By Fredrik deBoer By Fredrik deBoer August 11 at 6:00 AM

Fredrik deBoer is an academic and writer based in Brooklyn.

When Google fired James Damore this week for circulating a bizarre and offensive attack on their diversity practices, free speech advocates rushed to his defense, accusing the company of curtailing his right to free speech. The trouble was that hed written his memo and sent it to colleagues, imperiling his ability to have a healthy working relationship with his peers. Surely he knew, when he signed his employment contract, that hed have to abide by the companys code of conduct. It is Googles prerogative to decide what is right and wrong to say at the office.

But corporations arent just enforcing speech codes at the office. Increasingly, they are cracking down on their workers expression outside of it. In 2009, a Philadelphia Eagles stadium worker was fired for criticizing the teams personnel moves in a Facebook post. That same year, Georgia public school teacher Ashley Payne was forced to resign, she says, for posting pictures of herself drinking beer and wine while on vacation. An Ohio woman, Patricia Kunkle, sued the military contractor that had fired her in 2012, alleging that the reason was her public support of President Barack Obama. (She eventually settled the case.) In late 2013, public relations rep Justine Sacco was famously let go for tweeting an off-color joke about AIDS while traveling to Africa. In 2014, the chief executive of software company Mozilla, Brendan Eich, was forced out, resigning amid a public backlash against his stance opposing same-sex marriage. This trend even extends to academia, where speech is supposedly sacrosanct: Yale University dean June Chu resigned earlier this year under intense pressure after her offensive Yelp reviews were made known to the Yale community. And Lisa Durden, an adjunct professor at Essex Community College, was given the boot after an incendiary conversation about race with Fox Newss Tucker Carlson.

Most of these people said something that I find, to varying degrees, wrong or unhelpful. Some of it was outright offensive. But none of it deserves firing, because none of it happened in the workplace or had anything to do with work. Rather, each of these people was let go because of statements or gestures they made outside of their working duties. In doing so, they demonstrate the ways that private employers can constitute a grave threat to our free speech rights and expose a conflict between genuine freedom and capitalism.

There is a reason that, rather than letting legal codes alone protect expression, liberal societies have traditionally adopted a robust norm of free speech. The basic processes of democracy require that we all feel free to disagree with one another in the public sphere; without such a norm, its impossible to deliberate as democracy requires. To abandon that norm is to give up the means by which people in democracies make decisions. When that norm has been abandoned, such as in the McCarthy era, we have considered it an injustice, and for good reason. The American Civil Liberties Union, lately a proud public challenger of President Trump and his travel bans, puts the point succinctly: Censorship can be carried out by the government as well as private pressure groups. Yet thinkers on the left and the right have failed, in many cases, to grapple with this.

Right-wing theorists have always insisted that free-market economics is the best guarantor of individual liberty. Friedrich Hayek, the economist and philosopher who did so much to create modern economic conservatism, insisted that only societies with free markets could ensure free people. We must face the fact that the preservation of individual freedom is incompatible with a full satisfaction of our views of distributive justice, he wrote, arguing against social programs that protect the poor and unlucky, programs that he insisted throughout his long career would lead inevitably toward authoritarianism. The libertarian movement embraces Hayeks view, insisting that personal freedom must include the freedom to act in a market economy unencumbered by government regulation.

In contrast, the left has argued that the fickle turns of the market inevitably erode freedom. Karl Marx and his followers famously said that only through radical egalitarianism in material and social terms could the Enlightenment ideal of personal freedom be fully realized. Todays left-leaning thinkers have echoed this sentiment, pointing to the highly regimented conditions of workers on factory floors and in white-collar offices as proof that capitalist enterprise curtails freedom rather than protects it. The political science professor Corey Robin, in particular, has made a career out of demonstrating that the tyrannies that most consistently afflict ordinary Americans are workplace tyrannies, part of what he calls the private life of power. Progressives who are pleased when businesses discipline workers illiberal speech have lost this essential thread of leftism, arguing that if the government isnt the one enforcing speech codes, then there are no threats to free speech. This is clearly wrong.

Why have so many companies turned into petty dictators when it comes to their employees speech, political and otherwise? Progressives enamored of speech codes might like to imagine that corporations are motivated by genuine concern for social equality, but this gives them far too much credit. The reality is that in the Internet era, when outrage goes viral at incredible speed, companies have a pressing need to get out in front of potential controversies as swiftly as possible. Quick termination often works quite well to stamp out such fires until the publics attention shifts. Meanwhile, though the official unemployment rate has declined for years, flatlined wages and a steadily falling labor force participation rate suggest a weaker job market than the unemployment figures alone would indicate. Under such conditions, employers probably think they have little to lose in cracking down on workers speech, since there are probably eager replacements waiting to fill the spots of those who object.

Most Americans have no legal right that prevents them from being fired for their political beliefs. Public workers enjoy some protection, and some states such as New York and California afford private employees certain leeway to speak politically outside of work, free from reprisals by their employers. But the vast majority of American workers have no such defenses and can be fired for their political expression at the whim of their bosses. As Alina Tugend wrote in a 2015 New York Times essay on these issues, If youre a nonunion private employee, your boss has great latitude to control your political actions.

This condition is not new. What protected employees in the past was, first, a dividing line between work life and private life that has been blurred by digital technology. And second, that aforementioned norm of free speech, a societal expectation that workers were entitled to say what they wanted to say away from the workplace. Now, that norm is being eroded, from both the left and the right.

Tools of surveillance, whether public or private, coercive or voluntary, have never been more powerful or sophisticated, and while the reactions of private employers to employees speech vary, it doesnt take many incidents like those listed above to create a chilling effect. Every engine of online expression is also a tool with which our bosses might investigate our lives and our opinions. They will also therefore be key instruments of employer coercion going forward. As businesses gain new ways of observing the private lives of employees, they will become more adept at policing those off-the-clock moments, and all of us will become less free.

Twitter: @freddiedeboer

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Corporations are cracking down on free speech inside the office and out - Washington Post

As college students wrap up summer jobs and internships, university administrations are girding for another round of campus battles over issues of free speech, protest, and the universitys role as a setting for education and intellectual exploration. For those a step removed from todays college students (alumni, donors, parents and pundits), these periodic flare-ups have often been taken as dismaying evidence of a generations intolerance toward opposing views and free speech. Students who seek to shut down speech that offends through calls to disinvite speakers, punish offensive remarks or shout down opponents have been dismissed as coddled, unenlightened, entitled, anti-intellectual, dogmatic and infantile.

The desire to defend free speech and broad-mindedness is admirable, but a culture of respect for open discourse and tolerance for disagreeable opinions wont be built through insults, hand-wringing, financial pressure from irate alums or even the legal mandates now being proposed in some state legislatures. Those who are genuinely concerned about defending academic freedom and fostering intellectual diversity on campus would do well to grasp five factors that are fueling the impulse some students and professors have to try to silence speech they consider harmful.

The first factor at work is a striking lack ofunderstanding of the basic premises that underpin free speech. Many student leaders of the recent campus protests evince only a cursory grasp of the principles enshrined in the First Amendment, much less the more complex and harder-to-articulate values of free inquiry and expression in which most American colleges and universities take pride. Whether the blame lies with the demise of university core curricula that typically included liberal philosophers such as John Milton and John Stuart Mill, the retreat from civics education in recent decades, or other factors, principles surrounding free expression, freedom of association and press freedom are poorly understood among millennials.According to a 2015 survey by the Newseum Institute , 33 percent of Americans have no idea what rights the First Amendment protects. Subsequent surveys revealed that 69 percent of students think universities should be able to restrict offensive speech or slurs, and that young people are more likely than their elders to believe that constitutional rights to religious freedom do not apply to faiths that are considered extreme or fringe.

Whats more, some students, particularly nonwhite students, report that their primary experience with such strictures has occurred when free speech has been asserted as a justification or excuse for racist comments. One prominent student leader from the University of Missouri, when told that punishing speech could violate the First Amendment, replied that the First Amendment wasnt written for me. Her meaning was twofold: that when the Bill of Rights was written, each black American was treated as three-fifths of a person, and that her own prime exposure to the precept was its invocation to protect white students and administrators from reprisals for speech she considered offensive. It doesnt help that, often, the only vocal advocates for free speech on campus lean toward the right. Left-leaning students may find that the clubs they belong to, professors they admire, or personalities they follow on social media are not interested in defending the right to voice unpopular views.

A second influence shaping the campus climate for speech is grounded in technological change. The old adage Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me sounds quaint when insults, exposs, and quotes or video clips taken out of context can go viral online, leading swarms of antagonists to harass and intimidate a speaker with whom they disagree. The Internet offers a largely anonymous arena where hateful speech can easily flourish and where smears are available in perpetuity for family members or potential employers to stumble upon. The potency of social media has fueled calls to curtail and even shut down services like the now-defunct anonymous messaging app Yik Yak that seem to fuel cyberbullying. The potential for abusive online speech has made it difficult to argue that speech cannot do real damage and, correspondingly, that protections against harmful speech are unwarranted.

A third cause relates to the current movement for social equality in the United States. Our society has reformed many of the most obvious legal and structural manifestations of racism, sexism and anti-gay bias: keeping blacks from voting, firing women for getting pregnant, criminalizing gay sex and so forth. Now, the imperative to tackle more subtle and insidious forms of discrimination or exclusion including the quietly denigrating terms and unconscious stereotypes that may reveal and entrench implicit bias has rightly grown. Language is unavoidably implicated in this next phase of transformation. In fact, the evolution of language to reflect changing understandings of race, gender and culture is nothing new and does not simply indicate political correctness run amok. The terms Negro, colored and Oriental are all reminders that changing mores routinely render certain words out of bounds. As unfamiliar as some may find gender-neutral pronouns or neologisms such as Latinx, the insistence on them fits into this tradition, and the justifications behind them deserve a respectful hearing.

A fourth factor relates to our polarized and contentious political environment. The tone of political discourse had been degenerating well before Donald Trump arrived on the scene, but his campaign and election achieved through his distinctively impudent style have helped to normalize public speech that is intemperate, personally insulting, and derogatory toward women, the disabled, Muslims, African Americans, Jews and many other vulnerable groups.

The United States has the most protective standard for hate speech in the world, yet unwritten codes of civility and pluralism have, at least for the past few decades, largely confinedovertly bigoted sentiments to the margins of society.With these views now voiced among some of Trumps supporters and with the president himself repudiating them reluctantly, if at all, members of targeted minority groups understandably feel under siege, lacking confidence that their government will protect them.Students, meanwhile, see their campuses as places of refuge: a home where they can learn and socialize in security and relative comfort. If students witness a permissive environment for hateful speech in American society writ large, they will be more insistent in their demand for safeguards that prevent such attitudes from invading their schools.

The final development is that not all free speech standard-bearers come in peace.Conservative commentators including Milo Yiannopoulos, Ann Coulter and Richard Spencer style themselves as defenders of free speech for the purpose of building their brands and galvanizing followers, subscribers and book-buyers, but they manufacture confrontations to provoke controversy and draw headlines, rather than to elucidate ideas. This doesnt mean they should be barred from campuses or silenced; they still have their rights. But those who rally in defense of their freedom to speak, and those who invite them to speak, should engage not only the question of their rights but also the substance of their message. Free speech cannot be turned into a partisan cause of the right: At its core, free expression is a progressive concept and a liberal value.We value the right of all to speak because we want equal rights for all.

A robust defense of free speech on campus should be an enlightened defense, one that is alert to the concerns and arguments roiling universities now. A first step for those who rightly fear for the future of free speech should be dialogue with students historically the most impassioned defenders of campus free speech. To mobilize a new generation in that tradition will require listening to and understanding how it sees questions of race, gender and what it takes for a school to be a suitable setting for learning.Such conversations and engagement efforts are not an alternative to a staunch intellectual, political and legal defense of free speech principles. They are a necessary enabler of it.

Twitter: @PENamerican

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How we communicate is changing. So should the way we think about free speech. - Washington Post

Sen. Joe DonnellyJoe DonnellyGOP rep jumps into Indiana Senate race OPINION | Wendy Davis: Collins and Murkowski inspire the next generation of women in politics Anti-abortion Democrats fading from the scene MORE (D-Ind.)recently introducedthe Restoring Integrity to Americas Elections Act. Despite the innocuous name, this is yet another attempt to weaponize government against free speech, free association and political dissent.

The legislation wouldoverhaulthe Federal Election Commission (FEC) by lowering the number of FEC commissioners from six to five, supposedly putting an end to gridlock. The bill would also reduce partisanship by limiting commissioners to serving one term and granting the president power to nominate an FEC chair to serve for 10 years. This chair would have the authority to act independently of other commissioners, centralizing power in a single unelected political appointee.

Donnellys legislation will openly weaponize the FEC, as it allows one side of the aisle to impose its will when there is legitimate disagreement over complex legal matters. The House version of the bill sponsored by Rep. Jim Renacci (R-Ohio) already hasmore than 10 bipartisan co-sponsors. Perhaps Renaccisnow-floundering campaignfor Ohio governor drove him to support such an un-conservative idea to pander to liberal voters.

For decades, the independent, six-member FEC has remained bipartisan by design, precisely because it has the power to restrict speech about politicsthe very heart of our freedoms of speech and association.

Under the proposed Donnelly-Renacci legislation, Democrats and Republicans would receive two commissioners each, allowing the president to pick the tiebreaker for the next decade. Consolidating partisan control for 10 years at a time does not sound like an improvement.

Democratic Commissioner Ellen Weintraub, a proponent of all-powerful FEC Chair, exemplifies why it cannot work: These roles are innately partisan. Weintraub ignores Democrat malfeasance while actively lobbying her agency colleagues to probe the reported attempts of Russia to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election. In asensationalist June memo, Weintraub claimed Russias alleged activities in our 2016 presidential election may represent an unprecedented threat to the very foundations of our American political community. Yet she disregards such concerns when a Democrat is involved.

The same commissioner has sought toregulate the internet,fine Fox News Channelfor includingmorecandidates in a 2015 Republican primary debate, and routinelyassails her fellow commissioners.

Weintraub complains about partisan dysfunction at the FEC,lamentingdivisions on ideological grounds. But she fails to understand her perceived dysfunctionher colleagues not agreeing with heris the natural outcome of a checks-and-balances system. There are reasonable differences in interpretation of complex election law and its application to particular facts. Dysfunction proves the FEC is not controlled by a single side of the aisle. Giving Weintraubor a Republican equivalentthe power to persecute speakers and criminalize speech is just plain crazy.

Recent attempts to reform the FEC only prolong Americas unfortunately long history of misplaced anti-speech activism. Surreptitiously-named liberal groups like the Center for Public Integrityroutinely lamentmoney in politics. They fearmonger with threatening terminology, from unlimited cash donors to shell game and aggressive trafficking. Left-wing activists like these revert to visceral depictions of Sheldon Adelson and the Koch brothers as an us vs. them ploynot unlike the failed Occupy Wall Street movement.

Any attack on free speech is ultimately an attack on every Americans constitutional right to free expression, no matter how much money is involved. Big money in politics only exposes us to more ideas, while we, the citizens, retain the right to vote in secret at the ballot box. The dissemination of more ideas translates to more information, leaving us with more power to make informed choices about candidates or political issuesour own decision.

Only those who believe Americans are too stupid to make their own decisions think a few more TV ads is a bad idea. The American people should reject the Donnelly-Renacci mistake.

DanBackeris founding attorney of political.law, a campaign finance and political law firm in Alexandria, Virginia. He has served as counsel to more than 100 campaigns, candidates, PACs, and political organizations.

The views expressed by this author are their own and are not the views of The Hill.

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FEC 'reform' a smokescreen to weaponize government against free speech - The Hill (blog)

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In its annual report on the state of free speech on U.S. college campuses, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) raised the University of Toledos free speech grade from red to yellow.

There are three possible grades: Red means speech is mostly stopped on campus. Green means speech is free. Yellow is in between.

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As FIRE puts it: Yellow light colleges and universities are those institutions with at least one ambiguous policy that too easily encourages administrative abuse and arbitrary application.

Relative to what is happening at many universities in the country, several of them once great, the rating for UT is a relief. UT does not actively quash free speech!

But that is is hardly a point of pride.

In 2014, UT, as an institution, was not sure that students had the right to peacefully protest a speech by Karl Rove.

A university in this nation ought to be a bastion of free speech. At the very least, universities ought to meet the nations legal standards for the protection of speech and expression. Many of our universities get a failing grade in this regard. UT has improved to a C-minus.

The university violated speech laws most recently in March of this year, when it took down signs and flyers promoting a white separatist group called Identity Evropa. Odious though the group may be, its posters impinged upon the actual rights of no one.

The posters didnt even threaten the dubious rights the University of Toledo has dreamed up for its students: To be free from fear or intimidation and physical and/or emotional harm.

Should the right to be free of the fear of physical harm be put on the same plane as the right to be free from fear of emotional harm? What human being in the wider world is able to exercise the latter right?

The posters merely read, Protect Your Heritage, with the groups name in the subtitle, and Michelangelos David in the background. While the ideology behind the message is one all Americans should reject, the words themselves do not constitute a physical threat, or hate speech.

If the right to free expression exists only inside the boundaries of others sense of comfort and safety, then it does not really exist at all.

College is a place where young people encounter, and hopefully transition to, the world as it exists beyond the safe confines of home and hearth. White supremacists are unfortunately a part of that world. The real emotional harm here is being done by college administrators who, in seeking to shield the students eyes and minds from scary ideas and the people who hold them, stunt their emotional growth and leave them unequipped to face the complexities of life.

Students who felt emotionally harmed by the Identity Evropa posters need to toughen up and get a life. The university should be in the business of helping them to do that.

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UT still has work to do on free speech - Toledo Blade