Ayaan Hirsi Ali grew up in a culture of conformity. She was beaten and mutilated. She was told who she must marry.

Eventually, she rebelled.

“You don’t speak up at first,” she told us. “First you leave and you find a place of safety. It’s only after that experience that it occurred to me to speak up about anything.”

Hirsi Ali is a human rights activist, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, the founder of the AHA Foundation, and the host of the Ayaan Hirsi Ali Podcast. She is also the best-selling author of a number of books, including “Infidel,” “Nomad,” “Heretic,” and, “Prey.” Her latest initiative is Courage Media, which describes itself as a space for courageous conversations. 

Read the transcript.

Timestamps: 

00:00 Intro

04:36 Conformity and its consequences

09:03 Islam and free speech

16:38 Immigration and the clash of civilizations

26:03 Censorship and decline in higher education

34:14 Cost of criticism and finding one’s voice

37:20 Hope for the future

43:58 Outro

Show notes:

• “Submission.” Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Theo Van Gogh (2004)

• Brandeis Change.org petition. (2014)

• “When you use AI to replace every mention of ‘our democracy’ with ‘our bureaucracy,’ everything starts making a lot more sense.” Bill D’Agnostico via X (2024)