Book Launch: Richard Moon's "The Life and Death of Free Expression"

We're delighted to announce that we're hosting another book launch this semester, this time for Professor Richard Moon's (U Windsor) new book, The Life and Death of Free Expression. The launch will take place at Kaffa Roaster in Edmonton and will feature presentations by Professor Moon and Professor Eric Adams (U of A, Faculty of Law). To attend, please click the button on the right to register on Eventbrite.

Book Synopsis:

In The Life and Death of Freedom of Expression, Richard Moon argues that freedom of expression is valuable because human agency and identity emerge in discourse – in the joint activity of creating meaning. Moon recognizes that the social character of individual agency and identity is crucial to understanding not only the value of expression but also its potential for harm.

The book considers a range of issues, including the regulation of advertising, hate speech, pornography, blasphemy, and public protest. The book also considers the shift to social media as the principal platform for public engagement, which has added to the ways in which speech can be harmful while undermining the effectiveness of traditional legal responses to harmful speech. The Life and Death of Freedom of Expression makes the case that the principal threat to public discourse may no longer be censorship, but it is rather the spread of disinformation, which undermines public trust in traditional sources of information and makes engagement between different positions and groups increasingly difficult.