Future of Free Speech (FFS)

According to its website, the FFS advocates protecting “freedom of expression” through “actionable research, empowering tools, and principled advocacy.”  ³ The site also claims that the FFS uses “polling and research…[to] measure global attitudes toward free speech,” defends and strengthens existing standards needed to resist the global authoritarian deterioration of freedom of expression,” and “provide activists, policymakers, academics, and other critical stakeholders with…” information to prevent what it calls “the free speech recession.”  ³

Activities

Future of Free Speech (FFS) was established in 2020 as a joint research project between Vanderbilt University and free speech advocacy group Justicia. FFS advocacy efforts initially focused on researching international speech laws. The group also submitted advocacy reports to the English and Scottish governments over the scale and enforcement of their hate-crime laws. ⁴

In 2021, FFS conducted surveys on opinions of free speech in 33 countries. The top scorers were Norway, Denmark, and the United States, while the bottom scorers were Pakistan, Egypt, and Kenya. The survey found that Muslim-majority countries tended to have the lowest support for free speech, that support for free speech tended to decline as participants answered more specific questions (such as whether blasphemy should be legal), and that American Democrats tended to be less supportive of free speech than American Republicans.

By 2023, FSF was established at Vanderbilt University as an independent nonprofit under the leadership of Justicia founder Jacob Mchangama, who became a political science professor at Vanderbilt. ²

In 2024, FSF hosted a Global Free Speech Summit to discuss “the most pressing challenges threatening freedom of expression worldwide and identify impactful solutions to reinvigorate this fundamental freedom.”  ⁵ Attendees included author Salman Rushdie, Hong Kong activist Nathan Law, New York Times columnist David French, and Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) senior scholar Sarah McLaughlin. ^{6 5}

In April 2026, FFS was one of several advocacy groups, including the Foundation for American Innovation and the Collective Intelligence Project, to consult with tech company Anthropic on developing potential safeguards into the group’s AI system Claude to keep political information supplied by Anthropic AI tools neutral. ^{7  8}

Controversy

In April 2026, publication Savage Minds released a report labeling Future of Free Speech (FFS), along with the United Kingdom-based Free Speech Union, as hypocritical for allegedly ignoring free speech-related issues pertaining to the war in Gaza between Israel and the terror group Hamas. Such examples cited include U.S law enforcement breaking up student-led pro-Palestinian protests on university campuses, the second Trump administration withholding funding from certain universities due to lack of action “in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students,” and accusing the administration of “stripping away US residents’ legal status and threatening to deport them and revoking foreign students’ visas.”  ⁹