In this episode of Family Matters, Simon sits down with Sarah McLaughlin from @TheFIREorg - the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, one of the United States' foremost advocacy groups for freedom of speech and free thought. Sarah is FIRE's Senior Scholar, focusing on the dynamics of free speech around the globe.

Sarah is coming to New Zealand in late April as a guest of the Free Speech Union, talking around the country about how free speech is deteriorating worldwide - including in democracies like New Zealand, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the USA.

She shares the form most common reasons governments use to justify censorship: misinformation, hate speech, national security, and the “think of the children” excuse. Simon and Sarah talk about what is happening in Finland with a Christian MP being found guilty of sharing her opinion on marriage; the use of ‘national security’ reasons to censor speech in the USA; and the UK’s child-focused internet restrictions.

They then debate New Zealand’s move to limit social media to under-16 year olds, with Sarah warning that age checks can lead to expanded controls on everyone. Simon and Sarah also unpack how regulators and ‘codes of conduct’ can quietly erode free speech and how foreign money and political capture can pressure universities to silence unpopular views.

Sarah ultimately argues that we need to rationally evaluate all claims of harm and be deeply sceptical when it comes to suggestions that expanding state power over speech will solve problems. You can hear directly from Sarah McLaughlin as she tours New Zealand with the Free Speech Union. She is speaking in Auckland, Tauranga, Wellington, Christchurch, and Dunedin.

You can find more details of her speaking itinerary at www.fsu.nz/events Sarah is also the author of Authoritarians in the Academy: How the Internationalization of Higher Education and Borderless Censorship Threaten Free Speech (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2025).