Tara Smith and Onkar Ghate Interviewed: the Objectivist View of Free Speech

What’s distinctive about Ayn Rand’s view of free speech and what can we learn from it?

Two Objectivist scholars – Tara Smith, professor of philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin, and Onkar Ghate, senior fellow at ARI – eloquently answer these and related questions in a recent episode of So to Speak: The Free Speech Podcast hosted by Nico Perrino, Executive Vice President at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). The discussion revolved around The First Amendment: Essays on the Imperative of Intellectual Freedom by Tara Smith, recently published by the Ayn Rand Institute Press.

In the interview, Ghate explains that freedom of speech and freedom of thought should not be separated: we cannot have one without the other. The quest for truth, which is itself indispensable for pursuing our goals, means engaging in conversations with other people, raising questions, and expressing one’s own views. That is why, in order to get to the truth, we need freedom of speech.

One of the many topics discussed in the podcast worth highlighting is Rand’s testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). The committee is often criticized for interfering with political speech, but Rand took the purpose of HUAC to be to uncover the influence of the Soviet-backed Communist Party, not to police ideas. Ghate and Smith argue that it is the role of government to investigate criminal organizations, and the Communist Party had the aim of overthrowing the government. This is another matter entirely from government interference with speech merely because of its intellectual content, which would be utterly inappropriate.

Other topics Smith and Ghate discuss during the interview include Rand’s upbringing in Soviet Russia, her attitude towards criticism of her philosophy, “hate speech” and “offensive speech,” and Smith and Ghate’s criticism of philosopher John Stuart Mill.

The interview clarifies Ayn Rand’s view of freedom of speech and its implications, making it a valuable resource both to those who have read The First Amendment: Essays on the Imperative of Intellectual Freedom and those who have not.