On the 7th of January, our group interviewed the vice president of research at Freedom House, Arch Puddington. Arch talked with us about what Freedom House does, how freedom of speech plays different roles in different places of the world, and some of his views on free speech.

Freedom House publishes various analytical documents about freedom of speech on a worldwide scale. Their most famous publication is their “Freedom in the World” map. It ranks nearly 200 different countries on a scale of 0-100 for the freedom of speech in their country. 0 being the most free and 100 being a dictatorship with absolutely zero free speech. One of the most shocking pieces of data for me was that population wise only 14% of the countries surveyed had complete free speech.

Talking with Arch was very interesting and educational. A key point in our discussion for me was the issue of mass surveillance and the “right to be forgotten” This opened up another door and led to a very interesting conversation on whether you should be able to have truthful things that actually happened to you taken down from the internet.

Thank you Arch for taking the time to meet with us, and to Freedom House for continuously publishing these very important documents.