Views on First
“Views on First” is the Knight First Amendment Institute’s flagship podcast. Each season, we invite leading legal scholars, practitioners, tech policy experts, and others to join us in conversations about some of the most pressing First Amendment issues in the ever-shifting expressive landscape of the digital age.
“Views on First: Season 1” won a 2024 Anthem Award Silver Medal and 2023 Signal Listener’s Choice Award and a Signal Silver Medal.
Episodes
20 episodes
Speech & the Border E4: Spyware—The Authoritarians' Favorite Tool
It's not new for repressive governments to go after journalists. What is new is the ease with which they can do so — by turning journalists’ own phones against them. Host Alex Abdo explores the pernicious commercial spyware industry, and how re...
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Season 3
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Episode 4
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27:41
Speech & the Border E3: Singled Out & Searched
Citizen or not—anyone can be searched at the border. Border agents may search messages, photos, and other intimate data on your personal phone, tablet, or other devices. Host Ramya Krishnan hears from documentary filmmaker Akram Shibly about hi...
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Season 3
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Episode 3
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34:18
Speech & the Border E2: The Digital Surveillance Dragnet
Dating back to the Obama administration, the U.S. government has been using its authority over the border to justify the surveillance of visitors’ and immigrants’ social media accounts. Host Anna Diakun explores the chilling effect this digital...
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Season 3
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Episode 2
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28:58
Speech & the Border E1: What are we so afraid of?
From the war on anarchism to President Trump’s extreme vetting policies, the U.S. government’s practice of using the border as a justification to exclude ideas considered “dangerous” is as American as apple pie. In the first episode of “Views o...
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Season 3
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Episode 1
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51:23
A Preview of Views on First: Speech & the Border
We’ve all been hearing a lot about “the border”—in news headlines, candidates’ speeches, and political debates. On our third season of “Views on First: Speech & the Border” we examine the frontiers of censorship and surveillance. Today, the...
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Season 3
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3:35
War & Speech E9: The University’s Role in Political and Social Action
Harvard Law School’s Noah Feldman talks with Jameel Jaffer about whether and when universities should issue statements about social and political issues, and about the pros and cons of institutional neutrality.
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Season 2
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Episode 9
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39:21
War & Speech E8: Anti-Discrimination Law and the Protests on Campus
Cornell Law School’s Michael Dorf talks with Jameel Jaffer about how federal anti-discrimination law is shaping universities’ responses to pro-Palestinian protests on campus, and about the tensions between anti-discrimination law and the Fir...
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Season 2
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Episode 8
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41:24
War & Speech E7: The War and the Platforms
Deborah Brown of Human Rights Watch and Evelyn Douek of Stanford Law talk with Jameel Jaffer about the role that social media platforms are playing in shaping, suppressing, and distorting public discourse about the war.
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Season 2
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Episode 7
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28:27
War & Speech E6: The Crisis at Columbia
Jelani Cobb, Dean of Columbia’s Journalism School, and Isabella Ramirez, Editor in Chief of the Columbia Daily Spectator, talk with Jameel Jaffer about the crisis at Columbia, and about the challenges of reporting on it.
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Season 2
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Episode 6
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28:09
War & Speech E5: The War Comes for Academic Freedom
Jameel Jaffer returns to the issue of free speech on campus with Jeannie Suk Gersen, professor of law at Harvard, contributing writer to the New Yorker, founding member of the Academic Freedom Alliance, and co-president of the Council on Aca...
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Season 2
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Episode 5
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28:40
War & Speech E4: Campus Speech, Double Standards, and Discrimination
Jameel Jaffer returns to the issue of free speech on campus with Will Creeley, legal director at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). They talk about “cancellations” before and after October 7, the difference between f...
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Season 2
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Episode 4
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29:59
War & Speech E3: A Climate of Repression and Fear
Radhika Sainath, senior staff attorney at Palestine Legal, talks with Jameel Jaffer about the climate for speech supportive of Palestinians, defining discrimination, and the “Palestine Exception” to the First Amendment.
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Season 2
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Episode 3
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18:15
War & Speech E2: Campus Speech in the Shadow of the War
Jameel Jaffer talks with Eugene Volokh, distinguished professor of law at UCLA and soon-to-be senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, about free speech on campus in the shadow of the war in Israel and Gaza. They discuss whether administrators ...
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Season 2
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Episode 2
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34:45
War & Speech E1: How Repressive Is This Moment, Really?
Jameel Jaffer talks with Genevieve Lakier, professor of law at the University of Chicago Law School and one of the country’s leading theorists of free speech, about the climate for speech in the United States relating to the war in Israel and...
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Season 2
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Episode 1
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29:07
S1 E5: The 1A A-Bomb
Social media platforms have evaded heavy regulation on their content moderation practices so far, but the jig may very well be up. Many U.S. states are considering enacting laws to rein platforms in. To date, two states—Florida and Texas—have p...
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Season 1
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Episode 5
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39:00
S1 E4: Our Corporate Speech Overlords
Social media platforms make more decisions about free speech every minute than the Supreme Court has made in more than two hundred years. So the values and systems adopted by these Corporate Speech Overlords matter a lot. Guests ...
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Season 1
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Episode 4
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37:16
S1 E3: Old Doctrine, New Tricks
Over time, the First Amendment has meant lots of different things to a lot of different people. In this episode, with University of Chicago law professor Genevieve Lakier ...
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Season 1
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Episode 3
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30:43
S1 E2: A Slippery Slope?
Thanks to the ruling in Knight v. Trump, then-president Trump could no longer block critics on social media. Hooray! But the ruling was only the start of the story, and quickly new questions arose. How would it affect other government ...
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Season 1
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Episode 2
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33:01
