Ayaan Hirsi Ali: What about free speech in the West?

00:00:00 Intro
00:00:38 Address of Welcome by Prof. Dr. Christoph A. Schaltegger
00:04:25 Introduction by Dr. phil. René Scheu
00:09:29 Lecture by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
00:36:23 Questions from Prof. Dr. Christoph A. Schaltegger
00:40:17 Questions from the audience
Freedom of speech is under increasing pressure in Western countries, says author and political
scientist Ayaan Hirsi Ali at the 20th Reichmuth & Co Lecture at the University of Lucerne.
What was a free, tolerant, and open society 30 years ago, became much more intolerant and
divided. The biggest threat to free speech today comes from “Wokeism”, says Hirsi Ali.
Website: www.iwp.swiss/
Linkedin: / iwp-swiss
#Freespeech #West #CancelCulture #Wokism #Wokeness #Islamism #Freedom #Expression #University #Culture #Ayaan #HirsiAli #Switzerland
Content/Subtitels
Ladies and gentlemen, the ideology that threatens free speech today, at least in the United States, and has the potential to ruin our society, is a different one. It's not foreign and it's not Islamic. It goes by many names, but I will call it wokeism. Ladies and gentlemen, dear colleagues, esteemed students, dear Ayaan, it is my great pleasure and honor to welcome you here to the 20th Reichmuth lecture tonight at the University of Lucerne and the Institute of Swiss Economic Policy. I notice with great pleasure that such a large number of guests have joined us today to listen to Ayaan Hirsi Ali. And I think you did so with good reasons. It is one of the rare occasions when you can experience Ayaan live in Switzerland. And you will immediately realize she is both a fascinating and courageous personality. What she is saying is not just plain theory, but full of life and of our own experiences. Ayaan is a leading and visionary feminist, if I may say so. She thoroughly fights for freedom of speech and for women's rights, both outside of the Western world as well as within the Western world, and is exactly the topic of today's lecture. Ayaan was born in Somalia in 1969. In the early 1990s, she flew to Netherlands after a very complicated journey. Initially, she worked as a translator and interpreter for the Dutch judicial, social and immigration authorities. From 1995 to 2000 she studied political science at Leiden University. Ayaan began publishing and publicly criticizing fundamentalist extremist view of Islam. She changed her party affiliation from the Social Democratic Labor Party to the People's Party of Freedom and Democracy, for which she was elected to Parliament in 2003. Because of her political commitment, she received death threats. In 2007 she moved to the US and founded the AHA Foundation. Currently, she is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford. She works for the American Enterprise Institute and she was a senior fellow at Harvard Kennedy School. She has received numerous and prestigious awards around the globe for her work and for her courage. My esteemed colleague, René, who is now here, will now briefly introduce to today's lecture. Afterwards, we will be enjoying your talk, the talk of Ayaan Hirsi Ali. And then we will enter into a question and answer session where you, of course, will have the opportunity to ask your own questions, if you may so. So I'll be glad to hand over to my esteemed colleague, René. Ladies and gentlemen, dear Ayaan, dear Christophe. Thank you for your kind words. Ayaan Hirsi Ali. One might think a name says it all. Yet there is no set agenda with corny statements. Ayaan always takes on the most topical issues. She is on the frontier of discussions. Whenever she speaks, there is no bullshitting. Ayaan doesn't use any empty phrases. She thinks it through. She's a brilliant intellectual. She's a writer. She's a feminist. She's a mother. She's the opposite of a faker. She does not speak from an academic ivory tower above the clouds. Instead, she's rooted in reality. She's based on the search of truth. She's fearless. And she acts and speaks softly, calmly, clearly, and distinctly. Dear Ayaan, Welcome to Lucerne. Until recently, we in the West probably lived in the freest society of all times. But that doesn't mean anything, because freedom is a strange thing. You strive for it when you don't have it. You no longer feel it once you have it, and you only notice it again when you no longer have it. Ayaan will talk about free speech in the West today. Or more precisely, what about free speech in the West? Framing it as a question is crucial here because freedom cannot be taken for granted. To put it bluntly, frivolity and freedom don't mix well. Freedom allows for frivolity. But too much frivolity, and freedom is in retreat. Not only that freedom cannot be taken for granted; freedom is complicated and demanding too. Freedom goes hand in hand with responsibility. And that's exhausting, of course. But it also comes with pain.