Gide humans. Welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas. Is a dangerous idea for you. The government

should be able to punish you, find you, potentially even throw you in jail, for expressing certain

ideas. The crazy thing is, that is not really an uncomfortable idea. It's an idea we live with in most

societies all the time every day. Many countries that we live in have hate speech laws.

Several governments in Australia, including the government of the state that I live in,

passed laws within the past two years against knowingly displaying Nazi symbols.

There are also pushes to ban the Heil Hitler salute, and you might think, well, why not just live

in a society in which awful people aren't allowed to do awful things and say awful things. That, of course,

is not the position of so-called American free speech absolutists, one of whom, although he may dispute

that particular characterization, is James Kirchick, the historian and journalist and best-selling author.

Jamie's been on the show before.

He's a columnist for tablet magazine.

He's a writer at large for airmail.

He is the author of the New York Times bestseller, Secret City,

the hidden history of Gay Washington.

And I wanted to talk to him again because I saw a piece that he'd written in the New York Times.

A guest essay entitled Campus Speech Codes should be abolished.

This is all part of the conversation that erupted after three heads of prominent American campuses were hauled before Congress to explain the situation on American campuses in terms of the harassment and vilification of Jewish students by well-meaning, well, I assume well-meaning, sometimes probably not well-meaning, pro-Palestinian protesters,

and what appeared to be a double standard, let's say, where for the past few years, anyone who was accused of offending

the sensibilities of students of colour or transgender students was excluded from the

public square, sometimes punished, sometimes penalised, sometimes deprived stripped of their jobs because they were

creating an unsafe space or they were erasing the lived experience of students or negating their identity.

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