NEW YORK—The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University today launched “The Bully’s Pulpit: Trump v. The First Amendment,” a new weekly podcast that will follow the Trump administration’s assault on the freedoms of speech and the press and feature the people, communities, and institutions that are fighting back. Hosted by legal journalist Cristian Farias and advocates from the Knight Institute, each episode will explore a major First Amendment story in the news and feature the people most affected by it.
“Given the Trump administration’s ongoing and relentless assault on our First Amendment rights, it’s urgent that we hear from the people who are most affected by the administration’s policies and those who are fighting back, ” said Candace White, the Knight Institute’s deputy director of communications and executive producer of “The Bully’s Pulpit.” “We’ll be following the news closely each week and talking to the people in and behind the headlines.”
On his first day in office, in an executive order aimed at restoring freedom of speech and ending federal censorship, Donald Trump decreed that the First Amendment to the Constitution is “essential to the success of our republic.” Not long after, during an address to a joint session of Congress, the president declared it all a fait accompli. “I have stopped all government censorship and brought back free speech in America,” he said. “It’s back.”
To the contrary, the administration’s policies aimed at deporting student protesters, cutting federal funding from colleges and universities, and retaliating against news organizations because of their editorial decisions, among other actions, constitute an unprecedented assault on First Amendment freedoms, the Knight Institute said.
“This is an extraordinary moment for the country, and our democracy may just depend on whoever stands up for the First Amendment,” said Cristian Farias, writer and host of “The Bully’s Pulpit. “This project will aim to highlight the people and institutions doing just that.”
Before coming to the Institute, Farias was the senior editor of Inquest, which he co-founded, published by Harvard Law School’s Institute to End Mass Incarceration. A longtime legal affairs contributor for Vanity Fair, he has written extensively about law and justice issues for The New York Times, New York Magazine, GQ, The Atlantic, Slate, The New Yorker, The Nation, and other outlets. In related roles, he has served as a legal editor with Radiolab’s “More Perfect,” a podcast about the Supreme Court, and as a legal affairs reporter for The Huffington Post. More about Farias here.
Episode 1: The Students Are Winning centers on the case of Rümeysa Öztürk, the Tufts University student from Turkey whom ICE detained and imprisoned over an op-ed she co-wrote in the student newspaper.
Read Farias’ blog post on “The Bully’s Pulpit” here.
Listen and subscribe to “The Bully’s Pulpit: Trump v. The First Amendment” on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get podcasts. New episodes will drop every Friday.
Learn more about the series here.
In addition to “The Bully’s Pulpit,” the Knight Institute has produced three seasons of its award-winning podcast, “Views on First,” including Season one: What happens when social media collides with the First Amendment?; Season two: War & Speech; and Season three: Speech & the Border. Learn more about “Views on First” here.
For more information, contact: Adriana Lamirande, [email protected]