Wilson vs. FDR: Who was worse for free speech?

Woodrow Wilson or Franklin D. Roosevelt: which president was worse for free speech?

In August, FIRE posted a viral X thread (https://x.com/TheFIREorg/status/18233..., arguing that Woodrow Wilson may be America’s worst-ever president for free speech. Despite the growing recognition of Wilson’s censorship, there was a professor who wrote a recent book on FDR’s free speech record, arguing that FDR was worse.

Representing the Wilson side in our discussion is Christopher Cox, author of the new book, “Woodrow Wilson: The Light Withdrawn.” (https://www.amazon.com/Woodrow-Wilson...) Cox is a former member of the House of Representatives, where he served for 17 years, including as chair of the Homeland Security Committee. He is currently a senior scholar in residence at the University of California, Irvine.

Representing the FDR side is professor David T. Beito, a Research Fellow at the Independent Institute and Professor Emeritus at the University of Alabama. He is the author of a number of books, his latest being “The New Deal’s War on the Bill of Rights: The Untold Story of FDR's Concentration Camps, Censorship, and Mass Surveillance.” (https://www.amazon.com/New-Deals-Bill...)

Read the transcript: https://www.thefire.org/research-lear...

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
03:41 Wilson’s free speech record
15:13 Was FDR’s record worse than Wilson’s?
24:01 Japanese internment
29:35 Wilson at the end of his presidency
37:42 FDR and Hugo Black
42:31 The Smith Act
45:42 Did Wilson regret his actions?
50:31 The suffragists
56:19 Did FDR regret his actions?
01:02:04 Outro

Show notes:
-Espionage Act of 1917 https://www.thefire.org/research-lear...
-Sedition Act of 1918 https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/artic...
-Executive Order (creating the Committee on Public Information) https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/docum...
-Schenk v. United States (1919) https://www.thefire.org/supreme-court...
-Abrams v. United States (1919) https://www.thefire.org/supreme-court...
-Smith Act of 1940 https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/artic...
-President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms” speech (1941) https://www.fdrlibrary.org/four-freedoms
-The Lend-Lease Program (1941-1945) https://www.fdrlibrary.org/lend-lease