
Sign up to save your podcasts
Or


Celebrated as the bedrock of democracy, freedom of expression is often seen as an American or western value. Yet the concept has a rich and global history. In the spring of 2023 I offered a course on the global history of free expression. The course tracks the long and turbulent history of freedom of expression from ancient Athens and medieval Islamic societies to the Enlightenment and the drive for censorship in totalitarian and colonial societies.
For the final assignment I asked students to write a letter to a person of their choosing reflecting on how their learning in class made them rethink the parameters of speech and expression in their own contexts. For the next few episodes I’ll be featuring some of the student letters that deserve a wider audience.
This episode features my former student, Aishwarya Varma, reading her letter to her friend Grace. Aishwarya graduated from Carleton College in 2023 and is now a software engineer at Target.
By Amna Khalid & Jeff Snyder4.6
112112 ratings
Celebrated as the bedrock of democracy, freedom of expression is often seen as an American or western value. Yet the concept has a rich and global history. In the spring of 2023 I offered a course on the global history of free expression. The course tracks the long and turbulent history of freedom of expression from ancient Athens and medieval Islamic societies to the Enlightenment and the drive for censorship in totalitarian and colonial societies.
For the final assignment I asked students to write a letter to a person of their choosing reflecting on how their learning in class made them rethink the parameters of speech and expression in their own contexts. For the next few episodes I’ll be featuring some of the student letters that deserve a wider audience.
This episode features my former student, Aishwarya Varma, reading her letter to her friend Grace. Aishwarya graduated from Carleton College in 2023 and is now a software engineer at Target.

3,629 Listeners

10,743 Listeners

4,281 Listeners

2,286 Listeners

1,512 Listeners

900 Listeners

801 Listeners

16,310 Listeners

731 Listeners

572 Listeners

3,821 Listeners

809 Listeners

16,099 Listeners

567 Listeners

8,748 Listeners