Rethinking Free Speech – North American Dilemmas /w Peter Ives: Practices and Struggles in the US and Canada

Peter Ives is professor of political science at the University of Winnipeg. He is the author of Rethinking Free Speech (Fernwood, 2024).

We need to rethink free speech to better address diverse goals from knowledge production to democratic participation and individual expression.

Clashes over free speech rights and wrongs haunt public debates about the state of democracy, freedom and the future. While freedom of speech is recognized as foundational to democratic society, its meaning is persistently misunderstood and distorted.

Rethinking Free Speech will change the way you think about the politics of speech and its relationship to the future of freedom and democracy in the age of social media. Political theorist Peter Ives offers a new way of thinking about the essential and increasingly contentious debates around the politics of speech.

This presentation was recorded on June 2, 2025, as part of the Society for Socialist Studies Annual Conference in Toronto. The interview was recorded June 3, 2025.

0:00 Summary of book
12:38 What led you to write the book
17:41 Difference between US and Canada
22:57 Palestine solidarity
29:49 Cancel culture
32:55 Protests on campus
36:52 Social media and free speech