Jay Nordlinger is a senior editor of National Review and music critic of The New Criterion. His podcasts are Q&A and Music for a While.
Several weeks ago, Jay sat down with Mitch Daniels, the president of Purdue University – and a former governor of Indiana. Daniels is a Reagan conservative. They were talking about free speech on campus. And Daniels hailed Professor Geoffrey R. Stone at the University of Chicago – a “lion of the Left,” he said, who had been chiefly responsible for the Chicago Principles, which address this issue of free speech. Purdue, along with approximately 70 other institutions, has adopted the principles for itself.
Jay has now gone to see Professor Stone in Chicago. They talk about life – especially Stone’s, but some of Jay’s, too – and the momentous issue of free speech. Conservatives will not like everything Stone says; he does not like everything conservatives say. But he and Jay have little time for snowflakes and safe spaces. America has become all too “triggerable,” they agree.
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is a legislator from Hong Kong and a democracy leader. She has just given testimony before the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva (as an invitee of UN Watch, a non-governmental organization accredited at the U.N.). Chan talks with Jay about the democracy movement in Hong Kong. What does it want? What is its current mood? Who calls the shots in the city, the local government or the Party rulers in Beijing? What about police brutality? What about American flags in the streets? What about the relationship between Hong Kong and Taiwan? How about Chan personally – does she feel like a Hong Konger, like a Chinese woman, or some combination? Jay asks her all this and more. She is a brave woman, Tanya Chan. Earlier this year, she was sentenced to prison, although this sentence was suspended, owing to health: She was operated for a brain tumor. An interesting, candid, and indeed brave woman, in this “Q&A.”