Zócalo Public Square

From Benedict Arnold’s defection to the McCarthy hearings to the Edward Snowden affair, the American public and the U.S. political system have wrestled with the meaning of treason—legally, morally, and politically. And in our own complex era of digital eavesdropping and online secret-sharing, definitions of treason have become still grayer and more elusive. What does it mean to contemporary Americans to betray one’s country? Who gets to decide and pass judgment on what constitutes treason—juries, politicians, the mass media, social networks? And have traditional ideas about treason kept pace in a world where many people’s sense of their duty to country may conflict with other deeply held allegiances, identities, and ethical convictions? Those and other questions were taken up by UCLA legal scholar Eugene Volokh, UC Davis legal scholar Carlton F.W. Larson, and Yale senior lecturer and former FBI counterintelligence special agent Asha Rangappa at a Zócalo Public Square / KCRW “Critical Thinking With Warren Oln