Sarah McLaughlin
FIREStaff Speaker
Sarah graduated magna cum laude from Drexel University in 2014 with a B.S. in political science and a minor in history. She is Senior Scholar, Global Expression at FIREand analyzes the relationship between free expression in the United States and global censorship. She is also the author of the book Authoritarians in the Academy: How the Internationalization of Higher Education and Borderless Censorship Threaten Free Speech (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2025.) Her writing about global free speech issues has been featured in publications including Foreign Policy, The Guardian, The Boston Globe, MSNBC, Times Higher Education, and The Los Angeles Times.
Recent Writings
- Chinese officials force censorship of Thai gallery’s art exhibit about authoritarianism (proving the exhibit’s point),
- The Trump administration doesn’t need to go to Brazil to find government censorship. It can look in a mirror.,
- Turkish police arrested magazine staff over Muhammad cartoon, but it doesn’t actually depict the prophet,
- In Quran burning conviction, UK judge uses violence against defendant as evidence of his guilt,
- Once, international students feared Beijing’s wrath. Now Trump is the threat.,
- Belfast hip-hop group Kneecap at the center of international firestorm,
- ‘I hate freedom of opinion’ meme leads to sentencing in German court ,
- Should the government punish you for allegedly ‘undermining’ American diplomacy?,
- Is it ‘hate speech’ to say Jesus needs a haircut?,
- Quran burner assassinated in Sweden — and another arrested in the UK,
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