Reading wars: the story (so far) of Western literacy and the future of free speech

阅读战争:西方读写能力的故事(至今)与言论自由的未来

LSE: Public lectures and events

2026-06-09

1 小时 31 分钟
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Who gets access to books? And, to what extent does the act of reading shape our humanity?
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  • Welcome to the LSE Events podcast by the London School of Economics and Political Science.

  • Get ready to hear from some of the most influential international figures in the social sciences.

  • Okay, good evening, everyone.

  • I think we'll start.

  • My name is Professor David Hovel.

  • I'm a professor of Public International Law at the LSE Law School.

  • We are here today to discuss Don Herzog's recent book, Reading Wars, from LSE Press.

  • Now, I've spent today, we've all had busy days,

  • but I've been at our law school away day with our whole department, with my colleagues from the law department.

  • And one of our discussions was what skills were most important for us to teach our students in a world of AI.

  • Now, the answer that came back when we were put into tables was remarkably old fashioned, reading and writing.

  • And it's a disconcertingly good moment then to be launching a book called Reading Wars.

  • Because outside my own day in law school, reading wars are of course everywhere.

  • Children are being kept off social media for their own good.

  • Lawyers are being sanctioned for citing cases that AI appears to have invented for them.

  • Deep fakes circulate on X, inviting us to read images as evidence when they're nothing of the kind.

  • Rumours travel through platforms like Truth Social with the peculiar force that repetition lends to falsehood.

  • And for those of you who are on social media, the hashtag for today's event is hashtag LSE events.

  • So governments, regulators, universities and platforms are all asking with varying degrees of wisdom and panic.

  • Who may read?