Category Archives: Free Speech

After years of benign neglect neglect that was anything but benign for the victims bullying has finally moved to the top of the school-climate agenda.

Today, 49 states and the District of Columbia have anti-bullying laws in place (Montana is the lone holdout). The U.S. Department of Education has issued guidance on how schools can fight bullying and harassment. And many local school districts are moving vigorously to address a serious and widespread problem.

But as school officials act to stop bullying, they need to know when and where to draw the line on student expression. The challenge is to stop bullies without overreacting by censoring students' protected religious and political speech.

It goes without saying that creating and sustaining a safe learning environment is job one for school administrators. But how can public schools balance the need for school safety with a commitment to freedom of expression?

To help answer this question, a coalition of 17 education and religious groups released guidelines on May 22 designed to help public schools combat bullying and harassment while simultaneously upholding the rights of students to free speech and free exercise of religion under the First Amendment.

Harassment, Bullying and Freedom of Expression: Guidelines for Free and Safe Public Schools has been endorsed by diverse religious voices such as the Christian Legal Society, the Muslim Public Affairs Council and the Hindu American Foundation, as well as leading educational associations, including the National School Boards Association, the American Association of School Administrators and the National Association of State Boards of Education. (A full list of endorsers and the text of the guide are available at http://www.religiousfreedomeducation.org).

My own organization, the First Amendment Center's Religious Freedom Education Project, worked closely with the American Jewish Committee over the past year to produce the document.

As the guidelines explain, much harassment and bullying is physical, targeting an individual student or classes of students for unwanted touching, bodily assault or threats of violence. Prohibiting such actions in schools raises no First Amendment concerns.

But bullying can also be verbal, creating a hostile school climate. Following current law, the guidelines draw a distinction between student speech that expresses an idea, including religious and political views, and student speech that is intended to cause (or school officials demonstrate is likely to cause) emotional or psychological harm to the listener.

The former is, in most circumstances, protected speech, but the latter may and should be stopped.

Continue reading here:
Fight bullying, but protect religious, political speech

25-06-2012 15:02 Sami Al-Arian, a professor at the University of South Florida, and an activist on behalf of Palestinian human rights, was arrested over 9 years ago on terrorism charges. His daughter, journalist Laila Al-Arian, tells The Nation how the FBI built a case against her father that was based on intimidation, coercion and pervasive fear. She wrote about the case and the FBI's infilitratration of Muslim communities in The Nation's special issue on Islamophobia. For more visit

Read more:
Laila Al-Arian: Free Speech Under Attack for Muslim Americans - Video

(File Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

DETROIT (CBS Detroit)Exotic dancer Crystal Ludwigs attempt to have full nudity protected as free speech was shot down this week by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Ludwig, an exotic dancer at the now defunct Garter Belt strip club, challenged Van Buren Townships ban on full nudity, saying the ban violated her First Amendment rights. The club itself and another dancer previously sued the township located in a rural area of Wayne County and all lost their cases.

After the Garter Belt lost its bid for full nudity, Ludwig filed her own claim, but the court ruled that the decision against Garter Belt also applied to her.

Because the Garter Belt had already lost its challengeto the nudity ordinances, the district court held that Ludwigs claim was barred, the decision says.

Per court records,Van Buren Township enacted an ordinance in March 1999 that prohibits persons appearing in a state of nudity from frequenting, loitering, working, or performing in any establishment licensed or subject to licensing by the Michigan Liquor Control Commission.

Owners of the club went all the way to the Michigan Supreme Court to try to have the ordinance tossed out as unconstitutional, but they lost at every level of the court system.

So where does that leave the Garter Belt? Apparently nowhere.

TheWayne County Circuit Court entered a Judgment and Permanent Injunction againstGarter Belt, stating in part that the Nudity on Licensed Premises ordinance is withoutconstitutional or legal infirmity, and dismissed Garter Belts counterclaims. Garter Beltremains subject to the injunction, and is barred from challenging it, the Sixth Circuits decision says.

View original post here:
Stripper Claims Nudity Is ‘Free Speech,’ Loses Appeal

Dear Editor:

Gee, another negative letter to the editor by Bob Guion (Let the voters decide, June 22).

A few facts:

First, in the country we live in, the U.S. Constitution guarantees the right to free speech, including individually or collectively the right to have and publicly express an opinion or endorse a candidate.

Second, the only political machine I am involved in is the one our maker gave me and in particular, the two feet that have been hitting the pavement in support of Steve Child. It is called hard work.

In addition, a few individuals exercising their constitutional rights do not make for a political machine. It simply means that a few phone calls/communications were made by a group of similarly experienced people (ex-county commissioners), and they agreed to sign a letter in support of the candidate who stands head and shoulders above the other candidates. As we know, that candidate is Steve Child. Personally, I'm proud to have been asked to join in.

Jack Hatfield

Pitkin County commissioner

Snowmass Village

Excerpt from:
It's called free speech

Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown University Law Center student who was unfairly and repeatedly excoriated by Rush Limbaugh as a "slut" for advocating that contraception be routinely included in healthcare coverage isn't a friend of free speech, it turns out.

In the New York Sunday Times Magazine, she makes several statements that suggest that, while she disagrees with what Limbaugh says, she certainly won't defend his right to say it (as Evelyn Beatrice Hall once suggested Voltaire might).

In fact, she says she regards unpopular speech as "problematic" and not worthy of protection by the federal government, at least when the feds take the form of the FCC the agency that's charged (officially, at least) with the preservation free speech on the radio.

In her interview with Andrew Goldman, she says:

First, let's give Fluke the benefit of the doubt. The Times has a history of misquoting people in its Sunday Mag interview slot, so who knows what Fluke's true sentiments are.

Having said that, Fluke -- who is 30 and therefore does not get an undergraduate pass -- should know better.

Taking her points in order:

In the interview, Fluke says she grew up in a conservative Christian household and came to feminism late, after taking a women's studies class at college that she thought she'd disagree with. Conservative Christians are, bar Muslims, arguably the most censorious, anti-free speech community in America. So let's hope Fluke continues to stray even further, intellectually, from her roots.

See Also:

Read more here:
HEY, LIBERALS: Turns Out Sandra 'Slut' Fluke Isn't A Friend Of Free Speech

21-06-2012 16:50 This flashmob was organized by Havaar, Iranian Initiative against War, Sanctions and State Repression. Follow us on Facebook: "Join us as we 'flash mob' against APPLE's discriminatory, undemocratic and unethical policy of not selling products to Iranian people because their country is under economic sanctions by the US Apple has decided that internet freedom, equal rights and free communication are not company policy. We must take this opportunity to raise awareness about how sanctions are themselves human rights violations for depriving people of the digital tools of modern free speech and democracy, as well as, hurting the lives of ordinary people through economic starvation. Also we must take a stand against the growing culture of intolerance against Iranians in the US."

See the article here:
Iranians Flash Mob Against APPLE's Discriminatory - Fifth Ave - Video

It took guts for the New York Times to publish an op-ed by Tim Wu, the Columbia law professor who coined the phrase "network neutrality," arguing that the First Amendment doesn't protect the contents of the New York Times website. A significant amount of the content on the Times websitestock tickers, the "most e-mailed" list, various interactive featureswere generated not by human beings, but by computer programs. And, Wu argues, that has constitutional implications:

Protecting a computers "speech" is only indirectly related to the purposes of the First Amendment, which is intended to protect actual humans against the evil of state censorship. The First Amendment has wandered far from its purposes when it is recruited to protect commercial automatons from regulatory scrutiny.

OK, I fibbed. The target of Wu's op-ed was Google and Facebook, not the New York Times. But accepting Wu's audacious claim that computer-generated content doesn't deserve First Amendment protection endangers the free speech rights not only of the tech titans, but of every modern media outlet.

No one believes that the output of computer programs, as such, are protected by the First Amendment. It would be ridiculous, for example, to argue that the First Amendment barred the government from regulating a computer that controlled a nuclear power plant. But when a firm is in the business of providing information to the public, that information enjoys First Amendment protection regardless of whether the firm creates the information "by hand," or using a computer.

Wu's argument depends on drawing a sharp distinction between constitutionally protected human speech and computer speech that is unprotected by the First Amendment. But closer examination demonstrates how nonsensical this distinction is. To make the point, we don't need to look any further than the grey lady herself.

Articles published by the New York Times are often composed using word processors, and pages in the print newspaper are laid out using page layout software. The nytimes.com website is sent to readers by a Web server (a computer program) and rendered by a Web browser (also a computer program).

Of course, Wu isn't talking about those programs. He means programs that are directly involved in the production or selection of content. But the New York Times website has plenty of examples of those too. The home page features an automated stock ticker. A box on the right-hand side of the page shows "most e-mailed" and "recommended for you" storiesalso generated automatically. The millions of ads the Times shows its readers every month are almost certainly chosen by computer algorithms.

In 2010, the Times produced an interactive feature called "You Fix the Budget." Users were invited to try to balance the US federal budget by choosing a mix of spending cuts and tax increases. A January feature, called "What Percent Are You?," invited readers to enter their household income in order to see how it compares with others in hundreds of metropolitan areas around the country. Features like this would be impossible to create "by hand."

On election night, the Times typically has an extensive section of its website featuring election results from around the country, complete with maps, charts, and poll results. These features are updated in real time, far too quickly for a human staff to keep them up to date.

The Times employs Nate Silver, a statistician who collects thousands of poll results and produces sophisticated mathematical models of election outcomes. These models are complex enough that his results could only be generated by a computer, and indeed even Silver himself can't always explain exactly why the model produces a particular outcome.

Read the original:
Do you lose free speech rights if you speak using a computer?

WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange has sought asylum in a country notorious for crackdowns on free speech. Brian Braiker reports.

Julian Assange has defied his bail conditions by taking refuge at the Ecuador embassy in London. (Reuters)

Julian Assange may not have had many options when he was considering where to seek asylum, but still, Ecuador is a far from obvious choice. He faces extradition to Sweden for questioning over alleged sex crimes after Britains top court said last week that it had rejected a legal request to reconsider his case.

Assange was on bail and living with friends before his extradition.

Assange interviewed the president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, on the Russia Today TV channel last month. During their exchange, the Australian explained that he had been under house arrest in England for 500 days and elicited sympathy from the left-wing populist leader.

But Ecuador, a country with a tenuous respect for international human rights law, is a counterintuitive refuge for the free-speech and transparency crusader.

Ecuadors justice system and record on free speech have been called into question by Human Rights Watch, Reporters Without Borders, the Committee to Protect Journalists and Amnesty International.

Poorest record of free speech It is ironic that you have a journalist, or an activist, seeking political asylum from a government that has after Cuba the poorest record of free speech in the region and the practice of persecuting local journalists when the government is upset by their opinions or their research, said Jos Miguel Vivanco, director of Human Rights Watchs Americas division.

He pointed out that in April 2011 Ecuador expelled the US ambassador, Heather Hodges, over diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks alleging widespread corruption in the Ecuadorian police. Maybe Assange feels President Correa owes something to him.

Still, the fact remains that free-speech watchdogs are quick to tick off a laundry list of Ecuadors breaches. In a referendum held in May 2011, President Rafael Correa obtained a popular mandate for constitutional reforms that could significantly increase government powers to constrain the media and influence the appointment and dismissal of judges, Human Rights Watch wrote in its 2011 Ecuador report.

Go here to see the original:
Ecuador an odd choice for Assange

20-06-2012 14:42 Free speech zones, always controversial and vaguely Orwellian, have been dealt a blow by a federal judge, telling the University of Cincinnati that they must revise their policies of barring protestors from 99.9% of the campus grounds. Ana Kasparian of The Young Turks and John Iadarola discuss on TYT University. Do you think this could be the beginning of the end for these controversial free speech zones? Are Ana and John being too hard on the University? Or is the use of these zones as bad as they think? Let us know! And if you liked this video, "Like" it as well! 🙂 Subscribe to TYT U for more Submit a video to TYT U! We love hearing from students and faculty Follow us on twitter!!! TAGS: "free speech zones" "free speech" "orwellian" "free speech in america" "free country" "university of cincinnati" "cincinnati" "free speech ruling" "the young turks" "tyt university"

More:
"Free Speech Zones" SLAPPED Down at U Cincinnati - Video

21-06-2012 10:26 ... Simon Singh: The Fight for Freedom of Speech and Against Pseudoscience. Simon Singh is being interviewed by Julia Offe (GWUP) at the 6th World Skeptics Congress in Berlin 2012. Simon Singh talks about his fight for freedom of speech and against pseudoscience in the UK regarding the chiropractic lawsuit: In 2008, The Guardian published Singh's column "Beware the Spinal Trap", an article that was critical of the practice of chiropractic and which resulted in Singh being sued for libel by the British Chiropractic Association (BCA). When the case was first brought against him, The Guardian supported him and funded his legal advice, as well as offering to pay the BCA's legal costs in an out-of-court settlement if Singh chose to settle. Court case: In 2009, Mr Justice Eady ruled in a preliminary hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice that merely using the phrase "happily promotes bogus treatments" meant that Singh was stating, as a matter of fact (rather than as a matter of personal opinion or metaphor), that the British Chiropractic Association was being consciously dishonest in promoting chiropractic for treating the children's ailments in question. Singh denied he intended any such meaning. Singh decided to appeal the ruling, which raised substantially the potential financial liability that he would face if he lost the case. Leave to appeal was granted in October 2009. The pre-trial hearing took place in February 2010 before three senior judges at the Royal ...

See the rest here:
Simon Singh and the Fight for Free Speech - Video