PositiveThe Wall Street Journal[A] recurring theme in this expansive, atypical history is \'Milton’s Curse,\' a disease that afflicts defenders of free speech when they are exposed to power ... Mr. Mchangama, who directs a Copenhagen-based human-rights think tank, is not out to cut free-speech warriors down. He is himself such a warrior, out to warn civilians about \'free speech entropy,\' of which Milton’s Curse is only one aspect ... Free Speech is addressed especially to the well-meaning among would-be censors. They should know how rarely censorship goes as planned ... Mr. Mchangama acknowledges that there are many honorable proponents of hate-speech legislation. But he demands that such proponents have a reason, in the face of the history of overreach and error that his book unfolds, to trust themselves to wield illiberal tools in the work of freedom.
Anthony T. Kronman
PositiveWashington ExaminerIn his new book about universities, former Yale Law School Dean Anthony Kronman rounds up the usual suspects for an unusual reason ... But he foregoes the usual next move of extolling the free exchange of ideas. A university, he knows, isn’t a speaker’s corner in a public park ... The Assault on American Excellence deserves many readers. But even fans will wonder, if the forces against which Kronman contends are both stronger and more deeply rooted than they were in 2007, how his arguments can prevail.
