Sarah McLaughlin
Â鶹´«Ã½IOS Staff 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 Â鶹´«Ã½IOS and 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
- UK university censors human rights research on abuses in China,
- High-profile comedians paid handsomely to not offend Saudi royals at Riyadh comedy fest,
- Quebec is threatening to outlaw public prayer,
- 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 ,
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