Karen Attiah in conversation with Jason Stanley: Race, Media, Free Speech, and the Current U.S. Political Climate

On Thursday, December 11, 2025 the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy hosted a timely and thought-provoking conversation between award-winning journalist Karen Attiah and renowned philosopher Jason Stanley. Their discussion explored the intersections of race, media, free speech, and the current U.S. political climate in 2025.

 

 

Karen Attiah is a journalist and former columnist for The Washington Post, known for her insightful work on race, gender, human rights, and international affairs. She is also Founder and Lead Instructor for the Resistance Studies Series. A native of Dallas, Texas, Karen is a former Fulbright Scholar to Ghana, and has a masters degree in international affairs from Columbia University, School of International and Public Affairs. She has reported from countries including Nigeria, Curacao, Ghana, and Germany. Her work has appeared in various global outlets including Associated Press. In 2016, she became The Washington Post’s founding Global Opinions editor, commissioning op-eds on global issues, and was named an Opinions columnist in 2021. Karen has received numerous awards, including the 2019 George Polk Special Award and NABJ’s Journalist of the Year, and Washingtonian Magazine’s “Star to Watch” Award. She was an adjunct lecturer at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. She is currently working on a book, Say Your Word, Then Leave, a book about the murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

 

Jason Stanley is a philosopher, whose work ranges over philosophy of language, epistemology, linguistics, cognitive science, and social and political philosophy. Jason is the Bissell-Heyd Chair in American Studies in the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, and also has an appointment in the Department of Philosophy. In addition to his position at the Munk School, he is a Distinguished Professor at the Kyiv School of Economics. Before coming to the University of Toronto in 2025, he held positions as a Professor of Philosophy at Yale University (2013-2025), Rutgers University (2004-2013), The University of Michigan (2000-4), and Cornell University (1995-2000).  

 

The author of seven books and dozens of scholarly articles in multiple disciplines, Jason won the American Philosophical Association Book Prize in 2007 for his book Knowledge and Practical Interests (Oxford University Press, 2005), and the Prose Award in Philosophy for his 2015 book, How Propaganda Works (Princeton University Press, 2015). In addition to his academic work, Jason writes for a broader audience on the themes of authoritarianism, propaganda, free speech, mass incarceration, and democracy, most frequently for The New York Times, The Guardian, and Project Syndicate. Jason has also published in The Washington Post, Die Zeit, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Folha de São Paulo, El Pais and many other outlets across the world. A New York Times bestselling author, Jason’s work has been translated into over 30 languages.

 

Stanley is a member of the Justice Collaboratory at Yale Law School, a fellow of the African American Policy Forum, and serves on the advisory board of the Prison Policy Initiative.