Thammasat University students are cordially invited to participate in a free online public lecture on Free Speech in Universities by Lord Ken Macdonald QC, organized by the Faculty of Law, The University of Hong Kong (HKU).

The event will take place on Friday, 17 September, at 5pm Bangkok time.

The Thammasat University Library collection includes many books about different aspects of free speech.

Students may register at this link:

For further information or with any questions, kindly write to Mr. Augustine Hung at this email address:

aughung8@hku.hk

As the event website indicates,

Many people fear that free speech protections are weakening in British and North American universities. But what is the role of free speech in an academic institution? And is it really true that a combination of British government anti-terrorist programmes and a censorious transatlantic ‘woke culture’ is undermining the free exchange of ideas in our universities, encouraging self-censorship amongst professors and students, and putting academic freedom itself at risk?

The speaker will be Lord Ken Macdonald QC, Former Director of Public Prosecutions and Warden of Wadham College, the University of Oxford, the United Kingdom.

Lord Macdonald is a British lawyer and politician who served as Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) of England and Wales from 2003 to 2008. In that office he was head of the Crown Prosecution Service. He was previously a Recorder (part-time judge) and defence barrister. He is currently Warden of Wadham College, Oxford and a life peer in the House of Lords, where he sits as a crossbencher and was previously a Liberal Democrat.

Freedom of speech is the concept of being able to speak freely without censorship. It is often regarded as an integral concept in modern liberal democracies.

Here are some thoughts about freedom of speech from authors, most of whom are represented in the TU Library collection:

It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was ‘not done’ to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. 

• George Orwell

Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.

• John Milton, Areopagitica: A Speech for the Liberty of Unlicens’d Printing, to the Parliament of England (published November 23, 1644).

Without Freedom of Thought, there can be no such Thing as Wisdom; and no such Thing as publick Liberty, without Freedom of Speech.

• Benjamin Franklin, letter from “Silence Dogood,” no. 8, printed in The New-England Courant, Boston, Massachusetts (July 9, 1722).

Freedom of speech is a principal pillar of a free government; when this support is taken away, the constitution of a free society is dissolved, and tyranny is erected on its ruins. Republics and limited monarchies derive their strength and vigor from a popular examination into the action of the magistrates.

• Benjamin Franklin, “On Freedom of Speech and the Press”, Pennsylvania Gazette, 17 November 1737.

There is nothing so fretting and vexatious, nothing so justly TERRIBLE to tyrants, and their tools and abettors, as a FREE PRESS.

• Samuel Adams, (Boston Gazette, 1768)

Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.

• Thomas Jefferson to Edward Carrington, January 16, 1787, The Thomas Jefferson Papers Series 1, General Correspondence, 1651-1827

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty, than those attending too small a degree of it.

• Thomas Jefferson to Archibald Stuart, Philadelphia, December 23, 1791.

How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.

• Soren Kierkegaard Either/Or Part I (1843)

He who stifles free discussion, secretly doubts whether what he professes to believe is really true.

• Wendell Phillips, oration delivered at Daniel O’Connell celebration, Boston (6 August 1870),

I would not wish to live in a world where I could not express my honest opinions. Men who deny to others the right of speech are not fit to live with honest men. I deny the right of any man, of any number of men, of any church, of any State, to put a padlock on the lips — to make the tongue a convict. I passionately deny the right of the Herod of authority to kill the children of the brain.

• Robert G. Ingersoll, in an appeal to the jury in the trial of C.B. Reynolds for blasphemy (May 1887).

I would defend the freedom of speech. And why? Because no attack can be answered by force, no argument can be refuted by a blow, or by imprisonment, or by fine. You may imprison the man, but the argument is free; you may fell the man to the earth, but the statement stands.

• Robert G. Ingersoll, in an appeal to the jury in the trial of C.B. Reynolds for blasphemy (May 1887).

Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one’s thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down. They know its power. Thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers, founded in injustice and wrong, are sure to tremble, if men are allowed to reason of righteousness, temperance, and of a judgment to come in their presence. Slavery cannot tolerate free speech.

• Frederick Douglass, Plea for Free Speech in Boston (8 June 1880)

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

• Evelyn Beatrice Hall, Ch. 7 : Helvetius: The Contradiction (1906), p. 199. Often misattributed to Voltaire.

I realize that, in speaking to you this afternoon, there are certain limitations placed upon the right of free speech. I must be exceedingly careful, prudent, as to what I say, and even more careful and prudent as to how I say it. I may not be able to say all I think; but I am not going to say anything that I do not think. I would rather a thousand times be a free soul in jail than to be a sycophant and coward in the streets.

• Eugene V. Debs, speech in Canton, Ohio (June 16, 1918)

Freedom of expression is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom.

• Judge Benjamin N. Cardozo, Palko v. Connecticut, 302 U.S. 319, 327, (1937)

So we must beware of a tyranny of opinion which tries to make only one side of a question the one which may be heard. Everyone is in favour of free speech. Hardly a day passes without its being extolled, but some people’s idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone says anything back, that is an outrage.

• Winston Churchill, October 13, 1943 Hansard, United Kingdom Parliament, Commons, Coalmining Situation

Without general elections, without freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, without the free battle of opinions, life in every public institution withers away, becomes a caricature of itself, and bureaucracy rises as the only deciding factor.

• Rosa Luxemburg

Take away freedom of speech, and the creative faculties dry up.

• George Orwell, “As I Please,” Tribune (28 April 1944)

Threats to freedom of speech, writing and action, though often trivial in isolation, are cumulative in their effect and, unless checked, lead to a general disrespect for the rights of the citizen.

• George Orwell, “The Freedom Defence Committee”

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)