One issue with debates about free speech is a lack of clarity. Those who claim our freedom of speech is under attack often fail to specify which views are being suppressed, or provide specific examples to illustrate them. A lack of clarity can be a good thing if you are a novelist: the art of fiction trades on skillfully deploying ambiguity. It is not so good if you are delivering the Reith Lecture. This is meant to advance a thesis, not establish atmosphere or tension.
The Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie falls into this trap in the first of this year’s BBC Reith Lectures. She is wonderfully engaging, but withholds the scope of her argument.
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