Internet platforms and their defenders want you to believe that every attempt to reform Section 230 would repeal the provision and, with it, free speech on the internet. That isnt the case. The proposals under serious consideration do not strike Section 230, but instead make narrow changes to fix its flaws. And, as always, the First Amendment has the final word on free expression in the United Stateseven on the internet.

Congress decision to create Section 230 was precipitated by the 1995 case of Stratton Oakmont v. Prodigy. Applying a traditional libel analysis, the New York Supreme Court had ruled that Prodigys efforts to moderate inappropriate language on its electronic bulletin boards meant Prodigy had exercised editorial discretion, making it a publisher. Consequently, Prodigy was potentially liable for defamatory statements on the bulletin boards, even if it wasnt aware of the statements. Platforms that chose not to moderate content, by contrast, could not be held culpable unless they knew or should have known about such statements.

Concerned that platforms would stop moderating content to avoid liability, Congress overturned Stratton legislatively. In particular, Section 230(c)(2) states that [n]o provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected.

By creating a safe harbor for content moderation, Section 230(c)(2) gives platforms confidence to serve as outlets for user-generated content and free expression. Thats a good thing. Section 230(c)(1), however, states that [n]o provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider. Courts have held that this language shields platforms from liability even if they inadequately moderate illicit activity or refuse to moderate at all, including in cases involving sexual disparagement, revenge porn, harassment, and terrorism.

That interpretation eliminates for internet platforms the legal duty of care that businesses ordinarily have: to take reasonable steps to curb illicit use of their services and facilities. Platforms say they take such steps, anyway, and that may be true in some cases. But their decisions are beyond judicial scrutiny, which means they cannot be held accountable even when they dont take such steps.

Internet platforms oppose Section 230 reform because they wish to continue avoiding liability when they negligently, recklessly, or willfully disregard illicit activity. But thats not a winning argument. So they claim that reforming Section 230 would imperil free speech and the internet.

This simply isnt true, at least under proposals by a number of commentatorsmyself includedto require that platforms take reasonable steps to curb illicit conduct as a condition of receiving protection under Section 230.

The reasonableness standard is inherently flexible. It would account for the resources available to a platform and the benefits and risks posed by use of its services. The effort needed to meet the reasonableness standard will be proportional to platform size, ensuring smaller platforms are not unreasonably burdened as they try to grow and that firms are asked only to expend resources that make sense in light of the severity of a potential harm and the costs to combat it.

Because this approach does not require regulation, it avoids censorship concerns. Significantly, it would also leave in place the Section 230(c)(2) safe harbor for content moderation. So long as platforms meet the modest responsibility of taking reasonable steps to curb illicit activityas other companies mustthe platforms could continue to serve as outlets for free expression without fear of liability.

Moreover, even if an internet platform failed to take such steps, it would not automatically be subject to liability. It simply could no longer hide behind Section 230. Any lawsuit would still need to prove some cause of action. And a court would still be bound to consider the free speech implications before assessing liability, because loss of Section 230s special protections does not eliminate the First Amendments protections.

Internet platforms desire to stop changes to a provision that gives them liability protection not enjoyed by non-internet servicesmany of which they compete withis not surprising. But that does not represent good public policy when it vastly increases harmful behavior online that victimizes real people. If the platforms would take reasonable steps to prevent predatory behavior on their services, rather than cry wolf, they should have nothing to fear from this reform of Section 230, as both they, and the internet, could continue to thrive.

Neil Fried, former Chief Counsel for Communications and Technology to the Energy and Commerce Committee, testified at the Committees June 24 hearing on Section 230. In January, he left the Motion Picture Association and started DigitalFrontiers Advocacy.

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Instead of crying wolf on Section 230 reform, platforms should focus on the predators within | TheHill - The Hill

In the decades which followed the end of the Second World War, Britain emerged as a democratic state shorn of its empire, committed to a new global order based on the self-governing sovereignty of nations and the equality of their citizens. This was a radical break with what had gone before. Protecting empire had been a central theme in the politics of the 1930s. War was fought by the empire, in part to defend empire. But after 1945 empires collapsed quickly, and as they did so, in most parts of the world, the imperial statues came down quickly.

Statues celebrating Germanys empire were the first to fall, replaced by heroes of nations like Poland and Czechoslovakia, newly independent from Nazi occupation. In India, statues were first moved by Britons anxious to protect the monuments of imperial heroes from newly enfranchised Indian crowds. For example, a figure in Kanpur commemorating the death of Britons during the rebellion of 1857 was quietly moved in 1947 to protect it from Indians let into the previously white-only park where it had been housed. By the 1960s, Indian state governments were pulling down imperial statues in the hundreds. They did so to express a more confident sense of cultural nationalism, and caused diplomatic protests from Harold Wilsons government in London. More recently, the fall of the Soviet empire has seen the mass removal of statues to Russias Communist empire-builders in eastern Europe.

In Britain, statues to imperial heroes were until recently ignored not pulled down, more likely to be the repository of bird-shit than political rage.

Britain moved on from empire, without taking statues down. In part that happened as mid-century politicians and intellectuals rewrote empires story to claim independence in India and elsewhere was its culmination, not collapse. But by 1960, empire had been abandoned so fundamentally that Harold Macmillan could stand before parliaments in Ghana and South Africa in his Winds of Change speeches and celebrate Black African nationalism.

A review of the imperial statues in our towns and cities is long overdue.

Most were put up in a short period between the 1860s to 1920s, and they commemorated a politics based on racial inequality and violent conquest. The statue-builders imagined the world was divided between a small number of large competing imperial states whose power was based on force. Many of the figures celebrated, Robert Baden-Powell and Cecil Rhodes for example, thought war allowed better societies to thrive, and the weaker ones to die out.

These kinds of ideas have always been contested. The figure of Robert Clive standing amidst cannon-fire which Lord Curzon erected in King Charles Street was fervently opposed by liberals, who wanted Garibaldi put up instead. But there were enough like Curzon with the power to get statues put up to celebrate the men who embodied imperial violence.

Britains empire ended a long time ago. The fall of statues to slavers and imperial officers is an opportunity for the iconography of our public spaces to finally be brought into line with the democratic approach that has governed public life for almost a century. Protests in response to the Black Lives Movement create the exciting prospect of Britain properly reckoning with the empire it lost generations ago. In its place, they allow us to collectively create a shared national story to reflect and celebrate what, in practice, the country has been since the 1950s: a democratic, self-governing, multi-racial post-imperial society.

But that national conversation is currently being blocked by the irate response of politicians and commentators who vigorously condemn the removal of statues. Some of these largely conservative critics use hysterical rhetoric about totalitarianism and revolution. The more apoplectic among them (Peter Hitchens and Toby Young, for example) imagine that anti-imperial iconoclasm is undermining Britains liberal, easy-going, tolerant society.

The irony is worth noting peaceful protests against statues which commemorate the anti-liberal supporters of authoritarian regimes are condemned as attacking free speech. Its worth reminding ourselves how different the world which produced these statues is from the values that Hitchens, Young and comrades defend. The early twentieth-century Conservative party was imperialist and protectionist. It championed tariffs to protect national and imperial trade. Its arguments for imperial federation, an imperial single market and customs union were linked to ideas about racial hierarchy, and to the idea of uniting what Rhodes called the Anglo-Saxon race. But supporters of empire also used arguments about the need for big states in a competitive world familiar to present-day supporters of the European Union. By contrast, the modern Conservative party is avowedly anti-racist, economic liberal and strongly wedded to the idea of free trade. Most importantly it believes in the sovereignty of the nation-state, imagining the world to consist of independent, self-governing societies that have a right to resist the encroachment of external forces on national life. Rhetorically it is more likely to appropriate the language of anti-imperialism opposing the great empire of Europe, for example - than to justify imperial rule.

None of this is surprising. Since the mid-1950s the most articulate Conservative intellectuals had either become committed anti-imperialists (for example Enoch Powell) or simply remained silent on the subject. There is no unambiguously celebratory history of the British empire written by a Conservative-voting writer until 2003. Niall Fergusons Empire published in that year celebrates empire as something it was emphatically not: a vehicle for diffusing free trade. Until Iraq, even for Tories, empire was consigned to the irrelevant past. The useful, celebrated past for Britains right consisted instead of the moderate, decent, down-to-earth lessons learnt from the supposedly continuous history of an insular, island nation state over many generations.

My point is to highlight the strange predicament of those protesting against the downfall of statues. They defend statues which celebrate figures symbolising values exactly the opposite of those they support. They talk of a cultural revolution, but dont defend the order the supposed revolutionaries are trying to replace. Their worry is not that anything specific which the statues stood for might be dethroned; it is with the act of dethroning itself, and what conscious change in our public realm might entail.

This only makes sense if, a century after universal suffrage, conservatives are anxious about democratic conversation. If there is, in other words, a deep-rooted authoritarianism in conservative thinking which distrusts popular debate. From the comments of the statue-defenders, this certainly seems the case. Critics argue that those encouraging discussion of statues are accused of playing an irresponsible and dangerous game; dissent pushes us down a slippery slope. For one prominent blogger, protests about statues in Britain threaten the degeneration of our ordered polity into feudal tribalism unless the state adopts a vigorous, violent response. Given the largely peaceful character of protests and the success of the police in maintaining order, these are remarkable statements. They imply the paranoid view that open debate about the destiny of the nation and its heroes will quickly lead to disorder. In fact of course, theres no sign that thats the case.

The statue-defenders claim to defend the nation, but they have a hollow and undemocratic idea of what it is. They do not think we, its citizens, can debate and agree on our moral values, so instead they need to be imposed by an elite. They believe there is no space for reasoned disagreement within the national public. They do not trust people to speak other than through the narrow questions asked in plebiscites. Ultimately, the dictates of order force these fearful conservatives to defend silence in public space.

There are better ways of engaging with our national history than this, and they are being developed in towns and cities throughout Britain, by leaders from all political sides. In less than two months weve seen the debate about who to represent on the empty plinth in Bristol where Thomas Colston once stood; Sadiq Khans review of London statues and the discussion convened by a Conservative councillor in Croydon about imperial street names in Croydon. These, and conversations which will begin over the next months and years show that citizens want a mature and sustained debate about what and who we value in our history, about what we share in common, about which elements of the past we can celebrate and which move beyond or challenge.

Contrary to the fears of frightened Conservatives, we are capable of reaching a consensus about whose image should stay and who should go. The question is not whether each individual was morally pure, but whether they connect with what we want to celebrate now. My guess is wed keep Churchill and Gladstone, but remove Clive and Baden-Powell. But lets have the debate. If the defenders of silence and opponents of debate dont get their way, the empty plinths which emerge are an opportunity for a national conversation about the relationship between the past and present which is long overdue.

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The statue defenders are the real enemies of free speech - Open Democracy

COVID-19 infected our economy but there is a cure. the best economic stimulus package is the one thing Donald Trump and the Republicans don't want you to know. Thom Hartmann brings you a deep dive into how economies work and how demand drives economies. Fixing our economy is a simple matter of increasing demand, he says.

The Thom Hartmann Program covers diverse topics including immigration reform, government intrusion, privacy, foreign policy, and domestic issues. More people listen to or watch the TH program than any other progressive talk show in the world! Join them.

The Thom Hartmann Program is on Free Speech TV every weekday from 12-3 pm EST.

Missed an episode? Check out TH on FSTV VOD anytime or visit the show page for the latest clips.

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The Best Way To Stimulate The COVID Economy - Free Speech TV

TWO WEEKS AGO, an open letter published in Harpers Magazine and signed by more than 150 public figures, most of them writers or academics, ignited a new round of debate over cancel culture and its discontents. The letter portrayed freedom of expression in the United States as dangerously imperiled: We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters. But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought. A week later, Bari Weiss, one of the letters high-profile signatories, resigned her position at the New York Times op-ed desk and self-published her resignation letter. Echoing the Harpers letter, Weisss statement decried an increasingly illiberal environment in public discourse writ large and at the Times in particular. She wrote that her colleaguesand the publichave become unwilling to accommodate views that dont adhere to the new orthodoxy.

Yet, as some critics have noted, Weiss has a long history of claiming to support free speech while trying to curtail the speech of Palestinian rights advocates, from her college days through her years at the Times. And she is not the only signatory of the Harpers letter who has sought to silence those with whom she disagrees. Cary Nelson, professor emeritus at the University of Illinois, is a prominent opponent of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement and has written extensively about the need to combat anti-Zionist scholarship in the name of academic freedom.

These figures attempts to shut down speech while advocating for free speech are certainly hypocritical. But more importantly, their failure to recognize the tension between their free speech advocacy on the one hand, and their pro-Israel advocacy on the other, reveals an unwillingness to reckon with the relationship between speech and power. What [the Harpers] letter is missing is the power dynamics, said Radhika Sainath, a senior staff attorney at Palestine Legal, where she oversees the nonprofit organizations casework on free speech, academic freedom, and censorship. The real problem is the problem of the state coming down on people who are speaking out on Israel/Palestine.

Weiss and Nelson not only rigorously police the boundaries of acceptable discourse while simultaneously lamenting that the boundaries have become too narrow; they do so with far more cultural, financial, and even governmental support than the Palestinian rights advocates they seek to silence or the Black Lives Matter activists whose perceived excesses they lament. What their exclusive focus on the boundaries of acceptable debate obscures is the very real threats to political speech in the USespecially speech in support of Palestinian rightsand how their own efforts give rhetorical cover to those threats.

For more than a decade, Israel-advocacy organizations have employed the rhetoric of free speech and academic freedom to shut down criticism of Israeli government policies in the public sphere, and especially on university campuses. Through accusations of incivility or insufficient objectivity, these organizations and those who work with them have attempted to and at times succeeded in blocking hires, denying tenure, and even getting people fired. Now, with backing from the Trump administration, this crusade against support for Palestinian rights has morphed from an effective public relations strategy, which relied on public pressure for results, into a concrete framework for government assaults on free speechfrom the anti-BDS laws sweeping state legislatures to the executive order designating criticisms of Israeli government policy as forms of anti-Jewish discrimination.

Using a tactic perfected by Israel-advocacy groups like the Lawfare Project, which have been spearheading this legal campaign, both Weiss and Nelson have long framed their own Israel-advocacy efforts as attempts to protect free speech, rather than to limit it. As an undergraduate at Columbia University in the mid-aughts, Weiss co-founded a group named Columbians for Academic Freedom; supported by outside Israel-advocacy organizations like the David Project and Campus Watch, it claimed that combatting a supposed anti-Israel bias in the Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures (MEALAC) department would lead to a freer academic climate. In a 2018 Twitter thread, Weiss said that she never advocated for any professors to be fired while in college and that she had simply exercised her own right to free speech. However, Columbians for Academic Freedom did demand that the administration change the departments curriculum and make it easier to file complaints against professors, measures that would have affected certain scholars responsibilities and duties, as well as their future job prospects. The New York Civil Liberties Union said that the students crusade jeopardized academic freedom.

As an undergraduate, Weiss also asked for invitations to controversial speakers to be rescinded. In one case, she wrote an op-ed for The Columbia Spectator about a proposed event featuring then-President of Iran Mahmoud Ahmedinijad, arguing that condoning hate is not an academic exercisethe same argument that campus activists often make today when advocating against invitations to controversial speakers, and which Weiss often criticizes. (Weiss did not respond to requests for comment for this article.)

Cary Nelson, an outspoken opponent of the BDS movement in academia, has also justified his activism on the grounds that it bolsters academic freedom. Nelson defended the University of Illinois trustees 2014 decision to deny tenure to Palestinian-American scholar Steven Salaita, and he has written extensively about what he sees as the pernicious effects of anti-Zionist scholars on the academic climate. In his articles and booksmost recently Israel Denial: Anti-Zionism, Anti-Semitism & the Faculty Campaign Against the Jewish State (2019)Nelson charges that prominent anti-Zionist academics, such as Jasbir Puar, Saree Makdisi, and Judith Butler, have engaged in pseudo-scholarship, and that the ferocity of anti-Zionist convinction in their books and essays unfortunately means that they often cross the line to anti-Semitism. In a related essay titled The Devils Intersectionality: Contemporary Cloaked Antisemitism, Nelson argues that these anti-Zionist scholars, alongside the BDS movement, are making rational dialogue impossible. For Nelson, its not only these scholars alleged antisemitism that threatens academic freedom but their lack of objectivity and irrationality. In an interview last week, Nelson said he thinks anti-Zionism is a political perspective that people have a right to. But, he added, I think they can still be judged about whether they are rational, if their politics carries over into their teaching and research.

This line of argument is a common one. Accusations of insufficient objectivity or rationality are often wielded against Palestinian, Arab, and anti-Zionist scholars, especially those whose work relates to Israel/Palestine, as a way to silence them, framing political grievance as concern for academic standards. In 2007, for instance, Palestinian American anthropologist Nadia Abu el-Haj won a bitter battle for tenure at Barnard College after an intense alumni campaign attempted to discredit her work, including her book Facts on the Ground, which explored how Israel uses archaeology in order to bolster its exclusive claim to territory in Israel/Palestine. Weiss complained about Abu el-Hajs tenure in an op-ed for Haaretz, framing her concern as an objective evaluation of Abu el-Hajs scholarship rather than a political disagreement. This is not just another round between the Zionists and the anti-Zionists, she wrote. This is about the nature of truth, and the possibility of, well, facts themselves.

But who gets to be objective, and who does not, is a function of power; it is, in other words, political. In light of the significant power differentials between Israel-advocacy organizations and grassroots Palestinian rights activists, its hardly surprising that strong political commitments are almost never disqualifying for Zionist academics, or that Zionist academics ability to be rational is rarely systematically questioned like that of their Palestinian, Arab, and anti-Zionist peers. Nelson himself has clear ideological commitmentsthe final chapter of Israel Denial is devoted to A Proposal to Rescue the Two-State Paradigm. Yet Nelson does not see his own Israel advocacy or his commitment to a two-state solution as a sign that he lacks the necessary distance or objectivity to participate in scholarly debate. Likewise, at Columbia, Weiss argued that professors in the MEALAC department lacked the requisite objectivity to teach and imbued their learning environment with incivility. Yet her side had its own ideological agenda and its own disruptive tactics. A Columbia University panel convened to assess the charges levied by Weisss group found no evidence that any professors had issued antisemitic statements; it did find, however, that pro-Israel students had heckled professors during classes and lectures on Middle East studies and were partially to blame for a lack of civility on campus.

The Harpers letter signatories are not wrong that there is a war on political speech in the US. But its not the one most of them have in mind. It is, instead, the one in which Weiss, Nelson, and other anti-BDS partisans are active participants, fighting on the rhetorical front in tandem with a well-funded, state-aligned apparatus working to make support for BDS and anti-Zionism not only unacceptable but illegal. They have already won significant victories. Across the US, 32 states have enacted legislation banning or restricting boycotts in support of Palestinian rights. In North Carolina, the federal government threatened to defund the joint Duke-UNC Middle East studies consortium after Israel-advocacy groups complained about the speakers at an academic conference on Gaza. The US governments adoption of the controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitismwhich equates anti-Zionism with antisemitism and designates criticism of Israeli policy as forms of anti-Jewish discrimination under Title VIhas emboldened an entire network of Israel-advocacy groups that file legal complaints against Palestine-related events on campuses, sometimes even before they have happened.

What the free speech and cancel culture discourse advanced by the Harpers letter obfuscates, then, is how signatories like Weiss and Nelson use that rhetoric in political struggles with very real, material consequences. Indeed, while the letters signatories locate cancel culture in the virtual realm of social media, conjuring the image of the mob, Israel-advocacy organizationsincluding those that Weiss and Nelson have worked withare using terms like free speech and academic freedom to shut down real-life events on university campuses and to turn the legal apparatus of government against supporters of Palestinian rights.

Mari Cohen is an assistant editor at Jewish Currents.

Joshua Leifer is an assistant editor at Jewish Currents.

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The Real War on Free Speech - Jewish Currents

Criticising Bangladeshi migrant worker Mohammad Rayhan Kabirs arrest by the Malaysian authorities, Human Rights Watch on Wednesday said the authorities should immediately release him and reinstate his work permit.

The Malaysian authorities arrest of Rayhan who was featured in an Al Jazeera documentary was clear retaliation for his criticism of government policies towards migrants, said a HRW statement published in its website.

The authorities arrested Kabir on July 24, 2020 and ordered his detention for 14 days for investigation.

The director-general of immigration announced that Kabir will be deported and blacklisted from entering Malaysia forever. It is not clear whether he will also face criminal charges.

The Malaysian authorities actions against Kabir send a chilling message to all migrant workers that speaking out about rights abuses risks arbitrary arrest, deportation, and blacklisting, said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director.

The arrest of a source in a documentary adds to the devastating assault on free speech and media freedom in Malaysia.

Kabir was featured in an Al Jazeera documentary that aired on July 3 about the treatment of migrant workers in Malaysia during the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown.

The government targeted both Kabir and Al Jazeera, with the news agency now facing potential charges of sedition, defamation, and violation of the Communications and Multimedia Act. Al Jazeera is also facing charges that it failed to obtain a license to make the film in an unprecedented use of Malaysias outdated National Film Development Corporation Act.

On the day of his arrest, Kabir wrote to a journalist saying, I did not commit any crime. I did not lie. I have only talked about discrimination against the migrants. I want the dignity of migrants and my country ensured. I believe all migrants and Bangladesh will stand with me.

Kabirs treatment by the authorities has raised important due process concerns, Human Rights Watch said.

After the documentary aired, the authorities widely circulated a search notice that included his photo, name, and address, putting him at risk in an environment increasingly hostile to migrants.

A few days later, the inspector-general of police announced to the media that the immigration department had revoked Kabirs work permit.

This, along with the announcement that he would be deported and blacklisted, was made without Kabir receiving notice or having an opportunity to be heard.

The governments public attacks on Kabir, at a time of rising xenophobia in Malaysia, serve to fan the flames of intolerance, Human Rights Watch said.

International human rights protections normally apply to non-nationals as well as citizens, including the rights to freedom of expression and due process.

The arrest of Kabir and investigation of Al Jazeera are part of a larger crackdown on freedom of expression and media freedom in the country, with numerous journalists, civil society activists, and ordinary citizens facing investigation and prosecution for speech critical of the government.

Speaking to the media about the treatment of migrant workers is not a crime, nor is reporting on such abuses, Robertson said.

The Malaysian government should release Kabir and engage with the criticism to improve respect for human rights in the country.

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Rayhan's arrest violates free speech rights: HRW - United News of Bangladesh

13th November 1953: Members of Supreme Court. Seated, Felix Frankfurter (far left) and William O ... [+] Douglas (far right). Standing, Robert H. Jackson (second from left). (Photo by George Tames/New York Times Co./Getty Images)

Felix Frankfurter was a man of the Left. He wrote often for The New Republic, and he helped found the ACLU. He lobbied the United States to recognize the Soviet Union during the Russian Civil War. He was the foremost proponent of a new trial for the anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti.

While Frankfurter was agitating and organizing as a professor at Harvard Law School in the 1910s and 20s, the Supreme Court was striking down state licensing requirements, consumer-protection rules, and wage-and-hour laws. Like many on the Left of that day, therefore, Frankfurter believed in judicial restraint. Justice Louis Brandeis captured the contemporary progressive attitude in a 1932 dissent. It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system, he wrote, that a single courageous state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.

Brandeiss great ally on the court was Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. It was not progressive principle that made Holmes a restrained judge; it was a bullet in the neck in the Civil War. What damned fools people are who believe things, he once told the socialist professor Harold Laski. Although he said it of a pacifist in a case before the court, the line captures how he saw most things, including judging. Oddly enough, the idealistic Frankfurter worshiped the cynical Holmes. A justice willing to uphold social legislation he thought pointless, even ridiculous, was in Frankfurters eyes the pattern of a sound judge. This might explain why Frankfurters own judicial principles would remain fixed as times changed.

And change they did. Frankfurter became a justice in 1939. The next year, on behalf of an 8-1 majority of the court, he declared that the First Amendment has nothing to say about the expulsion from school of Jehovahs Witnesses who refuse to pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States. Local governments must, Frankfurter thought, have the authority to safeguard the nations fellowship. Just three years later, however, in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943), the court voted 6-to-3 to overturn Frankfurters opinion. If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, Justice Robert Jackson wrote for the majority, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.

Now in dissent, Frankfurter fumed about judges who write their private notions of policy into the Constitution. It must be remembered, he wrote, quoting Holmes, that legislatures are ultimate guardians of the liberties and welfare of the people in quite as great a degree as the courts. True, but not a very compelling point in a case about forcing schoolchildren to swear an oath against their (and their parents) will.

Shortly after the First World War, in fact, Holmes had started to take a more expansive view of the Free Speech Clause. When men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, he explained in dissent in Abrams v. United States (1919), they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas. When it came to free speech, Holmes could use his old philosophical skepticism to justify a new judicial assertiveness. His pivot was driven in part by distress at the persecution Frankfurter and Laski suffered at Harvard for their radical views. Yet Frankfurter himself remained in awe of the Holmes who told Laski, just a year after Abrams, that if the people want to go to hell, a judges job is to help them along.

Frankfurter clashed often with a group of justices, led by William Brennan and William Douglas, who placed little stock in text, precedent, or history. This activist wing became increasingly dominant. Frankfurters hour was pastor, rather, had never come. When Brennan, writing for the court in Baker v. Carr (1962), overturned a raft of precedents on the way to declaring that legislative redistricting decisions can be challenged in court, Frankfurter issued a long and bitter dissent, suffered a stroke, and retired.

Frankfurter complained that the courts hard left produced opinions that were shoddy and result-oriented. He might have added anarchic. In 1968 a man wore a jacket emblazoned with the words F*** the Draft in a courthouse. He was arrested and prosecuted for disturbing the peace ... by offensive conduct. In his final months on the court, John Marshall Harlan wrote the decision in the mans appeal. An heir, in many ways, of Holmes, Brandeis, and Frankfurter, Harlan set a trend for many later conservative justices by evolving on the bench. His opinion in Cohen v. California (1971) declared the protester's conviction inconsistent with the First Amendment.

Because the offensive-conduct statute applied throughout the state, the defendant, Harlan concluded, was not on notice that certain kinds of otherwise permissible speech or conduct would ... not be tolerated in certain places. Harlan dodged the key questionwhat counts as offensive conduct in a courthouseby denying that the law can turn on context or matters of degree. Having thus oversimplified the case (and infantilized every citizen), he was free to ask simply whether a state may ban the use of expletives in public. At that point he could at least have knocked down his straw man with a straightforward no. Instead Harlan offered a paean to vulgar relativism, a tract now remembered mainly for the assertion that one mans vulgarity is anothers lyric. As Robert Bork noted in The Tempting of America, that statement is a challenge to all laws on all subjects. After all, one mans larceny is anothers just distribution of goods.

Does Cohen remain a totem of left-wing free-speech jurisprudence? The courts progressives seem to have reversed gear. Take the courts decision earlier this month in Barr v. American Association of Political Consultants Inc. The Telephone Consumer Protection Act bans almost all robocalls to cell phones. The Act contains an exception for robocalls that seek to collect a debt owed to the federal government. At issue in Barr was whether this carveout violates the First Amendment. While acknowledging that robocalls are widely despised, the court concluded, by a vote of 6-to-3, that the government nonetheless may not engage in content-based discrimination, baselessly favoring some robocalls over others.

Writing for himself and Justices Ginsburg and Kagan, Justice Breyer argued in dissent that robocalls are not vital to core First Amendment objectives, such as protecting peoples ability to speak or to transmit their views to government. Congress, in Breyers view, should have greater leeway to impose ordinary regulatory programs that pose little threat to the exchange of thought. Maybe sobut this is not the outlook on display in Cohen. Say the government prohibits writing political statements on tax returns. According to the Barr dissent, it is hard to imagine that such a rule would threaten political speech in the marketplace of ideas. Dont count on the wing of the court that let a man say F*** the Draft in a courthouse in 1968 to let you say F*** Taxes on a tax form today.

Why has the courts left wing lost its enthusiasm for free-speech absolutism? One factor is the emergence on the court of a right wing that upholds the free-speech rights of corporations. No longer the only ones patrolling constitutional boundaries, the progressives are more careful about loose rights talk.

Another factor might soon come to the fore. If the Left conquers American culture, sheds liberal values, and becomes a force for conformity, will the progressive justices shift in turn? In the case of a child expelled from school for refusing to acknowledge, and renounce, her privilege, would they chastise the wielders of power and discuss the fixed star in our constitutional constellation? Or would they gain a new understanding of Justice Frankfurters belief in the value of making parents accept the training of [their] children in good citizenship? In the appeal of a man charged with offensive conduct for wearing, amid a hostile crowd, a jacket maligning political correctness, would they use Cohen to lecture the easily offended about simply avert[ing] their eyes to avoid further bombardment of their sensitivities? Or might they suddenly see wisdom in the Cohen dissenters claim that absurd and immature antic[s] are conduct rather than speech?

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The Protean Progressive Free Speech Clause - Forbes

A wall of veterans joined the front lines of protests in Portland, Oregon on Friday to support demonstrator's rights to free speech, Mike Baker of the New York Times reported.

The "Wall of Vets" joins other groups that have joined together to protect protesters, including "Wall of Moms" and "Wall of Dads."

The veterans lined up together in front of a fence outside the federal courthouse, the Times reported. They stayed there until tear gas broke up the crowd.

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There have been ongoing protests in Portland for two months since the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May. In the last two weeks, protesters have clashed with federal agents deployed by President Donald Trump to quell the protests over police violence.

Local officials including Portland's Mayor Ted Wheeler and Oregon Gov. Kate Brown have called for the federal agents to leave the city, saying actions including use of tear gas, force, and pulling protesters into unmarked vans is making things worse.

In one incident, federal agents hit Christopher J. David, a navy veteran, with a baton and sprayed him with pepper spray after he asked them if they felt their actions violated the constitution, the Times reported.

The incident was one of the reasons the wall of veterans was motivated to form, Duston Obermeyer, a Marine Corps veteran, told the Times.

Early Sunday, the police declared a riot in downtown Portland after protesters toppled a fence surrounding the federal courthouse during a night of protests. Federal agents then "deployed multiple rounds of tear gas," The Oregonianreported.

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'Wall of vets' join Portland protests to protect free speech - Business Insider - Business Insider

Georgia congressman and civil rights icon John Lewis, who died late Friday at age 80, knew about affecting change through policy-making. When Lewis was one of the marquee speakers at the monumental March on Washington in 1963, that event led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964; when Lewis participated in the seminal Selma-to-Montgomery march in 1965, that gathering led to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Jim Zwerg served as a pivotal Freedom Rider with Lewis in 1961, the year he also met the Rev. C.T. Vivian, another of Martin Luther King Jr.s lieutenants. Vivian, who died at age 95 on Friday morning, was more of a top-notch teacher for Zwerg, as Lewis was more of a prodigious peer.

The Freedom Riders were mostly college students determined to desegregate interstate travel in the South where the custom was to separate passengers by race on buses and in terminals. At that time, Zwerg was a 22-year-old white guy who left an all-white area in Wisconsin to experience the segregated South as an exchange student at Fisk University, a historically black school in Nashville.

A classic walk a mile in someone elses shoes.

Lewis, also at Fisk, inspired him to get involved in the Civil Rights Movement, to get into good trouble, as Lewis preferred to call joining the cause.

Everyone respected his total commitment and discipline to non-violence, said Zwerg, now 81. John had a deep commitment to faith.

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Gregory Clay: Which of us has the right to free speech? - Waco Tribune-Herald

The recent spate over cancel culture saw Americas leading institutions from newsrooms and art museums to aeronautics and utility companies remove or fire employees for perceived transgressions against todays standards; expect tomorrows to unearth new heretics. This began on university campuses but graduated into our professional class, with the primary message: Free speech is unsafe at any speed.

If were to maintain an open, democratic and pluralist society that solves differences through debate, not violence, it starts by countering the cancel culture where it started: on campus.

Its clear that higher education is losing the argument for free expression and robust discourse.

Many university professors, provosts and presidents came of age during the free speech movement and largely live by those values. So whats caused this rapid shift toward illiberalism? One factor is students are arriving on campus less prepared to live and study with those from different backgrounds.

Today, students are growing up in what The Pew Research Center calls think-alike communities. Its no surprise that students first safety impulse is to cancel anyone who doesnt agree with them on every issue. These outsized reactions create a chilling effect, as students are unable to separate the truth of their colleagues emotional response with the veracity of their argument. Essentially, they cannot disagree with a position without disagreeing with their friend as a person.

In turn, political issues cant openly be debated: A 2018 UCLA report found only about half of students were satisfied with their campus ability to provide an atmosphere welcoming to political differences.

Fear of being socially ostracized also prevents students from speaking up. A 2019 College Pulse survey found 68% agreed their campus climate precludes students from expressing their true opinions because their classmates might find them offensive, and a 2020 University of North Carolina survey found many students worry about the consequences of expressing sincere political views and that they engage regularly in self-censorship.

To correct this, many universities are seeking to re-establish themselves as institutions of intellectual exploration, imparting the values of open exchange to their students.

The University of Richmond, under the leadership of President Ronald A. Crutcher, convened a Free Expression Task Force in May 2019, which drafted a recommended statement that will be discussed on campus this fall. Crutcher personally hosts the Sharp Viewpoint Series and Spider Talks to bring challenging conversations and provocative ideas to campus.

Another example worth emulating: Professors Robert P. George and Cornel West, political opposites (George a conservative, West a liberal) who not only teach together but enjoy a famous friendship. Theyve shown disagreement not only can be civil, but friendly and productive.

If students want to build a constructive and diverse country, use college to develop their philosophical understanding, stress-test their prior views and even be willing to change them, follow these basic strategies:

1. Professors (usually) are your allies. Yes, most professors lean left, but most make it a point of pride that multiple viewpoints can be aired in their classes. At UNC, majorities of both liberal and conservative students reported instructors are encouraging of political participation from students across the political spectrum.

2. Show your commitment to hearing all sides in remote classrooms. You wouldnt take a partisan banner to an in-person class. Likewise, for online meetings, choose a neutral background or one that reflects your personality to signal that youre open to hearing from all your classmates.

3. Be ready when a conversation becomes heated. Instead of immediately disagreeing, ask, Help me understand where youre coming from. Listening to someone elses opinion doesnt mean you endorse it, and letting them elaborate might encourage them to give you a fair hearing, too.

4. Know the issues from many sides. Take advantage of student rates to subscribe to a right-leaning news source (for example, The Wall Street Journal or National Review) and a left-leaning one (such as The New York Times or The New Republic). Youll have more information to support your claims and gain credibility by showing familiarity with arguments on both sides.

Cancel culture might have escaped the campus, but universities are poised to play an important role in rolling it back by imparting the values of an open and inclusive society to the next generation of students.

Jacqueline Pfeffer Merrill is director of the Bipartisan Policy Centers Campus Free Expression Project. She previously served on the faculties of St. Johns College in Annapolis, Md., and the College of William & Mary. She also has taught at Duke University, the University of Calgary, Humboldt Universitt zu Berlin and in the college program at Marylands only prison for women. Contact her at: jPfefferMerrill@bipartisanpolicy.org

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Jacqueline Pfeffer Merrill column: Diagnosing the campus cancel culture and its prescription - Richmond.com

SaturdayJul25,2020at12:01AM

This is in response to Andy VanDeusen. You talk about being bullied and what you dont realize is that is exactly what the superintendent of Wooster City Schools did to the Wayne County Fair Board.

They bullied and threatened the fair board into changing their mind about the Confederate flag. If anyone is offended or insulted by the Confederate flag, then its time for them to put on their big boy pants and suck it up.

What is really bad is that the superintendent did the same thing to the fair board and to me that is much worse.

You dont need to tell me that the students of Wooster City Schools complained about the Confederate flag. It was only a handful of people and that is not enough to squash free speech.

There are a lot of things I dont like, but I ignore it instead of complaining. If you dont like something, I either look the other way or ignore it. Its not hurting anyone, so maybe we should all do that.

As I close, I would like to state that anyone voting for Biden is voting to defund the police. This man doesnt know where he is or what he is running for half of the time. Why in Gods name would anyone want a man like this to run our country.

Dennis Miller

Holmesville

Link:

Letter to the editor: There's nothing more to Confederate flag than free speech - Massillon Independent

New policies include the phrase Students shall be permitted to assemble and engage in spontaneous expressive activity, and students are no longer required to make reservations or be an official club to engage in speech on campus.

In fall 2019, a University of Wisconsin-River Falls campus official threatened to call the police on Sofie Salmon, a freshman student exercising her right to free speech by rolling a six-foot inflated free speech ball around the campus courtyard allowing other students to write whatever they desired on it.

"Students shall be permitted to assemble and engage in spontaneous expressive activity."

The official told Salmon that she could not engage in free speech or free expression in the public outdoor areas of the campus unless she had registered as a student club or had made a reservation.

[RELATED: EXCLUSIVE VIDEO: UW official tells conservative student with 'free speech ball' to move or face the cops]

Salmon, now a rising sophomore, and Rebekah Beeton, who was a Regional Field Coordinator for the Leadership Institute, Campus Reform's parent organization, at the time both took out their phones and recorded the encounter with the campus official.

WATCH:

During this brief encounter, the campus official, Kristin Barstad, accuses Salmon of violating one of the universitys policies but admitted that she was not going to know that [policy] off the top of her head.

UW-River Falls did not respond to Campus Reform when asked which specific policy was allegedly violated by Salmon.

[RELATED: STUDY: Free speech under serious threat at Wisconsin colleges]

Soon after this incident took place and the video began circulating, the Alliance Defending Freedom sent UW-River Falls a letter accusing the school of violating the student's right to free speech. The ADF deemed the universitys policies unconstitutional.

To avoid litigation and comply with the First Amendment we request that you immediately revise UW-River Falls policies on expression to permit students to engage in expression in public outdoor areas without prior restraint, the letter read, adding that public universities have a constitutional obligation to uphold the marketplace of ideas through clear, objective policies that promote the ability of students to engage in the free exchange of ideas and competing views on campus.

On July 15, the University of Wisconsin-River Falls agreed to adopt new policies regarding students First Amendment rights on campus.

"I first extend my sincerest gratitude and congratulations to Sofie Salmon for her active role in changing campus culture at UW-River Falls to be free speech friendly, Asha Moline, the former president of UW-River Falls Liberty Society toldCampus Reform. As the former president of The Liberty Society on campus, few things are more satisfying than knowing the fight for freedom lives on.

Any academic institution that not only lacks protection of students constitutional right to free speech but actively works against them has not earned the right to call themselves an academic institution, Moline continued, adding today, UW-River Falls earned that right."

Follow the author of this article on Twitter@LeanaDippie

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VICTORY: University changes policy that prompted employee to threaten to call the cops over 'free speech ball' - Campus Reform

Review By: Jonathan W. Hickman

The Fight, reveals the price of free speechthe good and the bad.

The vrit documentary filmmakers behind the eye-opening 2016 movie Weiner were granted unprecedented access to the offices and inner workings of the American Civil Liberties Union (the ACLU) to document its efforts to push back against Trump administration policies. The resulting feature, The Fight, is a fascinating legal procedural less concerned with the details of the cases featured and more interested in showing the process behind the scenes.

But as much as the film feels like a moving tribute to the ACLU and its enthusiastic staff, the filmmakers (Elyse Steinberg, Josh Kriegman, and Eli Depres) dont shy away from the possible collateral damage associated with the organizations core mission. And thats whats buried in The Fights second actthe tragedy of Charlottesville in 2017. More on that later.

The Fight takes a fly-on-wall approach to tell the story of a handful of dedicated attorneys and the causes that drive them. The four areas focused on are abortion rights, immigration rights, LGBT rights, and voting rights. We see the legal teams as they go about their frenzied days, spending time behind computer screens, taking trains, preparing oral arguments in hotel rooms, and relaxing at home with their families.

We meet five lawyers.

Attorney Brigitte Amiri is the director of the organizations Reproductive Freedom Project. She is lead counsel on a case that challenges the Trump administrations ban on abortion for unaccompanied immigrant minors.

Joshua Block is the senior staff attorney for the ACLUs Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender & HIV Projects. His case seeks to strike down President Trumps ban on transgender people serving in the military. His co-counsel is the charismatic young lawyer and transgender activist Chase Strangio.

Veteran attorney Lee Gelernt, the deputy director of the Immigration Rights Project, is shown handling several cases involving Administration policies. In court, he challenges the controversial Muslim ban and the practice of family separation.

One of Gelernts frequent television appearances is captured in realtime, as he learns of a crushing loss in one of his most high-profile cases. This scene is masterful. Media watchers will want to pay close attention to how he carefully measures his reaction, first attempting in mere minutes to educate himself and keep his emotions in check. This scene is really what vrit filmmaking is all about.

The final attorney featured is Dale Ho, the director of the Voting Rights Project. Hos efforts in the film challenge the inclusion of the citizenship question on the Census. We travel with him as he spends time in various towns and hotel rooms regularly practicing and researching. And Ho allows the cameras into his apartment, where we meet his wife and children.

The Fight is a story told exclusively from one side in various legal disputes. Pitching the lawyers as David against Goliath works mainly because Goliath, or the government, is rarely pictured in the film. Other than clips from a video deposition, at no time, are the cameras trained on lawyers from the Justice Department.

No government lawyers or officials would likely go on camera, but the filmmaking team makes little effort to dive into the legal claims and defenses. This lack of context may frustrate some viewers. Conservative audiences, who object philosophically to the ACLU, will find The Fight educational.

If I were a government lawyer, Id certainly want to watch this film. And as Oscar-nominated filmmaker Joe Berlinger learned after making his movie Crude, documentary footage shot (including, in that case, some 600 hours of outtakes) isnt necessarily privileged from the eyes of opposing forces. But whether you like or despise the ACLU, The Fight is an undeniably informative and moving portrait.

What jumped out at me while watching this film was a sequence covering the deadly events in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. The ACLU was instrumental in procuring a permit for the Unite the Right rally. It was lawyers from the ACLU who filed a lawsuit that resulted in an injunction allowing the white supremacist followers to march.

Cameras roll, showing the depressed ACLU staff watching news footage of the deadly violence. The unintended consequences of free speech are on full display, and the lawyers dont feel good about fulfilling their core mission in that circumstance. The good and the bad, it's a genuine American dilemma.

The Fight makes its debut on streaming platforms everywhere on July 31st.

***

A RottenTomatoes.com Tomatometer-approved critic, Jonathan W. Hickman is also an entertainment lawyer, college professor, novelist, and filmmaker. Hes a member of the Atlanta Film Critics Circle, The Southeastern Film Critics Association, and the Georgia Film Critics Association. For more information about Jonathan visit: FilmProductionLaw.com or DailyFIlmFix.com

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The Fight: The collateral damage of free speech - Newnan Times-Herald

The cartoon shows a bearded man in paradise, reclining on a couch in a tent, with a virgin on either arm. God pokes his head in. Do you need anything? he asks. Yes, Lord, the man replies. Get me some wine and tell Gabriel to bring me cashews. Take the empty plates with you. And put a door on the tent, so next time you can knock before you come in, your Immortalness.

Four years ago, Nahed Hattar, the Jordanian writer and intellectual, shared the cartoon on Facebook, captioning it The God of Daesh. He was charged with inciting sectarian strife and racism and insulting Islam. In September 2016, outside the Amman courthouse where he was about to stand trial, Hattar was shot dead by a Salafist gunman.

Telling jokes in the Arab world is no laughing matter. Yet as a new book, Joking About Jihad, shows, poking fun at Islamists and jihadists has become an essential part of Arab culture. Comedians and cartoonists, the authors Gilbert Ramsay and Moutaz Alkheder observe, play an important role in shattering once seemingly inviolable taboos, transgressing the boundaries of consensus while somehow also enabling conversations where they once seemed impossible.

The context of the free speech debate is very different in the west. Many of the questions facing writers and artists and comedians are, however, similar. What is taboo? How far can we upset people? Should we transgress consensual boundaries?

In the Arab world, those pushing the boundaries of speech work within brutally dictatorial states and know the dangers of provoking popular outrage. Hattar is only one of dozens of writers and artists who have lost their lives in recent years for transgressing taboos. It takes immense courage to stand up for free speech in Jordan or Egypt or Saudi Arabia.

In the west, writers and artists also face murderous threats, from the fatwa imposed on Salman Rushdie to the mass killings of Charlie Hebdo staff in January 2015. But there is also, unlike in most of the Muslim world, a general presumption of freedom of expression and laws and institutions that broadly protect free speech. This has made many sanguine about threats to speech.

After the Charlie Hebdo massacre, there were protest marches and words of outrage from politicians. But many liberals and the left felt uncomfortable about defending, even in death, figures associated with Charlie Hebdo. Three months after the attack, a host of prominent writers boycotted the annual gala of PEN America in protest at its decision to award the magazine a courage award.

Compare that with the response in the Arab world. Writers and artists, even those critical of the magazine, were, as the Beirut-based critic Kaelen Wilson-Goldie observed, unequivocal in their support because they saw the killings as part of a broader threat. At a vigil for Charlie Hebdo in Beirut, people added on to the Je suis Charlie hashtag: Je suis Samir Kassir, Je suis Gebran Tueni, Je suis Riad Taha, Je suis Kamel Mroue. All were writers, cartoonists or intellectuals assassinated for their work.

Arab activists recognise that censorship aids the powerful, while free speech is a vital weapon for those struggling for change. Its a point often forgotten in the west.

Consider the furore over the recent letter in Harpers magazine in defence of free speech signed by 153 public figures. A key criticism of the letter is that it is the voice of privilege.

Its true that few of the signatories have been silenced (though its also worth pointing out that Kamel Daoud, for one, still faces a death fatwa). Its the little people without power or platforms whose lives are particularly disrupted if they say the wrong thing, whether that be Muslim students in Britain, Mexican-American truck drivers, childrens authors, shopworkers, anti-Israel protesters or political activists.

These are all distinct cases and the now-fashionable term cancel culture is not particularly useful in helping us think about the different forms of silencing that people face. Nor are the conditions of censorship in the west comparable to those under which Arab writers and activists operate. The point, rather, is that the harsh conditions make Arab activists aware of the significance of free speech in a way that many in the west no longer seem to be. Would many of the jokes or cartoons for which Arabs risk their lives be published in the west without facing considerable pushback from liberals? I doubt it.

Being able to dismiss concerns about censorship? Now, thats the voice of privilege.

Kenan Malik is an Observer columnist

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It's the powerless who suffer when free speech is threatened - The Guardian

1. Free-Speech Rights Institute Demands Military 'Un-Ban' Users From Esports Twitch Channels | New York Law Journal  Law.com
2. Army Pauses Twitch Game Streaming After First Amendment Claim  The New York Times
3. US Army pauses video game streams after accusations of violating free speech  The Verge
4. US Army Esports Stops Streaming In Response To Free Speech Violations  Screen Rant
5. US Army Twitch Channel Finally Told to Stop Restricting Free Speech  The Nerd Stash
6. View Full Coverage on Google News

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Free-Speech Rights Institute Demands Military 'Un-Ban' Users From Esports Twitch Channels | New York Law Journal - Law.com

ITHACA, N.Y. (WHCU) A lawsuit alleges SUNY Binghamton officials supported efforts of a hostile student mob preventing free speech on the southern tier campus.

The suit stems from a November event hosted by college republicans. Renowned economist Dr. Arthur Laffer was presenting a lecture titled Trump, Tariffs, and Trade Wars.

Lawyers allege university officials and police refused to protect the First Amendment rights of students and Dr. Laffer by encouraging the mob and allowing megaphone-wielding activists to shut down the event.

SUNY officials assist antagonist mob in disrupting event, silencing conservative guest speakerActivists shut down world-renowned economist Art Laffers scheduled lecture, university supports hostile mob, punishes conservativesWednesday, July 22, 2020

BINGHAMTON, N.Y. Alliance Defending Freedom and King & Spalding attorneys filed a lawsuit Wednesday on behalf of Young Americas Foundation, College Republicans for the State University of New York at Binghamton, and a Binghamton student, challenging the unconstitutional actions and policies of the university that facilitated a mobs disruption of a conservative speaker.

Renowned economist and presidential medal of honor recipient Dr. Arthur Laffer was scheduled to give an extracurricular lecture entitled Trump, Tariffs, and Trade Wars at Binghamton University on Nov. 18, an event co-hosted by College Republicans and YAF. University police and administrators knew that a student group and an outside group planned to disrupt the event, gave disruptors direct access to the event and an adjacent room to organize the disruption, and allowed the mob to shout down the visiting economist and cancel the event.

Everyone should be free to speak about their beliefs, especially on a public university campus, said ADF Senior Counsel Tyson Langhofer, director of the ADF Center for Academic Freedom. Instead, the student groups and Dr. Laffer encountered violent opposition to an extracurricular event that provided some deeply needed viewpoint diversity. Unfortunately, SUNY-Binghamton officials and police utterly refused to protect the First Amendment rights of its students and Dr. Laffer. Instead, they encouraged the mob and stood by as megaphone-wielding activists shut down the event. These students and their guests have the same right to speak as anyone else without fear of being physically assaulted or relentlessly antagonized by hostile disruptors. This blatant viewpoint discrimination cannot stand.

Four days before the event, College Republicans hosted a table where they handed out hot chocolate and flyers promoting the upcoming lecture. Using social media messages, members of the College Progressives student organization incited individuals to disrupt this disgusting space. According to the complaint and video footage, approximately 200 persons gathered, confiscated and destroyed event flyers, broke down the College Republicans table, hurled insults and obscenities at their members, and physically assaulted one member, forcibly removing her hat bearing the political slogan Make America Great Again.

When university police arrived, they refused to disperse the hostile mob but directed College Republicans to vacate the area as the mob chanted pack it up. Immediately following the disruption, YAF hired a private security firm to offer personal protection to Laffer and asked the university to ensure the event would continue without interruption. However, on the day of the event, school administrators admitted knowledge of threats by College Progressives and a non-student group, Progressive Leaders of Tomorrow, to disrupt the event. Rather than promising protection, university police blamed YAF and College Republicans for opening their event to the public instead of hosting a private event. University police allowed protestors to shout down the speaker with a megaphone without any intervention for nearly two minutes before directing Laffers security to escort him out of the lecture hall before he had the opportunity to speak.

The First Amendment protects the free speech rights of people of all beliefs. Public universities that pick and choose which voices can be heard on campus violate the First Amendment, said co-counsel Andrew C. Hruska of international law firm King & Spalding. Universities have an obligation to protect students free speech rights, regardless of their viewpoint. University officials that let loose a mob to suppress disfavored speech are as guilty as the mob itself of depriving students of their civil rights. SUNY students deserve better.

The free and open exchange of ideas is critical to a students education, but SUNY-Binghamton is shamefully depriving its student body of an intellectually diverse learning environment, said YAF Spokesman Spencer Brown. All students have the constitutionally protected freedom to organize events and have their voices heard without fear of being targeted and shut down by university-encouraged mobs. Young Americas Foundation remains committed to holding school administrators accountable for their censorship of conservative students at SUNY-Binghamton and across the country.

ADF attorneys and Hruska and Joseph L. Zales, attorneys with King & Spalding, filed the lawsuit, Young Americas Foundation v. Stenger, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York.

Pronunciation guide: Langhofer (LANG-hoff-ur); Hruska (RUH-ska)

The ADF Center for Academic Freedom is dedicated to ensuring freedom of speech and association for students and faculty so that everyone can freely participate in the marketplace of ideas without fear of government censorship.

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Lawsuit alleges SUNY Binghamton supported efforts of mob in thwarting free speech on campus - whcuradio.com

Princeton University campus in 2013.(Eduardo Munoz/Reuters)We cannot allow the United States to become a country in which the price of dissent is so high that all but the bravest among us are unwilling to pay it.

NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLEA pall of orthodoxy has descended over an increasing number of American institutions. The stifling of dissent and the pressuring of people to conform to ideological dogmas that began in universities has spread to the media and even to the corporate world. While official government censorship may be rare, we are living in a moment where the consequences of speaking out on the wrong side of controversial issues or even supporting others who speak out are often nothing short of personal and professional ruin. And while we can, and should, expect people to display some degree of fortitude when it comes to the private social consequences of free expression, the price has become so high that an ever-shrinking number of people are willing to pay it.

A prime example of this phenomenon is the situation that has been unfolding at my alma mater, Princeton University, over the past several weeks. On July 4, more than 350 Princeton faculty, staff, and graduate students signed a petition demanding the university do more to address racism on campus, including by creating a committee composed entirely of faculty that would oversee the investigation and discipline of racist behaviors, incidents, research, and publication on the part of faculty.

Many people, myself included, were stunned that a group of faculty would demand such an all-out attack on academic freedom a virtual academic Committee of Public Safety. One such person was Classics professor Joshua Katz, who several days after the July 4 faculty petition published his own Declaration of Independence by a Princeton Professor in Quillette. Katz supported some of the demands made in the petition that do not imperil academic freedom and integrity, but pushed back against the demands that do. Of the aforementioned committee, for example, Katz asked, is there anyone who doesnt believe that this committee would be a star chamber with a low bar for cancellation, punishment, suspension, even dismissal?

Katz also took issue with the demand that Princeton make a formal public University apology to the members of the Black Justice League and their allies. In light of what any reasonable person would acknowledge as abusive behaviors by BJL members towards other students, he described the BJL (a group which was active on campus from 2014 to 2016) as a small local terrorist organization that made life miserable for the many (including the many black students) who did not agree with its members demands.

Predictably, the official denouncements came fast and furious though, unsurprisingly, the shocking demand by Princeton faculty to abolish academic freedom at the university generated no such reaction, nor did their unlawful demand that faculty of color receive extra pay and sabbatical time compared to white faculty. Despite the regularity with which words like fascist and Nazi are used to denounce anyone who does not cleave to the increasingly dominant orthodoxy of the hard left, Katzs rhetorical use of the word terrorist to describe the bullying tactics of a now-defunct student group was deemed beyond the pale. The university quickly announced that it was looking into the matter further, as though someones expression of opinion were an appropriate subject for an official university investigation, and the Classics department posted an official denunciation of Katz on the departmental homepage.

Thankfully, Princetons administration ultimately realized that any investigation or punishment of Katz would have violated the universitys contractual guarantees of free speech and academic freedom, and President Chris Eisgruber publicly confirmed this week in the Daily Princetonian that Princetons policies protect Katzs freedom to say what he did, just as they protected the Black Justice Leagues. He can be answered but not censored or sanctioned.

But this would not have been the outcome at many institutions. And indeed, throughout this episode, supporters of Katz and his free speech rights have learned how deeply the cancel-culture poison has infiltrated American educational and corporate institutions. Last week, a Princeton alumnus circulated a statement in support of Katz, asking fellow Princeton alums to sign on. Sadly, the repressive climate of fear in which we find ourselves was evident in a number of the responses to that statement. To illustrate the reality in which we now find ourselves, I have been given permission to quote from a few of these responses (anonymously, of course, with any identifying details removed).

One individual wrote: I wish I could sign this letter supporting you just as I wish I could write one of my own. However, this persons corporate employer made clear that it would view this as purposefully undermining them and would probably fire them for signing the letter. This person expressed deep regret, but said that they simply could not forego the money they needed to support a growing family.

Another person, despite agreeing with the letter, declined to sign because If I admitted now what I really thought on this and a number of other topics, I would be finished in academic life. This person hoped someday to have the courage to speak their mind, but for the time being said to the statements author and to Katz himself that until then I ask for your and his forgiveness for not signing your letter.

Yet another person this one so fearful that they did not even use their real name and email address wrote:

It is sad that the day has come in America when this kind of article amounts to a brave act. I hope free speech and critical thinking will one day be universally valued again in academia, but I dont think that is the direction in which we are currently headed. For the time being, I hope your article will at least inspire other colleagues to speak their minds more sincerely.

As a junior tenure-track professor, I sympathize with your message, but I cannot afford the luxury to support it openly; hence why this email is regretfully unsigned.

This is madness and it is horrifying. We cannot allow the United States to become a country in which, despite legal protections for free speech, the price of dissent is so high that all but the bravest among us are unwilling to pay it. So how do we pull back from this precipice? Individual courage is important, but I believe a commitment to collective action is also necessary. There is safety in numbers. My own anecdotal sense, as someone who lives and breathes and discusses these issues on a daily basis, is that a majority of people of good faith from across the political spectrum believe that cancel culture is toxic and deeply corrosive of the ties that bind us together as a nation. The problem is, no one wants to be the first to say it. So we all need to say it. Its like the bystanders who allow the school bully to rampage unabated for fear of becoming his next target. Failing to intervene on behalf of someone being attacked may delay the inevitable attack on you, but thats all it can do. Standing up as a group and saying no more, however that can end the bullys reign altogether. And make no mistake: This is bullying, plain and simple.

In addition to standing up to the bullies who cow so many into silence, we must also stand up using, whenever possible, the power of the law to those cowards in positions of authority who give in to their own fear of the bullies by investigating and even punishing students, faculty, or employees for daring to dissent. Public institutions are bound by the First Amendment, and private institutions are for the most part contractually bound by the promises they make to students and faculty.

This fight is not going to be easy, and the victories will be incremental. But it is an unacceptable state of affairs when people cannot even express their support for someones right to dissent without fearing personal and professional destruction. Whatever account is to be given of how we came to such a pass, the sad fact is that we are here the basic liberty to speak ones mind, even on a university campus devoted to free and open inquiry in the pursuit of knowledge, exists only as a formality. It is up to us to make it a reality again. It will take individual courage together with cooperation across the lines of ideological division to produce what we so desperately need: a new birth of freedom.

If you think there should be a corner of our journalistic and intellectual life that defends right reason and is an alternative to the unhinged mainstream media, and if you have been alarmed at the sound of the American mind slamming shut at so many institutions recently, please lend National Review your support.SUPPORT NR TODAY

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Toward a New Birth of Freedom - National Review

This is true; as Zaid Jilani wrote recently, If it were harder for employers to fire people for frivolous reasons, Americans would have less reason to fear that expressing their views might cost them their livelihoods. But it seems strange to me to argue that in the absence of better labor law, the left is justified in taking advantage of precarity to punish people for political disagreements.

None of this is an argument for a totally laissez-faire approach to speech; some ideas should be stigmatized.

I recently spoke to Wasow about the reaction to Shor tweeting his paper. Much of what we call cancel culture is just culture, he said. Culture has boundaries. Every community has boundaries. Those boundaries are always shifting. In the age of the internet, they move faster, and therefore where those boundaries are is less clear and less stable, and it makes it easier for people to cross those lines.

But its a problem when the range of proscribed speech is so wide that the rules are hard to even explain to those not steeped in left-wing mores.

Writing in the 1990s, at a time when feminists like Catharine MacKinnon sought to curtail free speech in the name of equality, the great left-libertarian Ellen Willis described how progressive movements sow the seeds of their own destruction when they become censorious. Its impossible, Willis wrote, to censor the speech of the dominant without stifling debate among all social groups and reinforcing orthodoxy within left movements. Under such conditions a movement can neither integrate new ideas nor build support based on genuine transformations of consciousness rather than guilt or fear of ostracism.

Its not always easy to draw a clear line between what Willis described as reinforcing orthodoxy and agitating to make language and society more democratic and inclusive. As Nicholas Grossman pointed out in Arc Digital, most signatories to the Letter probably agree that its a good thing that the casual use of racist and homophobic slurs is no longer socially acceptable. But those changes came about through private sanction, social pressure and cultural change, driven by activists and younger generations, he wrote.

Willis reminds us that when these changes were happening, the right denounced them as violations of free expression. Of the conservative campaign against political correctness in the 1990s, she wrote, Predictably, their valid critique of left authoritarianism has segued all too smoothly into a campaign of moral intimidation, one aimed at demonizing egalitarian ideas, per se, as repressive.

Link:

Do Progressives Have a Free Speech Problem? - The New York Times

Turkey remains Not Free in Freedom Houses 2020 Freedom in the World index, in large part due to the level of retribution against exercising ones right to free expression. Many of those safeguards for rights protections in Turkey had been stripped away before COVID-19 took hold. In 2016, following a failed military coup attempt, over 150 media outlets were shuttered, and thousands of journalists, activists, and ordinary citizens were jailed under allegations of participation in terrorist activities.

At Freedom House, before the pandemic unfolded, we conducted research on public trust in the media in Turkey. We found that pressures and restrictions against media in Turkey have contributed to low public trust in the media overall, as well as a significant shift in media consumption habits. We learned that the Turkish public has turned more and more to the internet and to social media as sources of information and news.

However, this shift comes with significant public concerns about, and anxiety around, censorship, surveillance and untrustworthy information. Sixty-nine per cent of respondents expressed concern about the effects of censorship in Turkey, and 64 per cent revealed that they were worried about the government monitoring their online activities. Thirty-five per cent of those who expressed concerned about these issues were specifically troubled by the governments concealment of rights abuses.

A proposed draft law on social media appeared on the scene in April, and this month, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed to tighten his grip on social media. Following that promise, at least 11 people were detained for posting allegedly insulting tweets about Erdogans newborn grandchild.

The passage of this legislation would ultimately give the authorities more control over content online, including Facebook, Instagram, and popular apps like WhatsApp and Messenger. These measures impact the free speech not just of outspoken journalists and activists but the broader public, as they turn increasingly to social and online media for information and expression. These decisions also bleed into the entertainment sphere; Netflix was blocked on the Turkish parliaments campus this month. As 130,000 websites in Turkey were banned in 2019 alone, the streaming giant might very well follow suit.

After a gay character in a Turkish-language drama on Netflix created a backlash in Turkeys conservative circles, Erdogan told Reuters: Do you understand now why we are against social media platforms such asYouTube, Twitter and Netflix? These platforms do not suit this nation. We want to shut [them] down, control [them] by bringing [a bill] to parliament as soon as possible.

Read more:

Turkey is Using Pandemic to Tighten Chokehold on Free Expression - Balkan Insight

And one of the biggest threats to our democracy is the ability of the wealthy and powerful to silence free speech.

They do so by using the peoples own court system to file frivolous lawsuits against journalists, authors, bloggers, documentary film makers, civic organizations, protesters, political candidates and others.

Such suits are called SLAPP suits, which stands for Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation.

Usually used by government bodies to silence citizens, more and more these suits are being used by political campaigns and other individuals to silence critical viewpoints.

Most recently, the Trump campaign and the Trump family have filed frivolous litigation to try to stop news organizations from publishing critical articles, opposing political campaigns and broadcast stations to stop running ads critical of the president, and a member of the Trump family from publishing a book critical of the president.

The goal of these suits is to discourage people from speaking out for fear of being dragged into court, where they then would be forced to spend money on legal fees, go through the time and hassle of a court fight, and risk losing a large monetary verdict.

That kind of intimation is effective and contagious, serving as a chill factor on potential criticism in the future.

Thats not just a threat to individuals; its a threat to our entire democracy. And government must do all it can to protect the peoples right to free speech.

State lawmakers have an opportunity to help preserve our free speech by expanding the states anti-SLAPP statute.

The new bill (A5991/S0052A) would cover any communication in a place open to the public or a public forum in connection with an issue of public concern and any other lawful conduct in furtherance of the exercise of the constitutional right of free speech in connection with an issue of public concern.

To discourage SLAPP suits, the legislation would compel the courts to award court costs and attorney fees in actions proven to be without a substantial basis in fact or law and that could not be supported by a substantial argument.

The bill has the strong backing of the New York News Publishers Association.

And a New York State Bar Association committee urged the full organization to support the bill, noting that it does nothing to affect legitimate claims.

The Legislature only expects to be back in session a short time.

Its vital to the free speech rights of New Yorkers that lawmakers in both houses pass this legislation before they leave for the summer and that the governor signs it when it gets to his desk.

Original post:

EDITORIAL: Bill needed to protect free speech - The Daily Gazette

Editor:

How come free speech isnt free for everyone?

How come the police cant use choke holds or excessive force, but criminals can?

How come flying a Confederate flag is seen as a problem, but burning an American flag is not?

How come some of our statues must be taken down, but not others?

How come burning, looting and rioting is regarded as peaceful protesting?

How come ordinary citizens go to jail when they commit a crime, but many politicians and celebrities dont?

How come news from conservative sources is scrutinized for accuracy, but news from the liberal side isnt?

And last but not least, I wonder why President Donald Trump is considered a racist but columnist Leonard Pitts is not.

Consider these questions food for thought. Wake up, America.

Keith Folk

Gilbertsville

More here:

Letter: Why doesn't everyone have right to free speech? - Reading Eagle