“A must read.”—Margaret Atwood
Dare to Speak
Defending Free Speech for All
By Suzanne Nossel
CEO, PEN America
Published by HarperCollins Dey Street
A vital, necessary playbook for navigating and defending free speech today by the CEO of PEN America, Dare To Speak provides a pathway for promoting free expression while also cultivating a more inclusive public culture.
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Praise for Dare To Speak
“Thoughtful, perceptive, and inspiring.”
“Should all speech be free? If not, who controls it? This brave, wise, succinct book is a must-read for writers, speakers, teachers, journalists, and, well, anyone who talks.”
—Margaret Atwood,
bestselling author of The Handmaid’s Tale
“This timely book not only provides a compelling analysis of free speech’s essential role in promoting democracy and human rights; it also serves as a practical “how-to” manual for every member of our society, explaining how each of us can secure and advance robust free speech rights for all people and all ideas, including the most marginalized. It is an important guidebook for revitalizing liberty, equality, and democracy.”
—Nadine Strossen,
John Marshall Harlan II Professor of Law at the New York Law School, and former president of the ACLU
“A thoughtful, perceptive, and inspiring set of insights to guide the citizens of our democracy as they struggle to understand and to respect the freedom of speech. Dare to Speak makes an essential contribution to our understanding and to our ability to live up to the highest aspirations of our democracy.”
—Geoffrey R. Stone,
author of Democracy and Equality and
The Free Speech Century
“With a clarity of conviction sharpened by years at the State Department and as the head of the leading literary organization on open speech, Suzanne Nossel offers us way to support free speech and also battle bigotry. Given the world’s roiling cauldron of modern-day disinformation and old-fashioned xenophobia, Nossel’s Dare to Speak provides a new path that is not both-sides-ism but intellectually and emotionally up to the challenges of our times.”
—Farai Chideya,
journalist, broadcaster, and author of books including The Color of Our Future
“In this essential volume, Suzanne Nossel passionately and convincingly argues for free speech, a liberty that is increasingly under attack throughout the world. Drawing on her experiences at the State Department and at PEN America, the author provides a critically important primer for those who seek to secure freedom of expression in our ‘diverse, digitalized, and divided culture.’”
—Henry Louis Gates Jr.,
Alphonse Fletcher University Professor at Harvard University
“Suzanne Nossel is one of the most courageous and sensible voices in America when it comes to the value of free speech. She’s especially persuasive, in my view, because she’s deeply empathetic—and sensitive to the harms that irresponsible speech can inflict. Her book is a real contribution to public discourse. If all Americans read it, our conversations would be so much more productive, and our democracy so much healthier.”
—Sewell Chan,
Editorial Page Editor, Los Angeles Times
“In this courageous, inspiring, and pellucid book, Suzanne Nossel unpacks the complicated ambiguities that have accrued around free speech in America. Without ever being reductive, Nossel makes the arguments not only comprehensible, but also thrillingly urgent. Her call to defend our most basic liberty could not come at a more important time; it is a moral outcry against a pernicious injustice that grows ever more prevalent at home and abroad. It is written with wit, but is at its heart an earnest and optimistic call to action.”
—Andrew Solomon,
National Book Award-winning author of Far From the Tree
“At a moment when Americans seem so unalterably divided and so filled with fury about each other that it seems difficult even to imagine public issues and candidates for office being discussed in a manner that both civil and serious, Dare to Speak offers constructive and potentially achievable ways of thinking about the problem and dealing with it. That’s a rare combination of virtues.”
—Floyd Abrams,
author of The Soul of the First Amendment
“A reasoned, well-sourced argument for protecting free speech. Readers will find this clearheaded account to be a helpful guide to navigating today’s partisan extremism.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Suzanne Nossel writes from the front lines of our political and cultural debates with heart and intelligence, with passion and wisdom. Dare to Speak is a vital and urgently needed guide to the numerous threats facing our most cherished rights and a testament to the courage necessary to protecting them.”
—Dinaw Mengestu,
author of three novels, most recently All Our Names
“In our censorious age of easy outrage, when it’s harder than ever to defend our right to express contentious ideas, Suzanne Nossel remains convinced that bigotry and intolerance can be fought without giving way on the principle of free speech, and makes her case eloquently, and—even better—usefully. An authoritative, essential book.”
—Salman Rushdie
“Exceedingly sane and thus indispensable.”
—Dave Eggers,
author of The Captain and the Glory
Press
“’Cancel culture’ censorship can be most dangerous for those who promote social justice”
NBC News THINK, August 4, 2020
“For Speech We Abhor: Talking to Suzanne Nossel”
Los Angeles Review of Books, July 31, 2020
“Why individuals, not governments, should safeguard free speech”
The Washington Post, July 31, 2020
“‘Cancel culture’ is complicated. PEN America’s CEO has a plan for that”
Los Angeles Times, July 28, 2020
“The American Approach to Free Speech Is Flawed—but It’s the Best Option We Have”
Slate, July 28, 2020
“New & Noteworthy, From Free Speech to True Crime”
The New York Times, July 21, 2020
“Has Free Speech Become an Even More Partisan Issue Under the Trump Administration?”
Literary Hub, July 15, 2020
“Five myths about free speech”
The Washington Post, July 2, 2020
About the Book
Online trolls and fascist chat groups. Controversies over campus lectures. Cancel culture versus censorship. The daily hazards and debates surrounding free speech dominate headlines and fuel social media storms. In an era where one tweet can launch—or end—your career, and where free speech is often invoked as a principle but rarely understood, learning to maneuver the fast-changing, treacherous landscape of public discourse has never been more urgent.
In Dare To Speak, Suzanne Nossel, a leading voice in support of free expression, delivers a vital, necessary guide to maintaining democratic debate that is open, free-wheeling but at the same time respectful of the rich diversity of backgrounds and opinions in a changing country. Centered on practical principles, Nossel’s primer equips readers with the tools needed to speak one’s mind in today’s diverse, digitized, and highly-divided society without resorting to curbs on free expression.
At a time when free speech is often pitted against other progressive axioms—namely diversity and equality—Dare To Speak presents a clear-eyed argument that the drive to create a more inclusive society need not, and must not, compromise robust protections for free speech. Nossel provides concrete guidance on how to reconcile these two sets of core values within universities, on social media, and in daily life. She advises readers how to:
- Use language conscientiously without self-censoring ideas;
- Defend the right to express unpopular views;
- And protest without silencing speech.
Nossel warns against the increasingly fashionable embrace of expanded government and corporate controls over speech, warning that such strictures can reinforce the marginalization of lesser-heard voices. She argues that creating an open market of ideas demands aggressive steps to remedy exclusion and ensure equal participation.
Replete with insightful arguments, colorful examples, and salient advice, Dare To Speak brings much-needed clarity and guidance to this pressing—and often misunderstood—debate.
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Suzanne Nossel is the CEO of PEN America, the foremost organization working to protect and advance human rights, free expression and literature. She has also served as the Chief Operating Officer of Human Rights Watch and as Executive Director of Amnesty International USA; and held senior State Department positions in the Clinton and Obama administrations. A graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, Nossel frequently writes op-eds for the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other publications, as well as a regular column for Foreign Policy magazine. She lives in New York City.
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