Category Archives: Free Speech

Years ago, after the Bush administration initiated the Deep States surveillance regime via the Patriot Act, I observed that the left and right in this country seemed to be competing to see who could censor the most speech.

Since then, the left has forged far ahead in the censorship race, with the rise of cancel culture, deplatforming of campus speakers, andmore recentlyspurious charges of misinformation leveled at conservatives.

Under Joe Biden, thegovernment has even pressured private companiesto remove social media posts contrary to the regimes preferred narratives on COVID-19, climate change, and election fraud. That is censorship on a large scale.

Indeed, weve gotten to the point where simply expressing support for the First Amendment automatically marks one as rightwingcan you say Elon Musk? This, of course, tells us all we need to know about the authoritarian tendencies of the left.

The dynamic has shifted somewhat, however, since the brutal terrorist attacks carried out by Hamas against Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023. The rights collective response to that atrocity appears to reveal some cracks in our free speech armor.

While most conservatives are openly pro-IsraelI dont know any who are pro-Hamassome do question the Israeli governments motives and tactics. Others wonder whether the U.S. should be expending its resources in what amounts to, in their view, a regional conflict.

Although I disagree, such opinions are not beyond the pale.

People must be allowed to express them, both because they have a right to and because, in any debate, contrarians serve the useful purpose of forcing the majority to reexamine its own arguments, shore them up as necessary, and perhaps make course corrections.

Yet prominent conservatives have been shouted down, deplatformed, and even fired by other conservatives for the offense of appearing insufficiently pro-Israel.

Then there are those, almost exclusively on the left, who are openly pro-Hamaswhich is to say, pro-terrorism, pro-barbarism, and literally anti-Semitic. Weve seen them protesting practically non-stop on college campuses and elsewhere for the past several months. They are extremely vocal, often disruptive, and occasionally violent.

How should we respond to them?

Texas Governor Greg Abbott believes he has the answer. He recently issued an executive ordercondemning Hamas and anti-Semitic rhetoric on campus and declared that Texas will continue to stand with Israel. He also reaffirmed his administrations commitment to free speech.

So far, so good.

He then directed all Texas colleges and universities to review and update free speech policies to address the sharp rise in antisemitic speech and acts on university campuses and establish appropriate punishments.

Do you see the problem?

Abbott puts speech and acts in the same category, essentially equating them and thereby coopting a longstanding leftist talking point: Words are violence. But as conservatives understand, words are not violence. So what is Abbott decrying herespeech or actions?

If the latter, his executive order is unnecessary. Every action he describesprotests escalating into violence, physical intimidation of Jewish students, disruption of classes and campus activitiesis already covered by existing laws and campus policies. As Governor, Abbott could simply direct college presidents to enforce those.

On the other hand, if the order is really about speech, then its clearly unconstitutional. However offensive we may find it, anti-Semitic speech is protected by the First Amendmentexceptions to which are, rightly, very limitedand therefore cannot be punished by state actors.

This should go without saying: if the government can punish speech, it isnt free.

Speech that directly incites a riot or calls for violence against specific individuals or groups is, like violent actions, already illegal. But merely chanting Free Palestine or even From the river to the sea does not meet that high bar.

When conservatives take pages out of the lefts playbook, we essentially accept their premises: in this case, thatwords are inherently violent, and thus, one side has no right to express views the other finds abhorrent. This is not to our advantage. We will be on the losing end of that transaction almost every time.

More importantly, our commitment to free speech is both morally and ethically right. Todays campus anti-Semitism is a test of that commitment, one Abbotts executive orders fails miserably. Whether this represents a broader failure on the right remains to be seen.

Photo by zimmytws Adobe Stock Asset ID#: 301839238

Rob Jenkins is an associate professor of English at Georgia State University Perimeter College and a Higher Education Fellow at Campus Reform. He is the author or co-author of six books, including Think Better, Write Better, Welcome to My Classroom, and The 9 Virtues of Exceptional Leaders. In addition to Campus Reform Online, he has written for the Brownstone Institute, Townhall, The Daily Wire, American Thinker, PJ Media, The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. The opinions expressed here are his own.

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The Right Must Avoid the Left's Free Speech Pitfalls Minding The Campus - Minding The Campus

Claim:

A TikTok video shows actor Harrison Ford giving a pro-Palestinian speech during the Israel-Hamas war.

On April 20, 2024, a TikTok user posted a videoshowing actor Harrison Ford delivering part of a speech in a suit and tie. The caption read, "They are pushing through TikTok ban today. Free Palestine. Protect free speech." As of this writing, the video had received more than 200,000 likes.

The mention of a "TikTok ban" concerned legislation passed by the U.S. House on the same day that would ban the video platform if the China-based owner didn't sell its stake of the app within one year, The Associated Press reported.

In the video, Ford says, "The people on the front lines. The people on the ground. The people with their feet in the mud. Our efforts will have effect. We will make great progress. And we are not alone.

"There's a new force of nature at hand, stirring all over the world. They are the young people whom frankly we have failed, who are angry, who are organized, who are capable of making a difference. They are a moral army. And the most important thing that we can do for them is to get the hell out of their way."

"Thank you Harrison Ford," one of the top comments read. "We salute you Mr. President," another user remarked, in a reference to Ford portraying a U.S. president in the 1997 action movie "Air Force One."

While the video's caption did not explicitly say Ford's remarks were recent or that they specifically referenced young, pro-Palestinian demonstrators who are concerned about the people of Gaza during the Israel-Hamas war, some users indicated in the comments they certainly believed that to be the case.

Still, several commenters attempted to notify users of the truth of the video, saying Ford's speech was from 2019 and had nothing to do with Palestine or TikTok. For example, one comment buried in the replies of another comment read, "Harrison Ford isn't speaking [about] Palestinians or Hamas. It's a video from 2019 on climate change! [The] creator's headline is misinformation."

The truth was that Ford gave this speech on Sept. 23, 2019, at the United Nations in New York. He was speaking in favor of efforts to save the Amazon rainforest. His speech, which lasted just over five minutes, was delivered at a meeting of the Alliance on Rainforests during the Climate Action Summit 2019, according to the U.N.website.

Snopes has yet to find any information concerning whether Ford has provided public comment about the Israel-Hamas war.

While it could be said the TikTok video did not feature an incorrect caption, the video also did not include any contextual information about how it was nearly five years old, nor did it make mention of the Amazon rainforest or climate change. For these reasons, we chose a fact-check rating for this claim of "Miscaptioned."

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Harrison Ford Called 'Free Palestine' Supporters 'Force of Nature' in Speech? - Snopes.com

On a recent Monday night along the University of Pennsylvanias iconic Locust Walk, students Sonya Stacia and Sparrow Starlight took out some chalk and got a lesson not listed in their curriculum on the oppressive, absurd zeitgeist of the 20th-century novelist Franz Kafka.

Stacia and Starlight were already facing possible disciplinary action for their protests with the universitys Freedom School for Palestine, but that didnt stop them from chalking messages against Israels invasion of Gaza on a section of the pavement where others from climate activists to comedy troupes had scrawled erasable messages in the past.

As they wrote their messages, they recalled, passersby made critical comments, and someone started filming them. In an increasingly tense year on the Penn campus, Stacia and Starlight are used to that but they werent used to what happened next. A large gaggle of security guards showed up at the scene, and when the two undergrads tried to leave, according to their account, about six university police officers showed up, surrounded them, and detained them for about a half hour.

I was terrified, Starlight told me two weeks later, as we talked on Penns College Green. I did not know what my rights were in that situation. They, Stacia, and another student who was present told me the campus police demanded their IDs and gave differing explanations for their detention either for vandalism with spray paint (there wasnt), or hate speech and eventually let them go, apparently without future consequences.

The messages that had triggered their encounter with campus officers? Free Palestine and Let Gaza Live.

Welcome to a new kind of tension that has gripped American colleges and universities in the most divisive year on campus since the dawn of the 1970s. The wave of protests that began with the first shots of the Israel-Hamas war on Oct. 7 has morphed into an age of paranoia. Its been marked by increasingly tougher penalties or confusing new rules for students still wanting to speak out against Israels invasion of Gaza, with some schools banning indoor protests or preventing students from posting political messages on their dormitory doors.

Student activists told me they feel constantly watched, either by university officials they think are monitoring their Wi-Fi or watching from omnipresent cameras or by pro-Israel outside groups that have doxxed the personal information of pro-Palestinian protesters.

This weeks jarring news out of the University of Southern California that its Muslim valedictorian, Asna Tabassum, would not be allowed to give her upcoming commencement speech because of what the school called safety concerns after some critics had singled out some of her X/Twitter posts over Palestine gave the rest of America a window into what students and some of their professors have been saying for months: Free speech and political expression at U.S. universities is facing its greatest threat since the 1950s Red Scare and the heyday of McCarthyism.

Two Carleton College professors who write frequently and host a podcast around questions of academic freedom actually argue the current crisis is even worse than that dark era.

Were both historians and so we dont use this term lightly, the Minnesota-based professors Amna Khalid and Jeffrey Aaron Snyder told me by phone. The threats to free speech and academic freedom are unprecedented. Their recent essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education Student Activism Is Integral to the Mission of Academe argued that the role of college since the 1960s as an incubator for powerful social and political movements is now endangered by shut up and study critics who see campus protests as an unwarranted distraction.

Its very clear where the force of censorship, silencing, and intimidation has fallen, Viet Thanh Nguyen, the Vietnamese American refugee, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, and MacArthur Foundation genius grant winner, wrote this week in blasting administrators at USC, where he currently teaches, for the muzzling of Tabassums commencement speech. Yet, critics of the new campus speech restrictions are struggling to be heard over the louder narrative around increased allegations of antisemitism some real, some disputed since the Oct. 7 start of the war, as well as a right-wing political movement that sees an opening to wage a wider war against higher education.

Im writing this column after twice recently speaking on college campuses at New Yorks Cooper Union (for, fittingly, an exhibit on Vietnam War protest there) and a climate class at Penn and was struck by the questions I got from students desperately wanting to know how they could voice their political views in this new, frigid environment. I later returned to Penn and the College Green, where a handful of students from the Freedom School for Palestine were chalking protest messages or silk-screening them on T-shirts, to meet the student whod asked me for help: 19-year-old sophomore Eliana Atienza.

An organizer with Fossil Free Penn, Atienza told me campus activists are frightened and confused by a tougher disciplinary stance from the Ivy League school, such as a threat of academic probation for taking part in a pro-Palestine study-in at a Penn library. She said protest is both fundamental to the college experience and to pushing progress forward, noticing that Penn touts movement-won gains such as its centers for women, LGBTQ people, and Africana studies to its prospective students. As we spoke on a bench near Penns main crossroads on a bucolic, early spring afternoon, there was a soft undercurrent of tension. Over on the main walk, a passing student poured out his water bottle on one of the chalked messages. I watched a maintenance worker with a roller painting over the nearby light pole, stressed from a year of political messages taped on and ripped down.

The national meltdown over campus protest is happening on the eve of this falls 60th anniversary of an event that defined campus politics for decades: 1964s Free Speech Movement at the University of California, Berkeley. Harsh restrictions on where students could set up tables for political causes from fighting racial segregation in the South to college Republicans united a diverse array of protesters who staged an often-chaotic battle with administrators throughout that fall. The Free Speech Movement tugged at the essence of higher education: Are students essentially children who are wards of the college, or adults with the freedom to voice political opinions? With support from the faculty, the young people of Berkeley won.

The golden age of campus protest, which reached its zenith over widespread opposition to the Vietnam War in the late 1960s and early 70s, was always a double-edged sword. The hothouse environment on campus became an incubator for an array of social movements environmentalism, LGBTQ pride, ending support for apartheid in South Africa, and much more that have bettered society, boosting a once widely held opinion that college protest wasnt antithetical to the mission of higher education, but central to the notions of developing critical thinking skills and a moral philosophy of life. But it also triggered a powerful conservative backlash Ronald Reagans political rise began by railing against the Berkeley protests that has stripped political support for the once universally popular public universities, which led to astronomical tuition and a student debt crisis.

Still, you could hear the faint echoes of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement as recently as the start of the current academic year. At Penn, then-president Liz Magill resisted pressure from large donors and others to cancel a Palestinian literary festival on campus criticizing the views of some speakers but stating that as a university, we also fiercely support the free exchange of ideas as central to our educational mission.

Times have changed. Magill resigned in December after criticism from several Penn megadonors and on Capitol Hill over her handling of complaints about antisemitism against the schools sizable population of Jewish students. The high-profile ouster of Magill and Harvard president Claudine Gay highlighted how the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas killing some 1,200 Israelis and taking several hundred hostages, trigging an Israeli onslaught against Gaza that has killed some 33,000, a majority of them women and children has turned U.S. college life upside down.

READ MORE: Liz Magills ouster at Penn will help the worst people take down free speech, higher ed | Will Bunch

As passions rose, colleges saw some ugly incidents of both antisemitism and Islamophobia. In the mainstream media, among the wealthy donor class that wields increasing clout over university policies, and on Capitol Hill, the reported rise in antisemitic incidents is clearly the dominant narrative hovering over the 2023-24 school year. The passion in both political parties for the greater cause of Israel despite increasing criticism of Benjamin Netanyahus right-wing government and attacks on civilians and aid workers was again demonstrated just this week when the U.S. House voted 377-44 to condemn the popular pro-Palestinian chant From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free as antisemitic.

The students and professors I spoke to for this column universally condemned antisemitic attacks against Jewish people or their religion, yet they also voiced deep frustration that legitimate criticisms of the Israeli government and attacks on civilians, or even anodyne statements like Let Gaza live, are also being branded as antisemitism. Meanwhile, many free speech advocates predicted that the ugly presidential ousters at Penn and Harvard would have a chilling effect on student rights that would go well beyond the war in the Middle East and that is exactly what is happening.

At American University in Washington, D.C., administrators have banned indoor protests and said theyll only permit student clubs, or allow posters, that are welcoming and build community. At Californias Pomona College, a peaceful sit-in at the presidents office seeking divestment from Israel was met with a phalanx of riot cops who arrested 20 students, many of whom are now facing suspension or expulsion. The University of Michigan is pushing a proposed ban on disruptive protests that critics say would cripple free speech at a flagship public university.

At New York University, an incident in which students were hauled in for disciplinary hearings after staging a reading of poetry by the Palestinian author Refaat Alareer, killed late last year in an Israeli airstrike, is cited by professors Paula Chakravartty and Vasuki Nesiah as part of what they call an alarmingly constrained environment around free speech at NYU.

Experts in free speech said this moment didnt happen overnight, even if it seems that way. Carletons Khalid and Snyder, in particular, make a powerful argument that an essentially liberal movement the relentless but, over time, flawed emphasis on diversity, equity, and especially inclusion on campuses set the stage for a free speech crisis by devaluing the often messy diversity of ideas for an emphasis on so-called safety that constricts debate. The professors argue that what they criticize as DEI Inc. an overadministrated regime of rigid rules and trainings thats harmed freewheeling academic debate created the language thats now being weaponized against pro-Palestinian activists.

You can hear that in the language at American University, which justified its indoor protest ban by stating that recent events and incidents on campus have made Jewish students feel unsafe and unwelcome, or in USCs use of the safety issue to bar Tabassum. The language enshrined in todays DEI regime has, unexpectedly, become the tool for college presidents who are under intense pressure from major donors and GOP lawmakers to respond to the antisemitism pressures and who want to avoid becoming the next Magill or Gay.

But arguably an even more insidious weaponization of the Gaza crisis is from right-wing politicians whove been waging war for decades against college campuses they see as breeders of left-wing thought, indoctrinating students against conservatism. Red-state governors like Floridas Ron DeSantis or Texas Greg Abbott and their far-right legislatures are seizing the Oct. 7 moment as an excuse to, ironically, eliminate campus DEI programs, place further limits on anti-racism teaching, or flat-out ban student groups that aggressively support Palestinian liberation.

The political movement to undermine universities in the public sphere is making the most of this moment, Jonathan Friedman, managing director of U.S. free expression and education programs at PEN America, told me. In many ways, the uproar over Gaza feels like the new Red Scare, borne back ceaselessly into the 1950s that preceded the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and everything thats happened since. But I also agree with Friedman that this low moment could also spark a turnaround. Thats what censorship does, he said. It makes [people] realize that free speech matters.

A recent Harris Poll conducted for Axios found that 77% of college students said campus speech should be protected even if some feel the language is deeply upsetting and these opinions were shared equally by young Democrats and Republicans. The question is whether student activists who tilt left and whove faced accusations of thwarting academic freedom with noisy protests that have shut down controversial speakers are now ready to embrace a 1964-style vision around free speech.

They just might. Free Speech at Columbia Is a Joke was the headline on a Columbia Spectator op-ed by School of Social Work grad student Layla Saliba. She complained about an unrivaled attempt to suppress student voices on her campus and affiliated Barnard College citing a ban on dorm door decorations, restrictions on where students can protest, and reports that the college is monitoring student Wi-Fi. Saliba says Columbia administrators have a Google Alert on her name.

It should not be considered controversial to say youre against children being killed, but at Columbia, it is, Saliba a Palestinian American who says she has lost 14 family members to Israeli bombs told me by phone. She said shes faced much more repression for protesting at Columbia than she did advocating for Black Lives Matter as an undergrad at North Carolina State, in the heart of the former Confederacy.

The painful ironies of this fraught moment are not lost on Penns Atienza. She grew up in the Philippines where her family is close friends and a source of support for Nobel Peace Prize-winning journalist Maria Ressa, famed for fighting her homelands repressive regime. And Atienza embraced what she thought would be Philadelphias freedom of expression from the day she arrived on campus. Atienza was one of 19 students arrested in October 2022 for storming the field during a Penn football game at Franklin Field. She said those protesters were allowed to escape harsher college discipline by writing an essay, and administrators noted their concerns about climate change were legitimate.

Atienza and her fellow activists say there is no similar empathy for protesting for Palestine.

We try our best not to get in disciplinary trouble. They try their best to get us into disciplinary trouble, Atienza said. Although still a teenager, the sophomore is developing a keen understanding of the traditions that now face a dire risk. Passing out flyers at a Penn football game calling for divestment from fossil fuels, she said one alumnus told her about sitting in at College Hall to protest the Vietnam War, while another in the same row had protested for divestment from South Africa.

Something I like to remind myself when things feel hopeless is that the university has had activism as long as its been here, she said. Yet, those rights for young people to learn how to speak their minds, on a path to becoming tomorrows engaged citizens werent won without a fierce fight. In 1964, the legendary Berkeley activist Mario Savio said that sometimes the machine of repression becomes so odious that youve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus and youve got to make it stop!

Nearly 60 years later, Americas colleges need another free speech movement.

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Fear and loathing on America's college campuses as free speech is disappearing | Will Bunch - The Philadelphia Inquirer

TikTok on Sunday raised free speech concerns about a bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives that would ban the popular social media app in the U.S. if its Chinese owner ByteDance did not sell its stake within a year.

The House passed the legislation on Saturday by a margin of 360 to 58. It now moves to the Senate where it could be taken up for a vote in the coming days.

President Biden has previously said he will sign the legislation.

The step to include TikTok in a broader foreign aid package may fast-track the timeline on a potential ban after an earlier separate bill stalled in the U.S. Senate.

It is unfortunate that the House of Representatives is using the cover of important foreign and humanitarian assistance to once again jam through a ban bill that would trample the free speech rights of 170 million Americans, TikTok said in a statement.

Many U.S. lawmakers from both the Republican and Democratic parties and the Biden administration say TikTok poses national security risks because China could compel the company to share the data of its 170 million U.S. users. TikTok insists it has never shared U.S. data and never would.

Democratic U.S. Senator Mark Warner, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, on Sunday said TikTok could be used as a propaganda tool by the Chinese government.

Many young people on TikTok get their news (from the app), the idea that we would give the (Chinese) Communist Party this much of a propaganda tool as well as the ability to scrape 170 million Americans personal data, it is a national security risk, he told CBS News.

Some progressive Democrats have also raised free speech concerns over a ban and instead asked for stronger data privacy regulations.

Democratic U.S. Representative Ro Khanna said on Sunday that he felt a TikTok ban may not survive legal scrutiny in courts, citing the U.S. Constitutions free speech protections.

I dont think its going to pass First Amendment scrutiny, he said in an interview to ABC News.

The House voted on March 13 to give ByteDance about six months to divest the U.S. assets of the short-video app, or face a ban.

The legislation passed on Saturday gives a nine-month deadline which could be further extended by three months if the president were to determine progress toward a sale.

TikTok was also a topic of conversation in a call between Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping earlier this month. The White House said Biden raised American concerns about the apps ownership.

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TikTok raises free speech concerns on bill passed by US House that may ban app - New York Post

Matters of freedom of expression and higher educations federal responsibilities were at the forefront of the University of Californias Sixth Annual #SpeechMatters Conference.Catherine Lhamon

The virtual half-day conference, held April 18, brought together panelists from across higher ed including federal officials, faculty, staff, university deans, and students to speak about the state of free speech on American college campuses, particularly amid ongoing tensions regarding the Israel-Palestine conflict and the 2024 elections.

Across the country, we are confronted with the challenges of extreme polarization, perhaps no more intensely than on our college campuses, said UC President Dr. Michael Drake. Places that ideally offer space for exchanging ideas and stretching perspectives, institutions of higher education are increasingly charged environments.

Hamass attack on Israel last October is one of the latest assaults in a bloody decades-long geopolitical dispute. Tensions surrounding this most recent conflict which has resulted in thousands of deaths, mostly of those in Palestine have flared student protests and hostility at colleges.

Last December, Congress questioned the presidents of several high-profile universities about potential antisemitism on their campuses. As recently as April 17, Congress called on Columbia University President Dr. Nemat Shafik to answer about reports of antisemitism and harassment of pro-Palestinian students.

Universities have a federal civil rights obligation under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to take action if they know or should have known about the presence of hostile environments on their campuses, including those against Jewish and Palestinian students, Catherine Lhamon, assistant secretary for civil rights at the Department of Education (ED), said in a recorded message during the conference.

There has been a proliferation of hate in campus communities in recent months, she said.

My office generally finds that a hostile environment exists where there is unwelcome race/national origin-based conduct that, based on the totally of circumstances, is subjectively and objectively offensive and is so severe or pervasive that it limits or denies a person's ability to participate in or benefit from the recipient's education program or activity, Lhamon defined.

Even if schools find that certain speech is protected, they still have a responsibility to ensure that it doesnt create hostile environments for students, she said.

And colleges can act in ways that do not necessarily cause conflict between free speech rights and their obligations against discrimination, such as publicly rejecting derogatory opinions, providing counseling to affected students, instructing students on how to file discrimination complaints, and teaching students how to engage in civil discourse, Lhamon said.

Students knowledge about Title VI and freedom of expression may vary, depending on their access to resources and people who can help them understand, explained Dr. Sheri Atkinson, associate vice chancellor for student life, campus community, and retention services at UC Davis. To that end, her office focuses on giving students proactive education about their rights and existing policies.

Dr. Sheri AtkinsonWhen they're using their voice, when they're expressing themselves, when they're expressing hurt and pain, these are important things that are happening. And if there's a policy violation in that, ... we can address it, Atkinson said. [We have to remind ourselves that] some of these behaviors are developmentally appropriate. This is a safe space on our campuses to express themselves. And they're opportunities to learn and grow from this.

But students are not the only party that can be victim to harassment. Multiple faculty and staff speakers told their stories of being targeted for their work. This kind of harassment such as emails, social media, and death threats is pervasive and can lead to censorship of faculty work, the panelists said.

It can be thoroughly isolating, added Dr. Patrick Grzanka, divisional dean for social sciences at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, after sharing his own story of targeted harassment.

It's really important to understand that we're talking about a structural form of isolation that this kind of harassment involves, Grzanka shared. It isolates you within your job, within your expertise, within all of your professional roles. It can make people incapable of doing their work. If what you're being harassed for is simply existing in your role, the stress ... can be quite debilitating.

Often in discussions about free speech, the First Amendment and a desire for a marketplace of ideas are brought up. But such ideas are not foolproof, said Dr. Mary Anne Franks, the Eugene L. and Barbara A. Bernard Professor at George Washington Universitys Law School.

Sometimes, when we think about the marketplace of ideas, we don't think enough about how unfortunately it is very much like a marketplace in a bad sense, Franks noted. There are people with more power and more resources who are able to keep other people out. If you have [a] lack of safeguards, certain things can poison the marketplace, hurt people, and damage the things that people are looking for.

As the U.S. approaches its 2024 election season, student voter participation was centered during one of the conferences panels. Todays students are interested and concerned about several issues the economy, civil and reproductive rights, climate change, etc. but they are at the same time quite disengaged and disillusion with the current state of politics, according to the panelists.

Students are exhibiting signs of hopelessness and feeling as though they are not being listened to by their representatives in a dysfunctional government, said Dr. Nancy Thomas, executive director of the AAC&Us Institute for Democracy & Higher Education.

We know from the polls that our elected officials are not listening to us, Thomas said. We know that most Americans want reasonable gun safety [and] reproductive rights for women. And yet, they are not following through on the will of the people.

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UC Virtual Conference Centers Free Speech and Civil Rights Amid Ongoing Tensions on College Campuses - Diverse: Issues in Higher Education

Google recently made headlines globally because its chatbot Gemini generated images of people of color instead of white people in historical settings that featured white people. Adobe Fireflys image creation tool saw similar issues. This led some commentators to complain that AI had gone woke. Others suggested these issues resulted from faulty efforts to fight AI bias and better serve a global audience.

The discussions over AIs political leanings and efforts to fight bias are important. Still, the conversation on AI ignores another crucial issue: What is the AI industrys approach to free speech, and does it embrace international free speech standards?

We are policy researchers who study free speech, as well as executive director and a research fellow at The Future of Free Speech, an independent, nonpartisan think tank based at Vanderbilt University. In a recent report, we found that generative AI has important shortcomings regarding freedom of expression and access to information.

Generative AI is a type of AI that creates content, like text or images, based on the data it has been trained with. In particular, we found that the use policies of major chatbots do not meet United Nations standards. In practice, this means that AI chatbots often censor output when dealing with issues the companies deem controversial. Without a solid culture of free speech, the companies producing generative AI tools are likely to continue to face backlash in these increasingly polarized times.

Our report analyzed the use policies of six major AI chatbots, including Googles Gemini and OpenAIs ChatGPT. Companies issue policies to set the rules for how people can use their models. With international human rights law as a benchmark, we found that companies misinformation and hate speech policies are too vague and expansive. It is worth noting that international human rights law is less protective of free speech than the U.S. First Amendment.

Our analysis found that companies hate speech policies contain extremely broad prohibitions. For example, Google bans the generation of content that promotes or encourages hatred. Though hate speech is detestable and can cause harm, policies that are as broadly and vaguely defined as Googles can backfire.

To show how vague and broad use policies can affect users, we tested a range of prompts on controversial topics. We asked chatbots questions like whether transgender women should or should not be allowed to participate in womens sports tournaments or about the role of European colonialism in the current climate and inequality crises. We did not ask the chatbots to produce hate speech denigrating any side or group. Similar to what some users have reported, the chatbots refused to generate content for 40% of the 140 prompts we used. For example, all chatbots refused to generate posts opposing the participation of transgender women in womens tournaments. However, most of them did produce posts supporting their participation.

Vaguely phrased policies rely heavily on moderators subjective opinions about what hate speech is. Users can also perceive that the rules are unjustly applied and interpret them as too strict or too lenient.

For example, the chatbot Pi bans content that may spread misinformation. However, international human rights standards on freedom of expression generally protect misinformation unless a strong justification exists for limits, such as foreign interference in elections. Otherwise, human rights standards guarantee the freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers through any media of choice, according to a key United Nations convention.

Defining what constitutes accurate information also has political implications. Governments of several countries used rules adopted in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic to repress criticism of the government. More recently, India confronted Google after Gemini noted that some experts consider the policies of the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, to be fascist.

There are reasons AI providers may want to adopt restrictive use policies. They may wish to protect their reputations and not be associated with controversial content. If they serve a global audience, they may want to avoid content that is offensive in any region.

In general, AI providers have the right to adopt restrictive policies. They are not bound by international human rights. Still, their market power makes them different from other companies. Users who want to generate AI content will most likely end up using one of the chatbots we analyzed, especially ChatGPT or Gemini.

These companies policies have an outsize effect on the right to access information. This effect is likely to increase with generative AIs integration into search, word processors, email and other applications.

This means society has an interest in ensuring such policies adequately protect free speech. In fact, the Digital Services Act, Europes online safety rulebook, requires that so-called very large online platforms assess and mitigate systemic risks. These risks include negative effects on freedom of expression and information.

This obligation, imperfectly applied so far by the European Commission, illustrates that with great power comes great responsibility. It is unclear how this law will apply to generative AI, but the European Commission has already taken its first actions.

Even where a similar legal obligation does not apply to AI providers, we believe that the companies influence should require them to adopt a free speech culture. International human rights provide a useful guiding star on how to responsibly balance the different interests at stake. At least two of the companies we focused on Google and Anthropic have recognized as much.

Its also important to remember that users have a significant degree of autonomy over the content they see in generative AI. Like search engines, the output users receive greatly depends on their prompts. Therefore, users exposure to hate speech and misinformation from generative AI will typically be limited unless they specifically seek it.

This is unlike social media, where people have much less control over their own feeds. Stricter controls, including on AI-generated content, may be justified at the level of social media since they distribute content publicly. For AI providers, we believe that use policies should be less restrictive about what information users can generate than those of social media platforms.

AI companies have other ways to address hate speech and misinformation. For instance, they can provide context or countervailing facts in the content they generate. They can also allow for greater user customization. We believe that chatbots should avoid merely refusing to generate any content altogether. This is unless there are solid public interest grounds, such as preventing child sexual abuse material, something laws prohibit.

Refusals to generate content not only affect fundamental rights to free speech and access to information. They can also push users toward chatbots that specialize in generating hateful content and echo chambers. That would be a worrying outcome.

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AI chatbots refuse to produce 'controversial' output why that's a free speech problem - The Conversation

USCs decision to bar its own valedictorian, Asna Tabassum, from speaking at its 2024 commencement ceremony reminds us of a similarly contentious moment that took place when we were undergraduates.

In 2018, USCs administration declared: There is something sacred on our campus, and that is the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, especially in regard to free speech.

This sacred commitment was put to the test when a student group invited conservative activist Ben Shapiro to speak at a sold-out Bovard Auditorium while hundreds of students protested outside. As politically engaged and vocal students, we were there.

We and other protesters criticized Shapiros views as bigoted and offensive. Some students even wanted to bar Shapiro from campus altogether, on the grounds that his presence and views would make campus unsafe.

USC rightly remained firm in its commitment to free speech, demonstrating that there need not be a compromise between public safety and ones rights. USC viewed creating a safe environment for the free expression of ideas as fundamental to its duties as a university.

As then-Department of Public Safety Chief John Thomas explained in a written statement, Our role is to make sure that all parties on campus may safely exercise their first amendment rights in accordance with university policy.

To live up to this ideal, USC paid for and deployed additional uniformed police officers from both DPS and the Los Angeles Police Department, alongside other security measures.

Afterwards, then-Provost Michael Quick celebrated our schools ability to protect its students First Amendment rights and physical safety, writing, The USC community proved that even in challenging times, we can engage in passionate, thoughtful debate while maintaining respect for each other.

Six years later, in the face of similar calls to silence a campus speaker, USC has decided that tradition must give way to safety. The University administration canceled Tabassums valedictorian speech on the grounds that it was necessary to maintain the safety of our campus and students. USC disclosed neither the magnitude nor the specificity of the threats to the public or Tabassum.

This decision and its rationale amount to an absurdity.

While Shapiro had publicly expressed hateful views of Palestinians and other groups, Tabassum has merely shared links that express ideas that are typical within academic discourse on Arab-Israeli relations.

Shapiro was allowed to speak and provided with extra security by the University. Tabassum has been banned from speaking as valedictorian at her own commencement ceremony. Both faced outside threats. Why was Shapiro given extra security while Tabassum will be silenced?

It is the Universitys job to protect and empower her ability to speak rather than cowering in the face of alleged threats made by outsiders. As students, one of whom is Jewish, we always thought the University would do what was necessary to protect our right to share our ideas in the face of outside threats, as they would for all students.

Yesterday, however, the administration showed those protections do not extend to at least some of their Muslim students not even those who achieve the Universitys highest honor. This decision places Tabassum in the company of far too many Muslim and Arab students across the nation who have been subject to sanctions for voicing their opposition to Israels destructive war in Gaza.

While private universities are not required to uphold constitutional protections for free speech, California private schools are subject to the Leonard Law, which prohibits them from disciplining students solely on the basis of protected free speech. That said, USC has the legal authority to cancel Tabassums speech, because the action is not a disciplinary sanction. In doing so, however, USC has shown the hollowness of its principles and cowardice of its administration.

Its not too late to change course. We urge the University to do the right thing and protect Tabassum from outside threats and enable her to address her fellow graduates at the commencement ceremony next month.

Jacob Schwessinger

B.A. 20

Gould School of Law

Class of 2025

&

Jacob Lind

B.A. 20 & M.A. 21

Gould School of Law

Class of 2026

See more here:
The choice between safety and free speech is a false one - Daily Trojan Online

The Vernal Equinox is half-way between the solstices: half-way between the shortest and the longest day. Like all the solar holidays, it brings to mind long shadows and standing stones and neo-paganism. Stonehenge and Glastonbury: picture a white sun rolled like a pin over a field of feral kids; a shrieking mass of stray limbs like the innards of an iPhone or an etching by William Blake; crap in buckets and crepe paper platted in hair.

I wasnt thinking about the Vernal Equinox or the Autumnal Equinox or any other harbingers of death, decay, and degeneration until about 8.07am, when a swarm of whatsapps wrenched me out of my bleary morning innocence. Id never heard of Vernal Scott, but his name was obviously an omen of some kind. He had tweeted: I applaud the mayor and police of Brussels for their decision to close down this conference.

For some reason, this was what the Mayor of Brussels and his dragoons had suppressed

He meant NatCon. And while I am delighted that many readers will have no idea what a NatCon is, it does mean that I will have to give a word of explanation. NatCon National Conservatism is a movement, organised by the Edmund Burke Foundation, that holds conferences on faith, flag, and family-values conservatism. It was vaguely on my radar back in the Euro-days as an occasional pulpit for one of the sexier Le Pens; Scruton might have gone once, presumably to indulge that particularly Tory penchant for addressing the Inuit in Mandarin. Their 2024 meeting was held in Brussels in mid-April, and the local mayor had set les Rozzers on them: the conference was shut down, although unfortunately, we were not granted the spectacle of Nigel Farage being hauled off to le slammer.

I got hacked-off about NatCon at the start of 23, when the Tories were settling into their new disorder, and the movements leader a disarming man in a kippah called Yoram Hazony rocked-up to announce NatCon London. During the taster, he was politely advised that National Conservatism had a branding problem in the UK.

None of this was exactly taken on board, which was unfortunate.

NatCon London was a morass of punditry everyone had heard before. It was bland even by the Pigling-Bland standards of a Conservative Party Conference fringe event. There were off-the-shelf speeches by Braverman, Frost, Mogg, and Gove (I skipped most of these: the labels at the Pre-Raphaelite exhibition at the Tate Britain were woke but at least they had a certain mock-gravity). The Brexit Man and his gawky drummer humped their speakers from the pelican crossing down to Marsham Street and set up camp. It was all quite strange.

Unfortunately, the Roderick Spode branding, the Disneyfied over-production, the Leni Riefenstahl lighting, and the brill-creamed bouffantry made it look like a planning meeting for the Fourth Reich, and the press was delighted to run with it. The fact that it was actually a window on the only future that might be even worse a future of shivering losers in shepherd-huts, shit-posting about Anglicanism in their dressing gowns and watching woke Netflix meant nothing. NatCon London violated Rules Alpha and Beta of British politics. Dont look like a fanatic(k). Dont sound like an American. We pitched these people overseas for a reason: they are a bit intense.

The whole circus seemed to have been calculated to have the smallest possible appeal: it won no new supporters, inspired no new ideas, informed no new policies, and cost an awful lot of money that could have been spent more usefully on practically anything else.

For some reason, this was what the Mayor of Brussels and his dragoons had suppressed. Obviously, it isnt good when Village Hitlers like Monsieur Philippe Close a soft-boiled oeuf who is mayor because his predecessor got attrapd avec le schnozzle dans la trough municipale start summarily banning painfully pedestrian talking shops. It isnt good for European conservatism that rootless, listless, pointless NatCon got some light and oxygen from it. But it probably is good for European conservatism that the mayor of Imperious Europes capital city outed himself as a low-rent train conductor (revenue protection officer in Newspeak).

Unfortunately, as the coffee settled into my veins and I scrolled every deeper down the rabbit hole of Vernal Scotts twitter feed, I remembered that the Covid Age has been high season for revenue protection officers, Village Hitlers, and other assorted mastodons of tyranny over our granulated societys witless and alienated electrons.

Vernal Scotts decision to side with lOeuf Mayeurnaise was getting a bit of a reaction. Free speech not your bag, Vernal? His reply was a staple of Dark Age philosophy that I had heard a few times the night before: Sure, but the mayor decides.

In the United Kingdom, he is Head of Equality and Diversity at the University of Oxford

Sire, you cant just murder your subjects: after all, it is the tenth century. (I stole that line, but Google is being racist and refuses to identify the source for me.) You see, in Villareal-Vladivostock Europa, theres a rule. If you want to quietly suspend some human rights or some constitutional freedoms or the rule of laws above men, and you dont have time to gather the support staff of the European Council of Ministers in the usual basement to do it legally, just chance your arm and the international nomenklatura will do everything it can to let you get away with it.

Which brings us to the salient point of this screed. Vernal Scott is indeed a member of the neo-nomenklatura. In the Soviet Union, he would probably have managed some kind of turnip manufactory in the Urals. In the United Kingdom, he is Head of Equality and Diversity at the University of Oxford, and we are delighted to have him: delighted, says the Chief Diversity Officer (Order of Lenin, II.ii), to have such an experienced leader on diversity joining us, as we embark upon our new agenda on equality, diversity, and inclusion.

Joining us? Yes, lets toss the past-peak-woke chestnut on the Belgian griddle, for Vernal was appointed to this august position as recently as September 2023 (equinox?), fresh from something called the Essex Police Service. Vernal is thrilled to have been appointed. His mission will be to persuade everyone that excellence in Higher Education and EDI are integral values. Aye, where are the songs of autumn. Where are they?

I do not care that Mr Scott is a gay dad or an ex-man of faith, any more than I care that Monsieur Close is an egg with a pair of eyebrows. I dont want to care about Mr Scotts values, which I wish were his business. I was briefly amused to see that he thinks diversity and human rights consultant is a job but then again, hes had the last laugh on that one all the way to the bank with public and charitable dough.

I do care a great deal that someone who will have vast, yea, unfathomable powers of sanctimonious meddling in one of this countrys greatest institutions an institution full of people who are too cowed and too poor and too busted to stand up to such meddling believes that random officials have the right to suppress the free and peaceable exchange of ideas upon a whim. And this actually matters, because Oxford is a coal-face of human imagination and invention, an enormous asset to Britains economy and influence and the place where we recruit our political and cultural leaders.

I dont like NatCon. But what Mr Scott said about its suppression is a knife tickling the gullet of Oxford University. He needs to explain himself. And if he will not recant, he needs to go: pour decourager les autres, because attitudes like his are destroying our society. And if he will not recant, and he does not go, then the Universitys most senior leaders will have questions to answer as well.

I dont like being gas-lit either. A few months ago Chris Patten announced his retirement as the Universitys Chancellor:

I regard universities as an important part of the value system of open democratic societies We should certainly not allow them to be dragged into the centre of so-called culture wars which have usually little to do with culture, but are invariably a clash between the ideologues and heresy hunters from the extremes. Scholarship is often abandoned in these somewhat demeaning fights. We should certainly do everything we can to avoid what has been happening on the campuses of some great universities in the United States.

Should certainly not allow! Everything we can to avoid! Its a nice old story Pang, but its in the wrong tense. Future most definitely imperfect. Were not buying it, and Vernal is Exhibit A.

Read more:
Free speech freeze-up | D.H. Robinson - The Critic

(April 19, 2024 / JNS)

I was proud until recently to have been an adjunct professor at Columbias Law School for more than 20 years. My one-day-a-week seminar was titled Religious Minorities in Supreme Court Litigation. In class discussions, written exercises and other assignments, students covered recent Supreme Court briefs, oral arguments and decisions.

The testimony of Claudine Gay, former president of Harvard, reportedly prepared by lawyers at the distinguished Washington law firm Wilmer Cutler, astounded me. Gay, along with the other university presidents who appeared at a hearing of a House committee on Dec. 5, was apparently not told of the Supreme Courts unanimous agreement in Counterman v. Colorado, (600 U.S. 662023), decided a few months before her public appearance, that the First Amendments shield for free speech did not protect harassing utterances. She and the two other intellectual giants replied to the sharp questions of Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) by asserting that calls for genocide of Jews, even if harassing, were protected on their campuses so long as they did not cross the line into conduct. The Supreme Courts opinions in Counterman uniformly rejected such a reading of the First Amendment.

Former dean David Schizer of Columbia Law School, whose term coincided with seven years of my participation on the law school faculty (although I must confess that I have no recollection of ever meeting him) sat next to the universitys president, Minouche Shafik, at the witness table for her appearance on April 17.

Schizers introductory statement at the House hearing was appalling, deserving a failing grade in his schools constitutional law course. He declared that on Columbias campus, the right to protest has to be protected, as if protest on grounds owned by Columbiaa private, not a government-owned or run, institutionis public speech shielded by the First Amendment guarantee against abridging the freedom of speech.

Schizer should know that protest in a public forum is legally and constitutionally very different from protest on private premises. I may legally control what is said in my home and exclude anyone from my private premises if he or she says anything that offends my family or other guests. Free speech does not extend to declarations that the owner of the premises chooses to forbid for any reasonor, for that matter, for no reason at all.

Schizer listed for the House Committee four areas that his remedial committee on antisemitism identified. The first, he said, was better rules about where and when protests can be held. Only where and when? As if all protests were mandatory and the only restrictions the Columbia administration might impose were on their location and timing.

Would Columbia permit a protest calling for a return to slavery of all blacks? What if a protest is called on the Columbia campus to repeal the 19th Amendment and again deny suffrage to females?

The First Amendment might entitle a provocateur to carry a sign on a public street or deliver an address with either of these messages in a town square. But the owner of premises, even if they are open to the public for certain purposes, could not be compelled to allow this opinion to be expressed on his property.

This is not a dubious constitutional proposition. In 1972, sustaining the right of a shopping center owner to bar the distribution of handbills protesting the war in Vietnam, the Supreme Court vigorously and forthrightly rejected the assumption that people who want to propagandize protests or views have a constitutional right to do so whenever and however and wherever they please. (Lloyd Corp. v. Tanner, 407 U.S. 551, 568, 1972).

Schizer is simply wrong in declaring that free expression and academic freedom demand that all protests be permitted on campusno matter how they affect portions of Columbias invited student populationso long as they dont disrupt classes and other activities. Columbia has always had the legal right and moral obligation to decide that certain opinions, even if called protests to energize and inflame its adherents, should not be tolerated.

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Will Columbias law-school dean learn the law of free speech? - JNS.org

The Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education held its first Free Speech Training Program on April 11, beginning efforts to train administrators and higher education officials.

Deans, department heads and other officials who deal with free speech policies or complaints must complete First Amendment training every two years or when they are hired, according to 70 O.S. 3205. House bill 3543, which Gov. Kevin Stitt signed April 2022,establishing the Oklahoma Free Speech Committee for the Regents. The Regents' policy 2.28 also established the committee, with the purpose of giving recommendations forfree speech policies, training and complaints.

This training is among the Regents first step toward complying with the statute.

The Regents' committee is also reviewing OSU's free speech policies.

The training was held at the University of Central Oklahoma, where faculty filed into an auditorium to learn about the basics of the First Amendment and how it applies to higher education institutions.

Andy Lester, a former member of the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education and lawyer, spoke and moderated a panel during the training. He said freedom of speech is essential for college campuses.

Let's be clear, freedom of expression is a central core principle for our public institutions of higher education, Lester said. Of course, the ideas of different members of a college or university community will often quite naturally conflict, but it is not the proper role of a college or university (to) attempt to shield individuals from ideas and opinions they find unwelcome, disagree (with) or even deeply offensive. With that said, our colleges and universities should greatly value civility. Today's college students are tomorrow's leaders.

The training had Joseph Thai as its featured speaker. Thai, an associate dean and professor of law at the University of Oklahoma, gave a lecture about the basics of the free speech clauses application to college campuses.

He discussed the varying degrees of protection based on context. For example, he said professors could impose a rule on their classes that students cannot disrupt class based on content-neutral restrictions.

As college campuses continue to evolve and serve as a space for political or social discourse, Thai said it is more important than ever to know about freedom of speech.

We know, as Andy (Lester) touched on, and as you have certainly followed from the news, that free speech controversies have been roiling our campuses across the country, from elite institutions like my alma mater, Harvard, to institutions closer to home, like my employer the University of Oklahoma, Thai said.

Pointing to issues of controversy, such as when OUs chapter of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity did a racist chant that spread across the internet, Thai said there is a difference between protected and unprotected speech. Although hate speech is protected, fighting words, true threats and incitement are not.

Thai used Cohen v. California (1971) as an example to demonstrate the importance of free speech to society.

The court said that freedom of expression is powerful medicine in a society as diverse and pompous as ours, Thai said. It is designed and intended to remove governmental restraints from the arena of public discussion, putting the decision as to what views shall be voiced largely in the hands of each of us, in our students, in the hope that use of such freedom or alternately produce a more capable citizenry, and a more perfect polity.

Brandee Hancock, deputy general counsel and chief legal officer to OSU President Dr. Kayse Shrum, spoke during the panel portion of the event.

Hancock said that trainings, such as this, are important for faculty members to participate in. It informs them of their rights and the rules they can impose on students. Specifically telling faculty members what they cannot do, as opposed to what they can, is often more helpful, she said.

I always quote a member of one of our communications team, who shall remain nameless, who says, If you're talking, you're losing, and that's usually what I'm thinking about when we're talking about should we say something or should we not? Hancock said.

Although there are no plans for the next free speech training, Hancock said in an email after the event that the Regents recorded it and that it will be available to anyone who could not make it in person. She said OSU plans to have all administrators and department heads complete the training by the end of the year.

Hancock said though the training was the only planned event to specifically discuss freedom of speech, other training OSU offers cover the topic during the academic year.

news.ed@ocolly.com

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OSU, OK State Regents for Higher Education complete first required free speech training - Daily O'Collegian