The Century Foundation and PublicAffairs Release The War on Our Freedoms: Civil Liberties in an Age of Terrorism

Jun 16, 2003

Authors: admin

Publisher(s): The Century Foundation

Available in Bookstores Today from The Century Foundation and PublicAffairs
The war on our freedoms: Civil liberties in an age of terrorism

 6/17/03, New York City — With the whole world watching, America, in the name of freedom, has twice gone to war half way around the globe. But here at home, the war on our freedoms is being conducted largely behind closed doors. The government has adopted numerous policies that challenge existing legal norms, freedom of information, and many basic civil liberties. Yet it is still far from clear that the nation is much safer.

In The War on Our Freedoms: Civil Liberties in an Age of Terrorism (A Century Foundation book, published by PublicAffairs, June 2003) fourteen thinkers, scholars, journalists, and historians warn that we may be giving up more of our freedoms than we realize to gain less security than we need. They argue that the rush to limit civil liberties in the name of national security is ultimately destructive to American values and may, in some cases, impede efforts in the war on terrorism. 
Contributors to the volume include Anthony Lewis, Kathleen Sullivan, John Podesta, Alan Brinkley, Stanley Cloud, Joseph Lelyveld, Christopher Edley Jr., Ann Beeson, E.J. Dionne, John Stacks, Roberto Suro, Richard C. Leone, Stephen Schulhofer, and Patricia Thomas (bios attached). In a series of essays, they detail how due process is being undermined, government secrecy is on the rise, racial profiling is rampant, immigration policies are being compromised, and individual freedoms are at risk. A central theme is that this war on our freedoms is being conducted largely behind closed doors, and with little public debate. Richard C. Leone and Greg Anrig, Jr. are the co-editors of The War on Our Freedoms.

“The struggle against terrorism could continue for generations, and we run the risk of finding ourselves on a slippery slope, making decisions in which freedoms that are set aside for the ‘emergency’ become permanently lost to us,” Richard C. Leone, writes in the introductory essay. “In the end, the freedoms we abridge in the interest of security will be largely the result of choices that we, not the terrorists, make.”

The editors and contributors to the volume are available for interviews. Some contributors will participate in a press briefing on Tuesday, June 24, at the National press Club in Washington, D.C. For more details, visit us www.waronourfreedoms.com. For more information, contact Christy Hicks at 212/452-7723 or hicks@tcf.org