Category Archives: Freedom of Speech

When a group of student activists were recruited to create a freedom of expression campaign, they were optimistic that their wide-ranging views could be part of its mission to get all young people enthusiastic about free speech.

The reality of the Free Speech Youth Advisory Board, they say, was rather different.

Instead of finding a forum for their hopes of opposing repressive regimes and helping minority voices to get heard, they claim that they were censured if they disagreed with the groups right-of-centre orthodoxy. And they say they were dismayed to realise that the supposedly grassroots project appeared to be an astroturfed front for Toby Youngs controversial pressure group, the Free Speech Union (FSU).

We have been used by Toby Young to legitimise this project, said Harry Walker, president of the Bristol Free Speech Society, who emphasised that he spoke in a personal capacity. Organisations like the FSU are just perpetuating a culture war.

Maya Thomas, an Oxford University student and founder of the Oxford Society for Free Discourse, claimed: They said very clearly this is a grassroots movement. They purposely hushed the FSUs involvement down.

Days ahead of a planned launch of the Free Speech Champions arm of the FSU, the Guardian has learned that at least six of the founding 16 participants have withdrawn from the campaign.

An email to organisers claimed that this project seems to have been in the works for months, originating effectively as an FSU youth wing rather than the independent grassroots movement it was pitched to us as.

Inaya Folarin Iman, a director of FSU who led work on the project, told the Guardian: This is my initiative, but I am a founding member of the board of the Free Speech Union and I have always been very open about the FSUs involvement and sponsorship No doubt the students who have contacted you see themselves as supporting free speech, but the Free Speech Champions project is unequivocal that it is an indivisible right and a fundamental civic virtue. Young did not respond to a request for comment.

The resignations, which highlight a seething debate over the definition of free speech on campuses, may come as a blow to Youngs plans to influence university cancel culture debates through the FSU. Since he founded the group in February last year, it has largely intervened in cases of interest to the libertarian right, embroiling itself in identity politics, anti-trans activism and lockdown scepticism.

Despite those apparent focuses, Young whose supporters include the historian David Starkey and the journalists Allison Pearson and Julia Hartley-Brewer insisted last year that he wanted the FSU to appeal across the political and demographic spectrum, saying the organisation isnt just for male, pale and stale conservatives like me.

More than 80% of the 85 directors, staff and advisers listed on the FSU website are male and more than 90% of those whose ethnicity could be determined are white.

Walker and Thomas were both approached to join the group. They and a recent Portsmouth graduate, Charlotte Nrnberg, told the Guardian that they found the promise of an open forum to be empty. The group started with quite diverse viewpoints, said Nrnberg, an activist and committee member of her university debating society until she graduated. But very quickly that got shut down.

In two emails to organisers explaining their departure, the trio, along with another member of Bristols Free Speech Society, Ben Sewell, claimed that the reality of the FSUs involvement had been deliberately withheld when they signed up.

We were led to believe that [the group] was independent from external organisations, particularly the one that most of us are concerned about, the FSU, they wrote. A number of us would not have joined had we known the true extent of the FSUs influence.

A subsequent email to Iman confirming their departure added: some of us even asked specifically about FSU involvement and were told that it was negligible.

Emails and social media messages seen by the Guardian suggest that during the recruitment process which sought branding help with name ideas, edgy marketing tactics, things which youd find cool students were led to believe that a separate group led by Iman, the Equiano Project, was behind the plans.

An online application form and introductory email both mention the Equiano Project but not the FSU. Jan Macvarish, a sociologist and education director at the FSU who was present at the first meeting, was introduced as an observer but swiftly took on a major role in shaping the discussion, they said. Macvarish did not respond to a request for comment.

Jan and Inaya dictated the ideological dogma of the group, one of the students who left the group said. This is correct free speech, this is wishy-washy free speech.

While some on the left of the group sought to make the case that it should seek to win support by emphasising the universality of free speech and raising concerns about repressive regimes silencing protest, Macvarish told them in a WhatsApp chat: The degree to which citizens of China or Hungary have fs [freedom of speech], I would argue, isnt of paramount importance to this project.

Instead, WhatsApp discussions were largely dominated by discussions of such figures as the self-styled professor against political correctness Jordan Peterson and anti-trans activists.

As time went on, the role of the FSU became more explicit, the disaffected group say, with Young himself appearing at one of the Zoom sessions. They claim that those who disagreed with the FSUs worldview were portrayed as not committed to free speech.

After Walker said in one discussion that he would punch a Nazi, saw Peterson as a peddler of bought speech and felt that marginalised groups were often denied true freedom of speech, Iman emailed him about a few things that you mentioned on the call that I wanted to pick up with you for clarification.

She added: A level of synthesis is important for the project to demonstrate coherence I aim for this free speech project to move away from an identity politics-based framework. Walker said he viewed those comments as a way of implying that he was not welcome to express his views.

The controversy caps an awkward week for the FSU and its supporters which began with Pearson, a Daily Telegraph columnist and member of the groups Media/PR advisory council, appearing to contradict its opposition to cancel culture by threatening to sue someone who she said had defamed her on Twitter, warning that she would contact his boss, and adding: Youre finished. She subsequently accepted an apology.

On Wednesday, Young was asked on Newsnight why he had written in June that the virus has all but disappeared and said hands up, I got that wrong before continuing his argument against lockdowns.

With the dangers of the wokerati often in the news, Young and the FSU which costs between 25 and 250 a year for membership have frequently found themselves on the frontline of a culture war and celebrating victories wherever they can find them.

After a judge dismissed the groups attempt to win a judicial review of Ofcoms role in regulating misinformation about coronavirus and called it not properly arguable, premised on a misinterpretation, and untenable, the FSU Twitter account posted: Thanks to us, @ofcom has stopped censoring Covid dissidents. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. In fact, the price of the case was the 16,732 the FSU was ordered to pay to cover Ofcoms costs.

Original post:
Students quit free speech campaign over role of Toby Young-founded group - The Guardian

A video posted to Twitter shows several people yelling at the Houston Democrat as he exits the flight in Tennessee to change planes.

HOUSTON Congressman Al Greensays he was harassed by people identifying themselves as Trump supporters on the way home from Washington.

The Houston Democrat said issues started at the airport in D.C.

Upon getting on the plane, someone recognized me, said Rep Green. At some point, someone said Mr. Impeachment is on the plane.

The Congressman said he heard another voice behind him.

Someone said, somethings gonna happen.

A video posted to Twitter shows several people yelling at the Houston Democrat as he exits the flight in Tennessee to change planes.

On the 21-second clip, voices can be heard saying four more years," youre a disgrace to this country," youre a dirtbag, and youre a traitor."

Rep. Green said people made comments accusing him of not honoring the Constitution, the Presidents freedom of speech, and about how people were being denied their rights.

The people became very rambunctious in the airport, said Rep. Green. They started closing in, and the young man who was helping me had to take me into a room off to the side and call police, call for some security.

He later added, Literally I had to be escorted some 50 feet, maybe, by two peace officers and a Southwest employee.

Rep. Green said the group helped him get on the flight and had a pilot sitting next to him.

The congressman said problems started again when he was about to deplane at Hobby Airport in Houston

Fortunately, I had HPD officers to meet me, he said. Im not sure how it would have ended but for having police officers to assist me.

Republican Sen. Mitt Romney was also confronted at the Salt Lake City airport and heckled while flying to D.C. on Tuesday.

Rep. Green says everyone has the right to free speech but believes protests in airports could lead to violence and disrupt travel and commerce.

He worries protests on planes could be especially dangerous.

You cant protest in a courtroom, you cant yell fire in a theater, and you ought not be able to protest in an airplane 35,000 feet in the air because you dont know what the protest will lead to, he said.

Its an issue the congressman says hell raise once he flies back to Capitol Hill.

Read the original here:
Houston congressman confronted while flying back from D.C. - KHOU.com

Likely Voters Reject Radical Great Reset Movement

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, IL (December 16, 2020) A new poll by The Heartland Institute and Rasmussen Reports finds that most voters have an unfavorable view of the Great Reset agenda supported by Joe Biden, the World Economic Forum, and other international political and business leaders.

Among those surveyed on December 6-7 who said they have heard of the Great Reset, a majority (53%) said they somewhat oppose (10%) or strongly oppose (43%) the movement, with the most common reply among all options being strongly oppose.

When asked, How influential should international institutions like the United Nations, World Economic Forum, and International Monetary Fund be in creating regulations governing United States businesses?, only 9% of respondents answered very influential, and 21% answered somewhat influential. Conversely, 22% said not very influential, and 37% answered not influential at all.

The results of this survey clearly show most American voters do not believe international organizations should have a significant amount of influence in Americas economic affairs.The results also demonstrate that most Americans stand in opposition to calls for increased globalism, such as the World Economic Forums Great Reset movement,which has already been backed by the incoming Biden administration.

Further, just 3% of likely voters said they believe that using business resources to pursue social justice causes should be the main priority of American businesses, which is a primary element of the Great Reset agenda. On the other hand, 44% of likely voters said U.S. businesses should focus on providing individual consumers with high quality products and services at the lowest prices.

See the full results of the poll below, including some of the key data from the crosstabs.

The following quotes can be used for attribution. If youd like to interview a Heartland Institute expert on the Great Reset,including Editorial Director Justin Haskins, one of Americas leading voices opposing the Great Reset, please contact Justin atJhaskins@heartland.orgor Director of Communications Jim Lakely atjlakely@heartland.org, or call/text Jims cell at 312-731-9364.

The results from the survey we conducted with Rasmussen Reports are clear: American voters do not support the Great Resets radical, anti-capitalism agenda, and they most certainly dont want international institutions influencing U.S. policy.

President-elect Joe Biden and his choice for climate czar, John Kerry, have already embraced the Great Reset agenda, in complete contradiction to the desires of the American people. If they follow through with their plan to push the United States toward the Great Reset, they will almost certainly pay for it during the 2022 mid-term elections.

Justin HaskinsEditorial Director and Research Fellow, The Heartland InstituteCo-Lead,Stopping Socialism Projectjhaskins@heartland.org312/377-4000

As the Rasmussen/Heartland poll shows, a majority of likely American voters reject the lefts calls for increased globalism. Americans understand that national sovereignty is superior to global governance. Further, according to the data, Americans are weary, as they should be, about the World Economic Forums anti-capitalist Great Reset movement. Apparently, Americans are well-aware that globalism is not the answer to U.S. policy issues.

Chris TalgoEditor and Research FellowThe Heartland Institutectalgo@heartland.org312/377-4000

National Survey of 1,000 Likely VotersConducted December 6-7, 2020By The Heartland Institute and Rasmussen Reports

1.Are you familiar with the Great Reset movement, a global economic strategy in response to the pandemic that seeks to change the priorities of capitalism?

35% Yes41% No24% Not sure

Interesting Crosstabs:

2.(Answered by 350 Likely Voters who have heard of the Great Reset movement)Do you strongly favor, somewhat favor, somewhat oppose or strongly oppose the Great Reset movement?

22% Strongly favor20% Somewhat favor10% Somewhat oppose43% Strongly oppose4% Not sure

Interesting Crosstabs:

3.Do you have a very favorable, somewhat favorable, somewhat unfavorable or very unfavorable impression of the United Nations?

21% Very favorable34% Somewhat favorable19% Somewhat unfavorable17% Very unfavorable9% Not sure

Interesting Crosstabs:

4.How influential should international institutions like the United Nations, World Economic Forum, and International Monetary Fund be in reducing economic inequality in the United States?

13% Very influential31% Somewhat influential18% Not very influential25% Not at all influential14% Not sure

Interesting Crosstabs:

5.How influential should international institutions like the United Nations, World Economic Forum, and International Monetary Fund be in crafting United States policies meant to address climate change?

19% Very influential30% Somewhat influential15% Not very influential28% Not at all influential8% Not sure

Interesting Crosstabs:

6.How influential should international institutions like the United Nations, World Economic Forum, and International Monetary Fund be in creating regulations governing United States businesses?

9% Very influential21% Somewhat influential22% Not very influential37% Not at all influential11% Not sure

Interesting Crosstabs:

7.What should be the highest priority for businesses in the United States.earning a profit to benefit shareholders or owners, providing individual consumers with high quality products and services at the lowest prices, providing good benefits and pay to employees, climate change or using business resources to pursue social justice causes?

13% Earning a profit to benefit shareholders or owners44% Providing individual consumers with high quality products and services at the lowest prices

27% Providing good benefits and pay to employees6% Climate change

3% Using business resources to pursue social justice causes7% Not sure

Interesting Crosstabs:

NOTE:Margin of Sampling Error, +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence.

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, IL (December 17, 2020) A new poll by The Heartland Institute and Rasmussen Reports finds that most likely voters believe freedom of speech should remain robust in the United States.

When asked, Should federal or state governments ban speech by individuals that a majority of Americans believes to be offensive, including speech on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter?, 56% of likely voters said, no. Only 26% of likely voters responded, yes, while 18% said they are not sure.

Likewise, most likely voters do not think jail time is a reasonable punishment for those who engage in speech a majority of Americans believes to be offensive. When asked, Should those who violate such bans against offensive speech be punished with jail time?, 23% of likely voters said yes. On the other hand, 55% of likely voters responded no. Somewhat surprisingly, 21% of likely voters said they were not sure in response to this question.

Our survey, conducted December 6-7, found that support for free-speech bans was significantly higher among younger Americans. Among the respondents aged 18 to 39, 37% said they support a government ban on some speech, compared to just 22% for those aged 40 to 64 and 20% for those aged 65 or older.

Taken together, these results show that a strong majority of likely voters believe the United States should vehemently protect citizens right to the freedom of speech. The results also demonstrate that most likely voters are not in favor of free speech bans or harsh punishments for those who violate such bans.

The poll has a margin of sampling error of +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence.

See the full results of the poll below, including some of the key data from the crosstabs.

See the poll results on the Great Reset, released Dec. 16, 2020,here.

The following quotes can be used for attribution. If youd like to interview a Heartland Institute expert on this topic or other topics, please contact Justin atJhaskins@heartland.orgor Director of Communications Jim Lakely atjlakely@heartland.org, or call/text Jims cell at 312-731-9364.

A free society cannot exist without free speech, and yet, one in four Americans now want government to limit the speech rights of their fellow citizens. Even more troubling, the numbers are higher among young people, with about 37 percent of those aged 18 to 39 years old supporting such bans.

The growing movement to stifle free speech and expression should deeply concern everyoneRepublicans and Democrats alikebecause protecting the First Amendment is essential for preserving our nation. If this trend continues, its unlikely the United States will survive the next half-century.

Justin HaskinsEditorial Director and Research Fellow, The Heartland InstituteCo-Lead, Stopping Socialism Projectjhaskins@heartland.org312/377-4000

Freedom of speech is one of the most important rights in the United States. Without it, our republic cannot survive. Fortunately, most likely voters recognize the fact that free speech must be protected against unwarranted bans and burdens.

During the past few years, freedom of speech has been under attack, especially by social media sites, which have routinely implemented arbitrary bans on what they deem to be offensive speech. Thankfully, a majority of likely voters oppose government adopting these Orwellian tactics to stifle free speech, although the large proportion of young people who support such bans is unquestionably a troubling development.

Chris TalgoEditor and Research FellowThe Heartland InstituteCtalgo@heartland.org312/377/4000

National Survey of 1,000 Likely Voters on Freedom of SpeechConducted December 6-7, 2020By The Heartland Institute and Rasmussen Reports

1.Should federal or state governments ban speech by individuals that a majority of Americans believes to be offensive, including speech on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter?

26% Yes56% No18% Not sure

INTERESTING NOTE: 37% of young people (18-39 years old) said speech should be banned. Only 51% said no.

2.Should those who violate such bans against offensive speech be punished with jail time?

23% Yes55% No21% Not sure

INTERESTING NOTE: 37% of the government workers surveyed who said that speech should be banned by government also said that offensive speech should be punished with jail timethe highest of any demographic in our survey.

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, IL (December 18, 2020) A new poll by The Heartland Institute and Rasmussen Reports finds that a vast majority of likely voters prefer a free-market economic system over a socialist economic system.

When asked on December 6-7, Which is better a free-market economic system or socialism?, 75% of respondents answered free-market economic system, while just 11% answered socialism.

Interestingly, most likely voters also have a decidedly negative view of one of Americas most prominent socialists, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). When asked, Do you have a very favorable, somewhat favorable, somewhat unfavorable or very unfavorable impression of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez?, only 18% said very favorable, while 19% said somewhat favorable. On the other hand, 38% of likely voters said they have a very unfavorable impression of AOC, and 10% said they have a somewhat unfavorable impression of her. About 15% said they are not sure.

Taken together, these results show that a strong majority of likely voters believe the United States should reject socialism and instead adopt free-market economic principles.

Further, when asked, Do you have a very favorable, somewhat favorable, somewhat unfavorable or very unfavorable impression of Joe Biden?, 36% of likely voters said they have a very unfavorable impression of the president-elect. This was followed by 32% who said they have a very favorable impression. 19% said they have a somewhat favorable impression of Biden, while 11% responded that they have a somewhat unfavorable impression of the next president. Just 2% said they are not sure.

The poll has a margin of sampling error of +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence.

See the full results of the poll below, including some of the key data from the crosstabs.

The following quote can be used for attribution:

Despite the increased calls for socialism by many on the far left, the vast majority of likely voters believe that the United States should embrace a free-market economy. Only a sliver of likely voters think that the United States should abandon the free-market capitalistic policies that are responsible for making the United States the wealthiest nation in world history. Despite the countless calls for more socialism among elites in media and Hollywood, Americans arent interested in adopting the same socialist policies that have led to mass poverty wherever they have been tried.

Chris TalgoEditor and Research FellowThe Heartland InstituteCtalgo@heartland.org312/377-4000

If youd like to interview the head of Heartlands Stopping Socialism Project, Justin Haskins, who also worked with Rasmussen on this poll, or another Heartland expert, please contact Justin atJhaskins@heartland.orgor Director of Communications Jim Lakely atjlakely@heartland.org,or you can call/text Jims cell at 312-731-9364.

National Survey of 1,000 Likely Voters on SocialismConducted December 6-7, 2020By The Heartland Institute and Rasmussen Reports

Which is better a free-market economic system or socialism?

75% A free-market economic system11% Socialism14% Not sure

INTERESTING NOTE: About one in five respondents aged 18-39 chose socialism, nearly the same as when we asked young people this same question in 2019. Support for a free market increased, though. In 2019, support among young voters was 59%. This year, it is 68%.

Do you have a very favorable, somewhat favorable, somewhat unfavorable or very unfavorable impression of Joe Biden?

32% Very favorable19% Somewhat favorable11% Somewhat unfavorable36% Very unfavorable2% Not sure

Do you have a very favorable, somewhat favorable, somewhat unfavorable or very unfavorable impression of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez?

18% Very favorable19% Somewhat favorable10% Somewhat unfavorable38% Very unfavorable15% Not sure

TheHeartland Instituteis a 36-year-old national nonprofit organization headquartered in Arlington Heights, Illinois. Its mission is to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems. For more information, visitour websiteor call 312/377-4000.

Read more:
Heartland/Rasmussen Polls on the Great Reset, Socialism, and Free Speech - The Heartland Institute

Freedom of speech is yet another victim of cancel culture, based on the results of a survey, Australians Together, carried out by Mark McCrindle and Mainstream Insights.

Instead of everyone having the right to express an opinion and engage in the battle of ideas, politically correct intimidation and groupthink prevail.

According to the survey, 77 per cent of people under 25 are so anxious about cancel culture they self-censor when talking about controversial issues involving race, gender and sexuality, Black Lives Matter and gay conversion therapy.

When it comes to Australians of all ages, about 65 per cent feel cancel culture limits their ability to say what they really think.

A second survey involving 55,000 Australians carried out by the ABC also concludes free speech is being curtailed, with 68 per cent agreeing political correctness has gone too far.

Evidence of how destructive cancel culture is abounds.

JK Rowling is attacked and vilified for arguing against transgenderism, and last year the Melbourne International Comedy Festival scrapped the Barry Humphries award because the comedian committed the same offence.

Universities and government departments now have diversity guides and toolkits designed to enforce left groupthink and ensure everyone uses the same politically correct language. Pronouns like "he" and "she" are replaced by "they" or "zie" and descriptions like "wife" and "husband" condemned as homophobic.

Among the worst examples is the Victorian government's legislation making it illegal to disagree with using puberty blockers and undergoing surgery to change one's sex.

The Conversion Practices Prohibition Bill even cancels "carrying out a religious practice, including but not limited to, a prayer-based practice".

One of the cornerstones underpinning Western democracies like Australia is freedom of speech and the right to engage in vigorous debate where not all might agree. As argued by George Orwell, author of Nineteen Eighty-Four, "If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear".

A principal strategy used by totalitarian regimes throughout history is to enforce mind control and groupthink by controlling language. Given the origins of cancel culture can be traced back to the emergence of cultural Marxism and the left's march through the institutions, it should not surprise it employs the same strategies.

Dr Kevin Donnelly is a senior research fellow at the Australian Catholic University

Originally published as Freedom of speech falling victim to politically correct intimidation

See the original post here:
Freedom of speech falling victim to PC intimidation - Queensland Times

2020 is the challenging year that just wont go away, however much we wish it would, as many current issues over First Amendment freedoms flop over into the new year.

In the broad realm of freedom of speech, theres little doubt debate will continue in the new Congress around the tangential First Amendment controversy over legal protections for companies hosting content on the web aka Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act.

The law largely removes liability from companies for user-posted content on their sites. While not directly a First Amendment issue, the fight does have major implications for users free speech on the web, as we know it today, as well for as social media companies rights.

President Donald J. Trump and conservatives claim the provision is being used to hide partisan discrimination by major technology companies against right-wing voices. Liberal critics say the law removes incentives for such online operations to seriously fight misinformation.

Advocates for keeping the law as is say that without it, social media companies would face a myriad of potential lawsuits and thus dramatically limit what users can freely post on sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, WhatsApp and Instagram. No company will be able moderate the webs current traffic, they say, estimated by multiple sources at 500,000 hours of user video uploaded to YouTube, 188 million emails and 18 million texts every minute.

Controversy will also continue surrounding the First Amendments two least-known freedoms petition and assembly as multiple state legislatures consider increasing criminal and civil penalties for demonstrators who block streets or sidewalks or simply participate in events where, at some point, a violent act occurs.

Critics of the proposals, many of which have been introduced over the past five years, say their real motives are the stifling of dissenting or minority views, though advocates claim the new provisions are rooted in legitimate law and order concerns about violence and property damages.

In the area of religious liberty, the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule this spring on Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, involving both the First Amendments free exercise and establishment clauses. In the case, a religious-backed foster care agency is challenging a city decision to cancel a contract because the agency refused to provide services to married same-sex couples, citing religious grounds.

There is no doubt that as COVID-19 pandemic restrictions on public gatherings continue into the new year, so will legal challenges rooted in the First Amendments protection of religious liberty.

There are some new First Amendment issues for 2021 as a result of the incoming Biden administration, though even here, many are tinged by actions or views from the Trump years.

A top concern for free-press advocates is the potential for the Supreme Courts new conservative majority to review the 1963 New York Times v. Sullivan decision, which provided wide protection from defamation claims by government officials and other public figures if actual error was inadvertent or not caused by reckless disregard for the truth.

A longstanding target of press critics and Trump, the decision is rooted in the theory that such protection is needed to foster the widest possible debate on public issues. Trump and others claim the decision makes it virtually impossible for officials and public figures to successfully repair deliberate damage to their reputations and that it gives journalists free license to report so-called fake news.

Of concern for some is the potential return to Obama-era regulations reversed by Trump that were aimed at combatting sexual harassment on college campuses, which critics said stepped on free-speech protections, particularly where online comments were deemed to be sexual in nature.

The Supreme Court is expected to decide in January whether to hear an appeal of a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit that public school authorities may not punish student speech made away from school grounds. Other circuits have made differing decisions.

Some First Amendment experts also are concerned the incoming administration may be open to reducing or eliminating the First Amendment protections for what some deem hate speech or speech demeaning to women or minority religious groups. At present, such speech generally is protected, with some arguing that in addition to a core right to voice ones own views, it is necessary to hear such speech to effectively argue against it.

Free-press supporters are already calling on President-elect Joe Biden to actively repudiate the Trump claim that mainstream news media are the enemy of the people, with some calling for new legislation to aid financially ailing local news operations seen by some as counterintuitive for a free press along with an international-U.S. effort to support free-press principles and journalists globally.

Welcome to the First Amendment in 2021 with its echoes of 2020s year of pandemic, protest and presidential-political turmoil.

Gene Policinski is a senior fellow for the First Amendment at the Freedom Forum, and president and chief operating officer of the Freedom Forum Institute. He can be reached at gpolicinski@freedomforum.org, or follow him on Twitter at @genefac.

We are making critical coverage of the coronavirus available for free. Please consider subscribing so we can continue to bring you the latest news and information on this developing story.

The rest is here:
First Amendment issues won't go away in 2021 - Sunbury Daily Item

University of Sussex professor Dr Kathleen Stock.

A gender-critical academic awarded an OBE in the New Year Honours list has branded LGBT+ charity Stonewall a threat to freedom of speech in a diatribe about gender identity ideology.

Dr Kathleen Stock, professor of philosophy at the University of Sussex, was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2021 New Year Honours list for services to higher education.

Stock has previously asserted that trans women are still males with male genitalia but strongly denies she is transphobic. Taking to Twitter on Thursday (31 December), she said she was honoured to have received the OBE, adding that Stonewall the largest LGBT+ rights charity in Europe is a threat to freedom of speech.

I want to use this opportunity to draw further attention to suppression of critical thought about gender identity ideology and trans activism in UK universities, Stock said.

She continued: Most UK universities are Stonewall Diversity Champions. Translation: effectively theyre now trans activist institutions. This significantly limits free thought and free speech of gender-critical academics.

The Stonewall Diversity Champions programme mission is ensuring all LGBT staff are accepted without exception in the workplace. More than 850 UK employers are signed up to the programme, which began in 2001, including the University of Sussex where Stock teaches.

Going on to say that academics and students urgently need to be able to criticise gender identity ideology and trans activism, Stock argued that Stonewall doesnt belong in UK universities (or schools, or gov departments, or local authorities, or judiciary, or police forces..).

Once a great organisation, theyre now a threat to freedom of speech/ public understanding, Stock concluded. Get them out.

Robbie de Santos, associate director of communications and campaigns at Stonewall, said: All employers have a legal duty to reduce inequalities and ensure lesbian, gay, bi and trans people are free from discrimination at work. Our industry-leading Diversity Champions programme supports organisations including a number of higher education institutions to make their workplaces more inclusive of LGBT+ people.

This work is absolutely vital as more than a third of LGBT+ staff (35 per cent hide who they are at work, while one in five (18 per cent) have been the target of bullying because theyre LGBT+. The programme covers everything from policy and procedure, to staff networks and monitoring, to culture and wellbeing to help organisation create truly inclusive workplaces.We are proud of the ground-breaking work that higher education members of the Diversity Champions programme do to make their workplaces more inclusive.

The University of Sussex has been contacted for comment.

Read the original:
Kathleen Stock: Professor made OBE calls Stonewall threat to free speech - PinkNews

David Brooks| The New York Times

This has not been a great period for free expression. The range of socially acceptable opinion has shrunk, as independent-minded journalists and experts have been eased out of their jobs at places ranging from New York magazine to Boeing and Civis Analytics for saying unorthodox things. The esteemed scholar James R. Flynn wrote a book called In Defense of Free Speech which was in turn canceled by his publisher for being too controversial.

Fortunately, a range of people from across the political spectrum have arisen to defend free inquiry, including Noam Chomsky, Cathy Young, the University of Chicago president Robert Zimmer, Caitlin Flanagan, Thomas Chatterton Williams, Jonathan Haidt, John McWhorter, Yascha Mounk, Jonathan Rauch and magazines like Quillette and Tablet.

Rauch was the subject of an interview by Nick Gillespie in Reason magazine, called How to Tell if Youre Being Canceled, which gets the first Sidney of 2020, the awards I give out for the best long-form essays of each year. Rauch was an early vocal champion of the movement for same-sex marriage, which was led by people who, in the early years, said things that seemed shocking and offensive to others. All they had back then was their freedom of speech, Rauch observes.

In Reason, he takes up the argument that certain ideas should be unsaid because they make other people feel unsafe. The emotional safety argument, I argue, is fundamentally illiberal, and there is really nothing about it that can be salvaged. It is just inconsistent with the open society, Rauch says.

The notion here is that emotional injury is a kind of harm like physical injury, and because its a kind of harm its a rights violation. The problem is this is a completely subjective standard, and it makes any form of criticism potentially subject to censorship and cancellation and lumps science into a human rights violation.

There were many brilliant pieces written in the wake of the George Floyd killing. Ill lift up Hilton Als memoir in The New Yorker called My Mothers Dreams for Her Son, and All Black Children.

Als mother had dreamed of raising her children in a nice house in a welcoming community, and finally realized that dream in Brownsville, Brooklyn. The neighborhood changed, though, in September 1967 after riots broke out after a Black boy was shot in the back of the head by a Black detective. The Alses moved to Bedford-Stuyvesant and Crown Heights, but riots followed there, too.

The essay is partly about the long-running tension between the gradual version of social change and the more aggressive version. Als subtly makes the case that gradualism might be nice, but Black Americans are shoved back into refugee status so regularly, its really not an option.

For a time, Als thought that Black men looting and rioting had to do with enacting a particular form of masculinity: if white men and cops could wreak havoc in the world, why couldnt they? But, as I grew older, I realized that part of their acting out had to do with how we were brought up. They werent trying to be men they were already men but in order to have the perceived weight of white men they had to reject, to some degree, the silence they had learned from their mothers. If they were going to die, they were going to die screaming.

I was also drawn to Brandon Vaidyanathans Systemic Racial Bias in the Criminal Justice System is Not a Myth. Writing for Public Discourse, a conservative-leaning publication, Vaidyanathan is rebutting conservative writers who argued there is no such thing as systemic racism. The core point he makes may not shock too many readers of this newspaper, but the way he does it is a glowing example of how to construct an argument. He is calm and methodical. He works up no outrage nor does he spread aspersion. He simply gathers a massive amount of data to carefully describe the contours of systemic racism, while dismantling the studies that supposedly deny it.

There were many gripping diaries written by medical personnel fighting COVID-19. I found Rana Awdishs The Shape of the Shore in Intima, among the most compelling. It not only describes the horror of working in a plague but also how hard it is to communicate that horror, even to the psychologists who were brought in to help, and who continually make the doctors and nurses feel misheard and misunderstood. At the heart of the problem were the moral injuries suffered by doctors and nurses forced to act in ways that seemed to them inhumane.

I dont recognize myself anymore. I dont know who I am here, a nurse, quoted in the essay, says. I kept a mother from her baby. I didnt allow her to nurse. I had to treat her as if she was a threat to her own child. And when the mother cried, I thought she was being so shortsighted. It was only for a few days until she tested negative. I remember thinking she was so selfish.

This was a year of both frontline heroism and appalling back-line failure. In a September article in The Atlantic called How the Pandemic Defeated America, Ed Yong describes the many, many ways our governing systems failed us.

The essay contains paragraph after paragraph of jarring incompetence. For example: Diagnostic tests are easy to make, so the U.S. failing to create one seemed inconceivable. Worse, it had no Plan B. Private labs were strangled by FDA bureaucracy. Meanwhile, [Pardis] Sabetis lab developed a diagnostic test in mid-January and sent it to colleagues in Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and Senegal. We had working diagnostics in those countries well before we did in any U.S. states, she told me.

This was a year when the very foundations of society seemed to be crumbling, and there were many fine essays about that. Francis Fukuyama wrote Liberalism and Its Discontents in American Purpose, which is the best single primer to the long-running debate about the liberal order.

Classical liberalism can best be understood as an institutional solution to the problem of governing over diversity, Fukuyama writes. It does this by deliberately not specifying higher goals of human life. It leaves people free to decide their own values, their own form of worship. Liberalism is thus perpetually unsatisfying to those trying to build a perfectly just or virtuous society because it is neutral about many ultimate concerns. Theres a void that often gets filled with consumerism.

Fukuyama honestly faces the shortcomings of liberalism, and then makes the core point that the alternative to slow, deliberative liberalism is inevitably some form of violence.

Tara Isabella Burton takes the argument one level deeper in her essay Postliberal Epistemology in Comment. Liberalism, she argues, was based on a view of the human person now being rejected on left and right. A person, Enlightenment liberalism holds, is essentially rational and disembodied. If people use reason properly, they will come to the same logical results.

For more and more millennials, in particular, she argues, this view is insufficient: In rendering human rationality disembodied, it also renders human beings interchangeable, reproducible, not incarnations but instantiations of a vague generic. Burtons essay takes some work, but it profoundly captures the way so many young people on left and right feel alienated from and unseen by the structures of society.

Well get back to deep think in a minute, but first a few fascinating essays that have nothing to do with the weighty issues of 2020.

First, eels are amazing. In On the Many Mysteries of the European Eel, on Lit Hub, Patrik Svensson breaks down eel life. The European eel can morph four times over the course of its life, changing color and shape. It crosses the Atlantic twice. It can live for 50 or even 80 years.

Second, men can be fools. In a piece called Dupes and Duplicity on the site Damn Interesting, Jennifer Lee Noonan writes about an 18th-century courtesan, Margaret Caroline Rudd, who went through life seducing, duping and defrauding a ceaseless variety of gullible men. With one guy, she posed as four different women, with different wardrobes and handwriting, and managed to bilk him out of four times as much money and jewelry.

Third, men can also be weirdly impressive. A man named Leon was 309 days into his westward cycling trek across Asia and through Europe, when suddenly in the deserts of Kazakhstan, he stumbled upon a man named Noel, nearly his own age, who was riding east from Europe and toward Asia. Kim Cross article, What Happens When Two Strangers Trust the Rides of Their Lives to the Magic of the Universe, in Bicycling magazine, is really about people who head out alone, with mediocre gear, to ride across two continents the motives that drive them, the adventures that befall them.

OK, back to weighty matters. In The Erosion of Deep Literacy, in National Affairs, Adam Garfinkle points out that over centuries people developed the ability to do deep reading patient, slow, creative absorption of complex plots and arguments. But technology now threatens to erode that skill, making us incapable of deep reading and thus deep understanding. In science fiction, Garfinkle writes, the typical worry is that machines will become human-like; the more pressing problem now is that, through the thinning out of our interactions, humans are becoming machine-like.

Finally, The Last Children of Down Syndrome by Sarah Zhang in The Atlantic is a subtle, fair and sensitive treatment of a very touchy subject. In Denmark, prenatal testing for Down syndrome is nearly universal and 95% of parents decide to abort the fetus when the test comes back positive, so in Denmark, parents are all but eliminating Down syndrome.

One health expert lists all the bad health outcomes associated with the syndrome, but she wonders, If our world didnt have people with special needs and these vulnerabilities, would we be missing a part of our humanity?

One mother with a child with the syndrome says she would have aborted him if she had known what it would be like. Other women are shaken as they choose to have the abortion. They realize they are not the person they thought they were the kind who would choose to have a child with a disability. The issues surrounding these decisions are complex and tender. Zhang treats them beautifully and humanely.

I have not included any political essays this year. Weve had enough politics. But I hope you get a sense of what a crisis year it has been, a year in which the foundations, norms and structures of our society seemed to be crumbling away. I hope these essays help you make sense of things and Im hoping 2021 will be so fantastic that all of next years Sidney-winning essays will be about eels.

David Brooks writes for The New York Times.

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Brooks: The Sidney Awards - The Register-Guard

Diana James

To the Editor:Upon reading the Dec. 16 issue of The Advocate, I wanted to ensure that the difference between an opinion by a commentator and a news article by a reporter is clear to all your readers. At this point, it may not always be easy to distinguish, not like it was in the days of Edward R. Morrow and Walter Cronkite. When I was in journalism school, we learned the difference between unbiased reporting and opinions. Opinions are defined as a view or judgment formed about something, not necessarily based on fact or knowledge. Unbiased reporting is based on facts, researched and, hopefully, confirmed by at least two sources. Laura Schiermeier does a great job of reporting and writing articles for the paper. The item highlighted in For the Record is an opinion by Ralph Voss. Its unfortunate, with the current media environment, that there are a lot of opinions being presented as fact. It is unfortunate because there are so many people who believe anything in print or on a news show. It would be a nice change to have an opposing opinion piece represented in the paper as well. And, it would be nice if the facts were given by the publisher of the paper. In this way, your readers could have the facts and the opinions, and be able to form their own, more educated, opinions.I recently was reminded that our constitutional right of free speech does have limits. For example, it is unlawful to run into a crowded event and yell FIRE if there is not. Lets hope that everyone is reading these opinions will do their own research in order to know what is true and whats not, while still allowing for some freedom of speech.Diana James

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Know the difference between facts and opinions - Gasconade County Republican

The first weeks of December were eventful in South Korean politics. After months of partisan jawing and committee deadlock, the ruling Democratic Party flexed its 174-seat majority in the National Assembly to pass a truly massive slate of lawsmore than 130 bills that touched on areas including government organization, corporate governance, labor rights, and climate change. But in Washington, only one bill among the 130-plus received any attention: the revision to the Development of Inter-Korean Relations Act, the so-called anti-leaflet law that prohibits disseminating leaflets near the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) by launching large helium balloons in a manner that could cause serious danger.

Rep. Michael McCaul, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, issued a statement criticizing the bill. A Washington Post op-ed reported that Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun conveyed concerns about the legislation in his recent visit to Seoul. Amid the small club of Korea watchers in the United States, the bill was the only topic in South Korean politics that generated any significant discussion.

The singular focus on the leaflet law is a typical example of the old mindsetone Ive criticized beforethat assesses South Korea solely on the basis on how closely its North Korea policy aligns with U.S. needs. These blinkered views, disconnected from ground-level events, cause an unnecessary strain on an alliance that is far more important than just for dealing with North Korea.

Few dispute that China is this centurys greatest U.S. foreign-policy challenge. This naturally means that the U.S. ally nearest to China must be given a very high priority. If we really are in a second Cold War, South Korea is as important as West Germany was: a wealthy democracy with a twin in the communist camp, standing at the front line of the liberal world order. South Korea isnt an auxiliary player but rather deserves to be evaluated on its own termssomething thats unfortunately rare in Washington foreign-policy circles. Even among experts and think tanks that specialize in East Asia and the Koreas, there is little attempt to keep tabs on South Koreas domestic politics. Instead, its politics (and sometimes its entire democracy) is judged based on two questions only: What is South Koreas plan for North Korea, and how closely does that plan align with the U.S. plan for North Korea?

Such myopia is especially harmful today, when South Korean politics is going through a fundamental realignment similar to the ones overseen by Franklin D. Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan in the United States. For 29 years after the end of military dictatorship in 1987, South Korea was largely a conservative country, with 19 years of conservative presidencies and 10 years of liberal ones. When liberal presidents like Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun did win, they did so by making strategic alliances with smaller conservative factions. Kim Dae-jung partnered with Kim Jong-pil, a former lieutenant of the dictator Park Chung-hee, while Roh campaigned with Chung Mong-joon, a centrist scion of the Hyundai Group. Even when they won the presidency, the liberals persistently faced a legislative minority, constricting their ability to implement a large-scale, center-left political agenda.

That era ended with the impeachment and removal of Park Geun-hye in 2017. The twilight years of Parks presidency saw the changing of the guards, as the liberals scored four national victories in a row: the 2016 legislative elections, 2017 presidential election, 2018 local elections, and the legislative elections once again in April of this year, in which the Democratic Party earned a historic, filibuster-proof majority that it applied with gusto to pass a massive slate of progressive laws. With these victories, the electoral mainstream of South Korean politics shifted decisively. Voters in their 40s, who make up nearly 20 percent of the whole voting population, support the liberal parties by a 2-to-1 margin, making South Koreas baseline electorate center-left rather than center-right. Conservatives may yet recapture the presidency, but in all likelihood, they will only be able to do so in the same way that liberals did 20 years agoby co-opting center-left issues and forming an alliance with some of the progressive factions.

This sea change, however, has been mostly lost on Washingtons Korea watchers. In December, they were content to focus on one law with no attention paid to the other 130-plus that, according to the conservative Dong-A Ilbo, effectively changed the foundation of our [South Koreas] society. The Corruption Investigation Office for High-Ranking Officials Act, for example, is the culmination of the Moon Jae-in administrations prosecution reform, whose drama involving the Justice Ministry and the Supreme Prosecutors Office gripped South Korea for months. Revisions to the Fair Trade Act are virtually certain to trigger billions of dollars worth of restructuring in South Koreas largest corporations as they come under greater scrutiny for anti-competitive behavior. The three ILO acts represent the greatest expansion of labor union rights in decades, making South Korea catch up to the recommendations of the International Labour Organization, the United Nations agency that sets global labor standards. In fact, the leaflet law is not even the most important North Korea-related bill that passed; that would be the corresponding revisions to the National Intelligence Service Act and the Police Act, which shifted the authority to investigate espionage cases from the spy agency to the police. None of these laws drew any attention in Washington; there was no congressional statement, no op-ed, no policy paper on any of them.

This is a pity, not least because studying South Korean politics would have made the debate on the leaflet ban more rigorous and informed. Most of the criticisms against the law come from the hard-liners in Washington who characterize the leaflet ban as a weak-kneed capitulation to North Korea by the liberal Moon. But if they had been following South Korean politics, they would have known that this issue long pre-dated Moon. South Koreas restriction on launching balloons containing leaflets near the DMZ began in 2007, with even conservative Presidents Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye enforcing the restriction. They did so because the safety concern was real: The last time North Korean shells landed in South Korean territory was 2014, when the North Korean military shot anti-aircraft guns at large helium balloons launched by activists.

The activists challenged the restriction with the court and lost, as the Supreme Court of Korea held in 2016 that the danger justified the restriction. The new law is no more than a legislative ratification of the Supreme Courts decision four years ago, made more urgent today due to the risk of an inadvertent escalation into a nuclear war with North Korea. None of the criticism from the United States refers to any of this history, makes any analysis of the 2016 Supreme Court opinion, or engages with the text of the law that makes clear the ban is not a wholesale prohibitionas Article 24 of the law states, the leaflet distribution is prohibited only to the extent that it is done in a manner that causes actual harm or danger.

Greater focus on South Korean politics would have also revealed the domestic political dynamic around the balloon-launching activists, many of whom are North Koreans who escaped to the South. Many in the North Korean defector community in South Korea have joined forces with South Koreas far-right. This trend was especially pronounced during the conservative Park Geun-hye administration, which subsidized the North Korean defector groups in exchange for their flag-waving support in downtown Seoul. As a result, they mostly stayed silent when the Park administration abused North Korean defectors, by falsely charging some as spies, but now vigorously protest Moon.

Being blind to these overall political dynamics harms the U.S.-South Korea alliance. Freedom of speech for North Korea activists is an important issue, but it is not the only important issue in the alliance that serves as the lynchpin for the liberal order in the Indo-Pacific. When the U.S. government expresses concern for freedom of speech only when North Korea is involved and not when, for example, the Park Geun-hye administration blacklisted and censored some 9,000 liberal-leaning artists, including the Academy Award-winning director Bong Joon-ho, South Koreans justifiably wonder if the United States supposed love for free speech is no more than a pretext to defend a hawkish stance against Pyongyang.

When the South Korean public sees U.S. experts on the Korean Peninsulawho are supposed to be well versed on these issuescavalierly dismiss the concerns of more than 1.1 million residents living near the DMZ, they feel viewed as disposable chess pieces in the game of foreign policy, not as human beings who carry on their lives in a community. The leaflet ban may deserve debate, but it should be a better, more rigorous one, with an eye on the health of the overall alliance.

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Forget Balloons and Follow South Korean Politics Properly - Foreign Policy

By J.D. DavidsonThe Center Squarehttps://www.thecentersquare.com/

When Ohio college students return to campus after the holidays, they will be able to speak their mind freely.

Gov. Mike DeWine signed the Forming Open and Robust University Minds Act that protects individuals First Amendment rights and prohibits free speech zones on public college and university campuses in the state.

Ohio becomes the 15th state with similar laws.

According to Senate sponsors Andrew Brenner, R-Powell, and Rob McColley, R-Napoleon, the bill prohibits colleges or universities from taking any action or enforcing any policy that limits or restricts the right of a student of that campus community to engage in political speech.

Students should not be afraid that their speech will be squashed by institutions of higher education by restricting students to free speech zones or using chilling tactics on those invited by students to the campus, Brenner said.

Specifically, the bill protects peaceful, expressive activities, such as assembly, protests, speeches, petitions and guest speakers. It also bans free speech zones, and allows for civil action by individuals or student organizations against violations of the provisions.

House Democrats argued the bill is unnecessary, political and will enable hate speech on campuses.

The First Amendment already protects freedom of speech on Ohios campuses, state Rep. Catherine Ingram, D-Cincinnati, said. This bill is purely political and could have a detrimental effect on Ohios college campuses. It could make our campuses less safe by blocking a universitys ability to regulate speech and that could potentially incite violence.

The act was one of five recently signed into law, including a bill that allows for-profit organizations to be classified as benefit corporations. That enables for-profit groups to pursue beneficial activities in any area, such as arts, education, technology and others.

Also signed into law was a bill that modernizes the states drainage laws, along with a bill that creates an Alternative Employer Organization, similar to professional employer groups but with different federal taxes.

Finally, a new Ohio law extends the Womens Suffrage Centennial Commission through the end of 2021 to allow for rescheduling of events associated with the 100th anniversary of womens suffrage in 2020.

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DeWine signs bill that protects students' free speech - The Highland County Press