Daily Archives: January 25, 2020

In 2017, Kansas State earned a green light rating on free speech from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. It is still the only university in Kansas to receive this rating.

FIRE is a non-partisan nonprofit that defends the free speech of college students and faculty members, said Laura Beltz, senior program officer for policy reform at FIRE.

The organization works to defend constitutionally protected speech by the standards of the Supreme Court in ways such as policy reform, direct defense work and litigation.

To get the green light rating, it means that all of the policies that are on the books that regulate expression are not restricting speech that is constitutionally protected, Beltz said. The red light policies are ones that clearly and substantially restrict free speech. The yellow light policies are more ambiguous or narrow restrictions on free speech.

Michelle Geering, public information officer for the K-State Division of Communications and Marketing, said via email that K-States statement on free speech and expression is based on the University of Chicagos statement, which many other universities adopted.

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The purpose of the statement is to explain free speech and expression and highlight the importance in higher education, Geering said.

The ideas of different members of the University community will often and naturally conflict, and some individuals ideas will even conflict with the Universitys values and principles. But it is not the proper role of the University to attempt to shield individuals from ideas and opinions they find unwelcome, disagreeable or even deeply offensive, the K-State statement reads.

It also makes clear that there are restrictions.

The freedom to debate and discuss the merits of competing ideas does not mean that individuals may say whatever they wish, wherever they wish, according to the statement. The University may restrict expression that violates the law, that falsely defames a specific individual, that constitutes a genuine threat or unlawful discrimination or that unjustifiably invades substantial privacy or confidentiality interests. In addition, the University may reasonably regulate the time, place and manner of expression to ensure that it does not disrupt the ordinary activities of the University or endanger safety.

Geering said K-State interprets the First Amendment based on federal courts.

First Amendment rights are established in the U.S. Constitution and interpreted through long-standing case law by federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, she said.

A presentation entitled What Can (and Cant) Universities Do about Hate Speech on Campus? made in November 2017 by the Office of General Counsel explains part of the reasoning behind the universitys ideas on free speech.

There is an understandable instinct to protect people from words that hurt, insult or offend them, the presentation states. So sometimes the first impulse is to suppress or censor those messages. But history has taught us that censorship is used mostly (almost always) to restrict and harm the most vulnerable, the most powerless and the most marginalized in our society.

Beltz said the policies at K-State right now do not restrict protected speech and follow the legal standards.

Were hoping that other schools in the state will follow suit and revise their policies so they can also get this green light rating, she said. Its great that K-State has revised all their policies and went above and beyond and adopted that statement on free speech.

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K-State only Kansas university with 'green light' rating from free speech organization FIRE - K-State Collegian

The prosecution of Glenn Greenwald and the global war on free speech 23 January 2020

The criminal conspiracy charges levelled by the Brazilian government against Intercept Brasil publisher and renowned investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald is the latest in a series of state attacks internationally on the hard-won historical right to freedom of speech. The arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has opened the floodgates for a global war on independent and critical journalism and the imposition of sweeping censorship.

The allegations made in Brazil against Greenwald are essentially identical to the first charge issued in April 2019 by the US Department of Justice to file for the extradition of Assange from the United Kingdom to stand trial in the United States. Both men have been accused of assisting whistleblowers to access information that, once published, exposed criminality and corruption at the highest levels of the state apparatus.

In Greenwalds case, a prosecution is being prepared on the pretext that he conspired with people to hack messaging accounts and obtain information that proved top officials had used a corruption investigation to undermine the political opponents of fascistic demagogue Jair Bolsonaro. In the lead-up to the 2018 presidential election, which was won by Bolsanaro, former President Luiz Incio Lula da Silva was convicted of corruption and imprisoned and his Workers Party mired in scandal.

In the case of Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder has been charged with conspiring with courageous American whistleblower Chelsea Manning in 2009-2010 to access troves of classified documents that exposed US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan and the sordid intrigues carried out around the world to prop up pro-US regimes and assert American strategic and corporate interests. A further 17 counts of espionage were then added to the charge list, threatening him with a life sentence of 175 years if he is extradited and condemned by a show trial in the US.

Greenwald has not yet been arrested, but it is almost certain that US intelligence agencies are involved in the legal moves to prosecute him. He would have been on their hit list of priority media targets since he played a key role in 2013 in publishing the leaks made by National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden. The Snowden leaks exposed the staggering degree to which the NSA spies on the communications of virtually every American citizen and much of the worlds population.

Julian Assange sought to protect himself from the revenge of the US state by gaining political asylum in 2012 in the tiny Ecuadorian embassy in London, until he was evicted and arrested last April. Just prior to Assanges eviction, Chelsea Manning was sent back to prison for refusing to appear before a grand jury and retract her categorical testimony during her trial that she acted alonewithout any assistance from Assange and WikiLeaksto access the information she leaked.

The imprisonment of Manning and arrest of Assange were quickly followed by the Macron government initiating moves to prosecute eight journalists over the exposure of Frances complicity in Saudi Arabias illegal war in Yemen. In June 2019, unprecedented police raids on journalists homes and media offices took place in Australia. Three journalists are threatened with prosecution over the publication of leaks exposing war crimes committed by Australian troops in Afghanistan and plans to legalise mass surveillance.

Glenn Greenwald had not visited the US since 2013 due to his legitimate concern that he would be arrested. With Bolsanaro now in power, the hands of the CIA, NSA and FBI can well and truly reach into Brazil, where Greenwald has residency rights through his partner.

The WSWS warned in 2010 that if Julian Assange was not defendedafter his detention in Britain over blatantly fabricated allegations that he had committed sexual offences in Swedenit would open the way for a full-scale assault to terrorise and silence genuine journalism. Then Vice-President Joe Biden in Barack Obamas Democratic Party administration had labelled Assange a high-tech terrorist. The Labor government in Australia, where Assange holds citizenship, had denounced WikiLeaks publications as illegal activity.

Within a matter of months, however, the vast majority of the ex-left and ex-liberal political and media fraternity lined up with the US state and its allies against Assange. Publications such as the New York Times and the Guardian which had worked with WikiLeaks to publish the Manning leaks because they were going to be published anywaydevoted their resources to slandering Assange as a suspected rapist and self-serving narcissist, undeserving of any popular sympathy and support. The unions and fake-left organisations internationally actively opposed any campaign in his defence, refusing to discuss his case and boycotting all actions taken to demand his freedom.

The political reasons this turn against WikiLeaks took place must never be forgotten. It occurred in the wake of massive social upheavals, which were in part triggered by information contained in the Manning leaks, which brought down US-backed regimes. Foreign Policy magazine nervously asked in January 2011 if Tunisia was the first WikiLeaks Revolution. Just weeks later, the seemingly all-powerful dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak was overthrown by a mass movement of the Egyptian working class.

The establishment left parties, unions and media are tied by a thousand threads to the financial and corporate oligarchy and benefit from the ruthless exploitation of the vast majority of the worlds population. The way in which the truth had motivated ordinary people to rise up in open rebellion against entrenched elites was viewed in these circles with horror. A mass upheaval demanding an end to social inequality and political injustice in the United States, for example, would threaten the wealth and power of the capitalist class and privileged upper-middle class, of which they are part and which they serve.

The instinctive response of the establishment organisations and media was to join with the state apparatus in seeking to prevent or censor future exposures. As New York Times editor Bill Keller bluntly wrote in November 2010 in response to WikiLeaks: When we find ourselves in possession of government secrets, we think long and hard about whether to disclose them Freedom of the press includes freedom not to publish, and that is a freedom we exercise with some regularity. [Emphasis added].

The hatred of the ex-liberal publications for Assange reached visceral levels in 2016 when WikiLeaks published leaked emails that shed further light on the militarist, big business and authoritarian agenda of Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Partytheir preference in the US presidential election. The Times and the Guardian spearheaded the campaign to promote the lie that Assange had conspired with Russian intelligence to hack the emails, and to smear him as a tool of Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump.

In July 2019, a US court dismissed the allegations that WikiLeaks had worked with Russian agencies as entirely divorced from the facts and defended WikiLeaks' right to publish the leaks as plainly of the type entitled to the strongest protection that the First Amendment offers.

The Times and Guardian, however, have never retracted their false accusations and slanders. To this day, the Times and the Democratic Party machine publicly advocate that Assange be criminally prosecuted over their incessant claims that Russian interference cost Clinton the 2016 election. In April 2019, the Times published comments that described the first conspiracy charge against Assange as an indisputable crime.

Given its record, the New York Times plumbed the depths of hypocrisy in its editorial on January 22 on the charging of Glenn Greenwald. It asserted that Greenwalds publication of leaks in Brazil did what a free press is supposed to do: they revealed a painful truth about those in power. The editorial concluded: Attacking the bearers of that message is a serious disservice and a dangerous threat to the rule of law.

The reality is that the Times, along with numerous ex-left and ex-liberal organisations and publications, has proven through its complicity in the persecution of Assange and WikiLeaks that its class allegiances lie with the corporate oligarchy and the capitalist state.

A genuine defence of persecuted journalists and whistleblowers will be taken forward only by the working class, whose right to know the truth they have courageously served.

Julian Assange is imprisoned in Britain and his extradition trial begins on February 24 in London. Chelsea Manning is in a cell in the United States, Edward Snowden is in forced exile in Russia and now Glenn Greenwald is under threat in Brazil. All those who defend the fundamental democratic rights at stake in their cases have the responsibility to fight for the greatest possible independent mobilisation of workers and young people to demand their immediate and unconditional freedom.

James Cogan

2019 has been a year of mass social upheaval. We need you to help the WSWS and ICFI make 2020 the year of international socialist revival. We must expand our work and our influence in the international working class. If you agree, donate today. Thank you.

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The prosecution of Glenn Greenwald and the global war on free speech - World Socialist Web Site

In a major ruling, the U.N. International Court of Justice at The Hague has ordered Burma to take all measures within its power to protect Rohingya Muslims from genocide.

The court issued the ruling Thursday, calling the 600,000 Rohingya remaining in Burma, also known as Myanmar, extremely vulnerable to military violence.

The court ordered Burma to report regularly to the tribunal about its progress.

The ruling is a sharp rebuke of Burmas de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who last month asked the court to drop the genocide case against Burma.

Suu Kyi is a Nobel Peace Prize winner who spent over a decade fighting against the Burmese military that she is now defending.

For more on the ICJ ruling, Democracy Now! speaks with Reed Brody, counsel and spokesperson for Human Rights Watch. This is the most important court in the world intervening in one of the worst mass atrocity situations of our time while the atrocities are still happening, says Brody. It doesnt really get more significant than that.

Democracy Now! produces a daily, global, independent news hour hosted by award-winning journalists Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzlez.

Our reporting includes breaking daily news headlines and in-depth interviews with people on the front lines of the worlds most pressing issues.

On DN!, youll hear a diversity of voices speaking for themselves, providing a unique and sometimes provocative perspective on global events.

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

#FreeSpeechTV is one of the last standing national, independent news networks committed to advancing progressive social change.

As the alternative to television networks owned by billionaires, governments, and corporations, our network amplifies underrepresented voices and those working on the front lines of social, economic and environmental justice.

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

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International Court of Justice Orders Burmese Authorities to Protect Rohingya Muslims from Genocide - Free Speech TV

Sonali Kolhatkar speaks with Julie Millican, Vice President of Media Matters for America.

As the Senate impeachment trial against President Donald Trump continues this week there has been wall-to-wall media coverage of the historical event given that it is only the third time in the nations entire history that US Senators are being asked to consider removing a President from office. But one media outlet stands out in its coverage and that is, of course, the Presidents favorite: Fox News.

Fox News, which has a symbiotic relationship with the current White House, has not only mocked the case for impeachment as harshly as possible and claimed the Presidents innocence, but has also seen its own talking points reflected back by the President legal defense team.

Rising Up with Sonali is a radio and television show that brings progressive news coverage rooted in gender and racial justice to a wide audience.

Rising Up With Sonali was built on the foundation of Sonali Kolhatkar's earlier show, Uprising, which became the longest-running drive-time radio show on KPFK in Los Angeles hosted by a woman. RUS airs on Free Speech TV every weekday.

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

#FreeSpeechTV is one of the last standing national, independent news networks committed to advancing progressive social change.

As the alternative to television networks owned by billionaires, governments, and corporations, our network amplifies underrepresented voices and those working on the front lines of social, economic and environmental justice.

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

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How Fox News Influences and Covers the Impeachment Trial - Free Speech TV

Social media giant Facebook has warned against curtailing freedom of expression as the EU considers measures to clamp down on disinformation campaigns across online platforms.

In the online world, the scope of what we deem to be acceptable speech has narrowed over recent years, leading to potential erosions in freedom of expression, said Nick Clegg, Facebooks Facebooks VP for Global Affairs, at Romes LUISS Guido Carli University on Tuesday (21 January).

Even though other social media companies, such as Twitter, have committed to ban political advertising online, Facebook has repeatedly resisted pressure to take action against political advertising across its platforms.

In the end you need to be careful once you have curtailed free speech because once you have curtailed it you cant turn it back, he said, adding that Facebooks position is to err on the side of free expression where that fine line has to be crossed.

Despite Facebooks commitment to ensuring that free speech is allowed to continue across its platforms, Clegg renewed previous calls for regulation across four areas of its operation: harmful content, election integrity, privacy and data portability.

EU fight against disinformation

Meanwhile in Brussels, the European Commission revealed that the EUs Democracy Action Plan, set to be released later this year, will establish measures in the fight against disinformation while also attempting to ensure free and fair elections, as well as addressing media sustainability.

A project team on media pluralism and media freedom as part of the Commissioners Group on European Democracy has been established to work on issues related to sustainability in the industry, Vra Jourov, the Commissions Vice-President for Values and Transparency, said yesterday. Members of the group include Jourov and Executive Vice-President Vestager, as well as commissioners Breton, Gabriel, Reynders, and Vrhelyi. The first meeting of the collective has been planned for early February.

Throughout last year, and particularly in the run up to the May 2019 elections, the European Commission had attempted to do its part to quell the spread of fake news with the introduction of a code of practice against disinformation.

Thecode was a voluntary framework aiming to stamp out the spread of fake news online. Signatories to the set of measures included Facebook, Google and Twitter.

In October, as part of the release of the first annual self-assessments reports of the code, the European Commission highlighted substantial concerns regarding access to data for independent scrutiny of tech platforms efforts against disinformation.

In a statement, the Commission said tech platforms have not been permitting sufficient access to their data to meet the needs of independent scrutiny and there is an urgent need for platforms including Facebook, Twitter and Google to establish better relationships with researchers and fact-checkers looking to probe the work platforms conduct in order to stifle disinformation.

More broadly, at the start of this year, Facebook announced plans to stamp out political manipulation online ahead of the November 2020 US Presidential election, allowing users to turn-off certain ad-targeting tools.

The decision comes after serious concerns related to Russian interference in the 2016 election and the misuse of user data as part of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

[Edited by Frdric Simon]

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Facebook 'on the side of free expression' as EU steps up disinformation fight - EURACTIV

Principles are pretty easy to have. It doesn't take much effort to say that you believe in things like free expression, multiculturalism, religious tolerance, a limited government, social justice or fiscal austerity.

Principles are pretty easy to have. It doesnt take much effort to say that you believe in things like free expression, multiculturalism, religious tolerance, a limited government, social justice or fiscal austerity.

The problem, though, is that living out those principles is made quite difficult by our flawed, tribal, primate minds.

An evolutionary holdover of 200,000 years of human development we yearn for small, close-knit groups of us, that are distinct and better to the barbarians that are them.

This is why cliques form in high school. This is why many people join Greek organizations in college. Its why we join message boards for our favorite sports teams, and participate in social media. And yes, this is why people join political parties.

Man is a social creature, but he does not have a universal love of all his brothers. He craves a tribe.

So, when a persons supposed principles come into conflict with their tribal allegiances, the caveman DNA emerges and demands loyalty to the tribe, above that of the principle.

And so, as we have seen lately, supposed advocates of free speech are quite happy to attempt to shut up people they dont like. People that arent in their tribe.

For much of American history, there were brave groups of people that understood how important it was to place principle over tribe. There were those who were willing to set aside those tribal loyalties, in favor of the larger ideal.

The American Civil Liberties Union, for instance, rather famously defended the free speech rights of members of the Ku Klux Klan in the landmark Supreme Court case of Brandenburg v. Ohio.

The American Founders understood this. He that would make his own liberty secure, Thomas Paine once wrote, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.

Last week, here in Maine, we saw just how far we have fallen from Paines ideal, and the ACLUs example.

Michelle Malkin was invited to Maine to speak by the local chapter of the College Republicans at the University of Maine. She is a controversial speaker herself and has drawn fire from the left and the right for refusing to disavow America First nationalist Nick Fuentes for some of his more disgusting opinions. This was the reason cited for their faculty adviser, Amy Fried, withdrawing from the group, which decertified them with the university.

Then a maelstrom happened, whereby the group was forced to move the event not once, not twice, but three times, before finally settling at their fourth venue. The university says they did not pressure the venues to close the event, and after speaking with some of the venues in question myself, I actually believe that.

It was made clear to the venues that holding the event would be detrimental to their operations, and so they decided to cancel the events.

Look, Malkin has never really been my cup of tea, and I find Fuentes to be troubling and dangerous. But if you really have that much of a problem with either, the solution to speech you find so reprehensible should never be to shut it down. That only inspires resentment, and makes people more curious about what could be so scary about a speech, and aids in the message being spread.

The solution to speech is more speech. Have a protest, but do not threaten businesses for allowing people to speak. Make a speech of your own. Use social media and make a better case for why they are wrong.

In the end, any attempt to shut someone up merely makes their voice that much bigger, and yours smaller. So ditch the tribe, and fight for a principle we should all believe in for once, no matter how uncomfortable that makes us.

Matthew Gagnon of Yarmouth is the chief executive officer of the Maine Heritage Policy Center, a free market policy think tank based in Portland. A Hampden native, he previously served as a senior strategist for the Republican Governors Association in Washington, D.C.

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The answer to speech we don't like is more speech - observer-me.com

President Donald Trump holds up an executive order on antisemitism in the East Room of the White House December 11, 2019. (Tom Brenner/Reuters)Requiring the government to consider someones political views to determine whether their conduct is punishable leads to no good.

These are challenging times to be Jewish in America.

I attend synagogue, and my children attend Jewish day school, under the watchful eye of armed guards. When I explained to my young daughter why my husband was out the other night he attended a simulated security drill at our synagogue, where he serves on the board she asked whether I thought bad people might come to our synagogue and whether I would find her and protect her if they did. Needless to say, my heart broke into a million pieces.

Whats particularly distressing about the current moment is that the antisemitism feels like it comes from every direction. White supremacists and the progressive Left, for example, have practically nothing in common, yet members of both groups can be found trading in antisemitic tropes and stereotypes. Its a bit too much like that line from Tom Lehrers National Brotherhood Week, where he sings,

Oh the Protestants hate the Catholics,and the Catholics hate the Protestants,and the Hindus hate the Muslims,and everybody hates the Jews.

And yet, antisemitism often goes unacknowledged, particularly at Americas colleges and universities.Thats why, in December, many people cheered the presidents new executive order on antisemitism for addressing a problem that too many have turned a blind eye to: the rise of antisemitism on college campuses.

Last spring, for example, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill hosted a conference entitled Conflict Over Gaza: People, Politics, and Possibilities. The conference featured Tamer Nafar, a Palestinian rapper, performing what he proudly called an anti-Semitic song. Undercover video taken by filmmaker Ami Horowitz showed Tamer asking the audience to join in, saying, I cannot be antisemitic alone followed by audience members singing gleefully along as Tamer sang, Im in love with a Jew ... When confronted with the recording, UNC defensively stated that it misconstrued the breadth of discourse that took place at the conference. It is difficult to imagine such indifference from a university if similar rhetoric had been directed at almost any other group.

As both an advocate of free speech on campus and an observant, pro-Israel Jew, these problems have been on my mind a great deal. Unfortunately, the relief at finally having the reality on campus acknowledged has, for many people, obscured problems with the executive order that threaten everyones freedom of speech in the long run.

First, the good news: The order promises robust enforcement of campus anti-discrimination laws to prevent antisemitic harassment. The longstanding policy of the Department of Education is that discrimination against Jews is covered by Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, specifically its prohibition of discrimination based on national origin, and the portion of the executive order locking in this policy signaled the administrations commitment to robustly enforcing it.

But unfortunately, the executive order did not end there. Instead, it directed federal agencies, in considering whether conduct was antisemitic, to consider a very specific definition of antisemitism and very specific examples of it. Those examples include protected political speech, such as drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis and denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.

Many Jews may find these views noxious. And yes, some of the people who hold these views may, in fact, be antisemitic. But requiring the government to even consider someones political views to determine whether or not their conduct is punishable is a recipe for disaster and will ultimately only hurt the people it was intended to help. Do we really want the federal government defining all of the worlds -isms? What happens when President Joe Biden issues an executive order on Islamophobia directing the government to consider things like denying the Palestinian people their right to self-determination or drawing comparisons between Hamas and the Nazis as evidence of a prohibited anti-Muslim or anti-Arab motive? Or when opposition to affirmative action, or even a vote for Donald Trump, are legally considered evidence of racism?

When we open the door to drawing distinctions among speakers based on their political views, that door will not easily be closed again and all of our rights are at risk.

We are already seeing evidence that people are seeking to use the executive order to justify censorship of protected speech. For example, several Jewish organizations are demanding that the University of Michigan cancel an upcoming Youth for Palestine conference being hosted on its campus, and are citing the new executive order in support of their argument that the conference could lead to harassment of Jewish students. Now of course, if conference participants do harass Jewish students, that could indeed be grounds for a Title VI complaint. But the idea that the university should impose a prior restraint by canceling the conference because of the views of its organizers and attendees is wholly inconsistent with the most basic principles of free speech and association.

The fear that I and other Jewish people feel right now is real. But that fear cannot justify infringing on our most fundamental liberties. Instead, we should focus our energies on ways to fight antisemitism, on campus and beyond, without compromising freedom of speech. For example, we can support legislative efforts to forbid, at institutions of higher education, discriminatory harassment based on religion. We should also work diligently to expose campus antisemitism to public scrutiny, as Ami Horowitz did when he took and publicized video of the viciously antisemitic rhetoric at the UNC conference.

As Supreme Court justice and committed Zionist Louis Brandeis famously said, sunlight is the best disinfectant.

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An Executive Order against Antisemitism Is Being Used to Justify Censorship - National Review

In 2015, PEN America, an organization I belong to and admire, gave its first Freedom of Expression Courage Award to Charlie Hebdo, the satirical French weekly. Four months earlier, two jihadists had slaughtered most of the papers staff at its weekly meeting in Paris. The award caused a lot of controversy among American writers. More than 200 PEN members denounced it, including some of the countrys most illustrious writers, and half a dozen table hosts refused to attend the awards ceremony. Charlie Hebdos satire, often juvenile, also took aim at intolerance in the Catholic Church and Orthodox Judaism, but the PEN writers found its crude caricatures of angry imams and the Prophet Muhammad beyond the pale. Theocratic Islam should be off-limits to satirists, the PEN writers argued, because French Muslims belonged to a marginalized, embattled, and victimized group. So do French Jews; so, at that moment, did French satirists. In fact, it took some nerve to argue that the balance of power between the heavily armed jihadists and the defenseless cartoonists was with the latter. These 200 writers wouldnt honor other writers who had paid the ultimate price for expression. They were members of an organization dedicated to free speech, but they wouldnt defend it in the face of murder. As Salman Rushdie said, I hope nobody ever comes after them. To its great credit, PEN held its ground.

Two years later, PEN gave the same Freedom of Expression Courage Award to the Womens March. This time there was no controversy, because PEN members overwhelmingly supported the cause. The next year the award went to three student gun-control activists, and the year after to Anita Hill. However admirable, however courageous, the winners were no longer writers, and the issue was no longer freedom of speech. Perhaps the searing experience of 2015the murders, the controversy that divided PEN, and then the incredibly tense awards ceremony, with riot police and bomb-sniffing dogs all around the Museum of Natural Historyhad taken some of the heart out of freedom of expression courage. After Charlie Hebdo, it became an award for American political activism. PEN was honoring heroes on its sidepublic figures whom the majority of American writers wholeheartedly support. The award became less about freedom than about belonging. As Charlie Hebdo showed, free speech, which is the foundation of every writers work, can be tough going.

Among the enemies of writing, belonging is closely related to fear. Its strange to say this, but a kind of fear pervades the literary and journalistic worlds Im familiar with. I dont mean that editors and writers live in terror of being sent to prison. Its true that the president calls journalists enemies of the American people, and its not an easy time to be one, but were still free to investigate him. Michael Moore and Robert De Niro can fantasize aloud about punching Donald Trump in the face or hitting him with a bag of excrement, and the only consequence is an online fuss. Nor are Islamist jihadists or white nationalists sticking knives in the backs of poets and philosophers on American city streets. The fear is more subtle and, in a way, more crippling. Its the fear of moral judgment, public shaming, social ridicule, and ostracism. Its the fear of landing on the wrong side of whatever group matters to you. An orthodoxy enforced by social pressure can be more powerful than official ideology, because popular outrage has more weight than the party line.

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The Enemies of Writing - The Atlantic