Monthly Archives: August 2017

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The thing about free speech is how often its just plain wrong wrongheaded, factually wrong, deceitful, even. Thats always been true.

And there have always been two schools of thought about what you do about it. One is that you pronounce yourself, or like-minded others, to be the ruler of the universe, and you only allow people to say, write and broadcast what you agree with.

Those who dont are vilified and punished; they lose their jobs and their reputations.

When this happens in other countries, we call it totalitarianism. Dictatorship. Censorship.

Lately, when it happens here, we call it Tuesday. Thats how often, how routine its become at universities, at private companies, big and small. No need to name names.

With classes starting soon, professors are being warned that our lectures might be recorded and, if we say something impolitic, released to the world. I remember all those years teaching criminal-law classes: Whenever I first introduced the topic of rape, I would vigorously take the side of the rapist to ensure all sides were presented. What would happen to me today? Would I be punished for not giving trigger warnings before I told my own story? Or for taking the wrong side in the debate? How lucky that Im on leave.

Of course, our Founding Fathers had a different idea. They knew the danger of punishing speech because you disagree with it.They understood that the answer to speech that is wrong, wrongheaded, hateful or unpatriotic (not to mention unscientific) is not less speech but more speech; not censorship but an open market of ideas; not dictatorship but democracy.

I am not talking about speech that incites violence, speech that preaches hatred and killing, speech that poses a clear and present danger.

Im talking about speech that raises questions that we only talk about in private for fear that someones head will be chopped off.

When Harvard President Lawrence Summers a great mind, love him or hate him wondered whether there might be some biological explanation for the underrepresentation of women in math and science, he was, very soon thereafter, no longer president of Harvard.

But guess what? The problem did not disappear. Firing Larry Summers did not open up the floodgates for women. It just shut down the debate.

A whole lot of good that did.

Worse than no good. If you want to trigger backlash, if you want to leave people thinking precisely what you dont want them to think, shut down the debate. Tell them they have no right to think that. Meet their argument not with a counter-argument but with a delete key and a pink slip.

As if that will further understanding. As if that will make things better. As if that will encourage open and honest dialogue.

Not that I blame the supervisors who quake when they see such posts. Leave them unanswered and, whoosh, youre vulnerable to accusations that youve tolerated, if not created, a hostile environment for women, or for men, or for someone.

This is not what we spent a lifetime fighting for. It was to encourage debate about equality, not squelch it, in the hopes that open dialogue would lead to action and change. It was to encourage leaders such as Maria Klawe, the president of Harvey Mudd College, to educate more women to take those high-paying STEM jobs, if thats what they want or to go off and cure diseases in Africa, if thats what they want. Maybe the reason that there arent more women in those engineering jobs is because women have more important, if less lucrative, things to do. But well never know if we cant even talk about it.

To find out more about Susan Estrich and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at http://www.creators.com.

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The virtue of free speech - Times-Enterprise

Corey Stewart, who made the defense of the Robert E. Lee statue in downtown Charlottesville a central issue of his recent failed gubernatorial campaign, addressed the city's violence at 7:30 p.m.

He warned mostly about the lefts attempts to crack down on free speech and made a brief statement condemning the violence and alleged murder that took place at the "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville on Saturday.

He made no mention of the Virginia State police helicopter crash that took the lives of two veteran troopers, but thanked law-enforcement officials for their service today.

In a Facebook Live video filmed in his historic Bel Air Plantation home in Woodbridge, Stewart, who is now running for U.S. Senate, began his five-minute talk by declaring that the left has never condemned their own violence.

Stewart, chairman of the Prince William Board of Supervisors, went on to criticize U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine (D), saying he applauded" his son when he was arrested as a member of Antifa after a protest in Minneapolis in May. Stewart is seeking the Republican nomination to unseat Kaine in 2018.

Linwood Woody Kaine, 24, was among five people arrested in connection with setting off smoke bombs or fireworks during a pro-Trump rally there. The attorney general declined to file charges against the younger Kaine or the other arrestees, according to news reports.

Kaine said in a prepared statement the displays of "violenceandbigotry" seen today in Charlottesville are "sickening."

"The fact that people like David Duke cited the president to justify their views is a disturbing reminder that divisive rhetoric has sadly contributed to a climate where individuals who espouse hate feel emboldened," Kaine said. "As they seek publicity through their hateful tactics, let's pull together--regardless of party, race or religion--to reject hatred in no uncertain terms and stand together."

Stewart went onto say he feared Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) would try to make all of Virginia a safe place, apparently meaning a place safe from what he called conservative speech.

The liberals will try to label all of conservative speech as hate speech and then try to forbid it, Stewart said. All those efforts will fail, and, in fact, the real irony of that, is as they continue to crack down on conservative speech that will lead to more violence.

If free speech is not protected, people do sometimes turn to violence, he added. That is not the right way to go. We must always condemn it. But we must not allow the left to crack down on free speech in the aftermath of what is happening in Charlottesville today.

Stewart thanked the police and Virginia National Guard for their efforts and said officials must hunt down and find the criminals who perpetrated these horrible crimes.

Stewart made no mention, however, of the "Unite the Right" rally or white nationalists.

Staff Writer Hannah Dellinger contributed to this story.

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Stewart: Charlottesville will prompt liberal 'crackdown' on free speech - Fauquier Times

In 1996, the internet activist and former Grateful Dead lyricist John Perry Barlow famouslydeclaredto the governments of the world that they would have no sovereignty in cyberspace. Two decades later, it's certainly true that the internet has made the world much more interconnected. But rather than fulfilling Barlows utopian vision for cyberspace independence, national governments are finding new ways to assert their jurisdiction over the global internet. Weve already seen this jurisdiction creep with the European Unions right to be forgotten. And now its happening again.

In its JuneGoogle v. Equustekdecision, the Supreme Court of Canada upheld a British Columbia court ruling ordering Google to remove entire domains and websites from its global search index, which would block access to that information on a global scale, regardless of users locations and nationalities. In the case, B.C.-based Equustek Solutions accused distributor Datalink Technology Gateways of selling counterfeit products and requested that Google delist the website selling these goods from its search results. At issue was the geographic scope of delisting, for which the Supreme Court granted a globally enforced injunction against Google, even though Google was never a party to the underlying suit.

TheEquustekcase is not the first attack on the integrity and freedom of the internet. In May 2014, the Court of Justice of the European Union recognized EU citizens rights to request information about them be removed from search engine results when it is either inaccurate, inadequate or no longer relevant or when it is excessive in relation to the "purposes for which they were processed," and when sufficient time has elapsed.

However, in the EU case, the underlying content remained intact on the internet. French authorities pushed the matter one step further in June 2015, when the French national data-protection authoritydemandedGoogle to apply delisting to all versions of its search engine. The authoritys rationale was that removing links only from European versions of Googles websites did not sufficiently protect the right to be forgotten, since readers could still access non-EU versions.

From a legal perspective, there are inherent limitations to any countrys jurisdiction. Permitting global application of domestic laws against private entities would lead dangerously toward over-enforcement and political chaos. While countries like Canada, France and Spain largely share the values enshrined in the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment, many others do not. What if an authoritarian regime sought to delist or censor LGBT websites, or ban news articles criticizing its head of state? Such legal fragmentation could only result in a race to the bottom. In the end, multinational service providers will have no choice but to surrender. The internet could end up only as free and democratic as the worst laws of the most repressive countries.

From an ethical perspective, its not clear that the values of privacy and self-determination ought to outweigh those of transparency and free expression by default. Rather, there should be an interest-balancing process on a case-by-case basis. For instance, in the EUs first right-to-be-forgotten case, the Spanish Data Protection Authority dismissed plaintiff Mario Costeja Gonzlezs complaint against a local newspaper after concluding that public interest favored accurate disclosures in a real estate auction over the plaintiffs privacy interests.

It's also important to understand that privacy expectations and levels of openness vary among countries, cultures and even generations. Todays sensitive data may have different interpretations tomorrow. Rather than removing information, the best option to promote continuous dialogue and innovation is to sustain and add even more content to cyberspace. For example, online service providers could enable people to annotate information related to themselves, or indicate that this is a disputed result or that this has been invalidated by a court, which would keep users informed and alert. Wikipedia adopted such measures to ensure accuracy, credibility and accountability on its website.

In theEquustekdecision, Justice Rosalie Abella ruled, The problem in this case is occurring online and globally. The internet has no borders its natural habitat is global. The only way to ensure that the interlocutory injunction attained its objective was to have it apply where Google operates globally.

However, it is theborderlessfeature of the internet that has made cyberspace such a valuable forum for different nations and cultures to come together. Governments have already used soft power effectively to assert jurisdiction beyond the territorial boundaries in, for example, France'sLICRA v. Yahoocase. Despite strong arguments about a lack of jurisdiction, Yahoo eventually agreed to remove all auction listings for Nazi memorabilia globally to ensure that such listings werent available to French residents, as the French court demanded. TheEquustekcase is testing this balance once again.

Google now seeks an injunction in California District Court to keep theEquustekruling from being enforced in the United States. Various civil society and internet trade groups haveofferedtheir support, but the fight is still ongoing. This should remind us all how easy it would be for governments around the world to unravel Barlows vision of the internet as an anarchic neutral zone for free expression, openness and commerce. It is not too late to defend these values, and patch the fractures that have begun to form in the foundations of cyberspace.

Ariel Jeng is a research assistant with the R Street Institute, a nonprofit group aimed at promoting limited government.

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

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Canadian Google crackdown illustrates need to protect free speech online - The Hill (blog)

Driggs 0Updated at 3:23 pm, August 12th, 2017 By: Scott Stuntz, Teton Valley News We Matched

Courtesy Teton Valley News

DRIGGS One of the two men involved in a scuffle that disrupted an otherwise peaceful march for womens rights this January has been convicted by a jury of two misdemeanors.

Greg Geffner was convicted of misdemeanor obstructing a highway and misdemeanor disturbing the peace following a trial on July 28. He was sentenced to pay $803 in fines.

The judgment was withheld for the two charges meaning he wont serve jail time, but he will serve unsupervised probation. If Geffner fails to pay his fines during that time or is charged with new offenses he could be forced to serve the sentences for his original crimes.

RELATED: Teton Sheriffs Office investigating fight at Womens March

On Jan. 21 Geffner was in downtown Driggs during the local womens march. Hundreds of people joined the Driggs march, which was part of nationwide movement to promote civil rights, including womens rights.

While over 900 people attended, only two were involved in any sort of violence.

RELATED: Charges filed against two men after fight at Womens March

The confrontation was caught on several cell phone videos as well as by a drone flying overhead. Geffner was filmed standing in the roadway and then having a physical altercation with Scott Rehberg of Victor. Rehburg pleaded guilty to misdemeanor disturbing the peace in June. He will be sentenced in September.

Geffners defense centered on the first amendment, but the judge denied Geffners motion to have the charges thrown out because of his right to free speech.

Instead the jury only looked at whether he committed the crimes in question and found him guilty on both charges.

I think based on that were happy with the outcome and there was some accountability, said Deputy Prosecutor Lindsey Blake.

This article was originally published by the Teton Valley News. It is used here with permission.

The Teton Valley News in Driggs was founded in 1909 to cover events in eastern Idahos Teton Valley. This weekly newspaper is owned by Pioneer Newspapers and maintains a print circulation in Teton County, Idaho.

Contributed content is used on this site with permission and is owned by Teton Valley News.

Subscribe to the Teton Valley News' print or online edition by calling (208) 354-8101 or by visiting http://www.tetonvalleynews.net.

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Man convicted for disrupting Teton County women's march, free speech not at issue - East Idaho News