Jacob Mchangama
executive director, The Future of Free Speech

Jacob Mchangama is the founder and executive director of The Future of Free Speech. He is a research professor at Vanderbilt University and a Senior Fellow at The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). In 2018, he was a visiting scholar at Columbia’s Global Freedom of Expression Center.

He has commented extensively on free speech and human rights in outlets including the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy. Jacob has published in academic and peer-reviewed journals, including Human Rights Quarterly, Policy Review, and Amnesty International’s Strategic Studies. He is the producer and narrator of the podcast “Clear and Present” Danger: A History of Free Speech and the critically acclaimed book Free Speech: A History From Socrates to Social Media, published by Basic Books in 2022, and co-author with Jeff Kosseff of The Future of Free Speech: Reversing the Global Decline of Democracy’s Most Essential Freedom, published by Johns Hopkins University Press, in 2026. He is the recipient of numerous awards for his work on free speech and human rights.

Follow Jacob on X: @JMchangama

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