Planet Insano Files Rant: Addressing Heterophobia and Fake Free Speech

By: Thyalwaysseek

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Planet Insano Files Rant: Addressing Heterophobia and Fake Free Speech - Video

The University of Oklahoma, which expelled two Sigma Alpha Epsilon members Tuesday for leading a racist chant, may have infringed on the students right to free speech, some legal experts said.

Two unidentified students were expelled Tuesday forplaying a "leadership role" in a racist chant by SAE brothers at theUniversity of Oklahoma, the university's president announced, following his orders Monday to ban the fraternity from campus and evict the members from the house.

"We will continue our investigation of all the students engaged in the singing of this chant," University President David Boren said in a statement, justifying the expulsionson the grounds that the chant had created a hostile environment for other students. "Once their identities have been confirmed, they will be subject to appropriate disciplinary action."

But at least two legal experts say the fraternitys racist song, although offensive, may be protected by the 1st Amendment.

The irony here is that [Boren is] arguing hes protecting the rights of some students while infringing on the 1st Amendment rights of other students, said Joey Senat, an associate professor who teaches media law at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater. The speech is offensive, the speech is abhorrent, but the 1st Amendment protects unpopular speech.

Eugene Volokh of the Volokh Conspiracy legal blog, agreed. Racist speech is constitutionally protected, just as is expression of other contemptible ideas; and universities may not discipline students based on their speech, Volokh wrote in the Washington Post.That has been the unanimous view of courts that have considered campus speech codes and other campus speech restrictions.

Joe Cohn, legislative and policy director of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a student legal advocacy group based in Philadelphia, called the comments "a plain, vanilla case of protected speech.

I think the university president is betting on the fact that the public won't care because of its distaste for racism, Cohn told The Los Angeles Times.

The expulsionswere the latest fallout from a viral video that emerged Sunday night showing members of the SAE fraternity singing an anti-black chant.

Boren almost immediately banned the SAE fraternity from campus after the video showed members singing "you can hang 'em from a tree" and"there will never be a [n-word] SAE" on a bus.

The rest is here:

University of Oklahoma expulsions may be speech infringement, experts say

Recent killings in Copenhagen and Paris have renewed an age-old debate: Should societies with vigorous traditions in free speech either adopt or strengthen laws against blasphemy?

At least a fifth of all the countries in the world maintain anti-blasphemy laws, according to the Pew Research Centerwhich include several Western European countries such as Denmark, Germany and Italy.

Read MoreJindal's brilliant take on radical Islam

Yet laws against offending the pious have been accompanied by increasing criticism about whether liberal democracies should even entertain them. Although some argue that blasphemy laws actually encourage zealotry, and feed the cycle of religious-inspired violence, international organizations like the United Nations have pushed to criminalize religious defamation.

Secular governments are attempting to grapple with "problems associated with terrorism and fundamentalism," Tomas Byrne, an author and attorney based in Stockholm told CNBC. "The question becomes, if states are trying to respondis there a way to keep the peace?"

Byrne, a native Canadian who was educated at the University of Oxford, worked as a lawyer and banker for 20 years in London. As it happens, the U.K. has become one of Europe's hottest crucibles in the debate betweencultural assimilation and strict interpretations of Islam.

"I don't think the context we have in western society are neutral concepts," said Byrne, who cited the "direct clash" that ensues when religious groups are confronted with speech they deem offensive.

"There's no way to dance around that. In places like Denmark and Germany they have tried to show tolerance by putting in place [blasphemy] lawsand if we live in a society where we want to choose between visions, we have to be able to risk causing offense," Byrne said, asking, "How effectively can you enforce tolerance?"

Freedom House, an independent freedom watchdog organization, wrote in a 2010 report that blasphemy laws "inevitably fail to address the issue of what exactly constitutes blasphemy, leaving enormous discretion in the hands of prosecutors, judges, and accusers who may be influenced by political or personal priorities."

In other words, regardless of how strict laws are preventing blasphemy, their application and interpretation can vary widely from country to country, and lead to dramatically different results. Pakistan, for instance, is notorious for tough enforcement against apostacyyet blasphemy accusations and retributions have surged there in recent years.

Originally posted here:

Can free speech and blasphemy live together?

The University of Oklahoma, which expelled two Sigma Alpha Epsilon members Tuesday for leading a racist chant, may have infringed on the students right to free speech, some legal experts said.

Two unidentified students were expelled Tuesday forplaying a "leadership role" in a racist chant by SAE brothers at theUniversity of Oklahoma, the university's president announced, following his orders Monday to ban the fraternity from campus and evict the members from the house.

"We will continue our investigation of all the students engaged in the singing of this chant," University President David Boren said in a statement, justifying the expulsionson the grounds that the chant had created a hostile environment for other students. "Once their identities have been confirmed, they will be subject to appropriate disciplinary action."

But at least two legal experts say the fraternitys racist song, although offensive, may be protected by the 1st Amendment.

The irony here is that [Boren is] arguing hes protecting the rights of some students while infringing on the 1st Amendment rights of other students, said Joey Senat, an associate professor who teaches media law at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater. The speech is offensive, the speech is abhorrent, but the 1st Amendment protects unpopular speech.

Eugene Volokh of the Volokh Conspiracy legal blog, agreed. Racist speech is constitutionally protected, just as is expression of other contemptible ideas; and universities may not discipline students based on their speech, Volokh wrote in the Washington Post.That has been the unanimous view of courts that have considered campus speech codes and other campus speech restrictions.

Joe Cohn, legislative and policy director of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a student legal advocacy group based in Philadelphia, called the comments "a plain, vanilla case of protected speech.

I think the university president is betting on the fact that the public won't care because of its distaste for racism, Cohn told The Los Angeles Times.

The expulsionswere the latest fallout from a viral video that emerged Sunday night showing members of the SAE fraternity singing an anti-black chant.

Boren almost immediately banned the SAE fraternity from campus after the video showed members singing "you can hang 'em from a tree" and"there will never be a [n-word] SAE" on a bus.

Read more:

University Oklahoma expulsions may be speech infringement, experts say

Recent killings in Copenhagen and Paris have renewed an age-old debate: Should societies with vigorous traditions in free speech either adopt or strengthen laws against blasphemy?

At least a fifth of all the countries in the world maintain anti-blasphemy laws, according to the Pew Research Centerwhich include several Western European countries such as Denmark, Germany and Italy.

Read MoreJindal's brilliant take on radical Islam

Yet laws against offending the pious have been accompanied by increasing criticism about whether liberal democracies should even entertain them. Although some argue that blasphemy laws actually encourage zealotry, and feed the cycle of religious-inspired violence, international organizations like the United Nations have pushed to criminalize religious defamation.

Secular governments are attempting to grapple with "problems associated with terrorism and fundamentalism," Tomas Byrne, an author and attorney based in Stockholm told CNBC. "The question becomes, if states are trying to respondis there a way to keep the peace?"

Byrne, a native Canadian who was educated at the University of Oxford, worked as a lawyer and banker for 20 years in London. As it happens, the U.K. has become one of Europe's hottest crucibles in the debate betweencultural assimilation and strict interpretations of Islam.

"I don't think the context we have in western society are neutral concepts," said Byrne, who cited the "direct clash" that ensues when religious groups are confronted with speech they deem offensive.

"There's no way to dance around that. In places like Denmark and Germany they have tried to show tolerance by putting in place [blasphemy] lawsand if we live in a society where we want to choose between visions, we have to be able to risk causing offense," Byrne said, asking, "How effectively can you enforce tolerance?"

Freedom House, an independent freedom watchdog organization, wrote in a 2010 report that blasphemy laws "inevitably fail to address the issue of what exactly constitutes blasphemy, leaving enormous discretion in the hands of prosecutors, judges, and accusers who may be influenced by political or personal priorities."

In other words, regardless of how strict laws are preventing blasphemy, their application and interpretation can vary widely from country to country, and lead to dramatically different results. Pakistan, for instance, is notorious for tough enforcement against apostacyyet blasphemy accusations and retributions have surged there in recent years.

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Can free speech, blasphemy coexist?

Steamboat Springs Saying derogatory things and offending one another is the foundation of the right to free speech, and that right is in jeopardy, according to Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute in Southern California.

People have a right to be despicable, and they have a right to free speech, said Brook, who will present Free Speech and the Battle for Western Culture at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday at Strings Music Pavilion.

What: "Free Speech and the Battle for Western Culture" with Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute

When: 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 11, with after-party from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m.

Where: Strings Music Pavillion, 900 Strings Road; after-party at Ghost Ranch, 56 Seventh Street

Cost: Free, with free entrance to after-party for those who attend (after-party only, $20)

Info: http://www.steamboatinst..., email info@steamboatins..., call 970-846-6013

Sponsored by The Steamboat Institute, the event is free to attend and those who do can also visit an after-party with Brook from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. at the Ghost Ranch.

The co-author of national bestseller Free Market Revolution, Brook is known for speaking around the world on topics including finance, economics, capitalism and Ayn Rand and her philosophy.

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Ayn Rand Institute director will discuss threat to free speech Wednesday

Last weekends shootings in Copenhagen are a test for Denmark. Its tempting to argue that Denmarks soft approach to dealing with radical Muslims has been found wanting. In truth, its the countrys conflicted approach to freedom of expression that demands closer scrutiny. In the wake of this years terror attacks on cartoonists who have mocked the Prophet Muhammad, what the West needs above all is clarity and simplicity in its policies dealing with integration and free speech.

As thousands of Danes laid flowers at the two sites where a lone gunman named by the local press as 22-year-old Omar Abdel Hamid El-Hussein shot a filmmaker and a synagogue guard and wounded several police officers, a few others brought their bouquets to the place cops shot El-Hussein himself. On that street in Norrebro, the area sometimes known in Copenhagen as Little Arabia, one of the mourners told Danish TV2 it was unfair that cartoonists were allowed to draw the prophet with a bomb on his head, while when a brother puts a smiley face on Facebook, hes a terrorist and he should be in prison.

This remark would ring true in France. After the deadly attack on the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo last month, the French government arrested 54 people for hate speech. The best-known of them, comedian Dieudonne Mbala Mbala, was recently ordered to pay a $37,000 fine for condoning terrorism in a Facebook post that appeared to express solidarity both with the terrorists and their victims. This was clear evidence that France was willing to tolerate and defend Muhammad cartoons, which offend most Muslims, but not anti-Semitism, of which Dieudonne has been repeatedly guilty, or public apologies for Islamist terror. The French attitude toward hate speech is thus unapologetically selective. People who point out the contradictions are treated to lengthy explanations about how blasphemy shouldnt be treated as hate speech in a secular country. Muslims might understandably reply that the offended party knows better whats offensive and what isnt.

Unlike France, Denmark has laws not only against hate speech but also against blasphemy. In several high-profile cases, however, the country has refused to apply them to anti-Muslim expression. When, in 2005, the newspaper Jyllands-Posten published 12 Muhammad cartoons, including one by Kurt Westergaard that depicted the prophet with a bomb on his head, Muslim organizations lodged a complaint with the prosecutors office but saw it dismissed on the grounds that the papers editorial freedom in matters of public interest justified the publication. Then, in 2012, the Supreme Court of Denmark acquitted Danish journalist Lars Hedegaard of hate speech. Hedegaard was initially ordered to pay a fine after a blogger reported that he had said that Islam permitted Muslim men to rape women. But he appealed the decision and the Supreme Court decided he was not guilty since he was not explicitly speaking for publication.

I can see how a Muslim might view these judicial decisions as unjust. On the other hand, the Danish government also doesnt prosecute radical Islamists for their beliefs (much less smiley faces on Facebook). In fact, it has the worlds mildest attitude toward fighters returning from Syrias battlefields. They arent prevented from entering the country; nor are they arrested, or even surveilled. Instead, they are offered public assistance to get job training.

Aarhus, the countrys second-biggest city, has 30 residents who fought in Syria, a third of the countrys total. A majority of them had attended a single radical mosque that openly supports Islamic State. Instead of closing it down or harassing its leaders, Danish police and local officials have been meeting with the returning fighters at the mosque to survey their feelings about being in Denmark again. The strategy has been to keep up a dialogue with the clerics and their flock to dissuade more people from going over to fight for the caliphate.

Denmarks approach to integration allows most people, regardless of their religion or heritage, to pursue their own preferred way of life. Residents of Denmark including Muslims generally appreciate this framework. In 2011, two Danish academics, Marco Goli and Shahamak Rezaei, conducted a survey to find out whether radical Islamist sentiment among young Muslims ages 15 to 30 was somehow correlated with the degree of their integration into Danish society. They found no meaningful connection: The 5.8 percent of their sample they identified as radical Islamists mostly spoke Danish at work or at school and had a higher proportion of Danish girlfriends and boyfriends than their less radicalized peers. The group was not overrepresented among the poor or educationally disadvantaged.

The radicals, however, appeared to be more sensitive to what they saw as discrimination, and they were more likely to have a history with the police. Goli and Rezaei could only conclude their stand was a matter of personal attitude and free choice, something for which the Danish culture has an ingrained respect. The results from this study while not supporting a link between migrant integration and radicalism do appear to be quite compatible with the core liberal (in the non-partisan sense of that term) notion that for the individual, integration is a right, but not an obligation, the researchers wrote.

Its understandable that attacks like those perpetrated by El-Hussein would give rise to discussions of how a country allowed them to happen. But I would argue that the Danish authorities did nothing wrong. No one would have benefited from more restrictions on Muslims, more police harassment, more attempts to force radicals to become assimilated or leave. A lone wolf terrorist can evade the most severe government dragnet.

In fact, Denmark would have done well to repeal its blasphemy and hate speech laws, since they are barely used against anyone, anyway. They only create confusion and suspicion, while a simple and clear policy of absolute freedom of speech would be easy to explain. (One could even evoke a quote from Sigmund Freud: The first human to loose an insult at his enemy rather than a weapon was the founder of civilization.)

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Free speech didnt cause Denmark tragedy

College campuses are supposed to be welcoming academic arenas where young people can discuss and argue ideas in a spirit of free and open inquiry.

But after a recent incident, in which Georgetown University safety personnel removed pro-choice protesters from a sidewalk adjoining the campus, student groups there are wondering how free they really are to express ideas.

In terms of promoting dialogue, the university could do a better job, said Caleb Younger, a junior and member of the universitys Georgetown Democrats. There is some aggression toward certain groups, and the university is put into a difficult position.

The incident helped the D.C.-based Jesuit-run university earn a dubious distinction this week: Georgetown was named one of 2014s 10 worst colleges for free speech by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), a nonprofit that advocates free speech and religious liberty in academic environments.

Our colleges and universities are supposed to be where students go to debate and explore new ideas, FIRE President Greg Lukianoff said in a statement. But too often on the modern college campus, students and their professors find their voices silenced by administrators who would rather they be absent from the often-contentious marketplace of ideas.

Patrick Coyle, vice president of the national organization Young Americans for Freedom, said that genuine dialogue is lacking on campuses across the country. He cited an incident at Penn State in which students werent allowed to distribute copies of the U.S. Constitution in the Student Center on Constitution Day.

The problem goes across the country. Universities are afraid of being challenged. Instead of challenging students with another event or speaker, they shut it down with bureaucratic maneuvers and tricks. It all goes back to political correctness. You go to a college to discuss various ideas, and some schools have a problem with that, Mr. Coyle said.

Georgetown officials restrict certain student activities to free speech zones, where spontaneous protest and speech of all kinds are allowed. One zone is popularly known as Red Square, and it sits in the center of campus.

We believe that our speech and expression policy is very appropriate for our campus community, said Rachel Pugh, the universitys senior director for strategic communications. [Our policy] offers students broad freedom of expression in keeping with our mission as a Catholic and Jesuit university.

The Speech and Expression Committee advises the vice president for student affairs on the universitys speech and expression policy. The panel provides education about the policy and decides whether it needs to be clarified or amended. The committee also reviews complaints, which can be referred to a sanctioning body.

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Georgetown fourth-worst college for free speech

BEIRUT, LEBANON

State censorship has long played a role in guiding the arts in Lebanon, where a permissive culture and a delicate sectarian balance come head to head.

In the face of what they complain are arbitrary clampdowns, though, some activists and playwrights are taking the fight for free speech to the courts. MARCH is a civil rights organization that works with playwrights whose scripts, it says, failed to make it through governments required approval process.

Using content from articles, blog posts and TV shows already online and uncensored, it submitted four plays that tackled some of the most taboo topics in Lebanon: politics, the countrys civil war, Zionism, religion and homosexuality.

Lea Baroudi, co-founder of MARCH, said the plays never made it past the censors. Now the group is launching a court appeal, and is campaigning to ensure that any decisions to ban or censor content are formalized.

A lot of people think there is no censorship in Lebanon, or that the laws are pretty correct, she said. What we wanted to show and prove is that the laws on censorship are completely arbitrary. All they do is oppress arts and culture in Lebanon, as the only people who suffer are the artists and play directors.

"The censorship is not even efficient, as the content we used could be found elsewhere. So if you are trying to protect communities, it is not working, said Baroudi. Danger of offending The deadly attack on staff at French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, thought to have been a response to depictions of the Prophet Muhammad, sparked widespread debate about the limits of free speech.

In Lebanon, more than a hundred gathered in central Beirut's Samir Kassir square - named after a Lebanese journalist killed by a car bomb in 2005 - in an act of solidarity and support for free speech.

However, others defend the role of censorship, insisting that free speech can go too far, given Lebanon's sectarian diversity and, especially, at a time of regional upheaval.

Baroudi argued the very concept of censorship, however, is often a misplaced one. Art is very cathartic and in our point of view this strategy of making everything taboo in order to please and appease every group and community is not making things better. Its making them worse and its building up the tensions.

Read more:

Lebanese Artists Battle State Censorship

Students Sound Off: Free Speech
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NET NEUTRALITY! Shutting down Free Speech
Same culprits over and over Are now throwing 196 mill$ into #39;securing #39; The Internet. They wanna regulate and censor it. H.Clinton said, #39;we #39;re loosing infowa...

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NET NEUTRALITY! Shutting down Free Speech - Video

Free Speech TV Ring of Fire featuring Howard Nations: GOP Mad Scientists Create A Disaster
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India bans film, UK defends #39;Free Speech #39;
Delhi Police Commissioner addressing on the Nirbhaya documentary. Will ensure blanket ban and will also take all necessary action says top cop. For Latest Breaking News, other top stories...

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TVC STOP CHRISTIAN BULLYING NOW - DEBUNKED
TVC talks about Christian bullying. He talks about his right and freedom to free speech being taken away when that #39;s not the case at all. Also, I give my idea on the whole christian persecution...

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TVC STOP CHRISTIAN BULLYING NOW - DEBUNKED - Video

Ezra Levant vs Noam Chomsky: Free Speech (Part 1 of 3)
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Campus Preaching Woman Argues With Police for Free Speech
March 6th my husband and I were preaching at San Marcos State in California. We had a great meeting going for a couple of hours and then the police approached me to turn the volume down. I...

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DAVID ICKE SQUELCHES FREE SPEECH!
I supported David Icke #39;s Free Speech startup channel, and he has many articles about free speech, but what do you know? I cannot have my free speech to analyze him for shapeshifting, without...

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Steve Cookseys fight for free-speech (N.C. editorial from the News & Record of Greensboro, reprinted in The Daily Reflector on Monday) ended in victory. Cooksey should not have been required by the N.C. Board of Dietetics/Nutrition to obtain a license for giving advice from personal experience on his blog. If in the end he was forced to obtain a license, it could mean that other U.S. citizens would have to obtain licenses for expressing opinions or giving advice.

As stated in the editorial, Cooksey did not claim to have professional credentials or to be a doctor or nutritionist. Forcing him to discontinue giving advice without a license invaded his free-speech right. The First Amendment of the Constitution states that Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech. Even though this amendment was ratified in 1791, it still applies today and should be upheld.

There have been many advances in technology and media since the First Amendment was ratified. Because of the Internet, what we say can have an impact on a greater number of people than in 1791. Even though times have changed and our amount of influence has grown, this law is still the law. It is right that the Board of Dietetics/Nutrition subsequently adopted new guidelines stating that people can give ordinary diet advice without a license. This was a constitutional decision.

AMANDA VERMIGLIO

Winterville

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Letter: Free speech upheld

They burn hot and bright. Right now, it is Angus that is feeling the heat. Last week, the Sunday Herald reported that one headteacher in Kirriemuir had pulled Black Watch off the Highers syllabus because it is "offensive". Parents are angry at the decision, and have demanded an explanation.

Freedom of expression does not just mean the freedom to write or say what you please, but also the freedom to read and to hear what you choose. The decision to remove Black Watch from the classroom curtails the right of the pupils to read and study one of Scotland's most culturally significant plays. Moreover, the essays that they have already written on the play will not be assessed.

It is entirely right that prominent figures in Scottish literature have written an open letter, urging the head to reverse her decision (in signing the letter they, too, are exercising their right to free speech). This decision may just affect one school, but that is enough to set a precedent. The free speech issues have been raised and must be debated before any more books are removed from shelves and school-bags.

It is particularly important that we challenge 'offence' as the justification for such decisions. If we do not, we run the risk that 'offence' becomes ingrained as a legitimate reason for censorship. We put a veto-power in the hands of whoever says they are upset. Offence, and its sibling, indecency, are the perennial free speech battleground in British society, and often it is literature over which we fight. Think of the fatwa issued against Salman Rushdie for The Satanic Verses; think of Mary Whitehouse's crusading legal actions against plays and poems that depicted homosexuality; think of Lady Chatterley's Lover, prosecuted for obscenity.

During the Chatterley trial, the prosecutor Mervyn Griffith-Jones was criticised for asking whether the book was something "you would wish your wife or servants to read". This paternalism is often at the heart of classroom censorship - the idea that the kids are too young to comprehend the subtleties of art. Scotland had this debate in the 1990s when Edwin Morgan's Stobhill sequence of poems, which depict rape and abortion, were the target of a campaign to have them banned from schools. Down in England, 'Education for Leisure', Carol Ann Duffy's chilling poem about a frustrated young man with a knife, was pulled from the GCSE textbooks after critics said it 'glorified' knife-crime.

The United States, where even the most parochial levels of government are highly politicised, has endured many battles over what books should be read by children. Since its publication in 1900, various public libraries and parents groups have sought to suppress The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and in recent years the Harry Potter series has been attacked because it promotes witchcraft. Another book that is frequently a source of contention is Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It is often described as the first great novel of American literature, and yet it also carries 219 instances of the N word. The characters that use it are undoubtedly racist by modern standards, but the book itself-the story of an escaped slave -is far more humane than the people it describes.

In Black Watch, the contentious word is 'c**t' which the characters use routinely. C-bombs are dropped into conversation with far more regularity than the sound of actual bombs falling on the Basra military compound where the play is set. Sometimes, the word seems benign, as if the soldiers think it is synonymous with 'man' or 'person'. But this is not always the case, and often it is deployed as an insult. The c-word has a sexist history and meaning and there is no escape from that legacy.

Worse, the characters talk constantly about various sex acts with the women they have met, and use derogatory language about gay men. There is no denying that the characters are offensive. Perhaps they will corrupt the morals of our young people? Will the swearing instil negative values in those who read and watch the play?

In all these attempts to shield young eyes from bad words-whether its Huckleberry Finn, or Black Watch-there sits an implication that children cannot grasp the full meaning of the text. For primary school children, there might be some merit to that argument, but it is patronising when applied to teenagers studying for Highers. Last year, 16 and 17 year-olds in Scotland were asked to vote on the complex question of Scottish Independence. To suggest that these same citizens cannot be trusted to read about characters doing offensive things, is just bizarre.

Moreover, drawing a distinction between what a character says in a play, and the playwright's message, is surely the very essence of literature studies. In a classroom, the offensive words are not presented alone, but within a highly specific context that a teacher must explain. Indeed, I would suggest that a school is the best place to uncover that context. Those who say that the kids can always read it at home if they want are denying them the chance of a deeper understanding of the play and the issues it raises.

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'The decision to remove Black Watch from the classroom curtails the right of pupils to study one of Scotland's most ...

JUMPIN #39; JUMM #39;AH FREE SPEECH!
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