Episode 2  Tolerance, Wokeness, and the Trouble With it All

The second episode of the Foreign Correspondent Unplugged podcast features a discussion between journalists Charles Lane and René Pfister on freedom of speech. Jacqueline Pfeffer Merrill, the director of the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) Campus Free Expression Project, joins the discussion and moderates. Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

The conversation centers on the threat to freedom of speech posed by emerging left- and right-wing ideologies originating from the United States. More specifically, the talk focuses on how current ideological norms are increasingly influencing freedom of expression in the Western world, particularly in Europe and the U.S. As we approach the 2024 presidential election, understanding the nuances of these ideological shifts is critical. Charles Lane, Jacqueline Pfeffer Merrill, and René Pfister delve deeper.

Speakers

Charles Lane is deputy opinion editor of The Washington Post and a columnist for the paper’s op-ed page. A finalist for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize in editorial writing, he also served as the Post’s Supreme Court correspondent between 2000 and 2007. A former editor of The New Republic, Mr. Lane has also worked as a writer and foreign correspondent for Newsweek, covering civil wars in the Balkans and Central America during the 1980s and 1990s. He is a frequent commentator on television and radio. He is the author of two works of history about post-Civil War America, Freedom’s Detective: The Secret Service, the Ku Klux Klan and the Man Who Masterminded America’s First War on Terror and The Day Freedom Died: The Colfax Massacre, the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of Reconstruction. Mr. Lane has taught journalism at Princeton and Georgetown University and was a fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Harvard University and a Master of Studies from Yale Law School.

Jacqueline Pfeffer Merrill is the director of the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) Campus Free Expression Project. Prior to joining BPC, Merrill was the executive director of the Fund for Academic Renewal, a program of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni. Earlier in her career, Merrill served on the faculties of St. John’s College (Annapolis), known for its Great Books curriculum, and the College of William & Mary. She has also taught at Duke University, the University of Calgary, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, and in the college program at Maryland’s only prison for women. Her articles and essays have appeared in venues including Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed, and Perspectives on Political Science. Merrill earned her BA (First Class Honours) from the University of Calgary and her M.A. and Ph.D. from Duke University.

René Pfister, born in 1974 in Müllheim/Baden, studied political science and attended the German School of Journalism in Munich. He was a reporter at the news agencies ddp and Reuters in Berlin. In 2004, he began working for Der Spiegel’s Berlin office, which he headed for several years. Since summer 2019, he has been Der Spiegel’s bureau chief in Washington, D.C. His book, One Wrong Word: How a New Left-Wing Ideology from America Threatens Our Freedom of Expression, was published by DVA in 2022.