03 Nov 23 | Israel, News and features, Opinion, Palestine, Ruth's blog, United States
It seems every week there is a news story of another academic, a group of students or a vice chancellor detailing threats to academic freedom. Heartbreakingly this has become an even more common occurrence since the Hamas pogrom in Israel on 7 October and the subsequent war in Gaza.
Only this week the UKRI, a UK government body which distributes research funding, has suspended its diversity advisory panel, after a leading member of the British Government publicly criticised members of the panel for their social media comments regarding Hamas and Israel. This led to the resignation of several academics from posts at the UKRI.
And at Cornell University in the US, a student is currently facing charges for threatening to kill Jewish students via a range of graphic social media posts, resulting in his persecution and enhanced security measures now in place for Jewish staff and members on campus.
These are two of the more extreme examples of the impact of the current crisis on academic institutions.
And as angry as they make me, as heartbroken as I am about current events, I have to consider them through the prism of my job – defending freedom of expression.
Freedom of expression is a very broad concept and there are as many definitions as there are forms of expression. But taking the two examples above at hand, academic freedom and freedom of speech are different things. What people debate and discuss in the lecture hall, in a seminar room or on the pages of an academic tome must always be protected. But academics are not afforded special protections outside of the confines of their intellectual endeavours. That’s not a matter of academic freedom, it’s one of freedom of expression and should be considered separately.
At the same time, the events in Cornell equate to hate speech and are not and should not be protected. Hate speech and incitement are against the law and should be dealt with accordingly. And every community, every student should have the right to feel safe on campus – not in fear of their lives. No one should be scared of walking onto their university campus whatever is happening in a war thousands of miles away.
This is all at a time when university campuses are increasingly considered to be the frontline in the ongoing battle to protect free speech.
Earlier this year, the UK saw the passage of The Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act.
In the current context, this seems to have muddied the waters between academic freedom and freedom of speech on campus. The new law places an onus on universities, colleges and Students’ Unions to not only protect free speech but to actively promote it. But what does this mean when applied to the views of students and academics who are promoting views outside of their academic specialisms?
The very name of the Act it suggests that those on campus have complete freedom of speech without limitation. They do not; no one does. But as academics they must have complete freedom to teach and challenge without fear or favour (within the confines of the law).
Universities are meant to be seats of academic exploration, cathedrals of learning. They provide a forum for discussion and debate in which new ideas and minority opinions can be considered. The purpose is to expose students to the breadth of views and ideas that exist in their particular discipline and ideally challenge their worldview – allowing them to argue back. On campus, in the classroom – not on a social media platform.
It is always difficult to know what impact these debates and issues are having on campus. How safe academics feel to push the boundaries of their areas of specialism and how secure students feel to question and debate on campus – to ask the unpalatable question, to challenge the status quo. But in the midst of the current gloom and misery I am choosing to take a little bit of hope from a recently published survey.
The National Student Survey from the Office of Students would suggest that this endemic attack on free speech is not as pervasive as we sometimes believe it to be. They asked students from colleges and universities in England how free they felt to express their “ideas, opinions, and beliefs” and 86% said that they felt “free” or “very free”. Only 3% of the 300,000 respondents said that they felt they were ‘not free at all.”
On the face of it, this is good news. We should welcome the fact that an overwhelming number of students feel free to speak their mind and share their opinions. Self censorship is a real problem but not one, it seems, that plagues the majority of today’s students.
But we must ask the 3% why they don’t feel free at all to express themselves on campus. is it threats from external forces like the Chinese Communist Party, is it because of their identity or faith, or is it because they themselves hold minority opinions and are fearful of being challenged. Whatever the reason, 9,000 students who participated in this survey feel silenced. We need to know why and we need to find a way to support them.
In the interim I’m going to focus on the positive and celebrate the fact that we start from a position of academic freedom and that the overwhelming majority of students know that they can express themselves on campus without fear or favour.
23 Jun 21 | News and features, United Kingdom
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- Leading experts brand government’s Online Safety Bill “catastrophic” at press conference today
- Members including David Davis MP, Ruth Smeeth and Gavin Millar QC launch the ‘Legal to Say. Legal to Type.’ campaign to scrutinise and push back against the proposed bill
- The proposed bill as it stands will “likely be challenged in the courts” for breaching right to freedom of speech
- New report warns that the “Duty of Care” model outlined in the Bill will see perfectly legal posts from ordinary people blocked online and turns Ofcom into a free speech “super regulator”
- Anger as the new law does NOT punish the abusers who post harmful content online but instead outsources internet policing to Silicon Valley
London, UK – A coalition of experts including David Davis MP, Index on Censorship chief executive Ruth Smeeth, and Gavin Millar QC savaged the government’s proposed Online Safety Bill today, branding it “catastrophic” for freedom of speech as they launched the ‘Legal to Say. Legal to Type.’ campaign to scrutinise and push back against the bill.
The emergency session was called by the group of leading experts to warn the public that the bill will create two tiers of free speech online: free speech for journalists and politicians, and censorship for ordinary citizens.
A new report from Index On Censorship launched at the conference warns that the bill’s introduction of the “Duty of Care model” which comes from Health and Safety legislation is overly simplistic. The new rule would force tech platforms to delete posts that are legal under laws passed by Parliament but considered “harmful”. The bill does not define what is and is not “harmful”, the group says this will result in many perfectly legal posts from ordinary people being banned online. The bill effectively outsources internet policing from the police, courts and Parliament to Silicon Valley.
Legal expert Gavin Millar QC deems the Duty of Care framework will enable vast amounts of speech online to be deleted – and suggests it will likely be challenged in the courts.
While the bill’s aim of ensuring platforms remove illegal images of child sexual abuse, terrorist material and content which incites racial hatred and violence from screens is welcomed by the group, its members today criticised the government’s bill for actually making it harder for law enforcement to properly hold online abusers accountable. The bill forces platforms to delete valuable evidence before the victims of targeted harassment or threats to kill can see the criminal content and ensure it is reported to the police.
In its current form, the legislation protects trolls, making them feel safer to abuse online because the platforms are punished for hosting the harmful content as opposed to the people who create it. Members of the coalition are demanding the government puts criminals behind bars rather than simply deleting their posts. The group also raises concerns about the bill potentially resulting in an increase in popularity of the ‘dark web’, which the Online Safety Bill does not cover.
The Index on Censorship report criticises the role of Ofcom as the final adjudicator as highly problematic and could lead to the over-censorship of free speech by the Silicon Valley giants as they attempt to avoid huge fines. As the report notes, since the abolition of press licensing in 1695, people in England have been free to publish ideas without direct government interference. By turning Ofcom into a “super regulator” of free speech, the government is imposing a state regulator over the written word for the first time in over 300 years. In place of a formal court process to deal with potentially illegal publication, instead Ofcom will be given new powers in the Online Safety Bill to fine technology companies for allowing content to be posted that is perfectly legal, but thought to be “harmful” by Ofcom. The definition of “harmful” is open to interpretation and the group is concerned this could be used to regulate ideas that people in the UK should be free to express. The fines that Ofcom will be able to levy will be eye-watering, with the potential fines as high as 10% of turnover. The report by Index on Censorship notes there will be a commercial incentive to over-censor, to remove content once deemed as perfectly acceptable, as to defend free speech online could cause significant financial risk.
The group have expressed fears that black and ethnic minority Britons will be censored by Artificial Intelligence that doesn’t understand the nuances of human language – especially when it comes to irony loving Brits. For example a 2019 study by Washington University found that tweets from African-American users were two times more likely to be labeled as offensive than tweets from other users.
Ruth Smeeth, Chief Executive at Index on Censorship states:
“The Government’s bill is catastrophic for freedom of speech. It’s plan to force tech platforms to delete “harmful” content or face big fines will lead to many legal posts being deleted. At Index on Censorship we work with people across the globe who are being censored by oppressive regimes. It might not be the UK Government’s intention but this bill sets a worrying international precedent. Dictators around the world will be taking notes. Also as someone who has experienced online abuse, I am dismayed that the bill would force platforms to delete offending comments. These comments are vital evidence for law enforcement and will make it harder for the authorities to catch people who actually break the law online.”
Rt Hon David Davis MP states:
“The Online Safety Bill is a Censor’s Charter. Lobby groups will be able to push social networks to take down content they view as not politically correct, even though the content is legal. The idea we should force Silicon Valley companies to police Briton’s speech online, seems out of Orwell’s 1984, and is not what our voters expect of us.”
Gavin Millar QC states:
“The bill proposed by the government is likely to lead to perfectly legal speech being removed from the internet and it seems inevitable that this will be challenged in the courts.
The scale of the task given to platforms, and the vagueness of wording in the legislation will force broad “technical” solutions to content moderation – such as overly restrictive algorithms which will make decisions without context, nuance and an understanding of our laws and culture. This could lead to large quantities of content being blocked wrongly.
Judgments that should be reserved for UK prosecutors and the courts will be outsourced to global tech companies.
As someone who has undertaken many free speech missions for international organisations to countries with repressive free speech regimes such as China, Turkey, Azerbaijan there is a real risk that this legislation, if passed, will be used to justify repressive measures aimed at closing down free speech on the internet in these countries.”
Jim Killock, Chief Executive at Open Rights Group states:
“Outsourcing decision making around free speech to Silicon Valley and taking away this responsibility from the UK’s Parliament and Courts would be a huge mistake. The threat of colossal fines or even jail time for Directors will cause tech platforms to overreact, prompting them to remove content that is perfectly legal. Worse still, politicians and journalists are opted out of the law, creating an unhealthy two-tier system online.”
-ENDS-
Notes to Editors
For more information please contact:
[email protected]
Or [email protected] / 07596 177849
About ‘Legal to Say. Legal to Type.’
The ‘Legal to Say. Legal to Type.’ campaign is calling on the government to table amendments and ensure the internet is kept “free, open and secure”. The assembly consists of notable experts including:
- Ruth Smeeth, Chief Executive at Index on Censorship
- Jim Killock, Chief Executive at Open Rights Group
- David Davis MP, Member of Parliament for Haltemprice and Howden
- Gavin Millar QC, Barrister at Matrix Chambers
- Graham Smith, Of Counsel, Bird & Bird LLP
- Penelope Gibbs, Founder and Chief Executive, Transform Justice
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14 May 21 | Opinion, Ruth's blog, United Kingdom
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”116759″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][vc_column_text]As a political obsessive, I love the Queen’s Speech in the British Parliament. It marks the beginning of the new parliamentary session. It is uniquely British with all the expected pomp and ceremony and a significant amount of pageantry. But most importantly it is a restatement of our democratic values and processes. It also sets the agenda for the year ahead and makes clear what the Government is prioritising. And unfortunately, this year there were significant concerns for those of us who care about free speech.
The Queen outlined the government’s agenda and on the face of it who could object to an Online Safety Bill or a Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill or even a Counter State Threats Bill. But, as ever, the devil is in the detail and the detail for too many of the British government’s proposals seems to have many, what I can only hope are unintended, consequences.
The draft Online Safety Bill proposes not only the establishment of a new category of unlawful speech in the UK – legal but harmful – but it also proposes outsourcing the regulation of free speech in the UK to Silicon Valley. Most concerningly there is no provision outlined which will let us know how much content has been removed – or even what has been removed. On the face of it, that might not seem that important but how would a victim know if they were vulnerable? How will police prosecute hate crime? And how we will be able to analyse how much of a threat to free speech this bill has become, if we have no idea of how much is deleted. The Government has suggested that they will fine companies for deleting too much content but there is no provision outlined which would allow them to assess the scale.
The Academic Freedom Bill will establish a ‘free speech champion’ to ensure that free speech protections are enacted on campus, but this week the Government couldn’t answer whether this would empower Holocaust deniers to speak on campus – or stop them. What’s likely to happen instead is that academic institutions will be so concerned about the fear of a fine or bad publicity that they will stop speakers attending campus full stop – the ultimate chilling effect.
These are just two examples of why Index has such significant concerns of the direction that government is taking on free speech.
To be clear, Index supports any and all efforts to protect our collective right to free speech across the globe and we expect the British government to take a global leadership role in defending Article 19. But what we’ve seen in this year’s Queen’s Speech does not give us hope – rather it seems to be a systematic assault on free expression by the British government, under the auspices of protecting free speech.
I am a former legislator; I know that you cannot, and you should not try to legislate culture or language – it will have the opposite effect. People won’t want to engage and our public spaces will become free of debate and challenge. We deserve so much better. Going forward we will seek to work with the British government to introduce additional protections for free speech, we must use our voice to protect yours.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][three_column_post title=”You may also want to read” category_id=”41669″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
26 Feb 21 | Opinion, Ruth's blog, United Kingdom
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”116315″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][vc_column_text]Legal but harmful speech – what does it even mean and why is every government body so insistent that the best way to deal with hate is to legislate against it?
So, you may guess from my tone that I am getting a little irked. There seems to be a pattern emerging in the UK, that rather than genuinely tackling some of the thornier issues–we’re seeing calls for more laws and regulations as the quick fix. Seemingly so people can say they are doing something, anything, rather than tackle the root causes of the problems at hand.
This week was a case in point. Building on the Government’s plans to create a new designation of unacceptable language for our online conversations in the Online Safety Bill – legal but harmful – we saw yet more headlines outlining the latest initiative from a well-intentioned quasi-government body seeking legislation to regulate speech in order to protect us from extremists.
The Centre for Countering Extremism published a paper calling for a new legal framework to tackle extremism – or rather extremist language which is creating an environment conducive to building new extremist groups. In principle, this is something that is difficult to knock and I have huge admiration for many of the people involved, but this is a slippery slope.
Let me be clear. I am not suggesting (nor would I ever) that all is well in our online world. It isn’t – there are too many examples of toxic abuse. Political and ideological extremism seems to be on the march; bullying, trolling, hate speech and threats are becoming far too normalised online. I should know, after all I still seem to attract a little too much of it…
But the question is can you or even should you regulate speech. Would that even work? Is regulation going to make people be nicer to each other online – or is there something more sinister at play that we need to focus our efforts on. As Taylor Swift said “haters gonna hate”.
So surely the real challenge here is how we balance dealing with the minority who choose to incite hatred and create a toxic environment which is attacking our very value system without undermining one of our basic fundamental rights – free speech.
Reaching for the statute book as a legislator is the easy option – politicians can say they have done something – even if that something hasn’t fixed the problem. They can point at a law and say job done. But let’s be honest, you can’t legislate culture and you can’t regulate language and nor should we be trying to.
People aren’t stupid, extremists aren’t stupid, recruiters to terror groups aren’t stupid – they are abhorrent, evil and wrong – and while some may not be that bright, the most effective tend not to be stupid.
If you change the law to restrict what they can and can’t say – all they will do is moderate their language, introduce coded phrases and push extremism into spaces that can’t be monitored. Suppression of language simply will not defeat the dangerous ideology at play. But what you will have done is create an environment where certain communities feel that they can’t speak at all – a chilling effect which will both create martyrs and undermine community cohesion.
Moving the line of legality will simply result in extremists developing a new vocabulary to achieve the same outcomes as they did before. And then we enter a dangerous period of cat and mouse where restrictions become even tighter, ensnaring legitimate debate and discussion in order to catch those purveyors of hate.
Someone famous once said, “Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime” and that mantra should be the starting point for any government on this issue. I have always said that speech should be free but not free of consequences.
The penalty for incitement should be severe – severe enough to be a deterrent but, and it’s a big but, the same level of resource, if not more, should be used to meet the continually emerging challenges of political extremism through education, engagement and community investment.
Empowering people to challenge hate speech and building a society where debate is celebrated but extremism is rightly ostracized. I know that for many that may be a naïve aspiration – but the alternative is a world where silence becomes the norm – because speech is too difficult.
Postscript. Just a note to thank Hannah who, in between doing her schoolwork yesterday, helped type my blog this week.
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