Monthly Archives: August 2017

BERKELEY In recent months, white nationalists and other alt-right groups haveadvanced the argument that UC Berkeley isnt living up to its distinction as the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement. By canceling events such as a February speech by conservative provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, they contend, the school is stepping on their First Amendment right to express themselves.

Carol Christ, Cals new chancellor, is well aware how that argument has gained steam in recent months. Before her tenure, former Chancellor Nicholas Dirks, who stepped down this summer, was criticized for addressing free speech issues reactively, not cooperatively.

So now, as a highly publicized, right-wing rally targets the city of Berkeley on Sunday, Christ is looking to regain control of the narrative. She has declared this school term a year of free speech in which the university will recount the origins of its free speech legacy and invite both conservative and liberal speakers to campus.

Free speech is not inexpensive, said Dan Mogulof, a spokesman for the university.

But in some ways, thats the cost to the school of reclaiming its reputation as the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement.

Free speech scholars say that if Christ succeeds in both fostering meaningful conversations and keeping violence at bay, the schools approach could serve as a model for other colleges grappling with the issue. In recent months, Pennsylvania State University, Texas A&M University and others have come under fire for declining to host right-wing activists and white nationalists, or canceling their talks.

On Wednesday, Christ emailed a letter with the subject line Free speech to the campus community and hosted her first fireside chat with student leaders on the topic.

This is the new reality, said Mogulof. We cant duck and cover. We have to be out there engaged in conversation.

Thats not how the school approached the free-speech issue as recently as last year and its certainly not how the school addressed it in the 1960s. In 1964, Dean of Students Katherine Towle prohibited students from taking positions on off-campus political issues because the university was hoping to minimize student involvement in political demonstrations off campus.

But the announcement backfired spectacularly. Faculty and students, led by a young Mario Savio, protested for months and ultimately won the right to speak openly. In response, most other colleges in the U.S. loosened regulations around political activity by students.

Today, anyone who sits on the famed Mario Savio steps at UC Berkeley for any length of time inevitably hears several languages and sees people from around the world pass by. For Cals leaders and many students, that ethnic and racial diversity has long been a point of pride.

But that diversityand the schools worldwide reputation as a progressive university also make the college a target for white nationalists and neo-Nazis.

In February, while Dirks was still in charge, Berkeley College Republicans invited Yiannopoulos to speak on campus. But tension between his supporters and opponents, not all of them affiliated with the university, erupted into violence that ultimately prompted the school to pull the plug on the event, citing security concerns. In the following months, the school raised similar concerns about having the conservative commentator Ann Coulter on campus.

The Berkeley College Republicans, joined by the Young Americas Foundation, filed a lawsuit alleging the school violated the First Amendment by imposing curfew and venue restrictions on Coulter and other conservative speakers.

Harmeet Dhillon, their lawyer, says it remains to be seen whether Christs tenure will bring an improvement in how the school handles free speech issues.

Christs comments so far mark a welcomefirst step, Dhillon said. However, they cannot address the deep-seated issues at Cal with a sort of fig leaf approach.

Shed like to see the university hire more conservative professors so that conservative students feel more comfortable sharing their views, she said. Were literally years or generations away from that at Cal, she said.

Bettina Aptheker, one of the students who launched the Free Speech Movement at Cal, is now a feminist studies professor at UC Santa Cruz. She is pleased Christ is addressing the issue head-on.

During the McCarthy era in the 1950s, while schools were cracking down on political advocacy, thousands of Americans were accused of and investigated for being communists by some on the right. In essence, Aptheker said, it was the right trying to suppress freedom of speech.

Now, she said, you have the ascendancy of the right again and a kind of hijacking of the free speech issue in a way that makes it seem like the left is trying to suppress freedom of speech which is not true.

Broadly speaking, the argument of Christ and other UC Berkeley leaders is that hate speech is best countered with more measured, thoughtful speech. That may be something Dirks believed but he didnt step forward like Christ to model the idea. Her approach appears to be resonating with professors and free speech scholars.

Youve got to protect the greatest possible range of speech, said Gary Orfield, co-director of the Civil Rights Project at UCLA. The answer to really idiotic racist speech is speech explaining why its idiotic and racist.

Former New York City police officer Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at Cal State San Bernardino, agrees.

Universities have been doing a laudable job of having a diversity of people, but what theyve not been doing a laudable job of is getting a diversity of ideas, he said. This is a test of academia and we are failing.

But not everyone is so sanguine. Zaynab Abdulqadir-Morris, a Cal senior and president of the Associated Students of the University of California, said she wants more students to be comfortable interacting with people who have different views. But shes also concerned about the real threat of violence when rallies and protests happen on or near campus.

And she thinks theres a line between fostering debate and opening the campus to provocateurs like Yiannopoulos.When speech is grounded in hate for another person, she said, its not free speech any more.

In her letter this week, Christ pushed back at that notion, writing: Some constitutionally protected speech attacks the very identity of particular groups of individuals in ways that are deeply hurtful. However, the right response is not the hecklers veto, or what some call platform denial. Call toxic speech out for what it is, dont shout it down, for in shouting it down, you collude in the narrative that universities are not open to all speech.

As a public university, Berkeley officials acknowledge they must balance protecting free speech with preventing the violence that has plagued rallies on campus in the past, or worse, deadly confrontation, as happened in Charlottesville, Virginia, where a young woman was killed earlier this month.

Ahead of Sundays rally which is on city, not university, property Cal has been in close contact with city officials, Mogulof said. The school is providing information on how to protest safely to students who want to join a counterprotest and also supportive services to students who are anxious about the rally. The school has learned from past protests that it needs to have more police in place for free speech events than it has in the past,Mogulof said.

Aptheker and Orfield point tothe peace that was maintained in Boston recently when thousands of counterprotesters overwhelmed a much smaller free speech rally that some white supremacists had promised to attend.

If its done well, Orfield said, it will create an example for the rest of the country.

Continue reading here:
UC Berkeley tries to reclaim its free speech legacy - The Mercury News

Recent events in the United States have only reaffirmed the wisdom of this liberal compromise. If there was ever a group whose speech appears to me to be obviously evil and dangerous, it is the white supremacists who marched in Charlottesville earlier this month. But the president of the United States is sympathetic to white supremacists; to him, it is the (mythical) alt-left that presents the real threat. If he had the power to suppress freedom of speech, he would use it to silence the people I agree with. It is better for me for no one to possess that power than to entrust it to someone who might regard me as an enemy.

Campus leftists who believe they are serving the cause of goodness and truth by silencing right-wing (or even not-so-right-wing) speakers are living in a fools paradise, because they temporarily inhabit an environment where they are in the majority. When they graduate into Trumps America, they will find that many people, including people in power, think they are the ones who are wrong and dangerous. Then the principle of free speech will become their shield, as it has long shielded dissidents and radicals in America. Without it, politics becomes a war of all against all, and as we have learned since last November, there is no guarantee that the right side will win.

Adam Kirsch is a poet and a critic. His most recent book is The Global Novel: Writing the World in the 21st Century.

By Francine Prose

What could free speech possibly mean when a mob is bullying and beating people with whom they dont agree?

Lately, Ive been thinking about The Emperors New Clothes. What a deeply felt and personal story it must have been for Hans Christian Andersen, whose work is full of plucky honest children. Awkward and painfully unable to pick up on basic social cues, he chose, as his fairy-tale hero, the outspoken innocent who delivers an unwelcome truth.

The emperor is naked! Was Andersen also alluding to one role of the writer: to say the thing that everyone knows but fears to say? Even the emperor realizes that the boy is right. No one punishes or contradicts the young truth-teller. But naked or not, no one is owning up. The procession must go on, so the emperor held himself stiffer than ever, and the chamberlain held up the invisible train.

Had the story been set here, we might say that the little boys right to call attention to the emperors nudity was protected by the First Amendment. But doesnt context matter? Wasnt the boy discouraged by his parents from embarrassing their leader? Shouldnt he have waited for a private moment, or asked the chamberlain to explain the emperors intention?

Not according to the United States Supreme Court. On the basis of past decisions, we can imagine that the justices would have decided in favor of the boy. Not only would he be allowed to say what hed observed, but he could have hurled insults racial, religious, sexual, political at the emperor, and still he would have been within his constitutional rights. In order for the boy to exceed the limits of protected free speech, he would have had to exhort the crowd to attack their naked ruler.

Traditionally, the courts have defended the freedom to express the thought that we hate; the law doesnt ban words that wound egos or hurt feelings. Its concerned not with psychological harm but with physical action, injury and risk with real and present danger.

Though when violence does occur, as it did in Charlottesville, we want to be very clear about what constitutes exhortation and incitement. Its regrettable that the phrase free speech should have been co-opted by white supremacists, as if the only kind of free speech worth rallying around is hate speech. And what could free speech possibly mean when a mob is bullying and beating people with whom they dont agree?

Obviously, context is important. Just because youre legally permitted to say what you want doesnt mean its socially or morally acceptable to subject other humans to racist rants. Yet almost daily one can see, on social media, someone doing just that, losing it on a plane or at the checkout counter. I think the ranters are reprehensible, but I dont want to see them locked up unless theyre trying to goad their fellow passengers or shoppers to mob violence.

Democracy depends on the civil, healthy and open exchange of ideas, on the chance to be persuaded by opposing opinions, to reasonably consider variant arguments and explanations. Freedom of speech, free expression, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press those guarantees have helped keep us from sliding into dictatorship, a fate that has befallen countries with formerly democratic governments and levels of education and prosperity not unlike our own.

We need to be clear about what those protections are, and about why we need them a need that seems to grow more intense each time Donald Trump attacks the press; when the former chief of staff Reince Priebus floated a plan to change libel laws (and by extension the First Amendment) in some vague but ominous way; and each time someone brings an automatic weapon to a free and open political demonstration.

Our democracy may have its flaws, but the alternative the repression that exists right now in so many countries is worse. That is a different fairy tale, less like the work of Andersen than like some modern-day Brothers Grimm. That is the story that ends with the little boy being arrested, jailed and killed for the crime of daring to say out loud what the emperor isnt wearing.

Francine Prose is the author of more than 20 works of fiction and nonfiction, among them the novel Blue Angel, a National Book Award nominee, and the guide Reading Like a Writer, a New York Times best seller. Her most recent novel is Mister Monkey. Currently a distinguished visiting writer at Bard College, she is the recipient of numerous grants and awards; a contributing editor at Harpers, Saveur and Bomb; a former president of the PEN American Center; and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

See the rest here:
Is Free Speech an Absolute Right, or Does Context Matter? - New York Times

White nationalist Richard Spencer's free speech fight against Google, Facebook and other tech companies has some unlikely support from the left. Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images hide caption

White nationalist Richard Spencer's free speech fight against Google, Facebook and other tech companies has some unlikely support from the left.

Following the violence in Charlottesville, Va., Silicon Valley tech firms removed far-right groups from search results, cut off their websites and choked their ability to raise money online.

The moves have leaders on the far-right calling for the government to step in and regulate these companies. They have some strange bedfellows in this many liberals also are calling for more regulation of the same companies.

On the far-right is Richard Spencer. He is a white supremacist.

"I would ultimately support a homeland for white people," Spencer says. "I think that ethnically or racially defined political orders are legitimate."

After Donald Trump was elected president, Spencer got some press about a speech during which he shouted: "Hail Trump! Hail our people! Hail Victory!" and members of the audience gave him a Nazi salute.

But, it is the First Amendment that now inspires Spencer, who was a speaker at the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville.

In the wake of the violence that occurred there, the Daily Stormer an online neo-Nazi publication was blocked by a series of major tech companies. Its domain name was taken away by GoDaddy. Google stopped linking to it. Facebook took down links to any article it published. And it can't use PayPal anymore.

"Getting kicked off Facebook or YouTube or PayPal or whatever, this is effectively losing the ability to speak," Spencer says. "It is actually a more powerful form of censorship" than it would be if a government were to censor.

Companies like Google and Facebook are not covered by the First Amendment, which applies only to the federal government. But Spencer feels these companies are so large that the government needs to step in just as it did with broadcasting. Spencer says that otherwise, there won't be freedom of speech.

"These are the free speech platforms in the 21st century," he says. "So if we're going to regulate all of these 20th century ways of expressing ourselves, then why are we so loath to regulate the 21st century ones, which are much more relevant and much more vital?"

Spencer has some unlikely allies on this.

Robert McChesney, a communications professor at the University of Illinois, describes himself as a Democratic socialist and has written books about the threat of fascism.

"I think Richard Spencer and I wouldn't agree on hardly anything," he says. "But on the issues of whether these companies should be able to control what I can and can't hear, I think in principle we have to be together on that. All Americans should, across the political spectrum."

Right now, Google has more than 80 percent of the online search market, according to Net Market Share. Google and Facebook combined have 77 percent of the online ad market, and 79 percent of Americans on the Internet have a Facebook account, according to Pew Research.

"The research shows that if Facebook or Google changes the algorithm just slightly and puts a different type of story in there, it affects the way people think about the world," McChesney says. "Their internal research demonstrates this."

Because these are private companies, they don't have to reveal their algorithms or what changes they make to them.

Currently, many Americans may agree with the choice to censor the Richard Spencers of the world, but McChesney says it might not always affect groups people don't like.

"What's to stop them from turning around and saying, 'Well, we don't like these people who are advocating gay rights. We don't like these people who are advocating workers' rights'?" he says.

That is the question leading both white nationalist Spencer and left-leaning professor McChesney to call for the government to step in.

Continue reading here:
Unlikely Allies Join Fight To Protect Free Speech On The Internet - NPR

73% Say Freedom of Speech Worth Dying For

Sign up for free daily updates

Wednesday, August 23, 2017

Americans agree freedom of speech is under assault but strongly insist that they are prepared to defend that freedom even at the cost of their lives if necessary.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that an overwhelming 85% of American Adults think giving people the right to free speech is more important than making sure no one is offended by what others say. Just eight percent (8%) think its more important to make sure no one gets offended. (To see survey question wording,click here.)

This shows little change from past surveying. Eighty-three percent (83%) think it is more important for the United States to guarantee freedom of speech than it is to make sure nothing is done to offend other nations and cultures.

Seventy-three percent (73%) agree with the famous line by the 18th century French author Voltaire: I disapprove of what you say but will defend to the death your right to say it. Only 10% disagree with that statement, but 17% are undecided.

Among Americans who agree with Voltaire, 93% rate freedom of speech as more important than making sure no one is offended. That compares to just 69% of those who disagree with the French author's maxim.

(Want afree daily e-mail update? If it's in the news, it's in our polls). Rasmussen Reports updates are also available on Facebook.

The national survey of 1,000 American Adults was conducted on August 17 & 20, 2017 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted byPulse Opinion Research, LLC. Seemethodology.

Just 28% of Americans believe they have true freedom of speech today, and most think the country is too politically correct.

There is rare partisan agreement on freedom of speech. Most Americans regardless of political affiliation agree that they would defend someones right to say something even if they dont agree with it, although Democrats are slightly less sure than Republicans and those not affiliated with either major party. The majority across the political spectrum also agree that free speech is more important than making sure no ones offended.

Generally speaking, most adults across the demographic board agree. Blacks (65%) are just slightly less likely than whites (75%) and other minorities (73%) to say theyd defend to the death someones right to free speech if they dont agree with them.

Men are more supportive of the statement that women are.

Voters rate freedom of speech asevenmore important than other basic constitutional rights such as religious freedom, freedom of the press and the right to bear arms.

After conservative pundit Ann Coulter was forced tocancel a planned speech at University of California, Berkeley, in the late spring following protests and threats of violence by some students.44% of Americans said there is less freedom of speech on U.S. college campuses today than there has been in the past. Nearly half (47%) also believe most college administrators and professors are more interested in getting students to agree with certain politically correct points of view rather than in a free exchange of ideas.

In May,just 19% of voters felt that the United States should erase symbols of its past history that are out of line with current sentiments.

Despite calls by some politicians and the media for erasing those connected to slavery from U.S. history, voters strongly believe its better to learn from the past than erase it.

Just 20% of Americans say it is better for owners of social media like Facebook and Twitter to regulate what is posted to make sure some people are not offended.

Additional informationfrom this survey and afull demographic breakdownare available toPlatinum Membersonly.

Please sign up for the Rasmussen Reportsdaily e-mail update(it's free) or follow us onFacebook. Let us keep you up to date with the latest public opinion news.

The national survey of 1,000 American Adults was conducted on August 17 & 20, 2017 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted byPulse Opinion Research, LLC. Seemethodology.

Rasmussen Reports is a media company specializing in the collection, publication and distribution of public opinion information.

We conduct public opinion polls on a variety of topics to inform our audience on events in the news and other topics of interest. To ensure editorial control and independence, we pay for the polls ourselves and generate revenue through the sale of subscriptions, sponsorships, and advertising. Nightly polling on politics, business and lifestyle topics provides the content to update the Rasmussen Reports web site many times each day. If it's in the news, it's in our polls. Additionally, the data drives a daily update newsletter and various media outlets across the country.

Some information, including the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll and commentaries are available for free to the general public. Subscriptions are available for $4.95 a month or 34.95 a year that provide subscribers with exclusive access to more than 20 stories per week on upcoming elections, consumer confidence, and issues that affect us all. For those who are really into the numbers, Platinum Members can review demographic crosstabs and a full history of our data.

To learn more about our methodology, click here.

Read the original here:
73% Say Freedom of Speech Worth Dying For - Rasmussen Reports

NOEL CELIS/AFP/GettyImages

by Tom Ciccotta24 Aug 20170

A new poll released by Rasmussen Reports on Wednesday revealed that over 85 percent of American adults believe that the right to free speech is more important than making sure no one is offended by what others say. A mere eight percent said they believe that guarding against personal offense is more important thanprotecting free speech.

73 percent also agreed with the famous line often attributed to Voltaire:I disapprove of what you say but will defend to the death your right to say it. Another 10 percent disagreed with that statement, and 17 percent said they are undecided.

The poll reveals that there is bipartisan agreement with regards to freedom of speech. Despite overwhelming support for speech rights, Democrats are slightly less supportive as a group of protecting speech for those they disagree with than are Republicans.

Additionally, 47 percent of respondents said they believe thatmost college administrators and professors are more interested in getting students to toe a specific political line rather than to participate in a free exchange of ideas.

Big Government, Social Justice, Tech, first amendment, freedom of speech

P.S. DO YOU WANT MORE ARTICLES LIKE THIS ONE DELIVERED RIGHT TO YOUR INBOX?SIGN UP FOR THE DAILY BREITBART NEWSLETTER.

Read more:
Poll: 85 Percent Say Freedom of Speech More Important Than Not ... - Breitbart News