24 Sep 2020 | News and features, United States
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”114982″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][vc_column_text]Ruth Bader Ginsburg did not set out to be an advocate for gender equality. Coming of age during the McCarthy Era of the 1950s, when freedom of speech and freedom of association were subject to intense scrutiny and repression in the United States, her initial goal was to uphold constitutional rights.
“There were brave lawyers who were standing up for those people [targeted by McCarthyism] and reminding our Senate, ‘Look at the Constitution, look at the very First Amendment. What does it say? It says we prize, above all else, the right to think, speak, to write, as we will, without Big Brother over our shoulders’,” she said in a 2011 interview. “My notion was, if lawyers can be helping us get back in touch without most basic values, that’s what I want to be.”
But as one of only nine female students in her 552-strong class at Harvard Law School, she quickly realised that she would face an uphill battle. This put her on track not only to become a feminist icon, but to become a voice for the few.
“Throughout her career she has not been afraid to push back against the power of the crowd when very few were ready for her to do so,” Index on Censorship magazine’s outgoing editor-in-chief Rachael Jolley wrote in her most recent editorial, not knowing then that RBG’s was to die the following week.
As a Supreme Court Judge, her dissenting opinions (which opposed the majority views that gave rise to judgements) became legendary. The fact that dissents do not carry the weight of the law did not dissuade Ginsburg from putting forward extensive opinions.
“Dissents speak to a future age,” she explained. “But the greatest dissents do become court opinions and gradually over time their views become the dominant view. So that’s the dissenter’s hope: that they are writing not for today, but for tomorrow.”
Ginsburg knew how to use her voice, but she also knew when to use it. “In every good marriage, it helps sometimes to be a little deaf,” she often told students, repeating the advice offered to her by her mother-in-law on her wedding day. It was advice that she followed assiduously, she said. “Reacting in anger or annoyance will not advance one’s ability to persuade.”
She often moulded her silences into thoughtful pauses. “This can be unnerving, especially at the Supreme Court, where silence only amplifies the sound of ticking clocks,” wrote Jeffrey Toobin, who profiled Ginsburg for the New Yorker in 2013. But her considered interludes likely amplified her voice too.
Ginsburg also understood how to express herself in other ways. In her later years at the Supreme Court she began to accessorize, wearing a golden flower-like crochet collar on days where she would announce a majority view, and a black beaded collar for dissents.
She apologised after criticising Donald Trump in July 2016, saying that as a judge her comments were “ill-advised” and that she would be “more circumspect” in the future. But her decision to wear her so-called “dissenting collar” the day after Trump’s election spoke volumes nonetheless.
Ginsburg’s respectful and dignified expression, her consensus-building approach, and her mission to uphold women’s rights, alongside other fundamental freedoms, made her an antidote to the Trump Era.
At a time when it seems so crucial, Ginsburg inspires us to choose our moment – and our words – carefully, and to stand up for those who need our support. And, when necessary, to fearlessly diverge and wear our dissent with purpose.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][three_column_post title=”You might also like to read” category_id=”581″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
26 Sep 2019 | News and features, United States
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_video link=”https://youtu.be/KSxDIAuOCdI”][vc_column_text]Libraries are often the first place children experience the joy of reading. But what happens when a community attempts to censor the collection so that it reflects just one worldview?
Courtney Kincaid, assistant library director at North Richland Hills Library, told her harrowing story of being at the frontline of a battle over books at her library in Texas, in which she was followed from her work and did not eat out for fear people would spit in her food.
All of this because the library stocked two children’s books.
Kincaid was speaking as part of the event Three Ways Librarians Can Combat Censorship, which was organised by Sage Publishing as part of Banned Books Week. Kincaid was joined by two other panellists, Molly Dettmann, a school librarian at Norman North High School in Oklahoma, and Adriene Lim, dean of libraries at the University of Maryland. It was chaired by deputy editor of Index on Censorship magazine Jemimah Steinfeld.
Kincaid said how in 2015 she was director of Hood County Library in Granbury, Texas, which she described as a ‘tea-party town’. When two children’s books, My Princess Boy by Cheryl Kilodavis and This Day in June by Gayle E. Pitman, were added to the shelves, a 21 week ordeal began for Kincaid as she defended the books against determined protestors.
Both books featured themes of diversity and acceptance of sexual difference, but were accused of promoting an LGBT lifestyle and perversion. Kincaid was faced with increasingly aggressive demands to remove the books. Some people wanted them burned. Kincaid said how she became a pariah in her town. She feared eating in restaurants in case people spat in her food. A state senator contacted her to admonish her for her fight to keep the books in the library. Kincaid attempted to reach a compromise by moving the books to the adult non-fiction section, but found this did not satisfy the protestors. She said: “They cared about their agenda and their agenda only, and it was anti-LGBT.” On 13 October 2015 the library won a legal battle for the books to remain.
Kincaid had since moved out of Granbury, Texas and was awarded for her efforts to protect the collection in Hood County Library with an I Love My Librarian award in 2015. She told the panel that the lesson she learned from her experience is to never try to find a middle ground with those attempting to censor. Her advice to librarians feeling pressure to self-censor: “Don’t be scared of what would happen. If you think your community needs a book, buy it. Stand your ground.”
Dettman, who herself is familiar with battles over which books should be on library shelves, highlighted her concerns over self-censorship which she said is widespread amongst librarians. She emphasised her belief that a school library should be a safe and welcoming place for all children and encouraged teachers to stock the library with an inclusive range of books. “Your kids deserve that so much. They need it, you have to remember that,” said Dettman.
She said books can transform lives, with it therefore being crucial to therefore have a library stocked with a very broad mix of books.
Lim spoke of when a mural was vandalised at the library in the University of Oregon when she was dean of libraries there. The mural depicted what Lim described as a white male supremacist narrative about the building of civilisation. Whilst not personally agreeing with the sentiment of the mural, Lim saw it as historical artefact and integral to the library’s original architectural design. She said that open and honest sharing of perspectives is a good thing because when voices are oppressed, when dialogues are shut down, “it is those with less power who will suffer the most.”
“If people pick and choose which historical perspectives can be displayed according to current values, where does that leave libraries?” Steinfeld added.
While the webinar was held as part of Banned Books Week, Dettman urged everyone to celebrate books and continue to fight against censorship in libraries throughout the year. “Don’t wait for Banned Books Week. Do it all the time,” she said. [/vc_column_text][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1569574933173-1fc994b1-338d-3″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
7 Jun 2018 | Events, Media Freedom, United States
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”100169″ img_size=”full”][vc_column_text]Media freedom in the United States of America has been under threat for several years, and the findings from an unprecedented mission to the US by leading human rights and media freedom organisations working on freedom of expression, reveals the true extent of the decline.
Over the last two decades, the situation has become steadily worse. Growing numbers of prosecutions against whistleblowers and journalists’ sources, attacks against and arrests of reporters covering protests, sweeping national security justifications to restrict public access to information, and border checks of journalists’ equipment, and an increasingly precarious economic situation for many news outlets, are among the pressing concerns that media workers relayed to the media freedom mission.
In our ever-shrinking globalised world, domestic policy is felt as keenly abroad as at home. That is why the impact of the decline in the US affects all of us. Our freedom to know, to criticise and to question those who hold power over us is reliant on the free flow of pluralistic and independent information.
How do we protect those freedoms?[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”Speakers” use_theme_fonts=”yes”][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”100677″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”100678″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”80210″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
When: Thu 14 Jun 2018, 6:00 – 8:00pm
Where: Free Word Centre, Clerkenwell, London EC1R 3GA, UK (Directions)
Tickets: Free. Registration required.
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
21 May 2018 | Digital Freedom, European Union, Germany, News and features, Russia, United States
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”85524″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center”][vc_column_text]For around six decades after WWII ideas, laws and institutions supporting free expression spread across borders globally. Ever more people were liberated from stifling censorship and repression. But in the past decade that development has reversed.
On April 12 Russian lawmakers in the State Duma completed the first reading of a new draft law on social media. Among other things the law requires social media platforms to remove illegal content within 24 hours or risk hefty fines. Sound familiar? If you think you’ve heard this story before it’s because the original draft was what Reporters Without Borders call a “copy-paste” version of the much criticized German Social Network law that went into effect earlier this year. But we can trace the origins back further.
In 2016 the EU-Commission and a number of big tech-firms including Facebook, Twitter and Google, agreed on a Code of Conduct under which these firms commit to removing illegal hate speech within 24 hours. In other words what happens in Brussels doesn’t stay in Brussels. It may spread to Berlin and end up in Moscow, transformed from a voluntary instrument aimed at defending Western democracies to a draconian law used to shore up a regime committed to disrupting Western democracies.
US President Donald Trump’s crusade against “fake news” may also have had serious consequences for press freedom. Because of the First Amendment’s robust protection of free expression Trump is largely powerless to weaponise his war against the “fake news media” and “enemies of the people” that most others refer to as “independent media”.
Yet many other citizens of the world cannot rely on the same degree of legal protection from thin-skinned political leaders eager to filter news and information. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has documented the highest ever number of journalists imprisoned for false news worldwide. And while 21 such cases may not sound catastrophic the message these arrests and convictions send is alarming. And soon more may follow. In April Malaysia criminalised the spread of “news, information, data and reports which is or are wholly or partly false”, with up to six years in prison. Already a Danish citizen has been convicted to one month’s imprisonment for a harmless YouTube video, and presidential candidate Mahathir Mohammed is also being investigated. Kenya is going down the same path with a draconian bill criminalising “false” or “fictitious” information. And while Robert Mueller is investigating whether Trump has been unduly influenced by Russian President Putin, it seems that Putin may well have been influenced by Trump. The above mentioned Russian draft social media law also includes an obligation to delete any “unverified publicly significant information presented as reliable information.” Taken into account the amount of pro-Kremlin propaganda espoused by Russian media such as RT and Sputnik, one can be certain that the definition of “unverified” will align closely with the interests of Putin and his cronies.
But even democracies have fallen for the temptation to define truth. France’s celebrated president Macron has promised to present a bill targeting false information by “to allow rapid blocking of the dissemination of fake news”. While the French initiative may be targeted at election periods it still does not accord well with a joint declaration issued by independent experts from international and regional organisations covering the UN, Europe, the Americans and Africa which stressed that “ general prohibitions on the dissemination of information based on vague and ambiguous ideas, including ‘false news’ or ‘non-objective information’, are incompatible with international standards for restrictions on freedom of expression”.
However, illiberal measures also travel from East to West. In 2012 Russia adopted a law requiring NGOs receiving funds from abroad and involved in “political activities” – a nebulous and all-encompassing term – to register as “foreign agents”. The law is a thinly veiled attempt to delegitimise civil society organisations that may shed critical light on the policies of Putin’s regime. It has affected everything from human rights groups, LGBT-activists and environmental organisations, who must choose between being branded as something akin to enemies of the state or abandon their work in Russia. As such it has strong appeal to other politicians who don’t appreciate a vibrant civil society with its inherent ecosystem of dissent and potential for social and political mobilisation.
One such politician is Victor Orban, prime minister of Hungary’s increasingly illiberal government. In 2017 Orban’s government did its own copy paste job adopting a law requiring NGOs receiving funds from abroad to register as “foreign supported”. A move which should be seen in the light of Orban’s obsession with eliminating the influence of anything or anyone remotely associated with the Hungarian-American philanthropist George Soros whose Open Society Foundation funds organisations promoting liberal and progressive values.
The cross-fertilisation of censorship between regime types and continents is part of the explanation why press freedom has been in retreat for more than a decade. In its recent 2018 World Press Freedom Index Reporters Without Borders identified “growing animosity towards journalists. Hostility towards the media, openly encouraged by political leaders, and the efforts of authoritarian regimes to export their vision of journalism pose a threat to democracies”. This is something borne out by the litany of of media freedom violations reported to Index on Censorship’s Mapping Media Freedom, which monitors 43 countries. In just the last four years, MMF has logged over 4,200 incidents — a staggering array of curbs on the press that range from physical assault to online threats and murders that have engulfed journalists.
Alarmingly Europe – the heartland of global democracy – has seen the worst regional setbacks in RSF’s index. This development shows that sacrificing free speech to guard against creeping authoritarianism is more likely to embolden than to defeat the enemies of the open society.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”100463″ img_size=”full” onclick=”custom_link” img_link_target=”_blank” link=”http://www.freespeechhistory.com”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]
A podcast on the history of free speech.
Why have kings, emperors, and governments killed and imprisoned people to shut them up? And why have countless people risked death and imprisonment to express their beliefs? Jacob Mchangama guides you through the history of free speech from the trial of Socrates to the Great Firewall.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”12″ style=”load-more” items_per_page=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1526895517975-5ae07ad7-7137-1″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
