European debates banning racist speech, forbidding burqas in public, and barring refugees from entering European countries all have at their core different notions of freedom. Freedom is a fundamental value to philosophers and citizens, but political actors often deploy the term strategically to pursue a particular agenda. In this talk, Erik Bleich examines European debates about freedom of expression, freedom of religion, and freedom of movement. A focus on these issues also helps to identify the multiple values that citizens and societies grapple with when discussing divisive political issues that have roiled European countries for decades.

Erik Bleich is professor of political science at Middlebury College in Vermont. He has published widely on racial, ethnic, and religious politics in academic journals and in popular outlets. He is the author of The Freedom to Be Racist? How the United States and Europe Struggle to Preserve Freedom and Combat Racism (Cambridge University Press, 2011) and Race Politics in Britain and France: Ideas and Policymaking since the 1960s (Oxford University Press, 2003). Bleich edited Muslims and the State in the Post-9/11 West (Routledge, 2010) and co-edited special issues of the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies on “Migrants, Minorities, and the Media” (41:6, 2015), and of the French public affairs journal Esprit on “Punir la Haine? (Punishing Hate?)” (October 2015).