Daily Archives: May 18, 2023

Updated on May 16, 2023, at 5:31 p.m. ET

Since the earliest days of the war in Ukraine, much of the Western world has become squeamish about Russian art. Tchaikovsky would not be played. Russian literature was kept high on the shelf. Moscows famous Bolshoi Ballet was disinvited from touring abroad.

Such boycotts have only increased in intensity, and in ways that demonstrate how wartime assaults on freedom can ripple far outside the conflict zonewhere the sound of war is not that of bombs detonating but of piercing silence. Now the impulse to censor anyone Russian has arrived in the United States, at a venue that is designed toof all thingschampion and promote freedom of speech and expression: PEN Americas annual World Voices festival. It has also led, quite precipitously, to the writer Masha Gessens decision to resign as the vice president of PENs board of directors.

This past Saturday, as part of the festival, Gessen was set to moderate a panel showcasing writers in exile, two of them, like Gessen, Russian-born authors who had left their country in disgust. But a day before the event, ticket holders received an email saying that because of unforeseen circumstances the panel had been canceled. Their money would be refunded. No other explanation was offered and any trace of the event disappeared from PENs program online.

A small delegation of Ukrainian writers, who participated in a panel planned for the same day as the canceled Gessen event, had declared they could not attend a festival that included Russians. Because two of the writers, Artem Chapeye and Artem Chekh, are active-duty soldiers in the Ukrainian army, they argued that there were legal and ethical restrictions against their participation. Chapeye, a writer whose short story The Ukraine was recently published in The New Yorker, texted with me from a bus on his way back to Ukraine. He didnt see himself as having boycotted the Russians. It was simply that their presence was incompatible with his. The Russian participants decided to cancel their event themselves because we as active soldiers were not able to participate under the same umbrella, he wrote.

Chapeye said he couldnt make distinctions between good Russians and bad Russians in this case. Until the war ends, he wrote to me, a soldier can not be seen with the good Russians.

I spoke with Suzanne Nossel, the CEO of PEN, who described the events of recent days as a tough situation, in which the Ukrainians presented themselves as being imperiled if they took part. Nossel told me shed offered to have Gessens event take place under different auspices, not the World Voices festival, though at the same venue and at the same time. But in the end, as she put it, that was not an option.

To Gessen, it was abundantly clear that PEN had been blackmailed by the Ukrainians. And while Gessen empathized with the Ukrainians position and their cause, the proposed rebranding of the event seemed absurd. I felt like I was being asked to tell these people that because theyre Russians they cant sit at the big table; they have to sit at the little table off to the side, Gessen told me. Which felt distasteful.

The organization, Gessen said, had already tried to anticipate certain sensitivities. The notion, for example, of doing any kind of Russian-Ukrainian dialogue was out of the question. Gessen understood that this would be akin to implying moral equivalency when one side is clearly the aggressor. For this reason, the two events were kept separate. For Ukrainians, who point out that Russia has been trying to extinguish their national identity for centuries, the war has been a chance to assert on an international stage that their voices need to be heard. Gessen was aware of how this urge had been expressed elsewhere in the literary world. Just a few days before, at a literary festival in Estonia, a Ukrainian writer, Olena Huseinova, had conveyed her distress at the presence of a Russian-born poet, writing an open letter suggesting what she would do in her place: I find myself compelled to confess that were I to embody a Russian poet, my tongue and my language would sink into a weighty stillness, as if lifeless and bereft of motion deep within me. Probably, nowhere else would I belong, except within this silence and void. The Russian poet was put on a plane and sent home from the festival.

Gessen, who uses they/them pronouns, said they could understand Ukrainians acting in this way. After all, the Ukrainians country had been invaded, hundreds of thousands of their fellow citizens brutally murderedthe desire to be cruel to Russians was perfectly comprehensible. But Gessen expected a different response from PEN.

Its up to people whose country hasnt been invaded, whose relatives havent been disappeared, whose houses are not being bombed, to say there are certain things we dont dowe dont silence people, Gessen said. Were a freedom-of-expression organization. Im not blaming the Ukrainians for this.

I cant look my Russian colleagues in the eye, they added. I cant serve on the board when I feel like this organization did something that it shouldnt do.

Its not the first time that PEN has struggled with the question of how to balance a commitment to freedom of speech with other political pressures. The incident brings to mind a protest in 2015 from a couple dozen writers, including Joyce Carol Oates and Francine Prose, who took issue with PENs decision to give a free-speech award to Charlie Hebdo. The satirical French magazine had been the target of a terrorist attack that left 12 people dead and 11 more injured. But the dissenting writers didnt think it was right to award a publication that had caricatured Muslims. There is a critical difference between staunchly supporting expression that violates the acceptable, and enthusiastically rewarding such expression, read the writers letter. The suggestion was that free speech should be supportedincluding Charlie Hebdos anarchic expressions of disdain toward organized religionjust not always so loudly. In the end, PEN stood by its award, presenting it to the surviving Charlie Hebdo editors, who were protected by armed guards.

Gessen said there is a lot of debate internally at PEN about the boundaries of free speech, and does not personally identify as a free-speech absolutist. We regulate speech in this country all the time, Gessen said. We could have a much more meaningful discussion if we accepted that we regulate speech and talked about why and how we do it.

The problem in this instance was that the decision to sideline the Russian participants came not as the result of deliberation, but rather in response to an ultimatum delivered by the Ukrainians, one that left no room for debate. In the end the Russian presence appeared as if it were a stain that had to be quickly covered up. Even if the panel remained on the website with a canceled stamp on it or something, even that would be less tragic than what happened, Gessen said. But to just have it vanish? Its almost a literal silencing.

For PEN leadership, the entire situation felt untenable, Ayad Akhtar, the president of PENs board, told me. The decision was made on the basis of certain human considerations, he said. Had we made the decision on the basis of principle, it would have meant a human cost that we certainly didnt want to pay at this particular moment given whats going on in Ukraine.

But when asked about Gessens resignation, Akhtar simply sighed. Its a big loss for us, he said. A big loss.

Read more here:
Masha Gessen Resigns in Protest From PEN America Board - The Atlantic

Fox News host Jesse Watters calls out censorship of Americans on "Jesse Watters Primetime."

JESSE WATTERS: Not everything's about money except on CNBC. On CNBC, everything is about money. Censoring the laptop, the lab leak was all about money. Follow the money all the way to China. Now, here's a concept that maybe CNBC can understand. You can have money and free speech. You guys ever think of that? You can have both. Now, I know CNBC usually interviews CEOs that, you know, if they think they could make a billion dollars they'd rip their own vocal cords out. But Elon Musk isn't a traditional CEO.

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Musk is like an advanced technology developer. He's a product genius, a software creator. His brain doesn't worry about what everybody else thinks. He doesn't have the time for that. Plus, Musk made so much money, he doesn't care. Hedoesn't have to hold his tongue to keep his wealth. Now, the problem with the United States right now is that the more truth you tell or the bolder you are, the more you put your money at risk. Not everybody has the luxury of free speech anymore. Cancel culture killed it.

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Now, everybody won't be able to make enough money to speak freely. Okay, I accept that. So, we need to take the mob out, get our voices back and Elon speaks for all of us. Kind of like Trump did before he got censored. Biden's lost his mind, Soros is a villain and the last election wasn't that fair. Everybody knows it, but a lot of people would rather be rich liars thanhonest and broke. But that's a choice we shouldn't have to make and thankfully, Elon Musk is breaking us out of that box.

Originally posted here:
JESSE WATTERS: Not everybody has the luxury of free speech anymore - Fox News

In no way has Musk shown a genuine commitment to free speech, even as he continues to pay lip service to the concept. And his decision over the weekend to censor tweets in Turkey may have been his most egregious violation yet. Pressed by Substacker Matt Yglesias on Saturday, Musk responded in a typically petulantand revealingfashion. Did your brain fall out of your head, Yglesias? he tweeted. The choice is have Twitter throttled in its entirety or limit access to some tweets. Which one do you want?

Its obvious which one Musk wants, but the choice here is far from obvious. Musk could have dared Erdoan to block Twitter entirely in Turkey. If Erdoan had blinked, then Musk would have looked noble for once. If Erdoan instead blocked Twitter, at least his supporters and opponents would have been silenced equallyand such a move would have made his authoritarianism even clearer to voters.

Musk also argued that, well, everyone complies with these requestsand that he was, in fact, being more transparent than his peers. This is par for the course for all Internet companieswe are just going to be clear that its happening, unlike the others, he tweeted. Except thats really not the case. In 2014, Erdoans government blocked access to Twitter after it refused requests to censor accounts in the lead-up to local elections. Twitter responded by telling users how to circumvent the ban; access was ultimately restored two weeks later, after an uproar.

View post:
Elon Musk Doesn't Care About Free Speech - The New Republic

A bill that seeks to address conservatives concerns about what they say is a lack of free speech on college campuses has passed the Ohio Senate. Supporters say the bill will ensure theres intellectual diversity, especially around controversial issues that are identified in the measure. Opponents say its an assault on academic freedom.

The bill was voted out of committee just a few hours earlier, as protestors with black tape over their mouths sat silent in the hearing room.

The bill's sponsor, Sen. Jerry Cirino (R-Kirtland), said Senate Bill 83 will change the direction of higher education in Ohio.

If we do not act now, I fear we will continue down the path of servitude to a woke agenda from which there may be no return," Cirino said in arguing for the bill on the Senate floor.

The bill has sparked protests and drew more than 500 people to submit or sign-up to give testimony most of it against the bill in a hearing that went for more than seven hours last month. Cirino noted the stir the bill has caused and said, "This bill isn't even law yet but it's already served as an agent of change."

The bill bans most mandatory diversity, equity and inclusion training except when related to accreditation, licensing and grants. It prohibits faculty strikes and ideological "litmus tests" in hiring and admissions. It bans universities from taking public positions on controversial topics, though they can lobby lawmakers on issues. It clarifies that the ban on financial partnerships with China doesnt include tuition from Chinese students. And it says no topics are banned, but faculty must allow intellectual diversity to be expressed on specific "controversial issues identified as "climate policies, electoral politics, foreign policy, diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, immigration policy, marriage, or abortion."

Republicans have been supportive of the bill. Sen. Rob McColley (R-Napoleon) cited a study from a conservative academic journal that showed the ranks of self-identified liberal-leaning faculty are growing while conservative-leaning faculty numbers are shrinking. McColley said the bill re-centers free speech on students over faculty and creates a non-biased environment, saying "the classroom is becoming forum for the political weaponization by the left."

But Democrats are outraged. Sen. Bill DeMora (D-Columbus) said Senate Bill 83 will stifle free speech, hurt diversity, and drive away good professors and students to other states. He said it's also "an assault on workers' rights" because it bans faculty and workers from striking. And DeMora recalled the last law that made big changes to collective bargaining for public employees Senate Bill 5 was overwhelmingly overturned by voters in 2011.

Minority Leader Nickie Antonio (D-Lakewood) said there haven't been many "culture war" bills in the Senate, but "this bill brings that to an end." She noted one required reading in the bill is "Letter from Birmingham Jail" by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., but said the bill prohibits professors from talking about racism and why he was in jail in the first place. And Antonio said shes heard conservatives embrace the free market, "but yet the General Assembly would come in and micromanage higher education to this level?

Three Republican senators joined all seven Democrats in voting against the bill: Bill Blessing (R-Colerain Township), Nathan Manning (R-North Ridgeville) and Michele Reynolds (R-Canal Winchester). It now goes to the Republican-dominated House.

A similar measure, House Bill 151, has been proposed by Reps. Steve Demetriou (R-Bainbridge Township) and Josh Williams (R-Oregon). Its nine co-sponsors are some of the most conservative Republicans in the House.

The rest is here:
Republican bill regarding 'free speech' on college campuses passes ... - The Statehouse News Bureau

To the Editor:

In its May 2 article entitled A decade later: a split legacy for Eisgruber, the Daily Princetonian erred in saying that Edward Yingling 70 and Stuart Taylor 70, co-founders of Princetonians for Free Speech (PFS) argued that Eisgrubers decision to fire then-professor Joshua Katz would destroy Princetons acclaimed free speech rule making the free speech rule one that would protect only a small subset of the speech that the rules language and intent clearly do protect.

In fact, this was a Yingling-Taylor criticism not of President Eisgruber, but of a December 7, 2021 letter-ruling by Vice Provost for Institutional Equity and Diversity Michele Minter, which removes Rule 1.1.3s protection from almost all instances of harassment for speech. Minter, in consultation with then-Vice President for Human Resources Lianne Sullivan-Crowley, found explicitly (and absurdly) that University harassment policy protects speakers like Katz from harassment or abuse only if it is based on a protected characteristic of the speaker (such as race, creed, color, or sex) despite the fact that Rule 1.1.3 does not even contain the words protected characteristic.

Eisgruber left the Minter letter-ruling in place, saying nothing for months about mounting criticisms by national free speech groups and others, including PFS, of his administrations treatment of Katz including the portrayal of Katz as a racist by Princeton administrators both on a University website in a presentation called To Be Known and Heard and in the 2021 freshman orientation over an article that the latter wrote in July 2020, which very strongly criticized the Black Justice League. The Black Justice League was a group of students that was active on campus from around 2014 to 2016.

Then, on March 27, 2022, Professor of Politics Keith Whittington wrote Eisgruber a strongly worded open letter on behalf of the Academic Freedom Alliance, a diverse coalition of faculty members from across the country. Whittingtons letter said that professors should not have to anticipate that the university administration will place members of its faculty in the pillory as an object lesson for each class of entering students to learn where the boundaries of acceptable speech can be found. In Eisgrubers public response four days later, he stated that University staff members enjoy free speech rights along with other members of our community and refused the AFAs request that Princeton delete (censor) from its official website his subordinates use of University resources to smear Katz as racist.

The website was shown to the Class of 2025 during its mandatory orientation. The smears remain on the website, alongside this statement: President Eisgruber condemned the words used by Katz, stating, While free speech permits students and faculty to make arguments that are bold, provocative, or even offensive, we all have an obligation to exercise that right responsibly. Eisgruber said that in July 2020. He also admitted that Katzs words were protected by Princetons free speech rule. Katz has said publicly that Eisgruber knew then that the words used by Katz were accurate.

Eisgrubers response to Whittington, and his similar responses to criticisms by Professor of Mathematics Sergiu Klainerman and others, plus the never-revoked Minter letter-ruling, mean that the Eisgruber administration has quietly eviscerated the free speech rule that Eisgruber claims to support.

Edward Yingling 70 and Stuart Taylor, Jr. 70 are co-founders of Princetonians for Free Speech.

Link:
Letter to the Editor: Eisgruber's administration has quietly ... - The Daily Princetonian

Our newJournal of Free Speech Law is faculty-edited, but we'd love to have help from students with cite-checking. Our American law professor authors generally have their own research assistants do that, but some of our authors are from outside the U.S., and some are practitioners or professors in other fields; for them, we do offer cite-checking. We publish both electronically and in print, and we've already published many articles, with many more in the pipeline.

If you'd like to join our team of Production Editors (this is the title we give, on our site and in our print issues), please e-mail me at volokh@law.ucla.edu. In particular, we'll need several people who can work on several articles over the next few weeks.

As you might gather from the job description, one thing we need is attention to detail. If your mind just absorbs information from written text, and doesn't bother you by alerting you to typos in citations and quotes, then this will be a frustrating task for you. On the other hand, if errors just jump off the page at you as you read, you'd be perfect.

See original here:
Law Students: Interested in Helping With the Journal of Free Speech ... - Reason

Why has the Royal Society of Chemistry published a 37 page opinion piece entitled Academic free speech or right-wing grievance? in their new journal Digital Discovery?

Digital Discovery publishes theoretical and experimental research at the intersection of chemistry, materials science and biotechnology focusing on the development and application of machine learning. So it is a little surprising for them to publish a piece that argues that those who wish to have an honest debate about the limits around freedom of speech need to engage that conversation in a manner that avoids resonance with the language of White (heterosexual, cisgender male) supremacy, lest their arguments provide intellectual cover to those who would attack historically marginalised communities.

Why have they published an entirely derivative, factually inaccurate opinion piece, in a journal dedicated to an entirely unrelated topic

The article has nothing new to say about chemistry, but disappointingly it has little new to say about academic free speech either. The authors central argument that free speech should not mean freedom from consequences echoes a quotation often attributed to Idi Amin that there is freedom of speech, but I cannot guarantee freedom after speech. However, Amin is one of the few people not cited in the articles staggering 713 bibliographic references.

The author, Prof John Herbert, an ostensibly white male physical chemist at Ohio State University does not propose imprisoning those whose speech offends him. However, he does acknowledge that some of the protests directed at feminist academic Kathleen Stock might be characterised as harassment but then goes on to argue that a competing viewpoint is that one should not expect outspoken bigotry to be met with polite debate. Unfortunately, it seems that, despite the 37 pages in which to put his argument and the 713 references he had studied, Herbert was unable to include an actual quotation from Stock to justify any accusations of outspoken bigotry.

Herberts article would also have benefitted from some fact and sanity checking. He asserts that 18 states have banned transgender athletes from participating in youth sports, when one might think such a well-read researcher would know that all these states have done is bar males from participating in the female category. In all these states, transwomen enjoy the same sporting opportunities as other males. In his discussion of Stocks case, Herbert fails to mention UK anti-discrimination law which outlaws harassment on the basis of gender-critical belief, yet this is surely something the reader might want to bear in mind before petitioning universities to investigate scholarship that undermines trans identities.

So why have the Royal Society of Chemistry decided to publish an article about academic free speech and identity politics in a journal that one would expect to be dedicated to science?

A partial answer to this is that science does not exist in a vacuum. It is entirely proper for a science journal to contain the occasional opinion piece discussing political matters related to science. Identity politics is relevant to science because of equalities efforts to ensure that minority groups are properly treated in research and education. Moreover, the Royal Society of Chemistry made it essential for chemists to start discussing free speech by publishing controversial new guidance on offensive or inappropriate content in journal articles which banned anything that might reasonably offend someone on the basis of their religious or political beliefs.

So the question should not be why the Royal Society of Chemistry published an opinion piece. Instead, the question should be why they have published an entirely derivative, factually inaccurate opinion piece, in a journal dedicated to an entirely unrelated topic. Particularly so when the opinion piece is ten times the recommended length for opinion pieces in that journal and when the opinion piece might be understood as endorsing harassment.

This is where we finally get to some science. I hypothesized that the reason the Royal Society of Chemistry might publish such an article was that Herbert was already acquainted with the journals editor in chief Aln Aspuru-Guzik. To test my hypothesis, I searched for collaborations between the two. I discovered that they had co-authored an opinion piece for the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters entitled Words matter: On the debate over free speech, inclusivity, and academic excellence. This was consistent with my hypothesis.

Despite its manifold flaws, Herberts article does contain some valid observations. One is that we do not have as many female or black scientists in academia as we should. Scientists have a duty to investigate the causes of such disparities and to consider what steps we may need to take to remedy them.

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Herbert puts forward one possible explanation of such disparities. He notes that it is hard to hear the phrase merit-based hiring as anything but a dog-whistle whose real meaning is to encourage a process that protects existing power structures and sees such an approach to hiring as a form of ambient White supremacy.

However, I would like to put forward an alternative hypothesis: is it conceivable that the advantages accruing to white males in university science departments are not due to ambient White supremacy as such but simply good old-fashioned nepotism?

Read the original post:
What the Royal Society of Chemistry gets wrong about free speech - The Spectator

HYDE-SMITH, COTTON INTRODUCE BILL TO PROTECT FREE SPEECH ON COLLEGE CAMPUSES

WASHINGTON, D.C. U.S. Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.) on Wednesday joined forces with U.S. Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) in introducing legislation to protect the First Amendment rights of students at public universities from unconstitutional speech codes and so-called free speech zones.

The Campus Free Speech Restoration Act (S.1511), includes provisions to assure free speech rights at public and private nonreligious institutions, in addition to creating a U.S. Department of Education review process and legal cause of action in federal court.

Its baffling that so many Americans accept the fact that colleges and universities, including some of the most elite in the nation, willingly suppress free speech, Hyde-Smith said. Our First Amendment rights are at the foundation of what makes our democracy unique, and I fully support this measure to restore free speech rights on college campuses across the country.

Too many of Americas public colleges have attacked the First Amendment rights of their students using so-called free speech zones and unconstitutional speech codes. This bill fights back against campus censors in order to defend open debate and free speech, which lead us to truth, said Cotton.

Additional original cosponsors include Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and U.S. Senators Steve Daines (R-Mont.), Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), Mike Braun (R-Ind.), Katie Britt (R-Ala.), Rick Scott (R-Fla.), Ted Budd (R-N.C.), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), and Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) cosponsored the legislation.

S.1511 would:

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HYDE-SMITH, COTTON INTRODUCE BILL TO PROTECT FREE ... - Cindy Hyde-Smith