[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”100370″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][vc_column_text]Written by: Che Applewhaite, Samantha Chambers, Claire Kopsky and Sarah Wu
Survivors of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida, have been making headlines lately with their calls for more American students to help them change the country’s gun laws. Their right to protest and petition politicians is enshrined in their right to free expression under the First Amendment.
It is clear that the US student body — whether at high school or college — is conflicted over the issue of free expression and what is or isn’t acceptable speech. While some recent surveys and studies show attitudes to be generally supportive of freedom of expression as an important right, in practice this isn’t always the case.
At this vital moment, students around the USA should see why free speech is so vital on their campuses, whether high school or university and what they have to lose if they won’t fight for it.
“Free speech must apply to everyone — even those whose views we find objectionable — or it applies to no one,” says Jodie Ginsberg, CEO of Index on Censorship. “Only by being able to express themselves freely and honestly, and also being exposed to as wide a range of viewpoints as possible can these get the most out of their education.”
In the past, the usefulness of free speech as part of such a campaign was much less in dispute. Martin Luther King Jr’s speeches and the student movements of the 1960s, which together changed a generation, relied on this very freedom. A lot of demonstrations today seem more geared towards the suppression of speech, such as those targeting conservative and alt-right voices like Milo Yiannopoulos at Berkeley and Richard Spencer at Michigan State University.
Students from four US universities weigh in on the issue and tell Index what is fair game on campus and what isn’t.
(Not) talking about race
The University of Missouri, colloquially known as a Mizzou and described as a “liberal student body in a red state”, is no stranger to racial tension. In 2015 the school saw protests by its football team and a graduate student go on hunger strike as part of a campaign to have the school’s president resign after mishandling racial issues on campus. This was followed by a drop in freshman enrollment and funding to the school.
Evan Lachnit, who studies journalism and sports at Mizzou, says that there are certain topics that, in the current political climate, are often too hot to touch. “As it relates to history, if there is one subject everyone appears to walk-on eggshells around, it would be slavery, one of, if not the largest, scars in American history,” he says. “It’s something many will just avoid altogether.”
The issue of “hate speech” — including speech considered to be insulting to a particular race — at Mizzou prompted the University of Missouri Police Department issued a campus-wide email asking “individuals who witness incidents of hateful and/or hurtful speech” to call them “immediately”. The police admit that “cases of hateful and hurtful speech are not crimes”, leaving many to wonder why they feel this is an issue the force should be concerned with.
“There is no question that a great deal of ‘hateful and/or hurtful speech’ is protected by the First Amendment, and that punishing students whose speech is determined to meet such a troublingly vague and subjective standard will violate students’ constitutional rights,” Fire, an organisation that campaigns for individual rights in higher education, said in a letter to the school’s chancellor, R. Bowen Loftin. “It is crucial that students be able to carry out such debates without fear that giving offence will result in being reported to the police and referred for discipline by the university.”
Sophie Kissinger, a senior studying history at Harvard University, claims that the ways in which her subject was taught in the past limits knowledge of American slavery today. Recently gifted a 1926 Harvard syllabus that outlines the core requirements for a history student at the time, she notices the document’s “neglect of the oppressed”. “These narratives largely serve to perpetuate a system of erasure, reinforcing colonial ideologies and degrading the lives of oppressed peoples,” she says. “This erasure is all around us today: only 8% of high school senior can identify slavery as the central cause of the Civil War and most don’t know an amendment to the US Constitution formally ended slavery”.
Over at Villanova University, Emily Bouley, a junior studying business and psychology, says that privilege can be tricky to discuss because “everyone has different definitions of what privileged means”.
One topic in particular that’s likely to receive backlash, Bouley says, is affirmative action, those measures that are intended to end and correct the effects of a specific form of discrimination. “One time my professor was really passionate about racism against white males in job selection since there are more programs aimed towards diversity now than ever before, which is great, but sometimes candidates will get chosen because they are of a minority,” Bouley says. “Often this isn’t the case, but I felt so uncomfortable sharing my opinion because yes it happens and doesn’t support equality but it’s very hard to argue without sounding racist.”
Thanksgiving rule on campus: no politics
Located in the fifth most liberal city in America as ranked by Forbes, Boston University students are aware of the politically left-leaning environment they live in. But as with the family dinner table at Thanksgiving, heated conversation about politics is discouraged on campus.
According to the school’s policies, students must not “impose” offensive or upsetting views on others. Nicole Hoey, a junior studying journalism and English at the school, says the overwhelming liberal majority, though welcoming of opposing ideas, has a tendency to silence conservative voices through the sheer volume of liberal students. “As a journalist, free speech is so important,” Hoey says. “And for the most part, BU does a good job at promoting free speech on campus.”
“But I think people who voted for Trump would feel more frightened to speak their minds because we’re so liberal,” Hoey adds. “I think the only time they would feel safe is if they’re in College Republicans”.
International studies major at the University of San Francisco Adule Dajani notes that “professors make their political views known pretty discreetly”. As a left-leaning school in a democratic state, Dajani says that USF professors try to remain unbiased by “talking about both the pros and cons of an issue”. However, she finds the conduct of the classroom facilitated by professors to be the main silencer for those in the minority side on any debate. “I can see how someone would feel too uncomfortable to speak up because the students are hotheads,” she says.
Candace Korasick, a professor at the school’s department of sociology at Mizzou, says her classes often tackle difficult issues, but there are some too controversial to discuss. “There are topics that I once would have broached in a class that I, not avoid, but now don’t initiate. And if students initiate them, I feel as if I’m tiptoeing through a minefield,” Korasick explains. “The two topics that I’d rather avoid are abortion and the Confederate flag. It is difficult to have a conversation with more than one or two students at a time on issues like that.”
Journalism and business student Nina Ruhe says topics like race, sexual assault and political beliefs are ones professors handle with “delicacy” on a surface level. For her, that’s a shame because it means she’s not getting any depth of knowledge on these topics as part of her education.
“While doing this allows the educators to say they’ve covered the issues and say that they’ve taken part in these important discussions, they also don’t go deep enough as to letting there be any real form of discussion,” Ruhe says. “Unfortunately, when I have heard of educators that have attempted to go into in-depth conversations about these topics, they are shut down by complaints from parents or superiors and are forced to stop.”
The right to freedom of expression and the right to peaceful protest are crucial in a democracy – and crucial to any success the students of Parkland may have in changing America’s gun laws. They must be in no doubt that it a right that is on their side.
Later this year Index on Censorship will release a report on the freedom of speech on campus[/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:1526388582695-a56b5824-ce86-7″ taxonomies=”8843″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”Close down freedom of expression for those you don’t like and you turn them into freedom-of-expression heroes, writes Jodie Ginsberg
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This year marks the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the two-day attack on Jews in Germany. Crystal Night – a glittering name for an evil event – was so dubbed because of the shards of glass that littered the streets after synagogues and Jewish-owned shops and buildings were attacked. Scores of people were killed and tens of thousands of Jews were subsequently incarcerated.
In the decades since the end of World War II, such mass demonstrations of fascism have been rare, but it is chilling to consider Kristallnacht in the light of the 60,000 neo-Nazis who marched openly through Warsaw in November 2017, or the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, USA, earlier in the year in which a counter-protester was killed.
As white supremacists become more visible, and vocal, demands have grown for those who espouse such views to be silenced. And as that happens, the band of people who champion freedom of speech for everyone – regardless of their views – diminishes. The far-right have stepped into that gap, with devastating consequences for free speech and for those who (genuinely) advocate it.
Let’s be clear about this: The far-right are not in favour of free speech. The far-right – the likes of Richard Spencer, who leads a US white supremacist think tank – are in favour of protecting the speech of their own interest group, not the speech of those who oppose them, nor those whose human rights – and very existence – they openly challenge.
But calls from their opponents for Spencer or controversial columnist Katie Hopkins to be silenced has allowed these individuals to set themselves up as the champions and protectors of free speech. And when the only public advocates for free speech are a bunch of neo-Nazis, who wants to defend free speech as a principle?
We must push back. Freedom of expression is a freedom that benefits everybody. The First Amendment is what allowed not only the Unite the Right movement to march in Charlottesville, but gave the thousands of opponents who turned out to vocally oppose the march the chance to do so publicly. Once you accept the principle that only certain voices can be heard, it can be applied to your voice just as easily.
The narrative that suggests publicising the views of the far-right leads directly to much wider violence is steeped in popular narratives, primarily around the Holocaust and the belief that the public airing of such views led directly to Kristallnacht and the subsequent horrors of Nazi Germany.
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_icon icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left” color=”custom” align=”right” custom_color=”#dd3333″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_custom_heading text=”Joseph Goebbels, Theodor Fritsch and Julius Streicher were all prosecuted for anti-Semitic speech” google_fonts=”font_family:Libre%20Baskerville%3Aregular%2Citalic%2C700|font_style:400%20italic%3A400%3Aitalic”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
But as prominent Danish journalist and editor Flemming Rose has said, this is based on false assumptions. People argue that if only the Weimar government had clamped down on the National Socialists’ verbal persecution of the Jews in the years prior to Hitler’s rise to power, then the Holocaust would never have happened.
Rose, who famously published cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in 2005 when he was culture editor of Danish daily newspaper Jyllands-Posten, said:
“Contrary to what most people think, Weimar Germany did have hate-speech laws, and they were applied quite frequently. The assertion that Nazi propaganda played a significant role in mobilising anti-Jewish sentiment is, of course, irrefutable. But to claim that the Holocaust could have been prevented if only anti-Semitic speech and Nazi propaganda had been banned has little basis in reality. Leading Nazis such as Joseph Goebbels, Theodor Fritsch and Julius Streicher were all prosecuted for anti-Semitic speech.
“Pre-Hitler Germany had laws very much like the anti-hate laws of today, and they were enforced with some vigour.”
Trevor Phillips, founding chair, Equality and Human Rights Commission, said at the Battle of Ideas in London 2017: “What we have learnt in the last 150 years is that, ultimately, freedom of expression is the last and only defence of the minority in any society. When they have taken away everything else from you… the last thing they can take away is your voice. That was true about Sojourner Truth, it was true about the slaves in the Caribbean, it was true about the Jews in Europe. People can take everything away from you, what they cannot do, ultimately, unless physically, physically they obliterate you is take away your ability to express your pain, anger, frustration. So the defence of free speech on the grounds that it is somehow an offence to minorities simply flies in the face of every piece of human experience.”
Increasingly, though, I hear the argument that by allowing free speech we benefit only the powerful. That it is a tool that enriches only the privileged. That it is the armour which empowers the far-right and precedes violence, and that, therefore, we must curtail speech to protect those who are persecuted.
This ignores what a powerful and essential tool freedom of expression has been in freedom movements over the centuries: its role in the US civil rights movement of the 1960s or the drive for women’s rights, gay and lesbian rights and religious tolerance.
If we want to counter the persistent and growing narrative that free speech only benefits the privileged, and the far-right, we must raise up those voices who argue the contrary.
Index works with hundreds of writers, artists and campaigners who have experienced persecution as the minority and whose freedom of expression has been repeatedly curtailed. Atheists in Bangladesh who face death for voicing their views in an increasingly hardline Muslim state; political opponents in Bahrain tortured and jailed for criticising the government; gays in Uganda hounded for expressing their sexuality.
These are the voices we need to raise when people celebrate the value of denying speech to those with whom they disagree.
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”From the Archives”][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”89095″ img_size=”213×300″ alignment=”center” onclick=”custom_link” link=”http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0306422013481709″][vc_custom_heading text=”What it means” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:24|text_align:left” link=”url:http%3A%2F%2Fjournals.sagepub.com%2Fdoi%2Fpdf%2F10.1177%2F0306422013481709|||”][vc_column_text]March 2013
Why does free expression matter? Journalists, artists and activists talk to Index about what free speech means to them.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”91052″ img_size=”213×300″ alignment=”center” onclick=”custom_link” link=”http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03064227508532452″][vc_custom_heading text=”Striking a balance” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:24|text_align:left” link=”url:http%3A%2F%2Fjournals.sagepub.com%2Fdoi%2Fpdf%2F10.1080%2F03064229208535375|||”][vc_column_text]July 1992
Helen Darbishire believes protecting victims of bigotry from verbal abuse is more likely to drive prejudice underground than to stamp it out.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”89174″ img_size=”213×300″ alignment=”center” onclick=”custom_link” link=”http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03064220802306838″][vc_custom_heading text=”Free speech for all” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:24|text_align:left” link=”url:http%3A%2F%2Fjournals.sagepub.com%2Fdoi%2Fpdf%2F10.1080%2F03064220802306838|||”][vc_column_text]August 2008
Aryeh Neier recalls landmark First Amendment case and believes hate speech will take place but will be countered in an effective form.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row content_placement=”top”][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_custom_heading text=”What price protest?” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:24|text_align:left” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.indexoncensorship.org%2F2017%2F12%2Fwhat-price-protest%2F|||”][vc_column_text]In homage to the 50th anniversary of 1968, the year the world took to the streets, the winter 2017 issue of Index on Censorship magazine looks at all aspects related to protest.
With: Micah White, Ariel Dorfman, Robert McCrum[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”96747″ img_size=”medium” alignment=”center” onclick=”custom_link” link=”https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2017/12/what-price-protest/”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″ css=”.vc_custom_1481888488328{padding-bottom: 50px !important;}”][vc_custom_heading text=”Subscribe” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:24|text_align:left” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.indexoncensorship.org%2Fsubscribe%2F|||”][vc_column_text]In print, online. In your mailbox, on your iPad.
Subscription options from £18 or just £1.49 in the App Store for a digital issue.
Every subscriber helps support Index on Censorship’s projects around the world.
Because if you’re an artist, you never know where you’ll go.
Because you need a personal identity number to send a package.
Because an IP address is not a perfect proxy for someone’s physical location, but it is close.
Because I do most of my research online.
Because there hasn’t been a proper rain in California in over three years, and this year may be the driest in the last half millenium.
Because the burning of fossil fuels is destroying our atmosphere.
Because persistent cookies are stored on the hard drive of a computer until they are manually deleted or until they expire, which can take months or years.
Because tracking cookies are commonly used as ways to compile long-term records of individuals’ browsing histories.
Because server farms require massive amounts of energy.
Because the friend who wanted to send the email “Photos from Taksim Square” couldn’t until she changed the subject to “Paris Vacation Photos”.
Because the line between “public” and “private” is tenuous at best.
Because the ACLU is doing its best.
Because a webcam’s images might be intercepted without a user’s consent.
Because a surveillance program code named “Optic Nerve” was revealed to have compiled and stored still images from Yahoo webcam chats in bulk in Great Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters’ databases with help from the United States’ National Security Agency, and to be using them for experiments in automated facial recognition.
Because it’s sketchy to be a Communist.
Because the Defending Dissent Foundation is all kinds of busy.
Because the U.S. army actively targeted nonviolent antiwar protestors in Washington in 2007.
Because I saw it on Dronstagram.
Because everything will or might end up on the internet.
Because the internet is a wormhole full of parasites.
Because I am trying to connect all of the dots.
Because free speech is a tinted mirror.
Because all mediated information is processed, edited, and altered.
Because Wally Shawn had to bring his play to Glenn Greenwald since the journalist who broke the story about Edward Snowden can’t return to the United States.
Because the author risked his freedom and physical security for the truth.
Because artistic solidarity is framed as criminal complicity.
Because how could I forget that language is always political?
Because Chelsea Manning is still being misgendered.
Because the personal is always political.
Because it’s not just the major political players.
Because of the metadata collection.
Because a local surveillance hub may start out combining video camera feeds with data from license plate readers, but once you have the platform running, police departments could plug in new features, such as social media scanners.
Because the Domain Awareness Center’s focus has been not on violent crime, but on political protests.
Because the collapse of the economy and the devastation of the environment are two sides of the same coin.
Because of the NSA’s presence at UN climate talks.
Because of the vested interests in the oil industry.
Because tell me something I don’t know.
Because my personal information is probably being used not just for advertising purposes.
Because despite Facebook’s rights and permissions policies, I still want to share with my friends.
Because Pussy Riot was imprisoned.
Because the Trans-Pacific Partnership would rewrite rules on intellectual property enforcement, giving corporations the right to sue national governments if they passed any law, regulation, or court ruling interfering with a corporation’s expected future profits.
Because I don’t know who is making money off of my information.
Because Abstract Expressionism was funded by the CIA.
Because of the time-honored tradition of governments keeping tabs on artists.
Because we don’t want jobs, we want to live.
On a Saturday afternoon in June, a group of activists walked into a bank in Manhattan, New York, and staged a peaceful protest performance. The Church of Stop Shopping, led by Reverend Billy, were protesting at JP Chase Morgan and other banks’ investment in fossil fuel projects, which they say is unethical in the face of climate change.
Bill Talen, 63, the man behind Reverend Bill and the Church of Stop Shopping, has been staging this kind of action for a while. I interviewed him for New Humanist magazine in 2004, after a protest at a Starbuck’s in Camden, North London.
But now Bill and his colleague Nehemiah Luckett are facing charges of riot in the second degree and menacing in the third degree, for their JP Chase Morgan protest. The pair could end with one year in jail. For a peaceful protest. They are due to appear in court on 9 December.
It’s hard not to think of the fate of Russia’s Pussy Riot when writing about Reverend Billy. Both Pussy Riot and the Stop Shopping Choir have used similar tactics, staging peaceful performance protests right in what they would see as the belly of the beast. And both have been subjected to very harsh charges. Earlier this year, members of Pussy Riot told me they “had not planned for the extreme reaction from the authorities,” after they staged their “Punk Prayer” in Moscow’s Christ The Saviour Cathedral. Similarly, Reverend Billy, while accepting that arrest is an occupational hazard for a protester, has been surprised by the riot charge and the potential sentence. The difference is, of course, that we don’t expect this kind of thing to happen in the US.
This week I asked Billy about the protest, and his upcoming court case.
Index on Censorship: Can you tell us what happened at JP Morgan Chase?
Reverend Billy: We interrupted the very wealthy of upper Manhattan in their “wealth management” sessions. The sea of white people at walnut desks looked up to confront large flaming frogs leaping on their desks, handing out information about the impact of their fossil fuel investments. An Elvis impersonator narrated the event while the “Golden Toads” – an animal forced into extinction 30 years ago by climate change – harmonised and hopped. Under the toad costumes was the singing group called “The Stop Shopping Choir”.
IoC:What were you protesting about?
RB: Banks and big hedge funds are busy investing in fossil fuel projects around the world, making high profits, at precisely the point that the natural scientists – as in the 5th IPCC report from the United Nations – are telling us that all we can do to save ourselves and the planet as we recognize it today is to immediately stop gas, oil and coal.
IoC: Were you surprised to be arrested? Or is it just something you see as a risk of the job?
RB:Although I’ve been arrested many times, like most activists – you’re always surprised.
IoC: You’re potentially facing a year in jail. Have you ever had charges this harsh before?
RB:No – the most time I’ve served was three days in the Los Angeles County Jail. Usually I have the overnight stay.
IoC: Why do you think this has happened now, after years of activism? Just a quirk of the prosecutor? Something else?
RB: Stopping the business of the very rich is altogether different kettle of fish from our usual “nonviolent dramatic action” – which is often in parks, lobbies, between cars in traffic jams, on the Staten Island Ferry, etc.
IoC: How do you intend to fight the charge?
RB: The “Necessity Defense” – which means that if someone is drawing a gun on us to kill us, we have the right to grab them and disarms them. I have the right to commit a minor crime to prevent a great crime that no other presiding authority can prevent. No presiding authority is dealing with climate change. Governments in the West and China – are committed to their deadly gradualism, controlled by fossil cartels.
IoC: How do you think this charge squares with your first amendment rights?
RB: The First Amendment has been under systematic attack in New York City for 20 years, under the leadership of Rudolf Giuliani and Mike Bloomberg, their police and courts. The right to express in public space is besieged by permits and police, and overwhelmed by corporate expression – advertising in myriad forms, from the glowing gadget in the hand to the 80 foot tall Kate Moss looking at me like we just made love. We must reclaim freedom of expression, and we believe that this resurrection of extinct Golden Toads is the right drama. Earthalujah!
