Category Archives: Free Speech

Anne Arundel residents who attend County Council meetings are barred from carrying balloons, signs and banners in the legislative chambers. They're restricted to two minutes of testimony on a particular topic. And they can be removed from public meetings for disorderly behavior.

But when it comes to the content of their speech, how much can the government limit?

The question came to a head at last week's council meeting, when several citizens who had come to testify on an anti-racism resolution were told they could not talk about Councilman Michael Peroutka's former membership in a pro-secession group.

The decision, by Council Chairman John Grasso, R-Glen Burnie, sparked an immediate uproar. More than once, the chambers erupted into a shouting match between Grasso and citizens who disagreed with his ruling.

Grasso justified his stance by pointing to the council's rules of procedure, which include a section, 4-106, that prohibits "personal, defamatory or profane remarks" during meetings.

"We are here to talk about resolutions that Councilman (Pete) Smith put in and attacking other councilmen is not going to be permitted," he said. "If you want to talk about councilmen, you can do it on your own time, but not here."

Audience members countered that the comments were truthful and relevant to the broader conversation condemning racism.

Peroutka, R-Millersville, was criticized during the 2014 election cycle for his involvement with the League of the South, which has been labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

During the campaign, a 2012 video surfaced that showed him asking the crowd at a League of the South event to stand for the national anthem. He then played "Dixie," a song celebrating the South that became the anthem of the Confederacy during the Civil War. Peroutka later said the clip had been taken out of context.

In October 2014, Peroutka announced he had left the league because he disagreed with statements members made in opposition to interracial marriage. At the time, he said he had no problem with the group and still supported its stances on self-government and preserving Southern heritage.

Along with the rest of the council, he voted in favor of last week's anti-racism resolution.

Yasemin Jamison, who first broached the topic of Peroutka's League of the South links, said her intention was to ask the councilman "to publicly say the League of the South is a racist organization and apologize for his membership."

"He could have said, 'No, I refuse to do that.' That's his prerogative, that's his right," said Jamison, who is a constituent of Peroutka's and a founder of the progressive group Anne Arundel County Indivisible. "I did not defame anybody; I did not say anything negative about my Councilman Peroutka. This is my testimony and it is a fact that he was a member of the League of the South."

William Rowel, who also attended the meeting, defended Jamison when Grasso told her she couldn't talk about the League of the South.

In Anne Arundel County, he said in an interview a few days after the meeting, "you have policymakers with informed constituents."

"If anything, you would champion that; you would say, this is great, people know what's going on in their communities, in their county and they want access to it," Rowel said. "The fact that they would discourage that, that they would shame people for doing it it's wrong. There's really no other way of looking at it."

Jamison said she is considering taking legal action against the council for restricting her speech.

Grasso said he stands by his decision to bar the topic.

"They were leading into a personal attack and the speaker will not address personal attacks towards the body; that's the bottom line," he said. "It wasn't on the subject matter."

Grasso said he shut down League of the South remarks in an attempt to keep order and decorum in his chambers.

"That meeting had clear rules in my eyes," he said. "What my opinion is and what others think might be different, but I was voted the chairman ... I'm in charge of keeping the meeting moving. It's my opinion that counts, and if they don't agree, they can run for office."

Limitations

The law does allow for some restrictions to be placed on speech in government settings, though they must be narrowly tailored. County Council meetings fall under the category of a "designated public forum," created by the government to allow citizens to express themselves to public officials.

The council has for years limited individual testimony to two minutes. In 2013, council members amended their rules of procedure to ban visual displays in the chambers, to prohibit "personal, defamatory or profane remarks" or "loud, threatening and abusive language" and to require speakers to give their name, address and any organizational affiliations before testifying. Grasso voted against the changes at the time.

The rules give the council chair permission to remove anyone who violates them and to clear the entire chambers in order to restore order.

Residents have challenged those limitations in the past. A Glen Burnie woman was removed from a council meeting in 2012 after she went over the time limit for testimony.

Many of the limitations are practical, said Councilman Jerry Walker, R-Crofton, who was council chair when the rules were updated in 2013.

"We banned posters because they would block people's line of sight," he said. As for testimony, he added, "it's supposed to be on the resolution."

As tensions rose during last week's meeting, Councilman Chris Trumbauer, D-Annapolis, asked Grasso to read the rules in an effort to calm the room.

Trumbauer said he believes the rules are "somewhat open to interpretation."

"Free speech means you can say whatever you want and not be penalized for that," he said, but "we have rules because we have to conduct business."

In designated public forums, "the government has the right to restrict what is being said, based on the purpose of the forum," said Eric Easton, a professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law.

But officials have to be careful not to bar certain topics based on politics, he said: "What they can't do is limit the conversation to believers of one side only in a controversy. Any restrictions on public speech have to be viewpoint-neutral."

It's common for legislative bodies to make rules against personal attacks, Easton added, but "the problem comes in: is this nothing but a personal attack or is it germane to the subject?"

In the case of discussion surrounding the anti-racism resolution, if the public's comments "were on that subject, they at least have an arguable case that maybe their rights were being restricted," he said.

In the view of Mark Graber, a professor at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law, Grasso's decision to bar testimony on Peroutka's past was "a very, very clear violation of the First Amendment."

Graber held a First Amendment workshop for Anne Arundel County Indivisible members and others before the start of last week's council meeting.

He said an example of a personal comment would be calling a councilman "ugly."

In contrast, Graber said, testifiers "spoke on relevant topics."

And, several pointed out at the meeting and afterward, remarks about Peroutka's past League of the South membership cannot be defamatory if they are truthful.

It is particularly difficult for public officials to argue they have been defamed. In the landmark 1964 New York Times v. Sullivan case, the Supreme Court ruled that an official has to prove a person acted with "actual malice," meaning they knew a statement was false or they acted with reckless disregard of the truth when they uttered the alleged slander.

"This was a comment of, 'You belong to the following groups,'" Graber said. "You're a public official; the groups you belong to are a matter of public interest."

The county's Office of Law did not return a request for comment.

Without a ruling from a judge, there's not much citizens can do to challenge Grasso's interpretation, Easton said.

"The one interesting thing about the First Amendment is you're never sure until a court rules on the exact facts that you have," he said.

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Sparring over testimony leads to free speech debate - Capital Gazette - CapitalGazette.com

Students and professors at UCLA said they think conversations about controversial issues have become strained since the election of Donald Trump as president.

Vice Chancellor of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Jerry Kangs office said in an email statement that national political discourse has become polarized and that certain conservative and liberal groups are trying to chill, intimidate and silence those they disagree with.

Ian May, a member of Bruin Democrats and a second-year political science student, said he thinks college campuses need to work on being more tolerant of free speech. May said he did not like that protesters tried to prevent conservative Milo Yiannopoulos from speaking at UC Berkeley.

While theres a lot of things about Milo Yiannopoulos (that) I dont agree with, I dont think its in the best interest of the left to silence of his opinion, May said. I think we truly cant be able to grow as a community unless we get different perspectives into the argument.

May added he thinks debates are won through logical counterarguments, not ad hominem attacks.

Several professors said they think free speech is not well respected on college campuses.

Keith Fink, a lecturer in the communication studies department, said in an email he thinks many students do not want to debate and exchange ideas. He added there is no hate speech exception to the First Amendment, even on college campuses.

Fink said that in 1973, the Supreme Court found that a student handing out a controversial school newspaper was protected under the First Amendment.

The (court) held that the mere dissemination of ideas no matter how offensive to good taste on a state university campus may not be shut off in the name alone of conventions of decency, Fink said.

Eugene Volokh, a UCLA law professor, said the government generally cannot restrict speech because of its content, with exceptions such as true threats or incitement of imminent lawless conduct.

However, Volokh added speech is regulated according to context and is subject to restrictions in some places, such as campuses or classrooms.

If UCPD has a policy that any unauthorized posters are to be taken down, then you can enforce that policy, (because the) walls of the campus belongs to the university Volokh said. (However), UCPD cant go after people based on the messages they express.

Though Volokh said he thinks physical safety is important, he added no one is entitled to be protected from offensive ideas.

Ive heard people say they are entitled to be safe from ideas that they view as hostile to them because of their identity, (such as their) religion or sexual orientation, Volokh said. The First Amendment protects speech regardless of whether it makes people upset or offends people. Nobody is entitled to be safe from hearing offensive ideas.

Volokh added he thinks people should argue against ideas they think are wrong or offensive, instead of trying to get the university to punish them.

However hateful and pernicious an opinion may seem, we depend for its correction not on the conscience of judges and juries but on the competition of other ideas, Fink said.

Kangs office said UCLA has worked to promote an environment that values dialogue and campus discussions on current events through projects like CrossCheck Live, which features panels of scholars discussing national issues.

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Faculty, students talk free speech, entertaining controversial opinions - Daily Bruin

Theres a disagreement in the planning group, about inviting you, an organiser told me hesitantly during a phone call this spring to finalise the details of my speaking slot in a diversity-and-inclusion event, an event one would imagine would prioritise free speech and diversity of thought. I sighed and prepared to respond, knowing the objection to my participation likely had to do either with my post 9/11 writings, critical of the U.S. empire, or my more recent essays challenging the ideology of the transgender movement from a radical feminist position.

This time the problem was 9/11. One of the sponsoring groups preferred to pull out rather than be associated with an event that included me, a reaction that was common in the years following the terrorist attacks. The debate over transgenderism is a more recent source of contention and a current constraint on free speech. Earlier this spring, a talk I was scheduled to give was cancelled when someone objected and another talk was interrupted by protesters who hoped to shout me off the lectern.

These incidents are only a minor annoyance in my life, hardly worth attention except for what they reveal about the cultures difficulty engaging in coherent and constructive arguments about issues that generate strong emotions. The health of a democracy depends on free speech and on peoples ability to argue, to propose public policies and articulate reasons why others should adopt those policies. Democracy atrophies when substantive arguments are sidelined by dogma, when claims are asserted with self-righteous certainty but not defended with reason and logic. Theres nothing wrong with people being emotional about politics so long as it doesnt shut down dialogue.

After several months of furore over high-profile conservative speakers who hadbeen thwarted in some way on college campuses (Milo Yiannopoulos, Charles Murray, and Ann Coulter all made news this way), its illuminating to reflect on the far less dramatic challenges to my writing, which have come from both the right and the left. My focus is not on concerns about free speech my constitutionally protected freedom has never been significantly impeded but rather on the danger of a political culture in which critical self-reflection and thoughtful debate become more difficult, perhaps impossible in some times and places.

One of those times and places was post 9/11United States. Like many in the anti-empire movement a grassroots global justice movement challenging U.S. military and economic policy and demanding that policymakers take seriously our shared moral principles and international law I argued that a mad rush to war would be counterproductive. When an op-ed making such an argumentthat the United States consider a more rational course of action, and that we reflect on a history of U.S. crimes in the developing worldwas published in a Texas newspaper a few days after the attack, I was the target of an ad hoc campaign (thankfully, unsuccessful) to get me fired from my teaching job at the University of Texas at Austin.

A decade later, a series of online essays about the transgender movement (available here, here, here, and here) led to another similarcampaign to exclude me from left/liberal spaces because I argued that the intellectual claims of the trans movement appear to be incoherent and the political program that flows from it undermines feminism. Like many in the radical feminist movement who take such a position, I didnt contest the experiences that transgender people describe but offered an alternative analysis that I believe provides a more compelling account of sex/gender politics.

These two cases are dramatically different in many ways, of course, but some similar features deserve attention. Challenging the foundational mythology of the United Statesthe claim that we have always been the moral exemplar of the world and today are the only force that can ensure a safe and stable world systemprovokes a predictable reaction from most of the right and centre in U.S. politics, which has made acceptance of those myths a litmus test for being a good American. When one invokes history to challenge the myths, conservatives rarely attempt to engage in real debate, preferring to dismiss critics as the blame America first gang and label any debate over policy as a failure to support the troops.

Challenging the biological claims and underlying ideology of the transgender movement that reproduction-based sex categories are somehow an invention and that cultural gender norms can be challenged separate from a feminist critique of patriarchy provokes a predictable reaction from most of the liberal and left end of the political spectrum, which has made acceptance of those claims a litmus test for being progressive. When one invokes basic biology and a radical feminist critique of the transgender movements individualist gender politics, left/liberals rarely attempt to engage, preferring to dismiss critics as TERFs (trans-exclusionary radical feminists) and label any disagreement about policy as bigotry.

Because I work for a public university, I believe it is part of my job to take my research and teaching into public. Because Im a tenured professor, I can exercise my right to free speech and engage in public debates without much fear of losing my job. In public writing and speaking, I dont shy away from provocative statements when I believe they are justified by the evidence and are important to democratic dialogue I always strive to support the claims I make with evidence and logic.

I dont mind being criticised and I invite challenges to my ideas. Whats disturbing in both cases, however, is that I was routinely denounced as being morally and/or intellectually inadequate, but rarely did those denunciations include a response to what I actually was writing.

For months after 9/11, any critique of U.S. foreign policy was rejected out of hand, taken by many as evidence that critics were colluding with terrorists. It wasnt until the failure of the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq wasundeniably evident that such critiques were taken seriously, and even then the debate focused mainly on failed tactics rather than the fundamental question of why the United States pursues global power through imperial strategies.

Radical feminist critiques of transgender ideology continue to attract denunciations, especially after the Obama administration issued rules about transgender students rights, which seemed to settle what the liberal position should be. Conservative/religious objections to that policy have been widely debated and covered by journalists, but the more substantial analyses of radical feminists are largely ignored in the mainstream and vilified in left/liberal circles.

All of this is troubling, but even more disturbing for me has not been what wassaid in public but what people toldme privately. After 9/11, a number of faculty colleagues took me aside and told me that they thought the UT presidents denunciation of me was inappropriate, but only a couple of them spoke out publicly. The faculty council and the faculty committee charged with defending academic free speech were silent on the university presidents clumsy ad hominem attack on a professor.

Similarly, after a local radical bookstore issued a statement declaring me unfit for future association with the store, many left/feminist friends and allies told me privately that they disagreed with that decision, but, to the best of my knowledge, none of those people publicly challenged the stores statement. Rather than risk similar denunciation, people found it easier to say nothing.

Reasonable people can disagree respectfully about many things, including the appropriate analysis of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and how best to understand the claims of transgender people. But in a democracy, weighty public policy decisions such as going to war or endorsing the treating of trans-identified children with puberty blockers- should emerge from the widest possible conversation in which people provide reasons for their policy preferences and respond substantively to good-faith challenges.

If that process is derailed, whether by forces from the right or the left, the deterioration of responsible intellectual practice will only serve to undermine democracy. What good is the right to free speech if our current political and academic climate makes it impossible or dangerous to exercise it?

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Free Speech and Intellectual Witch-hunts: How Dogma Degrades Democracy - Conatus News

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

The disturbing ramblings uttered by Jeremy Joseph Christian as he entered thecourtroomMay 27 drew on a horrifying trend in America: Rallying behind the right to so-called free speech, both figuratively and literally, to justify white supremacy and its violent acts.

Get out if you dont like free speech, Christian said. You call it terrorism, I call it patriotism. You hear me? Die.

Christian, 35, was arraigned on charges of aggravated murderof Ricky John Best, 53, and Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche, 23. Both men were stabbed and killed by Christian on a Portland light-rail train when they tried todefendtwo young women Christian was harrasing with anti-Muslim slurs. Christian was charged with the attempted murder of athird stabbing victim, Micah Fletcher, 21, who survived and was present in the courtroom.

If there is a central theme to Christians ravings leading up to the attack, its his tendency to articulate a volatile synthesis of xenophobia, Islamophobia, and white supremacy,Jack Jenkins, a senior religion reporter at ThinkProgress, reportedthe day after Christians first court appearance.

In addition to calling for violence against Muslims on his Facebook page, Jenkins added, Christian reportedly attended a free speech rally in April, where he shouted the n-word at protesters and offered up Nazi salutes.

According to Willamette Week, Christian arrived at an April 29 free speech march in Southeast Portland wearing a Revolutionary War flag as a cape. He carried a baseball bat. He threw Nazi salutes and shouted racial slurs in a Burger King parking lot. Twice, left-wing demonstrators grew so infuriated with his antics that Portland police officers formed a barrier to shield him.

Even the alt-right marchers were divided on Christians behavior.

Some of them, leather-clad bikers, told him to shut up and tried to kick him out of the rally, added Willamette Week reporterCorey Pein. Others seemed fine with him expressing himself: Unpopular speech was the point of the event.

Eight days after the Portland murders, another free speech rally took place in the City of Roses, where14 were arrested. Similar right-wing free speech rallies have been popping up in other blue-state cities fromBerkeleyto Boston, while aWashington D.C.version is planned for late June.

In addressing President Trumps overwhelmingprioritization of fightingIslamic extremism, Dan Coats, director of national intelligence, announced at a Senate Intelligencehearing on May 11, Homegrown violent extremists remain the most frequent and unpredictable terrorist threat to the United States.

Alexandra Rosenmann is an AlterNet associate editor. Follow her@alexpreditor.

This article was made possible by the readers and supporters of AlterNet.

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Are Far Right 'Free Speech' Rallies Breeding Terrorism? - The National Memo (blog)

As students of the University of Maryland College Park, we were saddened to hear of Lt. Richard W. Collins III's death. A 23-year-old student at Bowie State University, Lt. Collins was visiting a friend in College Park when Sean Urbanski, a UMD student, allegedly stabbed him at a bus stop. An investigation into Mr. Urbanski's online presence reportedly revealed he was a member of a white supremacist Facebook group, casting the stabbing in a racist light; Lt. Collins was black, and Mr. Urbanski is white. Authorities are investigating the death as a potential hate crime, and the university has taken a few unsettling steps in the interim.

Wallace Loh, president of the University of Maryland College Park, commissioned a bias-response team to address instances of hateful speech and actions. He also pumped $100,000 into the Office of Diversity and Inclusion and promised a task force for review of university policies related to hate speech and hate crimes. Mr. Loh said he hopes to "engage the campus on issues at the intersection of free speech and hate speech," which is cause for worry.

Driven in part by their restive student bodies, many college administrations around the country have introduced speech codes to their universities. While UMD and Mr. Loh have long refused them, Mr. Loh's solutions could nevertheless end up restricting free speech on campus.

The constitution doesn't distinguish between hate speech and free speech. And while we would hope that students would self-censor their comments for decency's sake, to mandate it at the administrative level endangers freedom of expression. Hate speech is broadly defined as an attack on a person based on their innate characteristics, which could be interpreted to include speech that merely offends. Where do we draw the line? Once one strain of speech loses its protection, other types will follow. Hate speech is the cost of free speech, and that cost is unavoidable.

Yet many student bodies fail to grasp this, demanding swift and bold action from their respective administrations following examples of hate speech. Ithaca College Pesident Tom Rochon and Yale University lecturer Erika Christakis were both forced to resign amid protests from students who determined the educators' approach to hate and bias did not adequately conform to their own. College administrators, when faced with accusations of being lax in standards of equality, are effectively held at gunpoint in the court of public opinion, which could explain Mr. Loh's response to this putative hate crime.

Mr. Loh's plan for the bias response team is worrisome. Similar teams at a number of U.S. universities (there are more than 100) investigate offenses that run an absurdly broad gamut. (In February of last year, for example, a University of Michigan hall director reported to that school's bias team the existence of a snow penis on the grounds.) These bias response teams largely operate in the shadows with little accountability for silencing expression, and they encourage every student around them to become an individual arbiter of justice. There is little legal standard for hate speech, and in that vacuum, students will themselves decide what does and does not offend, and report their findings. In practice, this leads to a misuse of campus resources on bogus, internecine hate-speech investigations and fosters a culture of mistrust.

Distinguishing between words that are truly threatening such as fighting words, which can directly lead to violence and are not protected by the First Amendment and constitutionally-protected free speech is vital. But creating new administrative bodies to regulate self-expression, however odious, endangers those who contribute productively to what Mr. Loh called a "marketplace of ideas."

Banning so-called hate speech would only suppress public expression of hateful views. Doing so at UMD, while likely to draw support from the student body, would do nothing to address the root of the problem. Instead of stifling those views, they should be debated. Given the opportunity to stand on their own false merits, they will collapse no prohibition required.

Hate speech and hate crimes are a pertinent issue to college students and the country, but our reaction to hate crimes and bias shows our strength of character as we combat these problems with compassion and reason. Knee-jerk reactions and forced self-censoring systems are no way to address hate. Civil discussion is.

James Whitlow (jwhitlow1994@gmail.com) and Tom Hart (tom.c.hart95@gmail.com) are students at the University of Maryland.

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Hate speech is the cost of free speech - Baltimore Sun

The Right Way to Protect Free Speech on Campus Wall Street Journal (subscription) In my inaugural address as the new president of Middlebury College a year and a half ago, I spoke of my hope to create a robust public square on campus. I said that I wanted Middlebury to be a community whose members engage in reasoned, thoughtful ...

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The Right Way to Protect Free Speech on Campus - Wall Street Journal (subscription)

Forbes

Blocked By The President: Are Trump's Twitter Practices Violating Free Speech? Forbes President and prolific Tweeter Donald Trump has come under fire yet again for his social media use. However, this time it's not about the ridiculous things he's saying, but how he's preventing what others are saying about him. The thin-skinned ... Columbia University's free speech experts argue that when Trump blocks Twitter followers he violates the ConstitutionQuartz Free Speech Group Says Trump Violates the First Amendment by Blocking Critics on TwitterGizmodo Free Speech Group Threatens to Sue Trump if he Doesn't Unblock Blocked Twitter UsersHeat Street TheBlaze.com -Sojourners -DocumentCloud -Knight First Amendment Institute all 166 news articles »

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Blocked By The President: Are Trump's Twitter Practices Violating Free Speech? - Forbes

ST. PETERSBURG After offensive signs appeared in front of a home in the Historic Old Northeast neighborhood last weekend, residents wrestled with the line between free speech and hate speech. While they searched for answers, a difficult truth presented itself: Just because speech is hateful doesn't mean it's not protected by the First Amendment.

Saturday evening, signs went up on the pristine, green lawn of 303 27th Ave. N in St. Petersburg. "No fags," "No Jews," "No infidels," "No retards," they read.

While people gawked and took pictures, residents scrambled for a solution. Complaints were made with City Hall, but the city government had no power to get the signs taken down, said Ben Kirby, a spokesman for Mayor Rick Kriseman.

"The city's goal is to help protect citizens' ability to exercise their free speech," Kirby said. "The city does not regulate constitutionally protected speech on private property."

The only possible grounds for action were the number of signs in the yard, but the signs were taken down by Sunday evening. City code permits "free speech signs" on private property, but has restrictions on things like size and placement.

The First Amendment serves as a shield for all speech, said Howard Simon, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Florida, and the instinct to gag speech we disagree with is exactly why we need such protections.

"If we don't defend the free speech rights of the most unpopular among us, even for views that are antithetical to the very freedom the First Amendment stands for, then no one's liberty will be secure," Simon said.

There's a good reason to keep the government at arm's length when it comes to free speech, he said.

"History has taught us that government with the power to censor hateful speech is more apt to use this power to prosecute minorities than to protect them," Simon said.

The only speech the First Amendment doesn't protect is speech that threatens real harm. But some argue it restricts speech that could lead to physical damage but does nothing to protect against emotional damage, which can be equally traumatic.

Society should employ more scrutiny when deciding what deserves to be protected, said Thane Rosenbaum, a distinguished fellow at New York University and author of the upcoming book The High Cost of Free Speech: Rethinking the First Amendment.

"We've interpreted it so literally that almost every word that comes out of your mouth is protected," Rosenbaum said. "We need to ask questions like, 'Are you doing something because you want to introduce an idea or are you doing something because you want to cause fear?' "

When the signs appeared, several neighbors said they felt unsafe in their own neighborhood. But this isn't the first time an incident like this has happened in Pinellas County.

In 2005, a toilet appeared on the lawn of a house in Pinellas Park with a sign that said, "Koran flush 1 p.m."

The owner of the home said he was making a political statement. At the time, Pinellas Park was home to the largest mosque in the county. Much like last weekend, residents felt threatened and looked to city government for a solution, but found none.

PREVIOUS STORY: Offensive signs cause stir in St. Petersburg's Old Northeast neighborhood

Painful as it may be, confronting hateful speech lets people acknowledge values that conflict with theirs, said Lyrissa Lidsky, a law professor at the University of Florida. Lidsky, who is Jewish, took her children to an event at University of Florida Hillel, where the Westboro Baptist Church was protesting. She considered it to be a powerful lesson.

"It's a lesson in citizenry," Lidsky said. "Children learn early on that there are different values in the world, and it's affirming for them to see their families and communities reach out against hate."

The First Amendment is broad because it expects citizens to fight back against speech that makes them feel attacked, Lidsky said.

"The remedy for speech that we hate is counterspeech," Lidsky said.

After the signs had come down, something new appeared at 303 27th Ave. N. Early this week, lines of black spray paint laced across the house's white shutters, in the shape of the anarchy symbol and "Antifa," which refers to the antifascist movement.

Contact Taylor Telford at ttelford@tampabay.com or (513) 376-3196. Follow @taylormtelford.

Free speech means language on hate signs is protected 06/08/17 [Last modified: Thursday, June 8, 2017 12:53pm] Photo reprints | Article reprints

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Free speech means language on hate signs is protected | Tampa ... - Tampabay.com

YANGON Myanmar journalists sporting "Freedom of the Press" arm-bands gathered on Thursday to campaign against a law they say curbs free speech, at the start of a trial of two journalists who the army is suing for defamation over a satirical article.

The rally by more than 100 reporters in the rain outside a court in Yangon was the first significant show of opposition to the telecommunications law, introduced in 2013, that bans the use of the telecoms network to "extort, threaten, obstruct, defame, disturb, inappropriately influence or intimidate".

Despite pressure from human rights monitors and Western diplomats, the government of Aung San Suu Kyi, which took power amid high hopes for democratic reform in 2016, after decades of hardline military rule, has retained the law.

The journalists said they were dismayed by the recent arrests of social media users whose posts were deemed distasteful, as well as of journalists critical of the military.

"At first, they were suing people over news articles and now they are suing even over a satirical article, showing how they are restricting the media," said A Hla Lay Thuzar one of the founders of the Protection Committee for Myanmar Journalists, which organized the rally.

She said that rather than staging a one-off protest, her group wants to launch a movement to raise public awareness of the issue and press the government to abolish the law.

The journalists on trial are the chief editor and a columnist of the Voice, one of Myanmar's largest dailies.

They were denied bail on the first day of their trial, meaning they may have to remain in custody.

"Obtaining bail is our right so we will keep fighting for it during next court dates until we get it," said Khing Maung Myint, who is representing the two journalists.

The telecommunications law was a main piece of legislation introduced by a semi-civilian administration of former generals which navigated Myanmar's transition from full military rule to the coming to power of Suu Kyi's government, from 2011 to 2016.

The protesting journalists said they would wear the arm-bands for the next 10 days to raise awareness about what they see as the threat to freedom of the press.

They are also planning to gather signatures for a petition to abolish the law, to be sent to Suu Kyi's office, the army chief and parliament.

(Reporting by Shoon Naing; Editing by Antoni Slodkowski, Robert Birsel)

RAQQA, Syria At Raqqa's eastern edge, a handful of Syrian fighters cross a river by foot and car, all the while relaying their coordinates to the U.S.-led coalition so they don't fall victim to friendly fire.

MELBOURNE Australian counter-terrorism police conducted pre-dawn raids in the southern city of Melbourne on Friday and were questioning three men they said were suspected of providing weapons used in a deadly siege this week claimed by the Islamic State group.

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Myanmar journalists campaign for free speech outside Myanmar trial - Reuters

Craig F. Walker/globe staff

The Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library in Harvard Yard in Cambridge.

A nationwide debate has erupted over Harvard Universitys recent decision to rescind admission offers to at least 10 students because of extremely offensive memes they posted in a private Facebook chat.

Some higher education specialists call the punishment appropriate, but others say that Harvard ignored its own claim to embrace free speech and that it missed an opportunity to educate those students about their poor choices.

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I dont know what lesson these students have learned, other than to keep their mouth shut, said Will Creeley, a senior vice president at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, based in Philadelphia.

The incident comes at a time when free speech has become a flashpoint on college campuses across the country. Concern about acceptance and inclusivity has in some cases led administrators to curtail what might otherwise be seen as students freedom to act and speak how they choose.

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This is true at Harvard, where for the past year the school has been embroiled in a debate about whether the university can punish students for clubs they join off campus. Few on campus seem to support a group of off-campus, exclusive all-male social clubs, but many students, professors, and alumni nonetheless say the university went too far in trying to punish members by restricting their on-campus privileges.Administrators, meanwhile, say the clubs foster a judgmental and unsafe culture that Harvard does not condone.

For many young people, memes the wild variety of funny captions over memorable images are a second language.

The recent incident involving the Facebook memes took place in April, when administrators were sent copies of memes that students had posted in a private group chat on Facebook whose members had been admitted to the class of 2021.

The messages made sexual jokes about the Holocaust, implied that child abuse was sexually arousing, and poked fun at suicide and Mexicans.

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Harvard has declined to comment directly on the situation but did say the school reserves the right to withdraw admission for a variety of reasons, including if a student engages in behavior that brings into question their honesty, maturity, or moral character.

One of the students who lost her seat is the daughter of major donors to the university, according to correspondence reviewed by the Globe.

News of the rescinded applications comes less than two weeks after Harvard President Drew Faust used her commencement address to passionately defend free speech.

We must remember that limiting some speech opens the dangerous possibility that the speech that is ultimately censored may be our own, Faust said in the speech.

If some words are to be treated as equivalent to physical violence and silenced or even prosecuted, who is to decide which words? Freedom of expression, as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes famously said long ago, protects not only free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought we hate. We need to hear those hateful ideas so our society is fully equipped to oppose and defeat them, she said, according to an online copy of her remarks.

Creeley, of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, said the organization has seen a spike in the past decade of faculty and students disciplined for online speech that sometimes has nothing to do with their official capacities at the school. The Harvard case was unique because the students had not matriculated yet, he said.

In some instances, administrators overreact, Creeley said, citing a Yale lecturer who resigned in 2015 after she came under attack for challenging students to stand up for their right to wear Halloween costumes that could be construed as offensive.

I can help but think that no matter how offensive these jokes may be to most if not all, that theres been an opportunity missed in terms of the possibility of educating these students, Creeley said.

Wendy Kaminer, a lawyer, author, and former board member of the American Civil Liberties Union, said Harvard should not have rescinded admission since the students made no actual threats against people, she said.

I guess you could say there is no free speech at Harvard; there is only speech of which the administration does not disapprove, she said.

Others disagree. Jonathan P. Epstein, a senior vice president at the higher education consulting firm Whiteboard Higher Education in Waltham, works with college administrators daily and said he has heard little objection.

From what Ive heard, counselors have been telling students for years ... that anything that you do online is essentially part of your application, Epstein said.

Harvard did not tell students they cant make those jokes, he said, but simply that it does not want students who act that way to attend the school.

Howard Gardner, a professor in the Harvard Graduate School of Education, said this is not a question of free speech. Any community needs to observe certain standards, and admission to Harvard is a privilege, he said in an e-mail.

The students have learned a lesson that they will never forget, he said.

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Harvard admission decision prompts debate over free speech - The Boston Globe