Garrett Epps: Dont let the First Amendment forget DeRay Mckesson

This is a theory of liability unknown to the First Amendment. In an important case arising from the civil-rights movement, the Court held in 1982 that protest leaders cant be sued for the violent actions of others unless the plaintiffs can show that the leaders themselves either engaged in violence or incited or directed the violence. Doe alleged incitement, but made no real attempt to show it.

Garrett Epps: Dont let the First Amendment forget DeRay Mckesson

The First Amendment and civil-liberties communities were shocked by the Fifth Circuits original decision, issued in April, which brushed aside the First Amendment with the breezy bromide that the First Amendment does not protect violence. The decision was unanimousWillett was on the panel, but the opinion was written by Judge E. Grady Jolly. (Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod was the third member.) That opinion was a dagger pointed at the heart of the treasured American right to protest against government action. If protest organizers can be sued, and possibly ruined, by lawsuits if anyone at their protest (even, say, an undercover police officer) turns violent, no ordinary citizen would dare organize protests.

Mckessons lawyers asked the Fifth Circuit to rehear the case en banc (as a full court); in response, the same panel withdrew its original opinion and substituted a new one that said, in legal verbiage, We agree with ourselves and by golly, we are right.

The case landed in the Supreme Courts inbox on December 6. Mckessons petition for the Court to hear the case, written by lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union, pointed out that the Fifth Circuit panel decision flatly defied the Courts own precedent in a landmark case called NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware. Advocates of free speech were holding their collective breath waiting to see whether this Court, which preens as a First Amendment champion when the rights of corporations or the rich are at issue, would call out the wayward panel or silently ratify its radical change in the law.

The latter course just got harder. Willett, a Trump appointee and former Texas Supreme Court justice, has now changed his vote and issued a full-throated defense of the idea that free speech covers even unruly protest.

I have had a judicial change of heart, Willett wrote. Admittedly, judges arent naturals at backtracking or about-facing. But I do so forthrightly. Consistency is a cardinal judicial virtue, but not the only virtue. In my judgment, earnest rethinking should underscore, rather than undermine, faith in the judicial process. As Justice Frankfurter elegantly put it 70 years ago, Wisdom too often never comes, and so one ought not to reject it merely because it comes late.

The words are true, and the practice of judicial self-examination is, while not unheard-of, regrettably rare. In this case, reexamination led Willett to see two gaping holes in the majoritys case. First, he pointed out, despite the panels earlier decision, its not clear that even Louisiana tort law would support a lawsuit against Mckesson. To reach that conclusion, the panel had to, in essence, make new Louisiana state law. Every second-year law student knows that is a practice courts of appeals are supposed to avoidespecially when doing so creates a federal constitutional issue.

The rest is here:

A Stunning Vote Reversal in a Controversial First Amendment Case - The Atlantic

Speech has never been freer than it was in this decade. But only if you take a broad view of what free speech means, and only if you look at the right parts of the decade.

There is an argument that says free speech isn't just a matter of stopping direct government censorship, nor of keeping the state from indirectly chilling what we say. True freedom of expression, the theory goes, requires a broader culture of free speecha society where art, information, and commentary face fewer restraints of all kinds, not just the restraints that have the government's guns behind them.

Now, I'm not crazy about conflating the concept of free speech with those bigger, messier social questions. But they are undeniably linkeda culture hostile to open expression is surely more likely to pass legal limits on speechand those big social questions are worth thinking about in their own right. So let's roll with it. If by "free speech" you mean the capacity and willingness to speak, not just a shield from the institutions that could forcibly stop you from speaking, then the early to mid 2010s arguably saw the freest speech in history.

As the decade dawned, it was cheaper and easier than ever before to create and transmit a text, an image, or an audio or video recording. That transmission, in turn, had a bigger chance of reaching an audience. People didn't waste that opportunity: Both the volume and the variety of widely available speech exploded. Whole new media ecosystems appeared. Budding musicians did an end run around the record labels, sketch comics did an end run around cable TV, and YouTube DIYers did an end run around licensed plumbers and repairmen. In the political world, the Overton window widened and a flood of oddball ideological tribes poured insome of them rather unappealing, but that's how it goes with unfettered expression.

That in turn provoked a backlash, and for the last several years we've seen a series of efforts to clamp down on all that uncontrolled chatter. There have been heightened calls for censorship from the left, right, and center, sometimes directed at new sorts of speech (bots, code for printing weaponry) but usually aimed at targets that feel familiar (sex-work talk, terrorist propaganda, hate speech, marchers wearing masks), sometimes so familiar that they're moldy (pornography, Russian subversion). Beyond that, there was a broader feeling of brittleness around all that unfamiliar or unpleasant expression; even critics who would never call for censorship sometimes went overboard when attributing ill effects to speech they disliked. Meanwhile, the biggest conduit for all those emerging ecosystems of expressionthe internetseemed to be growing not just more censored but more centralized, more surveilled, more controlled. That was true not just in purely online spaces but in the dissident movements that at times use cyberspace to organize and communicate. Around the world, it became clear that it wasn't just protesters who were imitating and adapting each other's tactics; the regimes that they were protesting watched and learned from each other too.

All of that raises the question: Did we just witness Peak Free Speech? Will the first half of this decade be remembered not just as a time when speech was less fettered than ever before but as a time when it was less fettered than it will ever be again?

Freedom vs. Tolerance

I may have rushed too quickly past the question of what a "culture of free speech" is supposed to be. It's not a term that everyone uses the same way. The people who throw around that phrase often claim, or at least assume, that certain sorts of speech are more conducive to open expression than others. Some of them suggest that speech should be more civil; others think it ought to be more oppositional. Most of them want the speech, or at least the speakers, to be tolerant of other points of view.

But freedom and tolerance simply aren't the same thing. Both are valuable, but they're often going to be in tension with each other.

Civil libertarians need to be clear-eyed about that. Speech has always included gossip, shaming, and other tools for enforcing conformity. In the past those sorts of speech may have been confined to a single village or middle school, but now they have a global reach. Some testy "free speech" debates of the last decade have really just been battles between different collections of culture warriors, each circulating misleading screenshots as they try to shout the other side down. That may look like illiberal intolerance, but it also looks like a lot of lively speech. It's not a sort of speech that I like, but some form of it has always been a part of public life and it isn't likely to go away anytime soon.

The more important issue, at least as far as the future of free speech is concerned, is whether the institutional environment makes it easier or harder for intolerant people to muffle the speech they don't want to hear. And this is where the most significant change happened. From the '70s through the '00s, America's electronic media grew ever more decentralized and participatory. Not so in the '10s, as the social media services that made publishing so quick and easy also brought more of that publishing under consolidated corporate control. The result was the difference between getting kicked off an email list and getting kicked off a social media network: Both may be cases of a private association exercising its right not to give you a platform, but one has a much bigger impact than the other when it comes to whether your voice is heard.

This didn't mean we reverted to the bad old days of just three big TV networks, or even to the 500-channel universe of the late cable era. It was still ludicrously easy by 1990s standards to get a homemade piece of media in front of a substantial audience. But it was also more likely that your homemade media would suddenly be obscured. That might be because you broke a platform's rules; it might be because an algorithm mistook your photo of a nude sculpture for pornography and improperly assumed that you had broken a rule; it might be because you were mass-reported by the sorts of assholes that the rules were supposed to address. (Time and again, a social media company would create a system that was supposed to keep out the bigots and trolls who harass people, only to learn that the bigots and trolls had found a way to turn the system itself into a tool for harassment.) The result was more Brazil than 1984: a control apparatus full of leaks and loose wiring.

Governments encouraged the process, passing mandates that fostered both the proliferation of rules and a sloppy sort of enforcement. Germany, for example, started implementing a law last year that informed platforms that they had just 24 hours to take down "obviously unlawful" hate speech or face a steep fine. Inevitably, this combination of stiff penalties and narrow time windows prompted companies to suppress first and ask questions later, even if that meant excising speech that didn't actually violate the law. (In one infamous example, the nominally anti-racist statute was used to remove some anti-racist satire.) That's bad enough for the Germans, but in a global internet decisions made by the government of Germanyor any other wired nation, from Britain to Chinacan affect what people around the world can see.

Centralized platforms make the task that much easier. As Declan McCullagh wrote in Reason this year, they offer "a single convenient point of control for governments eager to experiment with censorship and surveillance." A culture of freer speech might require a technology of freer speecha more decentralized internet with fewer chokepoints, one built around protocols rather than platforms.

The Global Spring

All that said, there is one big reason to think the pendulum may already be swinging back in speech's direction. This year saw an astonishing level of public protest around the globe, adding up to a revolutionary moment on par with 1968. Unrest has swelled everywhere from France to Hong Kong, from Chile to Indonesia, from Iran to Ecuador, from Haiti to Spain. Such movements have already brought down governments in Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Sudan. In Bolivia, mass protests preceded the ousting of leftist president Evo Morales and then more mass protests greeted the new right-wing regime of Jeanine ez. Here in the U.S., last year saw the biggest strike wave in more than three decades, and we may be on track to top that in 2019.

These movements have been sparked by a wide variety of grievances. Their supporters come from a wide variety of ideologies. They use a wide variety of tactics, not all of them limited to nonviolent speech and assembly. It would probably be hard to find someone who backs every single one of them. But put together, they represent a surge in people's willingness not just to speak out but to take risks to do so. That too represents a sort of culture of free speech, even though many of these regimes have reacted to the unrest with a repression that does not remotely resemble free speech in the legal sense.

Those movements are learning from each other, too: When one of them figures out a way to evade censorship, surveillance, or police assaults, the others take heed. (We live in an era when Hongkongers can be recorded neutralizing tear gas in the summer, videos of the technique immediately circulate on social media, and by October protesters in Chile are doing the same thing.) After a decade of authoritarian governments adjusting themselves to the ways protesters organize themselves on- and offline, the momentum is with the dissidents again as they find ways to adjust their tactics in return.

A decade that began with the rise and fall of the Arab Spring is concluding with a Global Spring. And while that could conceivably end with the most vicious clampdown of all, it's also the best reason to hope that what looked like Peak Free Speech was really just a temporary speech recession.

See the rest here:

Was This the Decade We Hit Peak Free Speech? - Reason

The new Conservative government should legislate to create a national academic freedom champion, while restrictions on low-quality courses in universities could rebalance funding towards further education in a shift tailored to the Conservatives new electorate, according to a former Tory adviser and senior civil servant.

With the UKs general election having brought to power a Conservative government with a significant Commons majority, sector attention will focus on the partys manifesto commitments, which notably include pledges to strengthen academic freedom and free speech in universities and to tackle the problem oflow-quality courses in England.

A paper published by Policy Exchange,titled The First Hundred Days: how the Government can implement the pledges in its 2019 election manifesto, says that ministers should move quickly to introduce an academic freedom and free speech on campus bill and thus adopt a plan advocated in arecent report on the issue by the thinktank.

Universities are a potential target if the Conservatives seek to bolster their increased support from working-class, largely non-graduate voters in towns across the Midlands and North by waging culture wars against institutions they perceive as hostile to Tory values.

Iain Mansfield, head of education, skills and science at Policy Exchange, formerly special adviser to Jo Johnson in his brief return as universities minister, said key recommendations in the thinktanks free speech report included extending the statutory duty on freedom of speech to include students and student unions as well as HEIs.

The report also recommended that the Office for Students should appoint a national academic freedom champion who would have the power to investigate allegations of academic freedom or free speech violations and then lead on sanctions where appropriate, he said.

Those would be two things which could be done by the new government, he told Times Higher Education.

Mr Mansfield, a former senior civil servant in the Department for Education, said a recent report by the Policy Institute at Kings College London had found that at least a third of Conservative or Leave-supporting students dont feel comfortable sharing their views at university.

ThePolicy Institute research also foundthat only a minority of UK students have heard about incidents where freedom of expression has been restricted in their own university.

Universities are already subject to requirements to protect freedom of expression under existing legislation.

Nick Hillman, director of the Higher Education Policy Institute and a former Tory special adviser, said: Because the Tories did even better in the election than anybody expected, to then use that [campus free speech] as a way of stoking a new culture war, Im not sure who will benefit from that.

Its not clear to me that either the politicians or the universities benefit from pretending theres a bigger free speech problem in our universities than there really is.

And hurried legislation tends to be legislation that doesnt stand the test of time, he warned.

On the manifestos reference to low-quality courses, Mr Mansfield said this should be understood in conjunction with where the Conservatives have won seats.

I think that steers them very much towards a genuine wholesale rebalancing between HE and FE in terms of funding, numbers, esteem and so forth. I think that will have to be part of the solution [in] looking at low-quality courses.

There were a range of mechanisms for establishing which courses arent delivering, such as the teaching excellence framework, dropout rates and data on progression to employment, he said. Mr Mansfield added that he would favour the reintroduction of number caps for at least some institutions or courses.

john.morgan@timeshighereducation.com

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Tory campus free speech bill would 'stoke new culture war' - Times Higher Education (THE)

On Wednesday, sections of the country and its social media were up in arms after Pernille Vermund, leader of the stridently anti-immigration, right-wing Nye Borgerlige party, used the word perker the Danish languages quintessential ethnic slur in a television documentary.

READ ALSO: Danish party leader uses ethnic slur in TV documentary

Vermund subsequently doubled down on the remark, saying I don't regret it. Let's call things what they are. If you're a negro, you're a negro; if you're aperker, you're aperker, if you're an immigrant, you're an immigrant.

Understandably, that got a reaction.

Natasha al-Hariri, director of the youth organization of the Danish Refugee Council, has called for a broad rejection of Vermunds sentiments.

Should we not show the 400,000 people in Denmark who could be considered perkere that we dont accept this type of derisory, racist remark? It would actually be nice if someone bothered, al-Hariri tweeted.

She is of course completely correct, and as a target of such abuse has a lot more authority to speak on it than I do.

Politicians including Sikandar Siddique, immigration spokesperson with the environmentalist Alternative party, and Social Liberal deputy leader Sofie Carsten Nielsen have in fact spoken out against Vermund and to support al-Hariris view.

Weve been here before though, and the next steps are clear.

Vermund or a like-minded high-profile person will say she can say use the word or any other word she wishes to because in Denmark there is free speech, and that will never be curbed by any kind of censorship.

The 2005 Mohammed cartoons, still a high water mark for Danish cultural tunnel vision, and multiple defences of the use of other words with overtones of racial prejudice neger is the primary example provide the precedents for where were headed here.

READ ALSO:

Its fine, goes the logic, to be politically incorrect and say or do something which has an othering effect on a large segment of your own society, because free speech.

Even if it makes your advanced, stable, pragmatic democracy seem like a tribute act to 19th century parochialism, thats okay. Because free speech.

I get it. Denmark has free speech. Nothing is sacred. You can make distasteful jokes and laugh at inappropriate things. Im all for that, its part of the honest, straightforward mentality that makes Denmark unique.

Its not an excuse to piss people off for the sake of it. That is what Vermund is doing here and what Rasmus Paludan, the leader of a far-right group which, unlike Vermund's, was rejected by the electorate, was prepared to go to far more extreme lengths to achieve.

After making an unprovoked verbal attack on your chosen target community, you can then invoke free speech, make yourself a victim of political correctness and censorship, and use that to try and drive a wedge down the middle of the population.

Weve seen the long term outcome of that kind of thing in other Western democracies which I wont mention here (okay, maybe I will).

Last week did indeed see unpleasant opposing demonstrations in Copenhagen between an Islamophobic organization and counter protestors. But Denmark is too pragmatic overall and its political system too sensible and consensus-driven for it to go down the route of the US or UK.

Furthermore, the country is stable and, while of course far from perfect, doesnt have societal ills of a requisite magnitude that they can convincingly be blamed on any particular segment, either fairly or unfairly.

So retrograde, racially divisive language must instead by justified by the Denmark has free speech argument.

MPs and anyone else using this kind of language in the public debate should realize that what theyre doing is not plain talking. Its plain embarrassing, for them and for Denmark.

Read this article:

Opinion: Are we about to have another 'free speech' debate in Denmark? If so, Ill pass - The Local Denmark

Wind, water, and time are agents of erosion, evident from the Great Smokies to the Grand Canyon. But Terry Tempest Williams also sees another kind of erosion in America: erosion of democracy; erosion of science, and erosion of trust.

For over 30 years, #Bioneers has acted as a seed head for the game-changing social and scientific vision, knowledge and practices advancing the great transformation to a restored world. We do so through our annual national conference, award-winning media, local Bioneers conferences and initiatives, dynamic programs, and special projects.

#FreeSpeechTV is proud to partner with this outstanding organization and we are pleased to bring the wisdom of the world's brightest leaders to our viewers. For more Bioneer content subscribe to Free Speech TV Youtube channel or visit freespeech.org/shows/bioneers.

#FreeSpeechTV is one of the last standing national, independent news networks committed to advancing progressive social change. As the alternative to television networks owned by billionaires, governments, and corporations, our network amplifies underrepresented voices and those working on the front lines of social, economic and environmental justice.

#FSTV is available on Dish, DirectTV, AppleTV, Roku, Sling, and online at freespeech.org

Bioneers 2019 Bioneers Seeding The Field Erosion FSTV@Bioneers2019 Nina Simons Terry Tempest Williams

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Bioneers: Seeding the Field Erosion With Terry Tempest Williams Erosion With Terry Tempest Williams - Free Speech TV

A new study shows that artists across the world are facing greater threats to their free speechand safety. Photo: PA Images

Scottish playwright Jo Clifford is no stranger to controversy. Her play,The Gospel According to Jesus, Queen of Heaven, casts Jesus as a trans woman, andfirst aired at Glasgows Tron in 2009 to a reception of applauseand protest.But there is controversy, and then there is outright danger. The same play was on tour in Brazil until recently, when asmoke bombwas thrown into the performance space and armed police invaded the theatre. Brazil hasbecome a country where it is dangerous to perform, especially if your show does not tick the boxes set out by the new right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro, who haspushedfor local art to focus on Brazilian heroes.

The incident warns of a new threat sweeping the world right now: the censorship of the arts. Aspecial reportin the latestIndex on Censorshipmagazine published this week shows a rising hostile climate towards the arts, even in robust democracies. Artists from around the world, including Germany, Poland, Brazil, and the UK spoke of the increasing threats to their artistic freedom as a result of an emboldened right. Perhaps most startling was the frequencyof attacks in the field.Indexwent out expecting to find just a few examples. Instead, the list was endless.

A threat from the right

While the spotlightin recent years has been on censorship from the student left, with concerns about the rise of safe spaces, trigger warnings and no-platforming, real and increasing threats are coming from the right. They are taking away our libertiesand liberal arts.

We are on the front line of a culture war that will only deepen and strengthen as the ecological and financial crisis worsens and the right feel more fearfully they are losing their grip on power, saidThe Gospel According to Jesus playwright Clifford.She added that even in Scotland, her play can ruffle feathers.Last Christmas there was a run at Edinburghs Traverse Theatre. An online petition demanding the play be banned, she tells me, attracted a whopping 24,674 signatures.

Germany is particularly feeling the heat.The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has gone from newcomer on the political scene in 2013 to being the largest opposition party in the Bundestag today. They are eyeing up seats in parliamentand in the theatre. Marc Jongen, commonly regarded tobe

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There's a new free speech crisis gripping the worldand governments aren't helping - Prospect

Incident at College of Lake County had targeted YAF club

After a College of Lake County adviser hung flyers accusing a conservative club on campus of being a hate group, the Illinois school hosted free speech trainings for faculty and staff.

In November, an employee of the college hung flyers stating hate groups are not welcome here and other materials accusing Young Americans for Freedom of being a hate group.

YAF student Chairman Rob Corn said in a Facebook post: Ive been going to this school for two years, and this isnt anything new. The intolerance of the left on our campus is rampant.

But after the incident, the college hosted free speech training sessions.

A student activities director told Corn that the first question discussed at these sessions was whether or not the YAF chapter was a hate group, to which the schools lawyers affirmed that the chapter was NOT a hate group, and has every right to exist on campus, YAF reported in a news release.

Faculty and advisers were also instructed to help students comply with free speech protocols on campus and assist them to navigate free speech issues, especially speech that may be controversial, according to YAF, which obtained the training documents.

The presentation also directed faculty to help students ensure that their free speech is not subject to regulation under the First Amendment.

Another slide instructed faculty and advisers to avoid treating protected speech as actionable misconduct and that expressions of hateful or offensive views do not constitute unlawful harassment, even if they offend listeners.

In an email to The College Fix, YAF spokesman Spencer Brown called the training another victory for YAFs student activists, and praised the campus YAF chapter for its boldness in confronting the administration.

The campus Lefts attempts to sideline and silence conservatives backfired when Young Americans for Freedom activists at CLC refused to give up, he said in the email. CLC is now taking steps to do what more universities should: train their staff and faculty to understand that the First Amendment must apply equally to all students, regardless of viewpoint.

MORE:As YAF president, Scott Walker vows to open the eyes of the next generation

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College hosts free speech training after harassment of conservative group - The College Fix

Brooklyn: Just finished watching a fabulous show on CNN titled The Sixties." During that era, groups like the Stones, Beatles, Animals, Beach Boys, The Who, Dylan, etc., never thought about getting older. I am now in my seventies and am moving on with it. All these 60s people have to do the same. Sometimes when I see these groups at present time, I think, Leave us with the way you were, not who you are now. Its okay. Unfortunately, youth does not last forever, physically anyway. I still can get into the songs and stuff with my mind, but when I look in the mirror I see a different face. So, I will continue to watch and listen to my 60s people, but sometimes, its time to move on. Love all you guys. Rita Leslie

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Readers sound off on campus free speech, impeachment and the death penalty - New York Daily News

The least-recognized of the amendments five freedoms assembly and petition are facing perhaps the most-immediate challenges, though freedoms of press, speech and religion dont escape unscathed.

At years end, First Amendment issues are as controversial and multi-faceted as anything in our fractured, divided society.

The least-recognized of the amendments five freedoms assembly and petition are facing perhaps the most-immediate challenges, though freedoms of press, speech and religion dont escape unscathed.

Most immediately, a Black Lives Matter activist faces a lawsuit from a Baton Rouge, La., police officer who blamed the activist for injuries he suffered at a 2016 protest over the police killing of a black man. The suit doesnt claim the activist threw or even encouraged the throwing of a rock; rather, it seeks damages because the man led others to block a highway where the violent incident occurred.

A recent Washington Post story notes that Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) plans to introduce legislation to hold protesters arrested during unpermitted demonstrations liable for police overtime and other fees around such demonstrations.

In more than a dozen states in recent years, from Oregon to Florida, lawmakers have faced proposals to increase penalties for obstructing streets and highways and to limit the financial liability of drivers whose cars injure protesters. In Arizona, a failed 2017 proposal rooted in that states racketeering laws would have permitted the arrest and seizure of homes and other assets of those whom simply plan a protest in which some act of violence occurs.

In a similar financial penalty vein, several major news operations face defamation lawsuits seeking massive damages over their coverage of news events claims certain to roil public debate once again about the role, credibility and performance of the nations free press. Critics also say such lawsuits even if unlikely to succeed are effectively attempts to chill reporting and intimidate corporate owners.

Prominent among those filing the lawsuits is Rep. Devin Nunes, (R-Calif.), who wants $435 million dollars from CNN for a report he says falsely linked him to events in the ongoing Ukraine-Biden investigation controversy. He also is seeking $150 million from The Fresno Bee over a report involving a workplace scandal at a winery in which Nunes has a stake, $75 million from Hearst over an Esquire article regarding a family farm in Iowa, with the claim the magazine has an axe to grind against him and a $250 million lawsuit against Twitter for what he says is its intentional effort to downplay conservative content as well as two parody accounts that mock him.

In the introduction to the most recent lawsuit, Nunes says CNN is the mother of fake news. It is the least trusted name. CNN is eroding the fabric of America, proselytizing, sowing distrust and disharmony. It must be held accountable.

Moving to another area of contention, campus free speech issues continue to vex collegiate communities, from complaints that conservative speech and views of faculty and staff are stifled, to a move by President Trump that he says will fight against anti-Semitism but that critics say is really intended to punish student or faculty advocacy for the BDS Movement boycotts, divestiture or sanctions aimed at ending international support for Israel.

Much like the campus controversies, interpretations of religious liberty regarding public policy continued to swirl through the year. As the Supreme Courts 2019-20 term began in October, at least eight cases touching on faith issues the most in recent years were scheduled to be heard. A number involved LGBTQ rights regarding employment or health benefits. While some cases do not directly involve religious organizations, the courts decisions would affect arguments over whether religious beliefs can negate claims of discrimination on the basis of sexual preference.

An expansion of First Amendment protection for commercial speech (which at one time did not exist in law) continues, as courts at least give serious consideration to a variety of business arguments. In several instances, corporate lawyers are arguing that to force companies to make certain disclosures about product content or sources is an unacceptable requirement that violates the First Amendment by forcing companies to speak.

Other cases involve claims of free speech protection for hospitals facing a Trump administration rule requiring disclosure of secret rates. Industry groups filed a lawsuit earlier this month, also claiming it is compelled speech in violation of the First Amendment.

New technology continues inexorably to challenge long-standing law. In a mix of free speech and public safety concerns, a Texas man was sentenced in February to eight years in prison for using a 3-D printer to construct a plastic handgun and ammunition in violation of a prior court order against owning of a firearm. Advocates for the so-called 3-D gun argue the computer instructions in such 3-D printing projects are speech and not subject to federal or state firearms regulations. Government officials say existing criminal law on issues such as possession and manufacturing should allow them to regulate or ban making or owning such weapons.

Government officials and social media critics continue to hammer operations such as Facebook and Twitter which are not government entities, but private concerns not governed by the First Amendment with regulatory threats over political advertising, hate speech and evidence of foreign election interference.

Threatened action ranges from using anti-trust legislation to break up the largest social media companies, to removal of what is known as Section 230 protection for companies (from the Communications Decency Act of 1996) that now permits them to avoid legal responsibility for content they simply carry, rather than material they create or significantly edit.

Opponents of watering down or removing Section 230 protection say either action would, in effect, end the web as we know it by shutting down the flow of information to the mere trickle of items or articles that could be independently verified by internet providers, or to bland factual accounts devoid of opinion or interpretation.

The year 2019 may well go down in First Amendment history as a turning point, in which those working to limit or control information avoided direct confrontations over First Amendment rights and turned to tactics designed to make it much more difficult, much too costly or even financially ruinous to exercise those rights.

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First Five: Were divided in new ways over core freedoms - McDowell News

WASHINGTON The White House is pushing back against criticism of its new executive order on anti-Semitism, specifically with regards to accusations that it will harm free speech on U.S. campuses.

The executive order was signed by President Donald Trump last week and has drawn strong praise from leading mainstream Jewish-American organizations, but also criticism from the American Civil Liberties Union and from several progressive Jewish groups.

The first wave of criticism focused on media reports that characterized the executive order as redefining Jewishness as a nationality. That description was not based on the orders actual text, which states that Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which prohibits federal funding of institutions that discriminate against a person or a group based on nationality, race or color will also include anti-Semitism.

The main reason for the Jewishness as nationality interpretation was because Title VI does not apply to religious groups. However, the U.S. government has been treating anti-Semitism as a form of discrimination that falls under Title VI for more than a decade, thanks to decisions taken by government agencies during the presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

Jared Kushner, Trumps son-in-law and senior adviser, played a key role in getting the president to sign the executive order. He rejected that interpretation in a New York Times Op-Ed published last week. When news of the impending executive order leaked, many rushed to criticize it without understanding its purpose, Kushner wrote. The executive order does not define Jews as a nationality. It merely says that to the extent that Jews are discriminated against for ethnic, racial or national characteristics, they are entitled to protection by the anti-discrimination law.

The confusion over the nationality issue wasnt limited only to the executive orders critics but also to some of its supporters. Brooke Goldstein, executive director of The Lawfare Project an organization that uses lawsuits to fight the movement to boycott Israel and the settlements in the occupied territories praised Trump for a groundbreaking executive order that acknowledges Judaism as a nationality not just a religion.

The White House battled these interpretations following the initial news reports about the executive order, and the criticism lessened once the full text became available. (It was first published by journalist Jacob Kornbluh in Jewish Insider on December 11.)

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The executive order is still facing strong criticism, however, over concerns that it harms and limits freedom of speech on American campuses. That criticism centers around how the executive order defines anti-Semitism.

Israeli political discourse

The executive order essentially says that if the U.S. Department of Education gets a complaint under Title VI that a university receiving federal grants is discriminating against Jewish students for anti-Semitic reasons, the university can lose its funding. The main controversy is over what exactly constitutes anti-Semitic conduct.

The executive order relies on the definition of anti-Semitism that was published by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance in 2016. The IHRA defines anti-Semitism as a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.

The executive order refers to the IHRA working definition as non-legally binding, and says that when trying to determine whether a certain action is anti-Semitic, the U.S. Department of Education should consider this definition.

In addition, the executive order says the Department of Education should consider the contemporary examples of anti-Semitism that are part of the IHRA definition. These are what critics of the executive order are most concerned about.

The list of examples published by the IHRA includes examples that are indisputably anti-Semitic such as denying the facts of the Holocaust or calling for the killing or harming of Jews. Several examples, however, describe criticism against Israel. One such example is applying double standards by requiring of [Israel] a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation. Another example is comparing contemporary Israeli policy to that of Nazi Germany.

These two specific examples are part of the political discourse within Israel itself, and are not limited to one side of the Israeli political divide. It is common for Israeli politicians to say that because Israel is a Jewish state, for example, it should be a light unto the nations and demand of itself higher standards than other countries.

As for comparisons with Nazi Germany, they have been made over the years by political figures from both the Israeli right and left, usually against each other, but also against state institutions such as the police and the military.

Haaretz asked the White House how these contemporary examples would, in practice, impact universities that receive federal grants from the government. Could, for example, a university lose federal grants if a student complained about a professor or guest lecturer saying in the classroom that something Israel did is reminiscent of actions taken by Nazi Germany? And could it lose funding over an event that supports an Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories something a right-wing Jewish organization could describe as requiring of [Israel] a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation?

Avi Berkowitz, a close adviser to Kushner and heavily involved in working on the executive order, says the answer is no. A complaint against a lecture as you describe would not trigger Title VI, he says. In order for Title VI to apply, there has to be actionable conduct. Title VI requires a certain level of conduct, and the executive order does not change that requirement. The lecture remains protected speech.

In other words, the Department of Education would not respond to a complaint about a statement alone. It would only respond to complaints about actionable conduct meaning an action that could count as discrimination.

The executive order is relevant if there is conduct that rises to the level of possible discriminatory action and the university needs to determine motive, Berkowitz says. For example, lets say a Jewish group, like Hillel, wants to reserve rooms for meetings but the administrator repeatedly refuses, so they cant meet and they suspect there is something underhanded about the process. They file a complaint. If during the investigative process it is discovered that the administrator has written emails saying that he/she would never reserve rooms for Jews, and that email includes anti-Semitic reasons, these emails may be relevant to show whether the conduct had a discriminatory motive, which is necessary for Title VI to apply.

Intimidation technique

Prof. Kenneth Stern has been one of the executive orders leading critics. He was previously the American Jewish Committees expert on anti-Semitism and is currently director of a program on hate at Bard College in New York. Following the executive orderspublication last week, he wrote an article in The Guardian warning about the threat it will pose to freedom of speech on campuses.

Stern explained that he was personally involved in writing an earlier anti-Semitism definition that was the basis for the 2016 IHRA definition. That definition, he wrote, was meant for the purpose of data collection and research. It was never intended to be a campus hate speech code, but thats what Donald Trumps executive order accomplished this week. This order is an attack on academic freedom and free speech, and will harm not only pro-Palestinian advocates, but also Jewish students and faculty, and the academy itself.

Stern also wrote: If you think this isnt about suppressing political speech, contemplate a parallel. Theres no definition of anti-black racism that has the force of law when evaluating a Title VI case. If you were to craft one, would you include opposition to affirmative action? Opposing removal of Confederate statues?

Speaking with Haaretz this week, Stern says he is concerned that right-wing Jewish organizations will use the executive order to go after people they disagree with, using the IHRA definition to accuse people of anti-Semitism for political reasons. He compares that to a trend on the political left in the United States to come and tell universities, We need a safe space to protect us from ideas we disagree with. Thats not a good thing, and now the Jewish right-wing will try to do the same, basically saying: Protect us too.

In response to the same question Haaretz presented to the White House Could a university lose funding over something said in class by a professor? Stern says he could not rule it out completely, but its not very likely.

The main problem, in his view, is that youre going to have groups on the right using this to try and intimidate the universities because even if they file a complaint knowing theres a 99 percent chance it wont be accepted, would the university be willing to take the risk?

Stern adds that complaints like this basically accusing universities of anti-Semitism will also come with bad press coverage and public pressure. This could lead to self-censorship, just in order to avoid all the trouble. This is how you can stifle debate.

Stern refers to a comment made in 2013 by Kenneth Marcus a senior Department of Education official appointed by Trump who was personally involved in several attempts to present Title VI cases against universities prior to joining the White House. Marcus wrote that while most of those cases alleging anti-Semitic discrimination didnt lead to any federal action, the cases were still successful because of the damage they caused to those they were filed against: Getting caught up in a civil rights complaint is not a good way to build a rsum or impress a future employer, he wrote.

Fear of such a scenario was also mentioned in a public letter to Trump by the Middle East Studies Association last week: It is not difficult to imagine how this executive order could induce colleges and universities seeking to avoid investigation and possible sanction by the Department of Education to adopt measures that limit or suppress the unfettered expression of the full range of views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and advocacy for particular perspectives on it, it stated.

Under siege

Lara Friedman of the Foundation for Middle East Peacealso warned of a similar scenario, in an article published last week on the website Responsible Statecraft: The goal of this effort, and the ones that will certainly follow, is clear: To punish campuses that protect free speech on Israel-Palestine, and to have a chilling effect on academic institutions across the board, ensuring that campus administrators and donors choose to preemptively quash criticism and activism related to Israel rather than risk reputational harm, legal jeopardy, and potential loss of funding.

The White House rejects these arguments, explaining that any complaint based on speech and not actual conduct would be rejected, and that after one or two such complaints fail to succeed, it will be clear what the executive order can actually be used for and where it isnt relevant.

David Bernstein, a law professor at George Mason University, believes the executive order is mostly symbolic. However, he notes, Jewish students at many campuses really feel under siege, which is why it matters that groups like the Anti-Defamation League, that hate Trump, are supporting it.

After the executive order was signed, Jesse Singal in New York magazine used the following example to try to explain its potential impact: Imagine that a pro-Palestinian student group arouses the ire of a local Hillel chapter, and the Hillel members decide they are experiencing discrimination because the pro-Palestinian group is holding Israel to a double standard. The Department of Education agrees and threatens to yank the university in questions funding, and the university, backed into a corner, bans the club.

Bernstein tells Haaretz there is nothing in the law that would allow for this. First, lets recall that the IHRA definition only comes into play as evidence of discriminatory intent. You need to have an underlying illegal act. Holding Israel to a double standard may be anti-Semitic, but expressing anti-Semitic ideas is not illegal, under Title VI or otherwise.

According to Bernstein, The only plausible threat from the IHRA definition is that a university administrator will misinterpret it as applying to hostile environment liability. In such a scenario, a pro-Israel Jewish student could claim that the university is creating a hostile environment by allowing an organization that supports boycotting Israel or the settlements to have a presence on campus. However, Bernstein says, the executive order doesnt refer at all to the issue of hostile environment liability. In Bernsteins view, The ultimate problem is with the broad scope of hostile environment law, not the executive order.

Bard Colleges Stern is concerned that the executive order, regardless of its impact on free speech, will also have an adverse effect on the very issue of fighting anti-Semitism.

I think the real way to confront this is to educate people about anti-Semitism, and about Israel and Zionism and I say this as a Zionist, he says. This is what I want to see universities investing in. Suppressing speech we dont like isnt the solution to this problem.

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White House explains to Haaretz how its anti-Semitism executive order will work in practice - Haaretz

The truth about the recent right-wing landslide in the United Kingdom that saw a massive Tory majority and the election of Boris Johnson to Prime Minister over Labour's Jeremy Corbyn.

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President Donald Trump is on the cusp of being impeached by the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives.

With a historic vote set today on whether to formally accuse him of abusing his power in dealing with Ukraine to help himself politically and then obstructing Congress by blocking their investigation.

Trump lashed out directly at the vote on Tuesday, calling the proceedings to remove him from office an attempted coup.

Should the House approve either of the articles of impeachment, the Republican-controlled Senate will hold a trial with all 100 senators acting as jurors, with a two-thirds supermajority 67 votes required to convict.

Meanwhile, thousands of protesters in favor of impeaching Trump took to the streets Tuesday in cities across the country.

On what many are calling Impeachment Day, we speak with: Rep. Al Green of Texas, who was the first congress member to call for President Trumps impeachment from the floor of the House of Representatives in 2017;

Dahlia Lithwick, senior legal correspondent and Supreme Court reporter for Slate, host of the Amicus podcast; and Mark Green, co-author of Fake President: Decoding Trumps Gaslighting, Corruption, and General Bullsh*t.

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House Votes on Impeachment and Charging Trump with Abuse of Power - Free Speech TV

Sonali Kolhatkar speaks with Cliff Albright, the Co-founder of Black Voters Matter. He's also a Radio Host, Writer, Consultant, Social Justice Activist.

A federal judge has just signed off on the purging of hundreds of thousands of registered voters in Georgia, the same state where massive voter suppression efforts just a year ago helped propel a Republican Governor into power. Many of the registered voters are being removed from the rolls simply because they have not voted in years. Others have out-of-date addresses. Stacey Abrams, the charismatic gubernatorial candidate who lost narrowly last year is challenging the voter purges.

The news from Georgia comes days after Wisconsin was shedding voters that could impact the Democratic Party and an Associated Press review of Ohios absentee ballots found widespread application denials.

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Thom Hartmann did the math on what America could afford if we started taxing billionaires.

What would you do if we started taxing billionaires? Would you be able to access healthcare or go to school should colleges be funded?

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The Thom Hartmann Program is the leading progressive political talk radio show for political news and comments about Government politics. Whether Liberal or Conservative, Thom speaks with special guests and callers from all over the globe about the topics that matter.

Full episodes of The TH Program air on Free Speech TV every weekday

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Missed an episode? Check out Thom on FSTV VOD anytime or visit freespeech.org/show/the-thom-hartman-program for the latest clips.

#FreeSpeechTV is one of the last standing national, independent news networks committed to advancing progressive social change. As the alternative to television networks owned by billionaires, governments, and corporations, our network amplifies underrepresented voices and those working on the front lines of social, economic and environmental justice.

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A mark of internal inconsistency at best and hypocrisy at worst

The University of Pennsylvania lost its coveted green light rating from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education this fall, after the civil liberties group noticed a pair of policies that undermine free speech on campus.

But its still publicly portraying itself as a green-light school and FIRE isnt happy about it.

In a blog post Friday, FIRE rebuked the Ivy League university for its response to a letter from the American Council of Trustees and Alumni.

Last month ACTA warned the university that its downgrading by FIRE should be an alarm bell that causes the campus to commit to a better culture of free speech and inquiry. Penn was already on the ropes with both ACTA and FIRE for its sanctions against law professor Amy Wax, an outspoken conservative.

As is increasingly common for universities called out for infringements of academic freedom and free speech, Penn responded in a perfunctory one-page letter. The university is aware of the yellow light rating, wrote Associate Vice President Lizann Boyle Rode, but it is not related to Penns Open Expression policies or practices, which continue to receive a green light rating from FIRE.

The yellow-light rating, however, applies to Penn as a whole, as well as to the two policies on sexual harassment that formed the basis of FIREs downgrade. It applies to schools with at least one ambiguous policy that too easily encourages administrative abuse and arbitrary application.

FIRE warned Penn in January that its 13-year green-light rating was at risk because of those two policies, which use a subjective standard to determine sexual harassment: whether verbal speech has the effect of creating an offensive environment. The university never responded, according to FIRE. (Useful to know: Penn is on the same street as FIRE in Philadelphia.)

Civil liberties group asks by The College Fix on Scribd

Penns response [to ACTA] misrepresents, in two critical ways, what the universitys yellow light rating means, Samantha Harris, vice president for procedural advocacy at FIRE, wrote Friday. Given that Penn may be responding along these lines to anyone who expresses concern over FIREs decision to revoke its green light rating, we felt it was important to set the record straight.

Maintaining policies that threaten speech while proclaiming a stated commitment to free expression is not a badge of honor, Harris wrote, but a mark of internal inconsistency at best and hypocrisy at worst:

If Penn had wanted to continue to ensure its policies protected academic freedom, it would have responded to FIREs concerns and revised its speech codes. As it stands, Penn maintains sexual harassment policies that pose a direct threat to academic freedom just witness the number of faculty around the country who are disciplinedfor germane classroom speechunder overly broad sexual harassment policieslike Penns.

Penns Boyle Rode also falsely characterizes FIREs speech code ratings as encompassing practices, when in fact they only evaluate written policies, Harris continued.

The university cannot avoid scrutiny of its speech codes and its practices by hiding behind its open expression policies, which only serve as a reminder of how far Penn has fallen.

Read the blog post, ACTAs letter and Penns response.

MORE: Penn throws away stellar free speech rating its maintained for 13 years

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Since this is our last issue of 2019, I had written a light-hearted, end-of-year column that was all set to go to the printer until, that is, an accumulation of hot news items got in the way.

The column was a breezy reflection on the value of dreams. Now all I can dream about is that well have a week quiet enough to publish it. For now, we must deal with the business at hand an avalanche of news, mostly bad, some historic.

Im writing this column early in the morning in the lobby of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem (with a little white cat swirling beneath my chair), having just participated in a four-day Strategic Dialogue between Israeli leaders and officials from Australia and the U.K.

Guess what people were asking me about at the closing gala? Yup, a certain synagogue incident in Beverly Hills. A potential future prime minister, Gideon Saar, had just delivered a candid address, and people couldnt stop talking about the ransacking of a sanctuary in Beverly Hills. Maybe it was the ZIP code.

A few days earlier, we were abuzz about the midnight deadline that had just passed in Israel triggering an unprecedented third election in 12 months. The next day, we were consumed with the election results in the U.K., which are paving the way for Great Britains historic divorce from the European Union.

In the meantime, other news items were intruding, like the articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump in the House of Representatives, for only the third time in U.S. history.

Maybe instinctively, thats why I stuck with the free speech cover because Eisgrubers ideal discourse is needed now more than ever.

And did I mention the latest deadly attack against Jews, this one in Jersey City, and the presidents controversial executive order to combat BDS and anti-Semitism? Oh, and I almost forgot: The festival of Hanukkah is coming up!

In the middle of this news tornado, I was still working on a cover story I had planned for several weeks on one of my favorite topics: The state of free speech in America.

So, I had a decision to make: Should I bump the free speech cover for one on the killings in Jersey City? Or the presidential impeachment? Or Brexit and the fall of the anti-Semitic Jeremy Corbyn? Or Trumps controversial executive order? Or the impossible stalemate in Israel? Or the attack at Nessah Synagogue?

While the free speech issue is timeless, the others are timely. Which should go first?

Maybe its because of my intense jet lag, but, as you can see, I decided to stick with the cover story on free speech and deal with the hot issues inside the paper.

For one thing, free speech is the foundation of a free society, not to mention the foundation of my profession, journalism.

But theres something else: Free speech has become timely. Thats because it has come under assault, especially on college campuses, from activists who focus on its microaggression side effects rather than its fundamental value.

In these chaotic times, we need the freedom to rise up against the forces of hate, the wisdom to engage with dignity those with whom we disagree, and the curiosity and humility to constantly search for the truth.

These sentiments should not be casually dismissed by free speech junkies like yours truly. As I write in the story: Our world is changing. As an evolving society, we are becoming more inclusive and sensitive to peoples feelings of alienation. Inclusivity is giving free speech a run for its money.

The thrust of the story is on the innovative thinking of one man in the eye of the storm Princeton University President Christopher L. Eisgruber.

Eisgruber is a man of deep thought, empathy and cautious optimism. He argues that a vigorous free speech can coexist with a noble value like inclusivity. He threads the needle by reframing the free speech debate around truth-seeking, and seeing universities as truth-seeking institutions.

Under this unifying ideal, Eisgruber marries two seemingly opposite values. Indeed, as I write: If the ideal revolves around the search for truth, the greater the inclusion of different voices, the deeper and broader that search will be.

I encourage you to read the entire story. It is based on a remarkable keynote address Eisgruber delivered recently at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, titled Contested Civility: Free Speech and Inclusivity on Campus.

I call the address remarkable because it aspires to a higher level of discourse that honors intellectual rigor and human dignity in equal measure.

Maybe instinctively, thats why I stuck with the free speech cover because Eisgrubers ideal discourse is needed now more than ever.

In these chaotic times, we need the freedom to rise up against the forces of hate, the wisdom to engage with dignity those with whom we disagree, and the curiosity and humility to constantly search for the truth.

If one considers that ideal a ray of light, well, maybe this was a Hanukkah cover story after all.

Happy Hanukkah.

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When the News Gets in the Way - Jewish Journal

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Indiana University in Bloomington Indiana. Students at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana demanded that officials fire professor Eric Rasmusen, after he posted racist, sexist and homophobic opinions to social media earlier this month. Photo: Don & Melinda Crawford/Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

If your professor at a public university regularly tweets out articles like Are Women Destroying Academia? Probably you would probably be confused as to why he taught students. If, after class, you read tweets by the same professor saying that black students are generally inferior academically to white students and that members of the LBGTQ community only want marriage rights to get spousal fringe benefits from the government, you might find fault with your professors boss for not firing the prejudiced chauvinist.

We should expect students, faculty and staff members with a modicum of dignity to call for that professors ouster. No student should be subjected to a professor who moonlights as a bigot. However, what may not be tolerated in other workplaces sometimes gets a free pass in colleges and universities, which adhere robustly to the value of free speech.

Free speech is tied to academic freedom the autonomy to teach and research ideas without the consequence of retaliation. The quality of a professors ideas is enhanced when scholarship isnt tethered to profits, political motives and/or the propaganda of hate groups. Colleges defend professors rights to pursue controversial topics of discussion such as climate change, police brutality, charter schools and pornography. University professors conduct clinical trials and other experiments in which the integrity of that work demands free speech.

Yet as noble as that sounds, higher educations loyalty to free speech can also protect chauvinists like Indiana University Bloomington professor Eric Rasmusen, who posted the bigoted tweets about women and others using his private social media accounts. Rasmusen understandably has come under fire for a history of racist, sexist and homophobic social media posts.

Protecting core principles matters but so does leadership. As the presence of hate groups spreads on campus, reflecting the growing diversity of beliefs in society, its important that university leaders properly balance free speech and academic freedom with facts, inclusion and social cohesion. A person who believes in the illogical notion that women, black and gay people are inferior to white men has as much a place in an institution of learning as a person who believes pigs can fly but the bigot is far more dangerous. How university administrators (and leaders in general) address past and present discrimination influences the kind of world we will live in in the future.

Related: HBCUs are leading centers of education why are they treated as second-class citizens?

Rasmusens boss, Lauren Robel, provost at Indiana University Bloomington, sets a fine example of the leadership we need. As absurd as it may seem, firing Rasmusen would compromise the pillars of higher education: free speech and academic freedom. However, Robel has done everything within her power to confront the discrimination that erodes basic values of truth, democracy and community. Robel is allowing students enrolled in Rasmusens class to transfer into another section. Students can also get out of taking a required course from Rasmusen. In addition, Robel will require Rasmusen to grade assignments without knowing the identities of the students in the class, an attempt to buffer against the biases he laid bare on Twitter.

Compare Robels actions to those of another university leader in the same state, and youll see why leadership is so important. In response to a students question on how to improve the campus for minority students, Purdue University President Mitch Daniels, a former governor of Indiana, touted an initiative to bring more inner-city students to campus. Daniels also said, I will be recruiting one of the rarest creatures in America: a leading, I mean a really leading African American scholar.

Students immediately took offense.

Creatures? said DYan Berry, president of the Black Student Union. Come on. Referring to African American scholars as rare creatures sounds right out of Rasmusens Twitter feed.

Responding to the backlash, Daniels explained he was referring to extraordinarily rare talent and told the Journal and Courier, part of the USA Today network, I never felt so misunderstood before.

Related: Students take their future into their own hands on climate change activism

To be clear, there are extraordinarily talented black scholars in many fields; predominately white higher education leaders simply dont hire and invest in black professors development in the same way as their white peers, resulting in their underrepresentation. Protected professors dont see the value in proactively championing diversity and inclusion. The beauty of Robels actions is that she showed how good leaders can work within systems to correct glaring problems. Its an approach Daniels should emulate.

According to the Journal and Couriers analysis of Purdues published diversity numbers, 8.3 percent (161 of 1,931) of tenured or tenure-track professors in 2018 were recorded as underrepresented minorities. In 2013, when Daniels started his tenure at Purdue, that stat was 6.3 percent (117 of 1,849).

Those numbers are moving in the right direction, but they still warrant scrutiny from concerned students, faculty and staff. Black, Latino, Asian American and Pacific Islander, and American Indian faculty make up 4 percent, 3 percent, 11 percent, and less than 1 percent of full-time professors in degree-granting postsecondary institutions.

We desperately need academic leadership that can stand up for whats right and stand up to white supremacists and white supremacy. Just last week, CNN reported five incidents of hate that occurred across the country. At the University of Georgia, someone drew swastikas on a whiteboard on the door of a Jewish womans dorm room. Another swastika was carved into a door of an Iowa State dormitory, and racist stickers and posters appeared around campus. Racist graffiti was found at the University of Syracuse during a two-week run of incidents of hate-driven harassment. At the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, a thread of a racist post from a private SnapChat account became public, setting off a firestorm of concern on campus. And a noose was hung in the common area of a dormitory. Lets hope that university leaders on these campuses address their issues as Robel did, because a lack of leadership is how we got here.

Related: As Republicans stress political fiction over facts, students math and reading scores fall

Academics dont have to tweet out bigotry to make their beliefs known. Colleges curricula and admissions policies do the talking on their behalf. For most of the twentieth century, Asians, Blacks, Latinos/Latinas and Native Americans were excluded or restricted from the academic offerings and leadership positions in most colleges and universities. People of color who were allowed on campus were insignificant in number or primarily relegated to service, housekeeping or grounds positions. If you want to learn more about racist customs of fraternities and sororities, including the tradition of wearing blackface, just thumb through a campus yearbook.

When campuses begin to value black and brown lives, youll see the presence of authors of color throughout course syllabi as well as more than a token handful of people of color in the student body and faculty. Youll see administrators commitments to affirmative action codified in policy and funding allocations dedicated to creating a positive racial climate. Over time, actions like these will seed the kind of campus where bigotry is cut off at the root and publicly condemned when it isnt.

Academic freedom and bigotry cant coexist on campus. Robel has demonstrated one way to tackle bigots who falsely claim the mantle of free speech. Now we need a new generation of college and university leaders to stand up for the values that create an inclusive learning environment for all.

This story free speech on campus was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechingers newsletter.

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As families gather for Thanksgiving in our polarized era, theres no shortage of advice about how to cope with the crazy Trump-lover in your family.

Your angry uncle wants to talk about impeachment. What do you do? go the headlines.

Theres nothing like a constitutional crisis to spice up the holidays.

Of course, the abhorrent relative in these scenarios is always a conservative but, for the sake of argument, not to mention reality, lets say it equally could be a progressive.

It might be your newly politically correct college kid home for Thanksgiving break from Ohio who has decided its her moral duty to re-educate the family.

Believe it or not, leftists can be obnoxious, too.

The polite way to maintain harmony used to be to avoid any discussion of politics or religion around the dinner table. But there may be a better way.

A timely new documentary about free speech that opens next week in New York argues that its crucial for the health of our nation to expose yourself to ideas you dislike and learn how to disagree respectfully.

No Safe Spaces stars conservative talk radio host Dennis Prager and libertarian comedian Adam Carolla.

While they disagree a lot, theyre also friends. Carolla explains their odd-couple pairing early on, saying hes always asked: Why are you friends with Dennis Prager? You have nothing in common . . .

He comes from the East. I come from the West. He comes from religion. I come from atheism . . . He comes from college and knowledge. I come from tomfoolery and sports. And yet we both share a little something called common sense in values [which] should trump everything. It should trump LGBT . . . It should trump Chicano . . . It should trump black. It should trump Trump.

They trace the origins of cancel culture on campus back to 2013, when students started demanding speech codes and trigger warnings.

It evolved into violent protests stopping campus speeches by right-wing agitators such as Ann Coulter, Ben Shapiro and Milo Yiannopoulos, and the less easily pigeonholed psychology professor Jordan Peterson and red-pilled liberals such as Dave Rubin and Bret Weinstein.

What they have in common, along with Prager and Carolla, is theyve been banned or hounded off campuses, often violently.

We see violent protests at UC Berkeley, the epicenter of campus free speech in the 60s, where students now riot to shut down speech that offends them.

Conservative students are shown being punched in the face, abused and ostracized for expressing politically incorrect ideas.

Isabella Chow, a student senator at UC Berkeley last year when she abstained from a vote affirming gender fluidity because she is a Christian, says the backlash shocked her.

Hundreds of protesters demanded she be removed from the senate, and she was booted out of every student organization and voted out of every student club.

It was difficult to hear accusations of people calling me a bigot and a hater.

But its not just conservatives falling victim. Liberals who inadvertently break increasingly capricious speech codes also are being shut down.

If you have any spark of individualism in you, anything about you thats interesting or different, they will come to destroy that, too, warns liberal talk show host Rubin.

Weinstein was a liberal professor hounded out of The Evergreen State College in Washington state after refusing to take part in a 2017 stunt requiring all white people stay away from campus for the day. This was anathema to me as a liberal, he says.

When violent protests against him paralyzed the college, police said they could not protect him.

He warns that Evergreen is just a preview.

This is going to spread into every quadrant of society . . . Evergreen is describing a future that is rapidly approaching.

Toward the end of No Safe Spaces, Prager polls a group of college students on their support for free speech, and finds theyre evenly split. One student declares she draws the line at Nazis.

It couldnt have been a better opening for Prager to explain that free speech is valuable only if it protects offensive, obnoxious views.

It is our trial-and-error way of sorting out good ideas from bad. Since you cant stop people secretly holding bad thoughts, silencing them just pushes bad ideas underground, where they fester and grow more virulent.

Allowing bad ideas free expression allows them to be mocked and countered with good ideas.

Im a Jew, says Prager, and Nazis killed 6 million Jews . . . so I have a real hatred of Nazis. But I feel they should be able to speak freely in America because if we say to the Nazis today, You cant speak, well say to a non-Nazi tomorrow, You cant speak either. And we hope, if everyone speaks, that good ideas win.

So speak your mind to your family today in good-natured fashion and give thanks that you live in a country where good ideas still have a chance.

Happy Thanksgiving, all.

Proof, again, that theyre the Finest

After a summer of taking abuse, its worth noting that the NYPD is the unofficial social safety net for New Yorkers.

Take Officers Ricardo Roman and Samuel Baez, of the 10th Precinct in Chelsea, who bought a homeless man a suit, glasses and a haircut last month so he could interview for jobs.

Wilfredo Falman Jr., 34, scored work at Kobrick Coffee Co., a cafe in the Meatpacking District.

He urges New Yorkers to give thanks for the officers: They have helped me see the police in a different light.

By Wednesday, Falman had raised $2,463 on GoFundMe, of which his lawyers, the Khan Johnson firm, say he has donated half ($1,172.34 minus costs) to the GLS Memorial Fund, which provides tuition assistance to relatives of police officers.

Feel free to criticize AOC

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is furious at critics who dismiss her policies as free stuff.

These are public goods . . . So I never want to hear the word or the term free stuff ever again, the socialist Democratic congresswoman ranted at a Green New Deal town hall in the Bronx this week.

Who made AOC language boss? We say free stuff because it describes unfunded policies for tuition-free college, Medicare for all and public housing for anyone who wants it.

She doesnt like the phrase free stuff because everyone knows there is no such thing. Someone has to pay for it and, eventually, if you pluck the golden goose enough, it dies.

Wealth creators move to greener pastures, you lose your tax base and any ability to fund even the most worthwhile public projects.

Who could forget it was AOC and friends who drove Amazon out of New York, along with its 25,000 jobs?

Of course, in AOCs utopia, who needs a job when theres free stuff to be had? Can someone please pay for a study tour of Venezuela?

Read more here:

Devine: Feast on free speech this Thanksgiving - New York Post

The recent interaction between student Michael Moreno and debate coach Ryan Wash caused significant controversy online and on campus after Moreno posted recordings of in-class interactions on YouTube. Since then, WSU faculty and staff have refocused on what it means to provide an environment of academic freedom and free speech while at the same time ensuring that all people on campus feel physically and intellectually safe.

Adrienne Andrews, WSUs Vice President for Diversity and Chief Diversity Officer, hosted a forum discussion for faculty and staff on the morning of Nov. 20. Andrews invited several faculty and staff members to share their ideas and to review the universitys official policies regarding these matters.

The panelists in the discussion included Professor of Economics Dr. Doris Stevenson; Dean of the Library Wendy Holliday; Director of the Womens Center Paige Davies; Professor of Chemistry Dr. Tim Herzog; Professor of Teacher Education Dr. Forrest Crawford and Dane LeBlanc the former chief of WSUPD and the current Director of Safety.

Academic freedom is one of the pillars of the university, Herzog said. It allows us to do things that are controversial and challenging, things that may be upsetting to other people.

Herzog believes that there are challenges with how others may interpret or use academic freedom. He also believes that curriculum should fall within an agreed-upon set of rules. The university has curriculum review processes and committees to ensure and approve curriculum quality.

Faculty cannot just teach any controversial topic they want outside of their disciplinary area, Herzog said.

Dr. Stevenson added to Herzogs sentiment.

You have the freedom to teach anything that falls within the purview of the legitimate pedagogical reason, Stevenson said. How do we balance student rights and teacher rights? You have to fall back on policy.

According to Stevenson, current university policy gives students the right and responsibility to determine whether they should or can complete a course. If a student has a problem with a courses material, they may drop the course. If the course is a requirement for degree completion, the student may ask the course instructor for a reasonable accommodation. It is up to the faculty member to determine what the accommodation will be. The faculty member may deny the request unless the denial is arbitrary, capricious or illegal.

After the panel discussed academic freedom and students options in courses they may have issue with, Crawford addressed the issue of free speech.

The student comes (to class) with the view that they have a wide range of consideration that they can explore, Crawford said. To me, I do not assume that free speech is whenever, wherever, however. Free speech has a particular obligation, a particular guideline, a particular way.

Crawford believes, from a faculty standpoint, that teachers ultimately want students to respond to questions, but in a responsible way. Teachers should provide a structured way for students to share a diversity of opinion.

Andrews concurred with Crawfords idea by suggesting that faculty, with their students consent, should establish rules of debate on the first day of class each semester. Andrews believes students can express dissent more constructively if they establish rules with their peers for expressing opinion.

Holliday continued the discussion on free speech by arguing that spaces for free speech must also be spaces of productive learning. She believes the university must ultimately fulfill its role, not as a public forum, but as a learning space. Holliday will not censor what students and faculty choose to read, but she hopes students and faculty will choose to address inequities.

The conversation then turned to LeBlanc to address issues of campus safety.

If someone wants to protest, we take an unbiased approach, LeBlanc said. Our job is to facilitate safe, free expression.

LeBlanc acknowledges that this sometimes means having to physically separate protestors from counter-protestors.

Davies reviewed and reinforced university policy that is meant to prevent any type of discriminatory harassment.

If a university employee or student is experiencing any type of harassment or feels physical danger, they can seek remedies through the Affirmative Action Equal Opportunity (AAEO) Office, Davies said. There are formal and informal measures to help students, faculty and staff.

An audience member asked about what students can do if they feel disrespected by a professor, but not harassed or unsafe.

In this case, students should report how they feel to the department chair, Herzog said. The department chair or dean can explore that. If the need arises, students can also file complaints with the AAEO Office or the Provosts Office.

See the original post here:

Balancing free speech and safety on campus - The Signpost

Earlier in June, local politician Walter Lbcke of Kassel was assassinated by a neo-Nazi extremist. Once again, Germany began debating the interrelation of right-wing vitriol and violence.

Lawmakers on all levels the local, state and federal have received threats. It is not uncommon for mayors of small municipalities to be among those threatened.So when individuals or a vocal minority create a climate of fear, fewer and fewer people are willing to take on such roles and serve their communities.

Intimidation damages our democratic culture

This can have fatal consequences for our democratic culture. Who, apart from those who are deeply ideological, will volunteer to take on a political mandate if the price is to live in fear or reap contempt? The state must be better at protecting all those who are threatened and subjected to violence And society regardless of party affiliations must openly support individuals who volunteer to serve their communities.

Guest columnist Matthias Quent

But this hatred did not come out of nowhere. For years, German lawmakers have turned a blind eye to this vile undercurrent, letting it fester. The state did nothing when German neo-Nazis gunned down migrants, homeless people and left-wing sympathizers. Few, if any, condemned the murder of punks, foreigners and gay people by the extreme right most likely because they felt no connection to them. Since 1990, 198 people were killed by right-wing extremists in Germany, according to the Amadeu Antonio Foundation. The number of sitting politicians? One.

It seems that only now, after the death of lawmaker Walter Lbcke, Germany's government and police have woken up to the lethal danger posed by German neo-Nazis. Germany's federal states, or Lnder, must strengthen the police and judiciary to this end so that they can more effectively prosecute radicals and protect those who are subjected to hatred and violence.

The funeral service for Walter Lbcke, head of the Kassel regional government, on 13 June.

Internet promoteshate speech

The internet allows people to hurl abuse and insults at others and even send death threats. This new reality shines a light on human depravity. Online, those spreading vitriolsdo not even have to look their victims in the eye.

Hateful statements, from a legal perspective, can be classified as opinions. Freedom of speech is an important principle, yet also one with ambivalent consequences: it permits anyone to make derogatory and aggressive statements as long as they do not violent German lawl. But italso enables anyone to take a courageous stand against such views and counter anti-Semitism, racism, sexism and other such ideologies of inequality.

Right now, there is a heated debate within Germany on whether countering discriminating and disparaging comments which until recently went largely unchallenged until society became more aware of this constitutes a breach of freedom of speech. After all, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD)is systematically violating people's human dignity and we must persistently confront the party about this. The party breaches the basic principles of our constitution and whinges that its freedom of speech is being curtailed when it gets challenged on this. The AfD, after all, is more than happy to cast itself as an unfairly treated victim.

Freedom of speech is thriving

In reality, freedom of speech is thriving in Germany. The voices of those who were previously ignored, overlooked or suppressed are now being heard. Journalist Christian Bangel's hashtag #Baseballschlgerjahre (German for #baseballbatyears), for instance, has provided a platform for all those who have been attacked by far-right radicals across Germany.

Read more:Germany's Angela Merkel vows to fight right-wing extremist terrorism

I am among this group of people. And Iknow all too well what it means to feel hated andexperience violence and fear.

Those who have emancipated themselves, who have been ostracized and discriminated against must speak up. They must dispel the ignorance and indifference that for decades has existed, and challenge the cultural dominance of those who, for decades, have kept the experiences of the suppressed out of the public sphere.

Now, finally, people in Germany are coming to realize that the far-right is attacking the very core of our democracy. Every hate-filled comment targeting refugees, women, Jewish people,and others is an attack on the liberal democratic order we inhabit.

That is why the majority of German society should show genuine solitary and respect for the "other."For we have learned from German history that there may be a time when there is no-one who could intervene if this hatred continued to fester and grow.

Dr. Matthias Quent is a sociologist and the director of the Institute for Democracy and Civil Society (IDZ) in Jena, Thuringia. He authored the German book"Far-right Germany. How the radical right is vying for power and how we can stop them."

Originally posted here:

Opinion: The clear line between hate speech and free speech - DW (English)