Category Archives: Free Speech

Here is a puzzle at the center of online life: How should we balance freedom of speech with the flood of slanderous statements, extremist manifestoes and conspiracy theories that proliferate on the internet? The United States decided decades ago to let private companies solve that quandary themselves. The Supreme Court made this position official in three major rulings in the 1990s and early 2000s.

But lawmakers arent sure about this arrangement, now that giant online platforms are the new town square. The left says Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and the rest should take more content down, especially hate speech and disinformation. The right says the companies, which removed posts about Covid and the 2020 election, shouldnt set the rules for discussions about politics and culture.

Now a series of federal court cases will address these questions. Supreme Court justices will decide a few in the next month or two. In todays newsletter, Ill explain how those cases could change the way the First Amendment functions in the internet era.

Courts have faced six broad questions about online speech. The Supreme Court has ruled on two of them.

When can social media sites be sued over what users post? Rarely. Two Supreme Court rulings last year kept protections in place for websites from most lawsuits related to content posted by users. Relatives of victims of terrorist attacks had argued that Google and Twitter should be legally responsible for content posted by the Islamic State. The justices disagreed.

Can government officials block constituents on social media? Sometimes. The Supreme Court ruled in March that public officials cant stop a constituent from commenting on their posts if they are acting in their role as political officeholders.

Four other philosophical questions are still in progress.

Can the government force social media sites to host political content? Twitter, YouTube and Facebook suspended Donald Trump in 2021 after the Jan. 6 riot. Then Florida and Texas passed laws designed to restrict such moves. The Supreme Court will soon rule on those laws, and the justices appeared skeptical of them during oral arguments in February, my colleague Adam Liptak reported.

When can the United States push social media sites to remove content? The government prodded social media services to take down certain posts related to Covid and elections. Missouri, Louisiana and five individuals argued thats a violation of the First Amendment. They say the government used private companies to stifle a specific viewpoint. The Supreme Court seemed wary of the lawsuit in March. The justices skepticism of conservatives argument is a sign of how complex it is to draw boundaries in this area of the law.

Can the government restrict access to online pornography? Texas passed a law last year that requires adult sites to check the age of their visitors. Parents can sue sites if the sites fail to do so and their child views pornography. If the law stands, adults will need to reveal their identity to pornography sites instead of remaining anonymous. The sites say this puts a barrier between adults and speech they have a right to view under the Constitution. The case is now in federal appeals court.

Can the government ban a foreign-owned social media platform? President Biden signed a law in April that will ban TikTok unless it is sold by its Chinese parent company, citing national security. TikTok says the measure curtails free speech rights both its own and its users. Federal courts are planning to hear the case this year. If they uphold the law, it will affirm the federal governments right to eliminate a platform for speech in the national interest. If judges strike it down, it may allow news and social media sites to serve Americans even when they are owned by a company from an enemy nation.

With this many kinds of cases, the range of outcomes is vast. If the courts decide the status quo is wrong, internet platforms might limit what you can post or take down more of it just to be sure they are complying with the laws.

Another possibility: The courts could decide that they got this question right the first time they considered it, 30 years ago. Free speech online might not change much. But private companies would now formally be entrenched as its arbiter.

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The Internet and the First Amendment - The New York Times

In a welcome development for people who care about liberty, Australia's government suspended its efforts to censor the planet. The country's officials suffered pushback from X (formerly Twitter) and condemnation by free speech advocates after attempting to block anybody, anywhere from seeing video of an attack at a Sydney church. At least for the moment, they've conceded defeat based, in part, on recognition that X is protected by American law, making censorship efforts unenforceable.

The Rattler is a weekly newsletter from J.D. Tuccille. If you care about government overreach and tangible threats to everyday liberty, this is for you.

"I have decided to discontinue the proceedings in the Federal Court against X Corp in relation to the matter of extreme violent material depicting the real-life graphic stabbing of a religious leader at Wakeley in Sydney on 15 April 2024," the office of Australia's eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, announced last week. "We now welcome the opportunity for a thorough and independent merits review of my decision to issue a removal notice to X Corp by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal."

The free speech battle stems from the stabbing in April of Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel and Father Isaac Royel at an Orthodox Christian Church by a 16-year-old in what is being treated as an Islamist terrorist incident. Both victims recovered, but Australian officials quickly sought to scrub graphic video footage of the incident from the internet. Most social media platforms complied, including X, which geoblocked access to video of the attack from Australia pending an appeal of the order.

But Australian officials fretted that their countrymen might use virtual private networks (VPNs) to evade the blocks. The only solution, they insisted, was to suppress access to the video for the whole world. X understandably pushed back out of fear of the precedent that would set for the globe's control freaks.

"Our concern is that if ANY country is allowed to censor content for ALL countries, which is what the Australian 'eSafety Commissar' is demanding, then what is to stop any country from controlling the entire Internet?" responded X owner Elon Musk.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) also argued that "no single country should be able to restrict speech across the entire internet" as did the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). The organizations jointly sought, and received, intervener status in the case based on "the capacity for many global internet users to be substantially affected."

In short, officials lost control over a tussle they tried to portray as a righteous battle by servants of the people against, in the words of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, "arrogant billionaire" Elon Musk. Instead, civil libertarians correctly saw it as a battle for free speech against grasping politicians who aren't content to misgovern their own country but reach for control over people outside their borders.

Worse for them, one of their own judges agreed.

"The removal notice would govern (and subject to punitive consequences under Australian law) the activities of a foreign corporation in the United States (where X Corp's corporate decision-making occurs) and every country where its servers are located; and it would likewise govern the relationships between that corporation and its users everywhere in the world," noted Justice Geoffrey Kennett in May as he considered the eSafety commissioner's application to extend an injunction against access to the stabbing video. "The Commissioner, exercising her power under s 109, would be deciding what users of social media services throughout the world were allowed to see on those services."

He added, "most likely, the notice would be ignored or disparaged in other countries."

This is where the U.S. First Amendment and America's strong protections for free speech come into play to thwart Australian officials' efforts to censor the world.

"There is uncontroversial expert evidence that a court in the US (where X Corp is based) would be highly unlikely to enforce a final injunction of the kind sought by the Commissioner," added Kennett. "Courts rightly hesitate to make orders that cannot be enforced, as it has the potential to bring the administration of justice into disrepute."

Rather than have his government exposed as impotently overreaching to impose its will beyond its borders, Kennett refused to extend the injunction.

Three weeks later, with free speech groups joining the case to argue against eSafety's censorious ambitions, the agency dropped its legal case pending review by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.

"We are pleased that the Commissioner saw the error in her efforts and dropped the action," responded David Greene and Hudson Hongo for EFF. "Global takedown orders threaten freedom of expression around the world, create conflicting legal obligations, and lead to the lowest common denominator of internet content being available around the world, allowing the least tolerant legal system to determine what we all are able to read and distribute online."

But if the world escaped the grasp of Australia's censors, the country's residents may not be so lucky.

The fight between eSafety and X "isn't actually about the Wakeley church stabbing attacks in April it's about how much power the government ultimately hands the commissioner once it's finished reviewing the Online Safety Act in October," Ange Lavoipierre wrote for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

"The video in dispute in the case against X has been used, in my opinion, as a vehicle for the federal government to push for powers to compel social media companies to enforce rules of misinformation and disinformation on their platforms," agrees Morgan Begg of the free-market Institute of Public Affairs, which opposes intrusive government efforts to regulate online content. "The Federal Court's decision highlights the government's fixation with censorship."

That is, the campaign to force X to suppress video of one crime is largely about domestic political maneuvering for power. But it comes as governments around the worldespecially that of the European Unionbecome increasingly aggressive with their plans to control online speech.

If the battle between Australia's eSafety commissioner and X is any indication, the strongest barrier to international censorship lies in countriesthe U.S. in particularthat vigorously protect free speech. From such safe havens, authoritarian officials and their grasping content controls can properly be "ignored or disparaged."

Read more:
Australian Censors Back Down, Highlighting the U.S. as a Free Speech Haven - Reason

Ask just about any American college administrator and they'll tell you: This past semester was one of the most chaotic on record.

College leadership can enjoy a momentary sigh of relief for surviving the semester marked by post-October 7protests,encampments,congressional inquiries andfreespeechcontroversies. But without real reform, the same problems will be waiting for them in the fall: demands to censor protected speech, questions about what is and isnt protected expression on campus, and increased concerns about student safety amid campus protests.

When facing protest-related challenges, some administrators might be inclined to create policies that further restrict expression. This must be resisted at all costs. The solution must never be censorship but a recommitment to the principles of free expression that have long been the lifeblood of academia.

It is the duty of college leaders to ensure students and faculty understand and respect First Amendment rights and responsibilities. In doing so, they establish a baseline from which they can turn controversy into teachable moments rather than turning to censorship.

The path forward is simple: Craft policies that protect free speech, do not overburden campus expression with oppressive regulations, teach free expression from day one, and commit to making free speech an institutional value before controversy ever arises.

First things first: Colleges and universities must ensure their policies safeguard expression rather than stifle it. While this sounds simple,85% of Americas four-year institutions either clearly and substantially restrict free speech or impose vague regulations on expression. Worse yet, more than1 in 5 students reported that their college administrations stance on free speech on campus is not clear.

As university leadership reviews and solidifies existing policies, it must make those policies as clear and concise as possible. Too often schools attempt to regulate events based on content or viewpoint or place other unreasonable burdens on public expression.

Yes, universities may enforcereasonable time, place, and manner restrictions to ensure expressive activity does not infringe on teaching and learning on campus, but any such restriction must be content- and viewpoint-neutral. In other words, it must be carefully crafted to guarantee faculty and students are able to teach and learn free from substantial interruption while providing alternative options for individuals to express themselves on campus.

We cannot allow illiberal activity to be an excuse to ignore basic First Amendment principles. Now is the time to correct course and ensure these institutions continue to grow as beacons of intellectual exploration and human progress.

Weve already seen calls fromlegislators demanding viewpoint-based restrictions on campus speech. For example, the federalAntisemitism Awareness Act would require the U.S. Department of Education to use a definition of anti-Semitism that is vague, overbroad, and includes criticism of the Israeli government.

Mandating a definition of this nature would not help schools address discrimination, but it would pressure institutions to investigate and censor speech that falls under such a definition even when those statements are protected by the First Amendment. Similar overbroad policies have recently been used to suppress free speech in places like theUniversity of Texas at San Antonio, where an administrator allegedly told protesters that they cannot say Zionism because it qualifies as antisemitic hate speech.

As confidence in higher education reaches historic lows, now is the time for campus leaders to return to first principles and re-establish their institutions as communities devoted to the discovery, preservation, and dissemination of knowledge.

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Second, universities must not strangle free speech with red tape. Institutions likeKean University mandate that students reserve an area multiple days before protesting or passing out pamphlets and brochures. These unnecessary hurdles chill speech by limiting students ability to express themselves in the moment or overburdening students to the point they may choose not to express themselves at all.

Third, we must educate incoming students on the principles of free speech from day one. Unfortunately, colleges today cannot expect students to arrive on campus with knowledge about the boundaries of free speech and academic freedom. For instance,more than a quarter of students said that using violence to stop a campus speech is acceptable to some degree, according to FIREs College Free Speech Rankings. Another 45% said that students blocking other students from attending a speech is at least rarely acceptable. These illiberal forms of mob censorship create environments in which students become afraid to speak up.

Orientation is the perfect time to educate students on the role of free speech on campus, the limits of First Amendment protections, and how students can legally exercise their freedom. From this foundation, students can begin their educational journey without censoring themselves for fear of overstepping the boundaries of protected expression.

Finally, colleges must cultivate an environment where students and faculty are free to push the boundaries of human understanding and challenge themselves and established orthodoxies.

The policy change could spark similar reforms throughout higher education. Where Harvard leads, others follow.

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Some of the countrys premier institutions are already rising to that challenge. Within the past two weeks,Harvard University,Syracuse University, andStanford University have taken proactive steps by committing toinstitutional neutrality, promising to refrain from issuing statements on political or social issues that do not impact core operations of the school. These declarations affirm the schools dedication to providing a platform where students and faculty can engage in debates on contemporary issues, free from institutional bias or commentary.

During the spring semester, we witnessed peaceful protests, civil disobedience, violence, and arrests on our nations campuses. This is not the first time weve seen such turmoil on campus, and it probably wont be the last time. We cannot allow illiberal activity to be an excuse to ignore basic First Amendment principles. Now is the time to correct course and ensure these institutions continue to grow as beacons of intellectual exploration and human progress.

FIRE is happy to work one-on-one with university administrators to reform the speech climate on your campus free of charge. Just email us at speechcodes@thefire.org.

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How college leaders can overcome the current campus crisis - Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression

Harvard evolutionary biology lecturer Carole Hooven didnt set out to cause controversy, but her research on hormones and behavior led her to conclusions on a third-rail topic that drove a wedge between her and her peers.

After defending the use of the terms male and female in a public interview, Carole endured a media firestorm and backlash from students, professors, and administrators, some of whom publicly disparaged her for simply sharing her views. The professor defended herself, but the environment became so hostile, she ultimately resigned.

Fortunately, her story doesnt end there. In the wake of the controversy, faculty formed the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard to further free inquiry and intellectual diversity on campus. As an active member of the now-more-than-170-member group, Carole is working toward a Harvard where faculty can fearlessly pursueVeritas.

If there is any silver lining to losing the career that I found so fulfilling, she wrote in The Free Press, perhaps its that my story will help explain the fear that stalks campuses, a fear that spreads every time someone is punished for their speech.

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FIRE's 25 Faces of Free Speech - Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression

The article is here; the Abstract:

Speech damages someone's reputation when it leads others to believe that that person has done something that reflects poorly on their character. When that belief is also false the reputational damage is undeserved, and it is the point of American defamation law to protect individuals from suffering such undeserved reputational damage.

It is easy to understand why individuals would need protection from false and derogatory claims made about them in works of nonfiction, such as journalism, documentaries, and biographies. But it is not immediately clear why individuals would also need protection from fiction. Although authors of fiction often base their fictional characters on real people, they do not typically make real people characters in their stories. Even when they do put real people in their stories and depict them as doing bad things, the audience is still usually meant only to imagine the real people doing those bad things.

Nevertheless, some works of fiction are not only about real people but also do real and undeserved damage to their reputations. It may not be true, as has often been alleged, that Aristophanes's comedy The Clouds gave Socrates the reputation for rejecting the gods and corrupting the young that later led to his execution. But readers of parodies of news articles published on sites like The Onion and The Babylon Bee are sometimes duped, especially when they are already inclined to think poorly of the public figure that is being ridiculed.

Of course parodies are believed only when they are not recognized as parodies. But there are other genres of fiction that mix facts into the story, such as biofiction, biopics, and docudramas, and it is not always easy for audiences to distinguish what the author is making up from what the author is, or ought to be, trying to get right.

The biographical drama Amadeus suggested that Salieri poisoned Mozart, re-popularizing an old rumor about Salieri that the filmmakers must have at least strongly suspected was false. Salieri, being dead, is in no position to bring a lawsuit. But the villain of the docudrama When They See Us, Linda Fairstein, is alive and is suing Netflix and Ava DuVernay, the director, for defamation.

Fairstein was chief of Sex Crimes Prosecution during the investigation and prosecution of the "Central Park Five," five Black and Latino teenagers who were convicted of the beating and rape of a jogger in Central Park but who were exonerated years later after a serial rapist whose DNA was found at the scene confessed to the crime and said that he had acted alone. Fairstein alleges that she was defamed in several scenes in the docudrama, including in a scene where she is depicted as concealing potentially exculpatory evidence from the defense and a scene where she is depicted as instructing officers to use harsh interrogation techniques. As a result of her depiction in When They See Us, Fairstein's publishing contract was canceled (she had become a best-selling mystery writer since leaving the DA's office), her literary agents dropped her, #cancellindafairstein trended on Twitter, and Glamour magazine expressed regret they had named her Woman of the Year in 1993.

As the docudrama When They See Us makes clear, fiction about real people can do serious damage to their reputations. It is another question whether it is ever appropriate to hold an author of fiction legally liable for that damage. One aim of defamation law may be to reflect our pre-legal moral duties of care to avoid damaging others' reputations. If so, one important consideration for determining how defamation law should handle fiction is whether and when an author of fiction would count, morally speaking, as having wrongfully damaged someone's reputation.

But defamation law is also answerable to another moral value, namely, freedom of speech, that may be in tension with these pre-legal duties of care. Even when it is plausible that an author of fiction has wrongfully damaged someone's reputation, there might still be a reason of freedom of speech, even an overriding reason, to shield such an author from liability.

This Article will address the question of what limits, if any, freedom of speech would place on holding authors liable for the reputational damage they cause with fiction. By "freedom of speech" I will not be referring to the First Amendment but rather to one conception of the moral idea underlying it. According to this conception, the limits that freedom of speech places on the scope of authors' liability for causing false and defamatory beliefs are whatever limits are necessary to adequately protect our interests as potential authors and audiences, and whose costs are acceptable in terms of other interests. To apply this conception, it will be necessary to identify our interests as potential authors of and audiences for fiction about real people, and to assess how these interests would be affected by different limits.

Ultimately, I will argue that freedom of speech is consistent with holding authors liable for reputational damage caused by their violations of fiction's "veracity rules" and for reputational damage caused by mistakes that their target audience would be expected to make. But liability for beliefs that are traceable to mistakes that only an author's incidental audience would be expected to make is, I will argue, prohibited by freedom of speech, so long as the costs of that protection remain acceptable.

Read more here:
Journal of Free Speech Law: "Fiction, Defamation, and Freedom of Speech," by Prof. Collin O'Neil - Reason

George Kimball was ready for war as soon as the first brick hit his head.

The 20-year-old printer was listening to an abolitionist lecture in Bostons Bowdoin Square during the 1860 presidential campaign, when a pro-slavery throng tried to shut it down. Kimball was prepared, present as part of a torch-bearing, black-clad bodyguard called the Wide Awakes, who beat the brick-throwers back using their torches as clubs.

As Kimball walked home, blood in his eyes, he wanted war declared at once. Years later, having fought his way through from Bull Run to Gettysburg to Petersburg, he still considered that Boston brickbat, as much a casus belli as was the firing upon Fort Sumter. For him, it was the embattled right to publicly protest slavery that sparked the conflict a fight over free speech brought on the war.

Today, our starkest political debates often turn on similar questions of public speech and public violence. Across diverse conflicts, from college campuses to the Capitols steps, we keep asking where the line is between heated words and aggressive deeds. Though framed as a legal question concerning the First Amendment, more often its a conundrum for our political culture.

In a democracy, how far is too far?

Its a question that fueled Americas bloodiest war. The Civil War was fought over slavery (anyone who says it wasnt is just wrong). But how did American slavery, which began in 1619, spark a conflict in 1861? How did a long-running debate turn into a shooting war? Where, exactly, was that dynamic moment when an argument became a fight?

George Kimballs Wide Awakes help make sense of it all. That half-forgotten movement provides a missing link between the election and the war. In the presidential campaign of 1860, hundreds of thousands of diverse young Americans joined companies of Wide Awakes, marching in militaristic uniforms, escorting Republican speakers, fighting in defense of antislavery speech. Their grass-roots rising helped elect Abraham Lincoln as president but also began the spiral into war.

Originally posted here:
Opinion | Long Before the Woke, There Were the Wide Awake - The New York Times

Yulia Navalnaya and the Russian Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), established by her late husband Alexei Navalny, receivedDW's 2024 Freedom of Speech Award at a ceremony in Berlin on Wednesday.

Navalnaya told the audience that free speech had been her husband and his organization's "most important weapon" during the last 13 years while trying to oppose Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"During these years, Putin has destroyed elections. During these years, Putin has prohibited protests. During these years, Putin has suppressed independent media. And he has tried to silence anyone who said what he didn't like.But he failed. Yes, he killed my husband, Alexei Navalny. But he didn't silence him and his ideas," she said.

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The decision to give the prize to Navalnaya and the FBK was originally announced last month.

Navalnayahailed her husband for "risking everything" to show Putin and Russian society more generally that freedom of speech "is not a weakness," as she said dictators like Putin perceived it, but rather a strength.

"Alexei proved this with his entire life and work, when he wasn't afraid to speak in court, in prison, risking everything. Believing that sincere words will defeat any lie. Showing how honest speech brings hundreds of thousands of people to the streets in a country where it seemed like there was no space left for public politics. Showing how the truth makes even an all-powerful dictator tremble with fear," she said.

DW's Director General Peter Limbourg and German Finance Minister Christian Lindner paid tribute to Navalnaya and her late husband, and the FBK's Ivan Zhdanov, a lawyer and longstandingfriend and ally of Navalny's.

"The Anti-Corruption Foundation and Yulia Navalnaya are dedicated to bringing light into the darkness of the corrupt and murderous system that is the Russian government," Limbourg said.

Both Lindner and Zhdanov spoke at length about Navalny's letters from prison during his incarceration prior to his death, including one in which he had noted how the "virus" of free thought appeared to be spreading in Russia's prison system, voicing hope that the secret services would struggle to suppress it.

Lindner described Navlany as a "super-spreader" of this virus in Russia.

"His aim was to, in a way, infect society in order to democratize and permanently immunize it against every form of oppression and autocracy," Lindner said."Like a virus, he was first isolated, and then repressed in the most brutal way. In the end, the regime I have no doubt even murdered him."

Lindner said the DW award served asa reminder of the meaning of democracy and the rule of law.

"Wecannot take for granted any of the core values on which our society is built, even if in Germany we sometimes think that we can, with a certain arrogance. In Russia, you risk your life if you fight for them," he said.

But Lindner also said it was crucial to remember the words of Navalnaya, namely that "Putin is not Russia, and Russia is not Putin."

Navalny had written in one of his letters from prison, when he was saying how he was reading Soviet-era dissident literature and despairing at how familiar the story felt, that he hoped that by 2055nobody could have the same experience in Russia. Lindner voiced hope that not only would this day come, but in much less than another 30 years.

"We must not lose sight of the fact that time is on our side. It is a fact that Putin's time in office will come to an end one day. Which makes it all the more important that Russia is prepared for democracy when the time comes. Ladies and gentlemen, in the long term, the will to be free will always prevail over oppression," said the leader of the neoliberal Free Democrats.

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Alexei Navalny founded the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) in Russia in 2011. Its original primary aim was to combat corruption by uncovering and publicizing cases of bribery and abuse of power among the Russian elite.

But he became one of the most prominent and outspoken opponents of PresidentPutin.

Navalny decided to return to Russia, despite having barely survived what German doctors designated as an attempt to poison him with a Soviet-era nerve agentin January 2021.

He was immediately detained on his return, accused of violating the terms of his bail for prior convictions,and was later sentenced to a series of other charges he dismissed as politically motivated.

In December 2023, he went missing from his prison cell near Moscow for around three weeks. It later transpired he had been transferred to a remote maximum security penal colony in the Arctic Circle.

On February 16, the Russian prison service reported that he had died at the age of 47.

That was just a matter of weeks before Putin's reelection as president.

Navalny's death came on the same day as the opening of the Munich Security Conference in Germany, as DW's chief political correspondent Michaela Kfner noted during the ceremony on Wednesday. Until the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, thesecuritygathering had always made a point of ensuring Russian participation.

Navalnaya still spoke at that event as scheduled, saying she intended to continue her husband's work.

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"Like you, Yulia, I was at the Munich Security Conference when the news broke. It was no coincidence, I'm sure," Lindner said of the timing of Navalny'sdeath. "Putin wanted to send a message to the world. But he was wrong. If he achieved anything, it was to strengthen our resolve. It was you, Yulia, of all people, who gave us back our courage that day. For you to find the strength and determination in Munich to address the worldwas impressive, moving and most inspiring."

The FBK is now designated as a terrorist organization in Russia and is operating effectively from exile. "Deutsche Welle knows the feeling," Kfner said when mentioning this at the event, in reference to the closure of DW's offices in Moscow shortly before the invasion of Ukraine.

DW's Russian language service continues to operate and try to reach users in Russia, Director General Limbourg stressed at the event, despite Moscow's efforts, not unlike China, to restrict ordinary people's access online or by other means of reception.

DW launched the annual Freedom of Speech Award in 2015.

It "honors people who passionately stand up for freedom of opinion and of the press," as Limbourg put it during Wednesday's ceremony in Berlin.

Past winners include investigative journalists Oscar Martinez from El Salvador, Tobore Ovuorie of Nigeria, Anabel Hernandez from Mexico, the White House Correspondents' Association, Saudi Arabian dissident and humanist Raif Badawi, andMstyslav Chernov and Evgeniy Maloletka from eastern Ukraine, for their work soon after Russia's 2022 full-scale invasion.

Edited by: Natalie Muller

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Yulia Navalnaya: Free speech is our 'most important weapon' DW 06/05/2024 - DW (English)

As a journalist, you usually go to the front line to find the news. But sometimes the front line finds you. This happened to me not once but twice on Thursday, as an epic battle over freedom of expression on college campuses unfolded from one end of Manhattan to another.

The first was when I happened to be on the campus of Columbia University, speaking at a class. While leaving the classroom, I came upon a tent camp that had sprung up on one of the campuss lush lawns. It was, as college protests often are, an earnest but peaceful affair. A few dozen tents had been pitched, and students hung a sign reading Gaza solidarity encampment. Their tactics were a mild echo of those of an earlier generation of students, who effectively shut down the campus in April 1985 to demand that Columbia divest from South Africa protests that were in turn an echo of the 1968 student takeover of the university amid the broad cultural rebellion against the Vietnam War.

On Thursday morning the students marched in a circle, their chants demanding that Columbia divest from Israel in protest of the ongoing slaughter in Gaza, in which around 34,000 people more than 1 percent of Gazas population have died, most of them women and children. The protesters were taking up a good bit of space and making a fair bit of noise. They were, according to the university, trespassing on the grounds of the school they pay dearly to attend. But they didnt seem to be targeting, much less harming, any of their fellow students. The campus was closed to outsiders; the protest seemed unlikely to escalate. I took in the scene, then hopped on the subway to get back to my office.

I was stunned to learn, less than an hour later, that Columbias president, Nemat Shafik, had asked the New York Police Department to clear the camp, which had been established less than 48 hours earlier. What followed was the largest arrest of students at Columbia since 1968.

I knew that I would run into those students again: I live a block from the headquarters of the N.Y.P.D., where protesters are often booked and processed. Since Oct. 7 there have been regular demonstrations on my block as pro-Palestinian activists await the release of their friends. When I got home from the office, a huge crowd had already gathered.

Most of the students I tried to talk to did not want to be interviewed. Some had harsh criticisms of mainstream media coverage of the war in Gaza. Others were afraid that being associated with the protest movement could harm their career prospects. (These are Ivy League students, after all.) But eventually, many told me of their determination to keep protesting for a cause they feel is the defining moral challenge of their lives.

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Opinion | Columbia, Free Speech and the Coddling of the American Right - The New York Times

1. TikTok raises free speech concerns on bill passed by US House that may ban app  Voice of America - VOA News
2. TikTok warns US ban would 'trample free speech'  BBC.com
3. TikTok says bill to force its sale would trample free speech  Al Jazeera English

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TikTok raises free speech concerns on bill passed by US House that may ban app - Voice of America - VOA News

Activist investor Bill Ackman is a fan of Elon Musks social media platform X and the debates and conversations he has on the site.

TSMC beat on Q2 sales expectations driven by AI boom, Nvidia, and Apple

Ackman, who has become known for his lengthy essay-style posts on X, lauded the platform as a safe haven for free speech in a conversation at the TED 2024 conference in Vancouver last week.

Im a big fan of X. I think it really is an open free speech platform, Ackman said. Ive learned a lot, and its affected my views, my politics, my insights. And I think its one of the few places you can go and have a true free speech platform.

The negative is, of course, youre going to confront hate speech and vile speech and things that are the detritus of free speech, he added. But I still think its a very, very good thing.

When Musk bought X (then Twitter) back in October 2022, he acknowledged that the site could not become a free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said without consequences. Musk said he was setting out to create a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO is a self-proclaimed free speech absolutist.

The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a nonprofit organization focused on online hate speech, reported last September that hate speech has continued to climb on X since Musks acquisition of the site. X Corp., the company behind the platform, sued the CCDH over how the group collected data from the site. The suit was dismissed by a federal judge last month.

Ackman, CEO of the hedge fund Pershing Square Capital Management, made headlines last year after he launched a crusade to oust the president of Harvard University at the time, Claudine Gay, over the schools response to the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel. Ackman has continued to express his support for Israel on X in the months since.

Gay resigned in January after facing the pressure from Ackman and other major donors, as well as drawing mounting criticism of her congressional testimony on campus antisemitism and accusations of academic plagiarism.

Following Gays resignation, Ackman penned a several-thousand-word post on X calling diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs on college campuses an inherently a racist and illegal movement.

Several TED fellows resigned in January after TED announced Ackmans participation in the annual conference. In a letter addressed to TED leader Chris Anderson, the fellows wrote that Ackman has defended Israels genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people and has cynically weaponised antisemitism in his programme to purge American universities of Pro-Palestinian freedom of speech.

Following the fellows resignations, Ackman told several news outlets that he stands unapologetically with Israel and against antisemitism and terrorism, while strongly supporting the Palestinian people.

Attempts to cancel speech and eliminate the free and respectful exchange of ideas among people with differing views are driving much of the divisiveness that plagues our nation, he said. Truth, wisdom and ultimately peace are the result of the free exchange of ideas and debate, precisely what Ted is all about. It is sad that this is not more widely understood.

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Bill Ackman says he's 'learned a lot' from Elon Musk's X - Quartz