterodox Academy, it seems to me, tries to defend. Which seems very valiant in some ways, but deeply dangerous enough. Fair enough. Fair enough. I'm being gracious with you and you're being gracious with me, so let's work. We're agreeing so far. One of the moves in the book that I found really interesting was that you distinguish arguments of principle, which are typically couching abstract terms, say John Stuart Mill's defense of free speech and non-liberty. And then you distinguish that from questions about power, context, and the specifics of each case. Can you just say a little bit about that distinction? It seemed to me sometimes that you were saying that there really is no such thing or it's just a mirage to talk about these abstract principles. There really is only context. Is that what you would say? You're kind of on the edge there, it seemed to me in some ways. Let me do one more specific question that might help with this, but it might not. Just thinking about some of the people to whom I recommended your book, a dozen or more prominent people. I know each and every one of them would say that they affirm the abstract principle of free speech in a content-neutral way. There'll be some restraints on time, place, manner, restrictions, and sort of First Amendment-y in the American context, First Amendment-y kind of restrictions to allow a healthy free speech zone. But they would all say that they would support the speech of a trans person explaining their struggles in the world or on campus, they would all say that they're for speech, not just for themselves, not just for racists, but for everybody.

John Tomasi: So that principle is what they stand by. Can you erode that or would you wanna challenge that by an approach to context or how does the principle context distinction work for you in the face of that kind of reply from them?

Anthony Leaker: Okay, so can I come back to that?

John Tomasi: Yeah, do it the way you want, do it anyway you want.

Anthony Leaker: So the main reason I think that getting involved in an argument against principle, I would probably lose, right? Because the principle is sound. So partly it's just strategic on my part. I'm just saying John Stuart Mill's argument is very good. Most arguments for the principle of free speech are very sound and very good. It's an ideal. It works as an ideal. But I think it obfuscates how free speech actually operates in our society. So I'm saying, we don't need to get brought into these arguments because that's just attracting us from the real issues here, and the real issues here are that there are power imbalances. So sure, most free speech defenders want to defend all people's points of view. They absolutely say free speech needs to be defended so that trans people can be heard. I absolutely get that. And they say if you don't defend trans people, well, let's say if you don't defend people may be critical of certain trans views, then you're not going to also be able to defend trans views. I mean, we might have to bring up the whole Palestine issue because that's a really live illustration of that kind of argument, especially as it's pre-played out in the US in the last eight, 10 months. Could you tell us how you think about that? I definitely will in a minute. I'll come back to it, don't worry. Yeah, yeah. Firstly, principle is sound, but it obfuscates. I think it obfuscates the details of what's going on in most actual free speech arguments. And so in actual free speech arguments, where an authority or an institution or authority figure is using free speech to kind of defend their view or the view of someone who has been challenged, challenged, I think we need to focus on what it is that they're being challenged for, right? I don't want to talk about principle of free speech if Nigel Farage, Geert Wilders, or Milo Yiannopoulos, I mean, these are all a bit dated, these references, because obviously the book was based around- I know these references. No, I'm thinking of some of the listeners. When I talk to my students about this, if it comes up, I just feel like, oh, it should be noted that the book was a response to a particular time period, which is when this was really, really live, right? It was much more in the press. I mean, I think that what's happened on US campuses around protests in favor of Palestine raises really important free speech issues, but it's not the same as that kind of slightly cynical way that free speech was being used during that kind of culture war period from, say, 2015 to 2018, which the coddling of the American mind kind of articulated quite well, you know, those kind of, which the Heterodox Academy was kind of responding to, FIRE was responding to. So yeah, to what extent my argument is relevant to this particular day and age, I'm not sure, in that my references are a bit dated. But anyway, I want to say each time this principle is invoked, it is helping in certain ways to legitimize those views that people were trying to challenge. So the racist homophobic views of certain people, the trans, you know, homophobic views of say, JK Rowling in the UK context. It's like principle just comes in as this kind of battering ram and then we stopped talking about the actual issues that people wanted to talk about. Because the issue, so the issue, that's the point you made as well that I was struck by that, for example, in the face of campus protesters, it's often the case that people will make the issue or turn their attention to the question about this abstract principle of free speech, rather than attending closely to the criticisms and the experiences that led these people to be protesting. So I'm interested in that. But let me ask you something on the racism side. Advocates of free speech, when people say, well, free speech principles are content neutral, they'll allow racist speech. Free speech people often say, well, the best response to racist speech There's more speech. What do you what do you think about that? I think that's Insulting I think it I mean Tim Timothy Garton Ash argues that you know He even says something like you need to develop a thick skin, which I mean it's quoted in the book I should find the extra quote, but it seems Hey, I just don't think it's gonna be more effective right because racism isn't just about speech. It's a deep structural issue So, I don't think you're going to defeat racism by pointing out the absurdity of racist views. You can be the calmest, most rational person, with brilliant arguments, you could be Shakespearean in your dismantling of a racist view. I don't think it's going to change them, and I don't think it's going to change society. It might change one individual's view, and I think there's a place for brilliant Shakespearean arguments, absolutely. I don't think that we should not try to make arguments against racism. But I think there's a whole set of other issues. But the really important thing is that there's a power imbalance, right? Racism is effective because of the pre-existing power structure, right? So this is why I don't believe in reverse racism, because this black person using an insult to me about my whiteness just isn't going to have the impact. It doesn't have the historical legacy. It doesn't have the social, political, cultural context. It's just not the same thing. There's just no equivalent. In the US, right, you've got the history of slavery, you've got the history of Jim Crow, you've got the history of decades, centuries of abuse. And any racist slur, unfortunately, is going to tap into that history. That's why it's so powerful. That's why it's so effective because this is much wider context and the white person is an embodiment of a power structure. Whether that white person themselves is individually powerful or not doesn't matter because they are embodying a structural context which gives them power. And when you express that concern that our focus should be on the ways free speech actually operates in context, not just on the abstract question of whether we like it or it's a good idea philosophically, But when you make that point, are you saying that is it a point about how reason works in the world or what role reason has in the world?

John Tomasi: Because sometimes when I think about recent things you write about criticizing free speech, I think you're criticizing the idea that arguments and ideas and expositions and examples and evidence doesn't actually move the world, that actually moves people and moves the world as much more contextualized, intuitive, sensitive feeling, perhaps. Are you skeptical of reason? Is being skeptical of free speech connected to being skeptical of the power of reason?

Anthony Leaker: No, I believe in the power of reason. I mean, I'm an academic, after all. I'm not skeptical of reason, but I guess I would be skeptical of the way reason has been used in the same way. Reason inadvertent commas has been used as a kind of tool historically. If you think about the Enlightenment as the age of reason, the Enlightenment as a set of European thinkers saying we need to overcome superstition, power of inherited monarchies, power of religion, all of these things which are really, really useful and historically incredibly significant and I'm not trying to dismiss it. But at the same time, reason was used as a way to legitimize that group of people, white Europeans and white European men, right? Men are in possession of reason, women less so. Women are guided by the emotions. So you get that kind of misogyny, kind of legitimization of patriarchy, I think that derives from the advocation of reason, the denial of reason to colonize people, right? So colonization was just my saying we are the rational ones, we have a, but also you could argue, I mean this is Adorno's argument to a certain extent, I'm butchering it and cartooning it, but you know the way that it legitimized the total mastery and control of nature. Now you could argue that the kind of climate catastrophe started then in that kind of colonial age of reason period, where Locke and other philosophers made this argument that we can control nature. So I'm not against reason, I'm not against arguments. I believe in, you know, we should all educate ourselves as much as possible to become as kind of nuanced in our use of rationality. And I absolutely agree with the Heterodox Academy about the importance of proper debate and conversation. I absolutely agree with all of that. You need to join us. Yeah, well maybe. I'll follow up with an email asking to join. No, I'd like to because it's important to have discussions with the people that you might not necessarily agree with. I agree with your, yeah, I completely agree with the role and purpose of rigorous debate. I'm not disputing that. And I believe in reason. I just think it has been used as a tool in a similar way to free speech has been used as a tool, right? It's an ideological tool. That doesn't mean it's invalid. It doesn't invalidate it. Just as free speech in lots of contexts is completely valid. I mean, I say in the book, you know, if I lived in an authoritarian regime, all I would do is advocate free speech, but I don't. I live in a kind of horrible, topsy turvy neoliberal world where the media kind of is incredibly powerful.

John Tomasi: You mentioned John Locke a few minutes ago. I just want to bring you to one of the sections of your book that I found really striking. And it goes to this question that I struggle with a lot, that advocates of free speech seem to always be talking about John Stuart Mill as though there been no intellectual history or work on free speech since he wrote in the 1800s. And there's a line on page 77 I'll treat out. You say about free speech advocates, they claim to be interested in intellectual progress and challenging conventions, but they seem to have paid no serious attention to any of the significant intellectual developments of the last century. The texts they rely upon, again and again, refer to the thinking of Milton, John Locke, John Stuart Mill. And then you go on to say, I think you're actually quoting Brendan O'Neill here, that the old million ideal of the self began to wither away, and as you say, as though that happened through some sort of organic process, not as a result of a sustained critique from multiple academic disciplines and, therefore, as a sign of intellectual progress. So when I read that, I think it's striking. When I read that, I think about some of the most powerful historical critiques of the million idea. And for me, the most powerful critique is the power critique from Marcuse. So we think about repressive tolerance in 1968, but especially the postscript that came out in the 1969 edition of it, where he talks about, you know, he sort of says, John Stuart Mill, yeah, if there was an idea, is there an ideal situation, ideal speech situation where all the competing views would be put into play and we'd make progress together? Yeah, that's possible. But whether or not free speech is going to lead to those kinds of enlightening outcomes, Marcuse says, depends upon the preexisting structures of power in society. And as you know, Marcuse runs it, capitalists will have the voices, the workers and the poor will not have the voices. So free speech will simply replicate existing power structures. And that last formulation is the one that I hear the most on college campuses from when I talk to the students who deplatform people and do some of these things that HxA and FIRE and other groups oppose. They say that free speech advocates are blind to power, just because in the same way that John Stuart Mill was in some ways, in that formal sense, at least blind to power. Do you want to to say anything about that? I mean, and so this, this is a question of intellectual development. How do we take our, if we're a free speech advocate, shouldn't we take Marcuse's critique seriously? What does it mean to take it seriously? What, you know, do you have any thoughts about that?

Anthony Leaker: Yeah. I mean, I, I, yeah. I mean, I agree with Marcuse and I agree with the students on campus. I, I, I don't know the bit you quote from me where I say they seem to, free speech advocates don't seem to have engaged with any of the developments. I mean, I'm not sure that's entirely fair. I probably am being a bit rhetorical there. I would imagine that some more so than others.

John Tomasi: Anthony, in fairness, you're a bit rhetorical often in the book.

Anthony Leaker: Yeah, exactly. No, that's very true. That's fair to say.

John Tomasi: That's part of why it's a great read, actually.

Anthony Leaker: I know, but that's true. It is rhetorical. But I would argue in my defense that I'm responding to Brendan O'Neill's use of rhetoric, right? I mean, Brendan O'Neill, who is someone I I argue with quite a bit or site to argue with is a great writer, right? I mean, he's he's he's so it's a bit of kind of tip for that, I suppose. But it is the case that a lot of free speech arguments do invoke Mill and Milton. And yes, so yes. And and I guess Marcuse has been a bit kind of overlooked to a certain extent, but maybe because Marcuse was responding to a particular time And again, I guess the defense would be, free speech defense would be, that's because what Mill presents us with is a more timeless argument, this is an argument of principle. And again, I'm trying to kind of situate things historically, say, how does free speech actually operate in our society? How does, not even the free speech, right? So how does free speech when it's used as an argument, we must defend free speech, da, da, da, how does it operate in that sense? but also how do arguments operate? How does reason operate? Is reason really the, I hate to keep mentioning him, but I wouldn't say Trump is the most brilliant user of reason or rationality, but he's an excellent performer. He's very clever. He knows what he's doing. He knows how to attract an audience. He knows how to move an audience. Would Marcuse compete well with Trump, with Adorno, with Kant, with Descartes? not sure they would, you know, or contemporary philosopher with, you know, can't think of a kind of brilliant contemporary American philosopher at the moment. But that's terrible.

John Tomasi: But I just thought the first thing I was going to say was Stanley Cavell and he died not too long ago. But let me let me go back to something you said a minute ago about about John Stuart Mill, and maybe it's enduring because it's an abstract argument and it has an appealed principle. But I find, I find, I find elements of the Marcuse critique to be equally enduring and equally sort of structurally abstract enough to survive that moments. And so, for example, with Marcuse, you know, he captures it in a critique of capitalism. But for me, I'll just drop that out. And just, but the main, what lasts and endures, I think, as a critique of Mill, this idea that is this idea that free speech, the formal principles of free speech, will only produce the desired outcomes, the stated, the avowed desired outcomes of pursuing increasing knowledge if the existing power structures are of a certain type. And if the power structures are very imbalanced, Marcuse says, then a free speech platform will just reproduce those power imbalances, which goes back to the point we're making at the beginning of this conversation, I think the point that you make in your book, that there's something odd about the way that you see this inversion, where it's often very powerful, wealthy, white academics, people with a regular call in the New York Times and so on, who find themselves being canceled or deplatformed somewhere, and they're often now advocating for free speech. They've got the power, but their critics on campuses, you say again and again, are often people who are or at least who speak for, claim to speak for, or marginalized communities. Do you want to say anything more about that?

Anthony Leaker: Yeah, I mean, I completely agree with Marcuse, and I do think it's still the case that free speech can't fully operate in a society where there's such massive power imbalances. That's exactly the kind of society we're inhabiting now. It's much worse, arguably, than in Marcuse's day, right? Even with social media, you know, you could argue potentially that social media has democratized the capacity for individuals to be heard because it's not all owned by a certain giant media conglomerate. But the way that kind of algorithm seems to work, it still gives the platform to the people with other forms of power, wealth, status, whatever. So I don't know that social media has really challenged it. But yes, and I mean, And this is where I think there's a problem with my argument, I'm just going to acknowledge it here, and with Marcuse. It's hard to envisage a society where there isn't going to be a power differential. You know, we can advocate, he would have advocated communism, you know, you can advocate a kind of more equal society, but what would total equality look like? I'm not sure that that's possible. So I do want to argue that in an unequal society, hat free speech isn't going to properly work. It would work in an equal society. But we are not, I don't think it's pessimistic to say that we're never going to have a totally equal society because that's impossible. I don't think you could ever have a, you couldn't eradicate power, I don't think.

John Tomasi: So you added a premise now, you add another point. You're saying that power imbalances are a permanent feature of human societies. Even if we enforce the equality for a minute, within a few minutes, everyone would start moving and using their agency to change their positions. So if power imbalances are a permanent feature of society, then free speech advocates need to address that point all the more seriously. Because if they're really concerned about what we free speech advocates say we're concerned about, we're really concerned about pursuing the truth, improving our imperfect understandings of the world together by encountering other people and so on with different views, then that's going to be a constant struggle for us. We can't just say free speech, let's go. We have to say free speech and now let's look at the power and how is the power structures in this society or on this campus, let's say, structuring what the conversations are actually that are being expressed look like?

Anthony Leaker: Exactly. You know, Mill's criticized for kind of taking the seminar space, he wouldn't use that language, but like he makes this kind of argument as if free speech or as if society more widely is basically a seminar of well-read, well-informed people having a free and open discussion about a given issue, right? And he's criticized for that. But even that, even if you take a campus experience of a seminar group of, say, 15 people, even that would have huge power differentials, wouldn't it? Right? I mean, you'd have had that experience. You're in a room. There's all sorts of things going on that means that some people's voices are more powerful than others. Now, I wouldn't want to discard free speech. And this is why ultimately I'm not actually against free speech. The title itself is rhetorical. I'm just saying we need to question it. We need to more thoroughly interrogate it. I think free speech depends more than anyone else, as you just said. Let's take it seriously. Let's look at how speech actually operates in each given context and let's think about, I mean, a lot much less kind of sexy title would be something like in favor of deeply restricted contextualized free speech. Let me ask you about that. Let's get started. Because that's what I'm arguing for. It's just a recognition of the way speech operates in in all different contexts, and that it's different in a classroom to a law court to a football pitch, right? And in each case, we need to think about how free speech might operate there. And so it's kind of pragmatic approach in saying we don't need principle, we just need to be pragmatic.

John Tomasi: So then on that point, I gather you're sympathetic to some of the deplatforming movements. You talk about the case of Charles Murray at Middlebury, you talk about some other cases that were very much in the news when your book was coming out. And they're still propping up these things. Those kind of debates seem to be with us now sort of eternally. I sometimes think that the students finally read Marcuse, because you may remember Marcuse in that post-script. He says things like, if you deplatform, it doesn't determine the term, but if you shut down a speaker, that's no offense to free speech in any serious way. That's just a question of if you're and for the right reasons, for the right people's concerns, then that's fine. But do you think that too? Because you do seem to be sympathetic to some of the deplatforming movements. Do you suggest that we learn by people being deplatformed? You said at one point you say, quote, to be against free speech means to be for certain kinds of silencing. Are you for certain kinds of silencing? You said that a minute ago too, I think. Can you say something more about that?

Anthony Leaker: Yeah, okay. Yeah, I mean, I do think that racists should be silenced in certain platforms. There's enough spaces in our societies for racists to speak and have their voices heard, but we don't necessarily need to have them in a seminar room where we're discussing, I don't know, a different topic, right? Like, we might, I don't know, the history of Second We don't necessarily need to hear someone come up with some racist speech, so I would be in favor of certain kind of codes in a university setting, which mean that some forms of speech are legitimate and others aren't. And I just would say, listen, I'm not going to debate that. I don't want to hear racist speech in this classroom. That's not quite the same as deplatforming. But yes, I do think there's a space for saying, in this context, that form of speech is not acceptable. Because I think that's how society operates anyway. I think at the dinner table with our family, there are some ways of speaking that aren't acceptable. I think our society is governed by norms and codes that largely are unwritten and unspoken, but they operate and they can be silencing. And I think that's just the pragmatic acknowledgement of the way speech operates. Now, obviously, these free speech issues are much more politically freighted or weighted than family discussion around the dinner table. And that's why, arguably, we need to invoke a principle, because there's a conflict, right? Like, I want to say this about Palestine. You don't want me to say this about Palestine. Okay, well, what kind of moral principles can we appeal to to find out who has a right to speak? So I get why free speech arguments are made. But I would still argue that in almost all contexts, it's still a pragmatic issue rather than a principal issue, even in the Israel-Palestine issue. It's still an issue of who's got power, how it gets represented, how it gets narrativized in the media. I have no idea what the actual students are actually saying on a given American campus because I only have access to it through second- and third-hand reports. So I have no idea of the truth, but I know it's narrativized to serve a certain set of purposes, right? In both directions. So to me, the issue is how do narratives operate? How is representation being used politically? It's not a free speech issue.

John Tomasi: I'm trying to think about something you said about the way people reason that we, like Donald Trump has the power to move people, as you said, often by invoking not strictly logical arguments, but appealing to motifs and senses of allegiance and patriotism and possibilities, perhaps, tapping into a hidden sense of angst. And this is kind of maybe a hard case for free speech advocates, but I'll just try it on anyway, just because here we are together. You might say the same thing about Donald Trump's obstreperous and rude and crass ways of speaking, that he's bringing things to light that are being hidden by the powerful narratives, to the dominant, the two dominant parties in the US, that the status quo was hiding the felt concerns of a lot of people. Many of them, let's say working class people voices were not being listened to in a serious way. I've been kind of ignored by the coastal, coastal elites. I mean, this wouldn't undercut your argument to say the argument works to defend Donald Trump, but it sounds to me like it does. Do you have any thought about that? On the premise that, on the working assumption that we want to think about the, we want to evaluate the quality of discourse on its capacity to teach us things, to reveal structures of power that have kept certain things hidden. One might argue that the Trumpian phenomenon, I'll use that, I'll stay with that example when the Trumpian phenomenon is doing just that. Whatever one thinks about Donald Trump's candidacy and his politics, that there's something about making visible the hold on power that the two political parties have, how they repressed outside voices. Bernie Sanders was, for example, on the margin, so that's when Trump talks about that too. So, but this might be, and this is actually what I'm thinking behind, so I'll just now come put it on the table. It seems to me another argument for free speech that it's content neutral enough, even if you add the Marcusean point, it's still content neutral enough to serve, doesn't franchise people as well as powerful people. It's just a question of who will get up and make that inversion happen. So I'm analogizing the campus radicals who are shouting people down with Donald Trump doing his, you know, streperist rallies where he's talking about concerns of the unseen people. Now maybe you feel the unconscionable, Maybe you feel that stuff is in some deep sense, or maybe not deep sense, racist, and objectionable just straight up that way. But I don't know.

Anthony Leaker: Yeah, okay. I think Trump has tapped into things and has revealed things. I mean, I think we certainly have to give credit to, you know, we have to acknowledge that it's not all just empty rhetoric and sloganeering, that he has made legitimate claims. I think his point about media has a lot in common with left-wing critiques of the media. His point about CNN, New York Times being a kind of... He doesn't put it in these terms, but he's saying they present a certain kind of ideology, but they mask that ideology, and they don't give, they kind of present themselves as truth, but actually there's kind of all sorts of cunning modes of representation advocate in a certain kind of normative position. So I think it's kind of teak of the media is not far off the mark. I mean, it's totally self-serving, self-interested. And so in terms of parallels between Trump trying to bring to the surface the way power operates in the US and the way that kind of campus radicals might be doing it, yeah, there probably are parallels, but the campus radicals get demonized and get silenced and he gets more powerful. and the reason he gets more powerful is because he's got money and he's got a huge amount of supporters. But also I would argue he gets more powerful because even though there's this kind of critique of him, this critique he makes of the mainstream media, the mainstream media also kind of love him. Just as the mainstream media in the UK love Nigel Farage, they can't get enough. They can't get enough. They're almost excited. And in the more extreme the things that Trump or Farage say, the more the media laps it up, right, because they can kind of repeat it. Oh, members of your party, Nigel Farage said this homophobic stuff. This was the British press about two or three weeks ago. They love it. They're kind of almost salivating at the fact that all these people are saying these outrageous things because it generates copy. I mean, that would be just a very obvious way of analyzing why they get excited about it. But another one might be that actually there's, you know, this is what I argue in the book, that the liberal center arguably has helped mainstream far-right to a certain extent because there isn't a massive difference because even though I would say that people in the liberal center aren't racist or sexist or homophobic, they nonetheless want to defend tradition, a certain way of doing things. They want to defend reason. They want to defend these kind of liberal principles. But there's a refusal, in my view, refusal might not be the right word, but there's a disavowal of the way power operates within liberal societies. There's a disavowal of positionality, right? The real composition, like I'm positioned as a white, straight, male, middle-class male. And that positionality on my part is largely obfuscated. It's not perceived to be relevant in most settings, whereas the positionality of someone who's either black or young or gay or straight or female or trans, that's always already going to impact the way what they say is evaluated. Their speech content is going to be evaluated according to their position in a way that I don't think ours would be. So I think there's more parallels between the liberal center and the kind of right to far right that maybe the liberal center would like to acknowledge. But unconsciously, they're, let's say, unhappy bedfellows.

John Tomasi: Let me ask you about that. So I've had the experience.

Anthony Leaker: That seems quite extreme.

John Tomasi: Yeah. Well, it's less extreme than some things you say. And I think that's free speech, it seems to me. But that's fine. You throw out a lot of interesting ideas and there's lots of stuff. That's why I think it's such a fascinating book. But I've had the experience as a white male middle class person being a professor and teaching at Brown University for many years being called up by students who would say to me in the classroom, on my invitation, say, well, you're up there in the front of the classroom. You've got all the power. You're doing all this stuff. And I remember the first time that happened, I was kind of taken aback by it and kind of wrong-footed. And I thought, well, that's true, I guess. Then I thought, well, that seems like a reasonable point to make, but now let's talk about it together. What does that mean? So I'm up in the front of the classroom because I've been selected because I've done all this research, which I might like reading these things and you guys have just started reading them for the first time. Other reasons too. It means I need to be more thoughtful about my positionality and be aware of our biases. But isn't that exactly the same thing true of the student protestors, Students of color, for example, are wanting shutting speakers down because they think they know better in terms of, they think they have answers of what counts as a racist before the person even comes onto campus. Charles Murray, who you talk about in the book and the whole Middlebury thing, when I first arrived at Brown as a very young assistant professor, I saw a poster saying a discussion on Charles Murray's book, The Bell Curve. I went along to this meeting in a basement, a bunch of student radicals were there. I didn't see the small print that said International Social Organization was organizing that, but anyway, I went along. And the person was going on and on against how terrible the book was. And I said, well, have you read the book? Why is it called The Bell Curve? They hadn't read the book, so they didn't know why it was called The Bell Curve. So we wanna, how do we know in advance that someone's a racist? Do we have to then want the campus to know what they say? Maybe there's sometimes on a campus where, Do you think that, how do we, when are the people who shout down people justified in shutting them down?

Anthony Leaker: I mean, yeah.

John Tomasi: Would you say never?

Anthony Leaker: You asked 10, 20 minutes ago if I was in favor of deplatforming. And I mean, and I started saying, I am in favor of certain silencing because I just think that's inevitable and it's already happening. Deep platforming, I personally, I don't think would advocate deplatforming, but when students do it, it might be the case that pragmatically I might want to defend. That would be my position. That sounds like I'm kind of trying to snake my way out. I don't necessarily think deplatforming is a good idea. I would probably just choose to ignore the person. Having said that, I do think we need to raise awareness about who gets platformed and where and how. I mean, I do think there's a problem with people being given platforms when they just don't need these platforms. I'd like to go back to the Nigel Farage example. In the British election campaign, I would say he got more column inches and more soundbite stuff on the news than anyone else. Partly because the Labour Party and the Tory Party are boring, right? Fine. But, you know, he's been given this platform. So I'm not saying he should be deplatformed, but I'm saying do we need to give these people such massive platforms? That would be more mild. Anyway, however, When students deplatform people like Charles Murray, I feel that it's important to argue on their behalf because I think there's a history of students getting drastically badly misrepresented in the press. And I think that whole argument that students are snowflakes slash fascists, right, there's this weird argument made for five years or so. But arguably it's still happening. I don't know why I said, right, students aren't, and this is Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt in The Coddling of the American Mind, right? Like students have lost the ability to really enter into rational debate because they're all super sensitive and there's historical reasons for this. But now we have to tread on eggshells around students because everything's an issue and we have to be worried about being called out for microaggressions, la, la. They're basically snowflake students. So these incredibly fragile, vulnerable people, and they need to toughen up. And I think their argument is they should take up cognitive hate and looking on us arguments. They need to take up some CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy to deal with their issues. This is personal, to which I would say it's a structural issue. I don't think it's personal. I'm not denying that there's not students with a whole set of serious mental health issues, because that's a whole other discussion.

John Tomasi: Let me pause on that point, Peter. That was another one of the sections of your book found really interesting. You said about John Haidt and some others that they do act sometimes as though if students could just get some seat cognitive behavioral therapy training, then everything would be solved, which ignores the question, well, how legitimate are their grievances? What is the experience of a young person facing the job market today? How do they think about their anxiety about loss of values or meaning in their lives? and all these kinds of things we often hear from young people. And that goes to what you were saying before earlier in this conversation, that the free speech people we claim that we're for the progress and that we're for learning from people who see the world differently than we do, who are going to add their perspective to our perspective so we have a better better perspective and we hope to do that with them too. We do it with each other. And yet it often seems to be the case that whole groups of people like on campuses, are set apart and sort of demonized as the other by free speech advocates very often. Now, it's because they often behave in ways that are beyond the pale, and they're not good faith actors sometimes, but it still doesn't remove the whole question about why is it often students of color, for example, on campus who are raised in these concerns. Now, maybe they've been brainwashed, this is one line, they've been brainwashed, they've been tricked by the activist departments, and they're not really expressing legitimate concerns, but who knows that? How do you know that, right? We need to ask people and take them at their word, I would assume.

Anthony Leaker: I mean, surely you know from your history of your experience of being a professor that the idea that students would be brainwashed by us just seems so far-fetched. I don't think, do you really think we have that kind of power to brainwash them? I can't even get them to read a book, let alone brainwash them. I think students pick up language and they pick up moves, which is part of that education. But I'm not sure if it's from fellow academics. I think it's from each other. I'm not sure that we are powerful enough. And I'm not sure we're even, I don't know. I mean, I find that the idea that we have the power to, I'm not saying we're not influential. I'm not saying that we don't put certain ideas in the head, but brainwashing seems very strong. I mean, I just don't think we're that powerful. I don't know, maybe in other universities, maybe that's more about me than about other universities. Yeah, you know, maybe someone like Judith Butler, maybe she does have the power. They do have the power to brainwash people, right?

John Tomasi: They are absolutely brilliant, right? I mean incredibly powerful speaker. So so maybe but I'm not I'm not sure We're coming up on to the end of this conversation Finish about the snowflakes for fascists On the one hand students are snowflakes on the other hand They're almost operating like fascists and their ability to silence us. That seems like a contradiction so I Whenever there's this case of students doing D platforming or and they get represented in the press I just feel like, are they being accurately represented? Are their grievances being properly heard? Are they being given the kind of nuanced reporting that we might want for our own views?

Anthony Leaker: That's all I think. I wouldn't give a blanket like, oh yes, all D platforming is a good set of political tactics. No, not necessarily. But I do think that in most cases where it's happened, And the person who's been to platform seems to come out with their voices being heard and not the students.

John Tomasi: I want to ask you for a closing question to talk a bit about debates. And as we both know, one remedy that free speech people often advocate or one approach they often advocate on campuses is that they should have more debates, we should have two speakers with different viewpoints, you know, who can get out and print them. When you express some skepticism of that, you'd say that debates are kind of polarizing and you make this point that most academic disciplines do not rely upon debates to further knowledge. You know, we have presentations and conversations, but not like a debate where people are taking cheap points. And you say, and this is a line that I really love and I just want to share it with you, free speech warriors seem unable to countenance is that there might exist alternative modes of learning, that a constructive, supportive environment might lead to deeper engagement with challenging material, but there might exist different, even better, modes of pursuing truth, practicing democracy, and developing one's moral autonomy than barking sound bites or being controversial. And you say simple things such as collaborating, listening, and being respectful, or interrogating, acknowledging one's privileges and prejudices. And HxA is something we call the HxA way. But I'd love to put it up on the screen just to have you look at it for a second. So here's the case. This is an ideal... You know, HxA is interested in culture. How do we improve the culture on our campuses? Not just the free speech rules. That's more fires. We're friendly with fire. We're allies, I suppose, in this whole thing. But HxA really focuses on the culture. And so these are sort of things we encourage people to use in all our events. Make your case with evidence. Be intellectually charitable. Be intellectually humble.

Anthony Leaker: Be constructive and be yourself. I completely agree with that. I completely agree really just about debates. I mean, I guess what I'm thinking there is the kind of Ben Shapiro thing, right? Like the way that Ben Shapiro gets, and this might not be fair on him, I don't know, but you know, he gets represented as this kind of person who can destroy the Libs arguments, blah, blah, blah. You know, as if debating is a game of chess or something. I don't think that's that useful, that construction. It's not about winning, is it? But that, yeah, I mean, what you argue, I completely agree with that. Make your case of evidence to be intellectually charitable and humble. I put a lot of thought into the idea of neutrality in universities and the Kalven Report. Fundamentally, I tried to produce an argument disagreeing with the Hedgerstock schedule, but I couldn't agree with it. What's there to disagree with other than a much bigger argument about the impossibility of neutrality. I'm not sure neutrality is possible, but pragmatically, the kind of pragmatic steps that the Heterodox Academy outline that each university should follow in terms of trying to kind of maintain a kind of neutral space, and certainly in terms of requiring that the administration doesn't make political statements. That seems like a given to me.

John Tomasi: I just want to read again, I want to close by reading again this line of yours that I read a minute ago, but I'm just going to read it again about your ideal, about how we might learn better on campuses. And you say that again, quote, simple things such as collaborating, listening and being respectful or interrogating and acknowledging one's privileges and prejudices. Those to me, those to me sound like what the work of university should be, that there's something gone wrong when advocates of free speech too readily accept a narrative of good guys fighting bad guys. There are some people who oppose free speech maybe more vehemently than you do. So in the book, you're such a lovely person to speak with. The book has a more rhetorical edge and you drop some bombs in there as you know, which is probably why it's such an exciting read and really, really useful. There's a lot of light thrown by some of the fires that you light on those, in those pages of that book, torching some of my friends along the way. But you know, it's not personal, right? I mean, if Greg Lukianoff or Jonathan Haidt were here, it's not personal.

Anthony Leaker: I know that now.

John Tomasi: You're breathing the book.

Anthony Leaker: I didn't know that. I hope it doesn't seem personal. I mean, I'm hoping, yeah, I mean, in a way there's formative contradiction, isn't there? I've just said that about Ben Shapiro and it's not useful and yet I'm also kind of, as I've acknowledged in your pointing out, I am quite rhetorical in the book at times. I do kind of call people out and maybe frame them in certain ways that are a bit unfair. You know, there's a kind of, partly I'm trying to do it in a humorous way. So I maybe point out kind of quite extreme thing that Jonathan Haidt argues about democracy. Well, he makes a parallel between Trump and the universities. And I'm like, dude, they're not the same.

John Tomasi: Anyway, let's look into that, finish what you're saying, sorry. Well, I was just going to say that those ideals you described are, I think, there's a question about politics and free speech in the political realm. And that's this question about what special roles free speech principals might have on a college campus. And I believe, and I think you do too, that on the college campus, we owe a special responsibility take care with one another, to listen even when it's hard to listen, to not just cast people aside because of their actions. Some people are going to make mistakes, and we should call those mistakes, I believe, stand by the principles. And many of the protesters, I think, it was a mixture. I visited campuses last year, a protest, the encampments at Columbia at NYU and at Brown. I was on there talking to students there. And it's a complex cocktail of the personnel in those encampments. And there were some, without any question, who are there to cause ham. And some are intellectually committed to that. They want to take down liberal society, which you flirt with a little bit in the book, and those two reasons to be against free speech. And some people, I talk to students who are, you know, this is part of the revolution. This is a move we need to make rhetorically to take out free speech so that we can take out liberalism and bring down the capitalist society. But lots of the students are there because they're deeply concerned about the death toll and the rising body counts, and they're sincerely upset about it, and they want their two other universities to do something, which I think opens up the possibility of having conversations about what the university is, what kind of speech they owe each other on this campus, and what does it mean to have any, they're gonna deplatform someone, maybe you should be thoughtful first about, are you acting now like those good guys and bad guys mean who they are and everyone's fixed in their place? Shouldn't we be more like the kind of community that you described so beautifully that passage that I read twice, of imperfect learners coming together to try to actually with humility find their way better.

Anthony Leaker: Yeah, I mean, I agree, but in some cases certain groups of people might need a leg up, right? That would be my argument, you know, that I would be in favor of affirmative action, I would be in favor of certain kind of interventions to disrupt the so-called neutrality because I don't think the neutrality is there. I think neutrality is always going to be in favor of a certain group of people over other groups of people on that. So, yes.

John Tomasi: On affirmative action, though, in the U.S. context, for example, there's a massive imbalance ideologically on the faculties and then even more so on the administration between people who lean left and people who lean right. So if you take the Marcusean point and put it on campuses today, the power structures are very much one-sided. Would you advocate affirmative action for Republican speakers or people on the right to remedy that imbalance?

Anthony Leaker: Okay. I mean, again, why I'm against dark principle because they're usually... They can't run in weird ways. They can't run in weird ways. I have an argument against that. If I'm in favor of action, you point out there's an imbalance, then yes, but I would want to question the data and the way it's interpreted. I find it very hard believe that, I mean, again, this leaning left, leaning right thing in universities in the U.S., is a survey based on what academics answer about their political position? Does that really illustrate the way power operates in the university? That would be my question to you. So I'm not denying the statistics or the answer to the survey, but I'm still not convinced that necessarily translates into the way power operates.

John Tomasi: It sounds like a defense of the status quo, which I'm surprised to hear from you.

Anthony Leaker: I'm saying that academics might not be that powerful. It's the administrators who might be powerful, the senior management or the, we call them vice-chancellors, principals, you call them principals, right?

John Tomasi: The deans.

Anthony Leaker: The deans, yeah.

John Tomasi: The studies seem to show pretty clearly that the ideological imbalance is even worse among the administrators.

Anthony Leaker: If I'm cleaning it short, this might sound like I'm desperate here, but I would say, okay, well then the university is one space within the United States context where the left has a bit more of a dominant voice.

John Tomasi: And so it doesn't require affirmative action in favor of people from the right because they have enough space and platforms everywhere else in society. So that would be my... I mean, I'm having to think quickly on my feet. And then we can agree that... I think we agree that my own views, there should be more people speaking with a wider range of political views on campuses and it would be better for students if that were the case. But it has to be done in a way that is at the same time more thoughtful and attentive to voices that are currently being silence. We have to ask ourselves, this means to me, those of us who care about campuses, why is it that so many young people are turning away from these liberal ideals and are engaged in these kinds of shout downs and deplatformings? What motivates them? Some of it might be arguments that they hear, but there's probably also things in their experience, their own personal lives, as you point out in the book quite eloquently, I think. So I think what your book helps me to see, It kind of shatters the simplistic narrative that a lot of us free speech people have about campuses, that they're sort of a good team and a bad team. Your iRIGI was calling us, those free speech advocates, to recognize some tensions and maybe contradictions in our own practice of free speech and to try to reach for something higher. That's what I take from you.

Anthony Leaker: Yeah. Yeah. My best, in my view, Charles Mills, the black philosopher, who I also think died quite recently, because he still advocates liberalism. That would be my position, I think. I definitely don't want to give the impression that I want to destroy... You were saying that the books, yeah, I critique liberalism, absolutely, but I don't think I'd want to destroy it fundamentally. I agree with almost all liberal values, right? Equality, individual rights, civil rights, freedom. It's great. But I just think it needs to be more deeply interrogated and recognize the way, at the same time, its principles have power that serves some interest groups more than others. That's all I would want to do. I wouldn't want to eradicate. I just want to kind of redress the balance, I guess. I'm fundamentally quite a liberal person by disposition.

John Tomasi: I see that you are, but in the book you describe liberalism as a racist doctrine, or at least in practice racist.

Anthony Leaker: Yeah. I think historically it has been, yeah.

John Tomasi: We're going to close now. I just want to say again to our listeners that the book we've been talking about is Against Free Speech. There's actually a subtitle that's called polemic, which is actually maybe important to mention because as you're as you're hearing those who are listening to this podcast, Anthony's View is not a simplistic one by any by any stretch of the imagination. And it's a book that I, as I've mentioned, I've recommended to a lot of my free speech advocates, leaders of these movements. And I really recommend it to you the listeners too. It's a, I think you'll find a fascinating read. You may tear your hair out at some points, but that's, that's probably good for us to grow back stronger perhaps. Anthony Leaker, it's been such a pleasure having you on Heterodox Out Loud.

Anthony Leaker: Thank you.

John Tomasi: Yeah, it's been my pleasure.

Anthony Leaker: Thank you.

John Tomasi: Thank you.