Ep. 14 NYU Professor Stephen Solomon’s ‘Revolutionary Dissent’

The time of America’s founding was full of raucous debate and
widespread dissent. Americans built effigies, wrote pamphlets,
sang songs, and gathered at liberty trees to protest British
rule.


But while citizens of the 13 colonies, and later America, might
have acted like they had a right to express themselves in the
myriad ways that they did, the spectre of seditious libel—illegal
statements criticizing the government—often hung over their
heads.


In “Revolutionary Dissent: How the Founding Generation Created
the Freedom of Speech,” New York University journalism professor
Stephen D. Solomon chronicles how early Americans such as Paul
Revere, James Madison, Alexander McDougall, and others fought
seditious libel laws and developed their understanding of the
right to freedom of speech along the way.


We sit down with Professor Solomon in today’s episode of “So to
Speak” to discuss his new book. We also learn why anyone who
cared about free expression at the time of America’s founding
associated it with the number 45.


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