Free speech is the foundation of democracy. It’s the lifeblood of a liberal society. Saying what you want to say, what you need to say, is the top spot in the bill of rights for a reason, right?

But speech is also powerful. And slippery. And people can use it in dangerous, unpredictable, chaotic ways. So how do we manage that tension? Should free speech be a little less free? Or is it truly an unimpeachable right?

The dangers and virtues of free speech have gained new relevance after the killing of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk. He has been praised in death by those on the right and beyond as an exemplar of free speech — debating his ideological foes on college campuses and speaking his mind on his podcast. But he has also been held up as an enemy of free speech by his critics — having set up a “watchlist” online of college professors deemed insufficiently deferential to conservatives, explicitly encouraging visitors to intimidate and report them, and having frequently denigrated the democratic value and participation of minorities, women, and his political opponents. Now, politicians, businesses, and media organizations are firing and threatening people who have criticized Kirk after his death — in other words, punishing them for their speech.

Fara Dabhoiwala is a historian at Princeton and the author of a new book called What Is Free Speech?: The History of a Dangerous Idea. A few weeks ago, before Kirk’s death, I invited Dabhoiwala onto The Gray Area to talk about the contradictions at the heart of free speech, how the concept was invented, who it empowered, and what it’s become in the digital age.

As always, there’s much more in the full podcast, so listen and follow The Gray Area on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, or wherever you find podcasts. New episodes drop every Monday.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

I want to start with the myth of free speech. Most people treat it as a timeless, universal, almost sacred ideal. Your book takes a hammer to that. Why did you think it was important to challenge that story?

Because it’s central to modern culture and because the way we talk about it is often wrong. We all believe in freedom of expression, and rightly so. But two things get missed.

First, psychologically, no one likes being told what to say or not to say. That instinct is powerful. Second, we misunderstand free speech if we try to define it purely from first principles — philosophical or judicial. You can’t really grasp it without history.

A decade ago, I toured with a previous book on the history of sex. I saw how differently people could — or couldn’t — speak about it in different cultures. In China, where it was translated, the text itself was censored; I saw up close how comprehensive the censorship apparatus is. That trip made me ask: If we in the West value free expression so deeply, where does that idea come from? Why do we disagree so sharply about what it means? Those are historical questions, so that’s where I went.

If you asked most people to define free speech, they’d say it’s the absence of censorship. Simple and clean. What’s wrong with that?

It’s........

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