The Free Speech Union Presents Sarah McLaughlin. Touring in Auckland, Tauranga, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin. Come for an engaging evening talking about one of the most important topics facing New Zealand.
New Zealand prides itself on openness and democratic integrity, yet many decisions about what cannot be said, studied, published, or debated now happen before any outside pressure is applied. We want to create a space to discuss hard questions about the influence of funding, diplomacy, and commercial relationships on institutional decision-making and to offer practical approaches leaders can use to restore institutional courage. We will discuss how pre-emptive self-censorship has become institutionalised across universities, government, corporations, and media, and why that institutionalised silence poses direct risks to democratic resilience, trust, and innovation.
Sarah McLaughlin is Senior Scholar, Global Expression at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and author of Authoritarians in the Academy: How the Internationalization of Higher Education and Borderless Censorship Threaten Free Speech. She writes regularly about the state of free speech around the world, and her analysis has appeared in Foreign Policy, The Guardian, and The Los Angeles Times.
Join the Free Speech Union and Sarah McLaughlin for an unforgettable evening. Buy your tickets now!
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