Category Archives: Freedom of Speech

On the campus of NC State in Raleigh, N.C., August 7, 2020(Jonathan Drake/Reuters)

North Carolinas Campus Free Speech Act requires all public universities to include in their freshman orientation programs information about free speech on campus. How well are they doing?

For the most part, not very well, argues Shannon Watkins in todays Martin Center article.

She writes, Unfortunately, many of the schools free speech sections are rather bleak. Rather than providing students with substantial information and guidance, the following schools include a very brief nod to free speech:

At Appalachian State, students are told: As a public university with an open campus, you cant drown out the speech of someone you dont like. If there are issues, you can report them to the office of student conduct. If you want to learn more about freedom of speech, come to the events scheduled around Constitution Day this fall. That is hardly a ringing endorsement of free speech if you hear something you dont like, complain to campus officials.

Students at NC State are encouraged to stand firmly against intolerance and hate which many students will take to mean that they dont need to make reasoned responses to ideas they dont agree with.

Several of the universities didnt bother responding to the Martin Centers request for information that state law requires of them.

Not one of the UNC institutions took advantage of excellent free-speech materials available from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.

Watkins concludes, if the institutions are serious about their core missions of discovering truth and furthering knowledge, it is in their best interest to inculcate in their students a respect for and understanding of free expression. Yes, and they arent doing a good job of that.

See original here:
North Carolina Public Universities Arent Preparing Students Well on Free Speech - National Review

OCEAN CITY, Md. (WJZ) Ocean City Police said Wednesday they are aware of the profane-laced flags about President Joe Biden on the boardwalk, but they are considered freedom of speech.

The beach towns police department responded on social media after receiving complaints from people in the area.

Unfortunately, the flags (including the profanity) is considered freedom of speech, the police department tweeted. We share your frustrations with this and are as disappointed as you are.

We support freedom of speech and expression but do not agree with the inappropriate and offensive language used in the sign, the department tweeted. We do not recommend sharing the photos circulating online or taking photos of the flags, as it will only help spread the tasteless message.

WJZ has not found the images of the flags online to share.

Go here to read the rest:
OCMD Police Say Profanity-Laced Biden Flags On The Boardwalk Are Considered Freedom Of Speech - CBS Baltimore

Carl J. Asszony| Special to the USA TODAY Network

Will no spectators change Tokyo Olympic performances?

USA TODAY Sports' Tom Schad explains how the recent decision to bar spectators in Tokyo leads to the first Made-for-TV Olympic Games.

SportsPulse, USA TODAY

The anthem doesnt speak for me. It never has.

Those were the words of Gwen Berry, an Olympic track and field athlete, who turned her back while the national anthem of the United States was being played during the award ceremony at the Olympic trialsJune 26. Berry had placed third in the hammer throw. While the other winners stood quietly with hands over their hearts in respect to the nation, Berry refused to do so and even covered her head with a t-shirt displaying the words "activists athlete."

Berry claims that the "Star Spangled Banner," is racist and disrespectful to black Americans.

She explained, If you know your history, the third paragraph (stanza) speaks to slaves in America, our blood being slain and piltered (?) all over the floor. Its obvious. There is no question.

This the verse of the Star Spangled Banner that Berry said she finds offensive:

"No refuge could save the hireling and slave

From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave,

And the star spangled banner in triumph doth wave

Oer the land of the free and the home of the brave."

If Berry had studied history a little closer, she would have found that racism in that stanza is not so obvious. Her interpretation was debunked in 2016 by Mark Clague, a professor of music history, American culture, African and AfroAmerican studies, and entrepreneurship at the University of Michigan. Clague is considered to be the leading authority on the "The Star Spangled Banner."

Clague contends that that the term "hireling" referred to mercenaries hired by British forces, and the term "slaves" meant escaped slaves recruited by the British with promises of freedom.

The professor also feels that the poem honored both black and white defenders of Fort McHenry. For example, there was William Williams (Frederick Hall), an escaped slave who was allowed tojoin the U.S. Army and was at the battle of Fort McHenry. It was there that he lost his leg in battle and died a few months later. Charles Ball, another escaped slave who could havejoined the British to gain his freedom, instead fought with the U.S. Navy during the war of 1812. He encouraged other escaped slaves to fight for the United States instead ofjoining British forces.

'I never said I hated the country': Gwen Berry responds to critics of her flag protest

Other historians also believe that Francis Scott Key, in his poem the Defense of Ft. McHenry,just used the words "hireling" and "slaves" as a rhetorical device to describe those in the Royal Army and Royal Navy being repelled by American forces.

Yeonmi Park, a human rights activist who escaped the harsh regime of North Korea, criticized Berry for turning her back on the national anthem. Park believes if Berry had done this in North Korea she would be imprisoned or executed.Park added, the fact that shes (Berry) complaining about this country, the most tolerant country she doesnt really understand history.

Berrys father, Michael, an Iraq war veteran, commended his daughter for her actions stating, For her to do that on the podium is more American than anything, because thats what our country is founded on: freedom of expression, freedom of speech.

That may be true, but whatBerry and others dont seem to understand is this: It is not their freedom of speech that is in question it is the matter of the sports arena being kept neutral and separate from politics.

For me, thisquestion remains: if Berry has such disdain for the national anthem, how can she represent the United States in the Olympics?

CarlJ. Asszony, a longtime New Jersey veterans advocate, can be reached at njveteran30@gmail.com.

Read more from the original source:
Gwen Berry, 'The Star Spangled Banner' and free speech in the world of sports | Opinion - NorthJersey.com

Among the dozens of bills filed by Republicans to restrict how educators teach about race, perhaps none was more carefully written than the one in North Carolina. And therein lies the larger problem with such bills: The downside of even the most cautious efforts likely outweighs their benefits.

In numerous other states, legislators purporting to target critical race theory or divisive concepts have packaged sensible reformsincluding prohibitions on requiring students to proclaim particular points of viewtogether with irresponsible clauses that are highly likely to discourage valuable instruction. Greg Lukianoff, the president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, worries that many of these bills are so vague that they arguably forbid teaching about slavery or racism at all.

Yet even harsh critics of this kind of legislation grant that North Carolinas effort is less vulnerable to censorious abuses than those of other states. For example, the Acadia University instructor Jeffrey A. Sachs surveyed more than 50 bills in 24 states that would add restrictions to what K12 educators could tell students about race or sex. He concluded that legislators who wanted to ban teaching topics such as white privilege and the work of authors such as Robin DiAngelo and my colleague Ibram X. Kendi had drafted bills so broad and clumsily written that entire historical eras and swathes of contemporary events would be barred from discussion. The large majority of these bills are repugnant to an open society, Sachs declaredyet he noted that North Carolinas bill is the exception and would probably do little harm.

Thats because House Bill 324 would not prohibit elementary- and secondary-school educators from merely discussing anything, including white privilege, DiAngelos White Fragility, or Kendis How to Be an Antiracist. Rather, it would prohibit them from promoting seven specific concepts:

Under the proposed law, schools are explicitly allowed to explain those seven concepts or to assign materials that incorporate them for educational purposes in contexts that make clear the public school unit does not sponsor, approve, or endorse such concepts. Educators are prohibited only from teaching any of the concepts in a manner that could reasonably give rise to the appearance of official sponsorship, approval, or endorsement. (Though the laws text mentions race and sex in parallel, the debate about it has focused on how schools handle the former.)

Read: The GOPs critical race theory obsession

I sympathize with fears that some educators try to indoctrinate rather than educate public-school students about race and that some left-progressive perspectives about race veer into racial essentialism, discrimination, or crude racial stereotypes, like the notion that showing up on time or revering the written word is an attribute of white culture. Any teacher actively promoting the concepts targeted by the North Carolina bill should meet public resistance. For lawmakers or parents to object to curricula that promote ideological dogma about race is neither illiberal nor authoritarian, any more than objecting to Lost Cause mythology in public schools is illiberal or authoritarian.

Yet North Carolinas relatively well-written bill illuminates a flaw in all such legislation: Any prohibition broad enough to exclude pernicious dogma risks prohibiting or chilling legitimate instruction, while any bill so narrow as to avoid a chilling effect is unlikely to effect significant change. The needle is extraordinarily difficult to thread.

The populist right is now using critical race theorya term that originally referred to a distinct, decades-old form of scholarship about racism in American politics and lawto encompass everything conservatives dislike about leftist identity politics, while the progressive left now understands CRT to be mere common-sense truths about racism in America. The outrage entrepreneurs on either side of H.B. 324 therefore share a perverse incentive to portray it as a law that would ban critical race theory. The bill would prevent discriminatory concepts, like Critical Race Theory, from being taught as fact or endorsed, North Carolinas Republican House speaker, Tim Moore, declared in a press release. Democratic Representative Kandie Smith likened the bill to a book burning and said, A small group of enraged individuals are looking to ban an entire concept of thought because it makes them uncomfortable.

But if the North Carolina bill passes, it wont ban critical race theory. It will restrict teachers from promoting seven specific concepts that may overlap at times with CRT but are far from synonymous with itand will do so mostly by banning the promotion of racial stereotypes in public schools. Indeed, the bill is best understood as an attempt to deploy the blunt tool of antidiscrimination law, an exercise that ought to confound many of its supporters and opponents alike.

Actors on both sides are taking positions that they reject in other circumstances. Prior to this year, observers of American politics could expect a bill targeting discrimination on the basis of race or sex (as at least six of the seven concepts named in the legislation do) to be disproportionately supported by Democrats invoking values such as diversity, inclusion, and the importance of combatting hate, and disproportionately opposed by Republicans citing concerns about restricting individual liberty and needlessly inviting costly, frivolous litigation. Instead, the Republicans pushing the bill say that it simply prohibits schools from endorsing discriminatory concepts, as Representative John Torbett, the lead sponsor, put it. Opponents of the North Carolina measure and similar bills in other states emphasize their potential chilling effect. Commenting on GOP proposals collectively, the ACLU declared, Using these laws to prevent talk about racism is anathema to free speecha right many conservative lawmakers claim to hold dear.

This role reversal is due to the confluence of many factors. For years, academic training programs and professional organizations for American educators have asserted that teachers have an ethical duty to advance progressive notions of social justice in the classroom, given the opportunity. More recently, an opportunity to advanced these notions arose: The rise of Black Lives Matter, the ideological shift of white liberals to the left of Black voters on issues of race, and the murder of George Floyd all contributed to greater support, especially in blue America, for radically transforming the way that public schools discuss race, for better and worse. Events such as the arrival of enslaved people in English colonies, Juneteenth, the Tulsa massacre, and unjust police killings have received due attention. And education about the workings of systemic racismfor instance, how redlining created racial disparities in inherited wealthhas grown more sophisticated.

These positive changes have triggered some backlash from reactionaries who simply object to any emphasis on the ugly side of U.S. history. But a broader backlash encompasses observers across the ideological spectrum who worry that, in the effort to right Americas very real racial wrongs, progressive educators are sometimes guilty of worrisome excesses, as when they stray into indoctrination or racial essentialism and reductionismwhat the essayist Albert Murray called a folklore of white supremacy and a fakelore of black pathology. Alongside historical facts, some schools are relaying hotly contested narratives about race in America as if theyre established truths rather than the opinions of one ideological faction among many. The New York Times published the 1619 Project, which blended facts, such as the year enslaved Africans were brought to Virginia, with subjective interpretation, including the claim that 1619 was the year of Americas true founding, and partnered with the nonprofit Pulitzer Center to adapt even its most contested claims for school curricula. The Black Lives Matter at School movement succeeded in persuading a number of school districts across the country to devote a week to lessons that, at least in one district, include materials that tell kindergartners that whiteness is akin to signing a contract with the devil. DiAngelos signature book, now a fixture of professional-training sessions, maligns and stereotypes white people and condescends to Black people; Kendis best seller argues that racial discrimination is not inherently racist If discrimination is creating equity, then it is antiracist.

Conor Friedersdorf: What happens when a slogan becomes the curriculum

So should public schools be banned by statute from promoting the concept that one race is inherently superior? Or that some people should feel psychological discomfort because of their race? I suspect that majorities of all racial groups regard at least the first six of the seven concepts targeted in North Carolina as profoundly wrongheaded. (The seventh, which includes the idea that the U.S. was created for the purposes of racial oppression, appears to refer to the 1619 Project. Though questionable as a historical matter, this proposition is not overtly discriminatory.)

Yet conservatives, of all people, should recognize compelling arguments for declining to pass a state law that interferes with the prerogatives of local control, which theyve long valued, or that targets specific concepts, even extremely destructive or discriminatory ones. After all, commentators on the right have spent decades warning about potential and actual excesses of antidiscrimination statutes, and the many ways that they may conflict with other goods, such as First Amendment protections, academic freedom, freedom of religious conscience, freedom of expression, and more. Additionally, Republicans should worry that banning even something they abhor, such as the active promotion of White Fragilitystyle racial essentialism in North Carolina schools, could cause some educators to stop teaching valuable material that legislators did not intend to ban, because antidiscrimination laws tend to chill more speech than they formally prohibit.

Progressives, meanwhile, will be familiar with counterarguments in favor of aggressive, formal prohibitions on race and sex discrimination, having built bureaucracies in universities and other institutions to enforce such restrictions. In the 1993 essay collection Words That Wounda seminal text of critical race theorythe professors Mari J. Matsuda, Charles R. Lawrence III, Richard Delgado, and Kimberl Williams Crenshaw provide a multifaceted intellectual edifice for overriding academic freedom, free speech, and First Amendment concerns and using state power against words that degrade or humiliate in education.

In an ironic twist, proponents of the North Carolina legislation could argue for its passage by citing these critical race theorists, who argued in Words That Wound that less egregious forms of racism degenerate into more serious forms; that libels against entire racial groups are more damaging than slights aimed at individuals and are best treated as outside the realm of protected discourse; that racist messages trigger physiological injury and devastate self-esteem; that those who are denigrated for their race or gender benefit from laws that tell them they are not imagining the harm being done to them; that the appropriate standard in determining whether language is persecutory, hateful, and degrading is the recipients community standard; and that the classical liberal insistence on viewpoint neutrality when the state restricts speech entrenches abuses by people in power.

Summing up their case for narrowing the First Amendment and limiting freedom of speech, the authors of Words That Wound declare in a joint introduction that this is at bottom a fight to gain equal access to the power of the intelligentsia to construct knowledge, social meaning, ideology, and definitions of who we are.

The same fight continues today, but with a noteworthy ideological flip.

The right, watching some educators abandon race neutrality, stigmatize whiteness, and embrace historiography that portrays the introduction of slavery as Americas true founding, is now invoking nondiscrimination law, a tool it has often criticized, to challenge a left-identitarian intelligentsias power to foreground racial difference and group identity in defining who we are. The North Carolina bills very title, Ensuring Dignity & Nondiscrimination / Schools, adopts the premise that protecting students dignity requires limiting their educators classroom speech. In a tweet reminiscent of Words That Wound, Speaker Moore warned of hateful ideas that are attacking our kids.

For its part, the left, which has traditionally pilloried skeptics of antidiscrimination laws, is opposing one such law in North Carolina, awakened to how that tool can limit speech, truth-telling, and knowledge-making. Echoing free-speech advocates who believe that people need no protection from views with which they disagree, one Democratic lawmaker, Representative Ashton Clemmons, declared, Fundamental to education is discomfort. If you stay in your comfort zone, you are not growing. You are not learning. You fundamentally have to feel discomfort to learn something new.

In short, proponents of the North Carolina bill have adopted critical race theorists call for explicitly limiting discriminatory speech in education, while bill opponents have rejected it.

Small tweaks to the North Carolina bill, such as eliminating the one prohibited concept that doesnt constitute discrimination or stereotyping, could make it less prone to chilling effects or overweening prohibitions. But the bills opponents vastly exaggerate its potential harm when they claim, as did North Carolinas ACLU chapter, that rather than help young people get the most out of their education to help them grow into informed and engaged citizens, some lawmakers want to practice censorship and impose an alternate version of American historyone that erases the legacy of discrimination and lived experiences of Black and Brown people, women and girls, and LGBTQ+ individuals. If passed, this bill will result in no such erasure.

Anne Applebaum: Democracies dont try to make everyone agree

This is an act to ensure discrimination, fanaticism, bigotry, State Representative James Gailliard, a Democrat from Nash County, said of the bill. Nothing in the bills text can justify those histrionics. As Republican legislators in many states transgress too far into censoriousness, some Democrats are talking as if any step to contest preferred progressive curriculum on race is verbotenas if no legitimate disagreements exist about how best to educate and acculturate young people. If a significant number of North Carolina educators are promoting discrimination on the basis of race or sex, whether in the guise of white supremacy or anti-racist activism, state legislators are within their rights and responsibilities to pass a bill tailored to stop it. The question is: Are the ostensible abuses that this bill would prohibit actually common?

The conservative blogger A. P. Dillon has documented a teacher-training event in Wake County, North Carolinaset up by an employee of the Wake County Public School Systems Office of Equity Affairs and attended by scores of public-school teacherswhere handouts at a Whiteness in Ed Spaces session listed supposed norms of whiteness, including fear, I know best, and punish, and urged educators to adopt applied critical race theory to challenge the centrality of whiteness in schools. But Ive been unable to find significant evidence of North Carolina teachers engaging in classroom conduct that would violate the law.

Although I agree in principle with forbidding public-school teachers from promoting racism or sexism, and support existing nondiscrimination laws that do so, I doubt that many North Carolina teachers would ever be caught violating H.B. 324 by promoting one of its prohibited conceptsprecisely because the bills language is so narrow, and merely teaching the concepts is permitted. And insofar as any educator is found to promote discriminatory stereotypes, pressuring principals and school boards to stop such activity could be effective without a state law.

Proponents of H.B. 324 argue that it would empower parents and make it easier for them to take their complaints to state courts, rather than federal ones. Still, the bill provides no specific remedy for violations. And other remedies are already available to students and their families. Specifically, the First Amendment protects against the states compelling people to affirm ideas with which they disagree. Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 already prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin in any program or activity that receives Federal funds. And North Carolinas state constitution already declares, No person shall be denied the equal protection of the laws; nor shall any person be subjected to discrimination by the State because of race, color, religion, or national origin. Truly discriminatory teaching, in other words, is already illegal.

Meanwhile, lawmakers and members of the public who want to ban the 1619 Project or White Fragility from schools outright, rather than trusting that flawed historiography or identitarian racecraft will be rejected if the strongest arguments on all sides are aired, should understand that H.B. 324 wont, in fact, keep those materials out of public-school classrooms. A North Carolina teacher could even assign Critical Race Theory: An Introduction without violating the law.

The closer one looks at the particulars, the more it seems as though the North Carolina bills advocates would be securing a symbolic political victory rather than a policy victory with any significant classroom consequences. That makes justifying the potential chilling effects of any antidiscrimination bill harderespecially in an environment where some credulous, uninformed teachers who listen to the hype from either side might mistakenly conclude that a whole ill-defined academic subfield is banned. The activists pushing these laws ought to study the history of the academic movement they tout as their enemy: As an early generation of critical race theorists discovered in the early 1990s, when they worked to promote speech codes in higher education, policy makers will inevitably struggle to write a bill that constrains discriminatory teaching narrowly enough to avoid undue censorship and broadly enough to achieve their goals. Should this bill become law, like those bygone speech codes, the victory may prove as Pyrrhic.

Excerpt from:
North Carolina Finds That Banning Indoctrination Is Hard - The Atlantic

In the annals of Section 230 crackpottery, the publisher or platformcanardreigns supreme. Like the worst (or perhaps best) game of Broken Telephone ever, it has morphed into a series of increasingly bizarre theories about a law that is actually fairly short and straightforward.

Last week, this fanciful yarn took an even more absurd turn. It began on Friday, when Facebookbegan to roll out test warningsabout extremism as part of its anti-radicalization efforts and in response to theChristchurch Call for Action campaign. There appears to be two iterations of the warnings:one asks the userwhether they are concerned that someone they know is becoming an extremist,a second warns the userthat they may have been exposed to extremist content (allegedly appearing while users were viewing specific types of content). Both warnings provide a link to support resources to combat extremism.

As it is wont to do, the Internet quickly erupted into an indiscriminate furor. Talking heads and politicians raged about the Orwellian environment and snitch squads that Facebook is creating, and the conservative mediaeagerlylappeditup(ignoring, of course, that nobody is forced to use Facebook or to pay any credence to their warnings). Thats not to say there is no valid criticism to be lodgedsurely the propriety of the warnings and definition of extremist are matters on which people can reasonably disagree, and those are conversationsworth having in a reasoned fashion.

But then someonewent there. It was inevitable, really, given that Section 230 has become a proxy for things social media platforms do that I dont like. And Section 230 Truthersnevermiss an opportunity to make something wrongly about the target of their eternal ire.

Notorious COVID (and all-around) crank Alex Berenson led the charge, boosted by the usual media crowd,tweeting:

Yeah, Im becoming an extremist. An anti-@Facebook extremist. Confidential help is available? Who do they think they are?

Either theyre a publisher and a political platform legally liable for every bit of content they host, or they need to STAY OUT OF THE WAY. Zucks choice.

That is, to be diplomatic, deeply stupid.

Like decent toilet paper, the inanity of this tweet is two-ply. First (setting aside the question of what exactly political platform means) is the mundane reality, explainedad nauseum, that Facebook needs notin factmake any such choice. It bears repeating:Section 230provides that websites are not liable as the publishers of content provided by others. There are no conditions or requirements. Period. End of story. The law would make no sense otherwise; the entire point of Section 230 was to facilitate the ability for websites to engage in publisher activities (including deciding what content to carry or not carry) without the threat of innumerable lawsuits over every piece of content on their sites.

Of course, thats exactly what grinds 230 Truthers gears: they dont like that platforms can choose which content to permit or prohibit. But social media platforms would have a First Amendment right to do that even without Section 230, and thus what the anti-230 crowdreallywants is to punish platforms for exercising their own First Amendment rights.

Which leads us to the second ply, where Berenson gives up this game in spectacular fashionbecause Section 230 isnt even relevant. Facebooks warnings are its own content, which is not immunized under Section 230 in the first place. Facebook is liable as the publisher of content it creates; always has been, always will be. If Facebooks extremism warnings were somehow actionable (as rather nonspecific opinions, they arent) it would be forced to defend a lawsuit on the merits.

It simply makes no sense at all. Even if you (very wrongly) believe that Section 230 requires platforms to host all content without picking and choosing, that is entirely unrelated to a platforms right to use its own speech to criticize or distance itself from certain content. And thats all Facebook did. It didnt remove or restrict access to content; Facebook simply added its own additional speech. If theres a more explicit admission that the real goal is to curtail platforms own expression, its difficult to think of.

Punishing speakers for their expression is, of course, anathema to the First Amendment. Inhalting enforcement of Floridas new social media law, U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle noted that Florida would prohibit platforms from appending their own speech to users posts, compounding the statutes constitutional infirmities. Conditioning Section 230 immunity on a platforms forfeiture of its completely separate First Amendment right to useits own voicewould fare no better.

Suppose Democrats introduced a bill that conditioned the immunity provided to the firearms industry by thePLCAAon industry members refraining from speaking out out or lobbying against gun control legislation. Inevitably, and without a hint of irony,manyof thepeopleurging fundamentally the same thing for social media platforms would find newfound outrage at the brazen attack on First Amendment rights.

At the end of the day, despite all their protestations, what people like Berenson want is not freedom of speech. Quite the opposite. They want to dragoon private websites into service as their free publishing house and silence any criticism by those websites with the threat of financial ruin. Its hard to think of anythinglessfree speech-y, or intellectually honest, than that.

Ari Cohn is Free Speech Counsel at TechFreedom

Section 230 Continues To Not Mean Whatever You Want It To

More Law-Related Stories From Techdirt:

Texas Legislature Sees Floridas Social Media Bill Go Down In Unconstitutional Flames; Decides We Can Do That Too!South Florida Cops Ran Images Of Protesters Through States Facial Recognition DatabaseGoogle Facing Yet Another Antitrust Lawsuit Over Its App Store Practices, Even Though Android Is Quite Permissive

See the rest here:
Section 230 Continues To Not Mean Whatever You Want It To - Above the Law

Former President Donald Trump on Wednesday filed class-action lawsuits against Facebook, Twitter and YouTube arguing his suspension from those platforms violates the First Amendment.

However, legal experts say that argument has little chance of succeeding in court since the First Amendment constrains only the government, and not private entities.

The First Amendment specifically says "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press," and the Supreme Court has extended that protection against all government agencies and officials executive, legislative and judicial, as well as federal, state and local, per the National Constitution Center.

This protection does not include private individuals or organizations, such as Facebook, Twitter and Google, which owns YouTube. But Trump is arguing that certain private businesses have become "state actors" and therefore are required to abide by the First Amendment. Trump claims:

Defendant Facebook has increasingly engaged in impermissible censorship resulting from threatened legislative action, a misguided reliance upon Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act ... and willful participation in joint activity with federal actors. Defendant Facebook's status thus rises beyond that of a private company to that of a state actor, and as such, Defendant is constrained by the First Amendment right to free speech in the censorship decisions it makes regarding its Users.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

But the Supreme Court, in an opinion authored by Trump-appointed Justice Brett Kavanaugh, declared in 2019 that media platforms are not state actors.

Trump and his supporters have long lambasted social media companies for so-called "cancel culture" and their disparate treatment of conservative voices. The former president's removal from Facebook, Twitter and YouTube for inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol fueled this outcry.

"We're demanding an end to the shadowbanning, a stop to the silencing, and a stop to the blacklisting, banishing and canceling that you know so well," Trump said at a press conference Wednesday.

In addition to arguing a First Amendment violation, Trump's lawsuits are also seeking a ruling that declares unconstitutional the so-called Section 230, a decades-old federal law that protects online platforms from lawsuits regarding content moderation decisions.

Evan Greer, director of Fight For the Future, whose organization advocates for Internet freedom and privacy, said that from a legal perspective this lawsuit is likely to go nowhere.

"While it's silly to pretend that the moderation decisions of Big Tech don't have a significant impact on free expression, the First Amendment enables private platforms to make exactly the kind of moderation decisions they wish to make as non-government entities," she said.

Greer and other critics of the lawsuits also pointed out the legal action was likely a fundraising tactic for Trump, who is considering another presidential run in 2024.

Shortly after announcing the lawsuits, Trump's joint fundraising committee sent a text saying, "Pres Trump: I am SUING Facebook & Twitter for UNCONSTITUTIONAL CENSORSHIP. For a short time, 5x-IMPACT on all gifts! Donate NOW."

At the press conference, Trump also encouraged his supporters to go to a website where they could join the class-action lawsuits. However, that site redirects users to one for the America First Policy Institution that only includes a promotional video and links to donate.

From Your Site Articles

Related Articles Around the Web

See the rest here:
Does Trump have a legitimate First Amendment case? - The Fulcrum

Australian conservatives claim that woke students and leftist academics are creating an Orwellian atmosphere, silencing honest academic debate. They present themselves as the guardians of free speech on campus. In June, education minister Alan Tudge warned universities that if they did not implement the governments preferred code of conduct, ostensibly designed to protect freedom of speech, the courts would make them do so.

The code to which Trudge was referring is the product of a 201819 review into freedom of speech and academic freedom commissioned by his predecessor and carried out by chief justice Robert French. The French review came after a right-wing culture war around freedom of speech on university campuses and a series of reports on academic freedom launched by the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA), a right-wing libertarian think tank.

The Australian rights strategy is almost identical to that of its counterparts in Britain. Having overseen years of disastrous cuts to higher education, the Coalition is now waging a war on academic freedom. Their goal is to clamp down on left-wing speech and activism, marginalize progressive academics, and push university education to the right.

The French review found few actual cases in which activists had undermined free speech on campus. Instead, it observed that recent incidents reported in the press

do not establish a systematic pattern of action by higher education providers or student representative bodies adverse to freedom of speech or intellectual inquiry in the higher education sector.

The review did, however, conclude that even a limited number of incidents . . . may have an adverse impact on public perception of the higher education sector which can feed into the political sphere. Far from exposing censorious students and academics, the French review drew attention to the role the media has played in stoking a moral panic.

Nevertheless, the report recommended a code of conduct known as the French model code. It recommends that external parties should not restrict lawful speech by staff, students, or invited speakers. Academic staff and students, the report insists, should not have their intellectual inquiry and their ability to express their opinions or engage in public debates constrained by opponents of free speech.

The authors of the report explicitly rejected the idea of imposing the code on universities. Despite this, Australian minister Dan Tehan felt that universities werent adopting this voluntary model code with sufficient enthusiasm. In response, he commissioned a further review in August 2020, conducted by former Deakin University vice chancellor Sally Walker.

Of the forty-two universities surveyed by the Walker review, thirty-two had implemented the French model code although not all had adopted the reports full list of recommendations. Only six universities reported they had no plans to implement the Code.

In March, Parliament passed the Higher Education Support Amendment (Freedom of Speech) Act 2020, in line with this recommendation. A Sydney Morning Herald article hinted at the ulterior motives behind support for implementing the bill. The article outlined how the government negotiated its definition of academic freedom with Pauline Hansons One Nation Party. In return, the right-populist party committed to supporting other government bills, including the Job-Ready Graduates legislation that raised university fees for many courses.

The Australian right imported the claim that universities are beset by a free speech crisis from the United States and UK, where similar moral panics have come to dominate politics. As the story goes, snowflake students and left-wing academics have created an Orwellian culture. Allegedly, a mixture of cultural Marxism, identity politics, and postmodernism has inspired the anti-liberal turn in student politics. This confected crisis has focused on the tactic of no platforming, which aims to ban, disinvite, or disrupt objectionable speakers.

In the UK, the National Union of Students has had a no platform policy in place since the mid-1970s, applied mainly to openly fascist or racist groups or speakers. But conservatives have raised increasing alarms about it over the last decade. They have pointed to the 2015 attempt to disinvite Germaine Greer from speaking at Cardiff University over her transphobic views and the disinvitation of former home secretary Amber Rudd at Oxford in 2020.

The British Conservative Party has also criticized Cambridge University for revoking a fellowship given to Noah Carl, who had previously argued that the debate about race, genes, and IQ was being stifled. These, cases, they claim, prove that universities are increasingly intolerant toward conservatives and gender critical feminists.

This narrative has little basis in reality. Following renewed media coverage, in 2017, then UK universities minister Jo Johnson launched a parliamentary inquiry into freedom of speech at universities, conducted by the Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR). The JCHRs final report found that although there had been some incursions on lawful free speech, there was no evidence of the wholesale censorship of debate which media coverage has suggested.

The JCHR report did, however, call for greater intervention against student unions that inhibit lawful free speech. It recommended that effective action should be taken against protestors who go beyond the law in attempts to disrupt or shut down events. The report suggested that the newly created Office for Students publish an annual report on free speech at universities.

Under the leadership of Boris Johnson, the Conservative Party have pivoted toward an increasingly right-wing, populist politics. In its 2019 manifesto, the party pledged to strengthen academic freedom and free speech in universities. Johnson modelled his approach on recommendations from right-wing think tanks such as Policy Exchange. The Guardian described the research methodology underpinning Policy Exchanges findings as laughable.

In February 2020, UK education secretary Gavin Williamson warned that the government would intervene if universities did not implement its freedom of speech reforms. By the time the Tories had introduced legislation to Parliament, they had already initiated a wider war on woke. They have targeted historical research critical of the British Empire, as well as institutions like the National Trust and the BBC.

Instead of following the JHCR report, the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2021 fell largely in line with Policy Exchanges recommendations. Most troublingly, it extended legislation applied to universities to student unions, previously accused by the government of subsidizing niche activism. The government also mandated that the Office for Students appoint a director of freedom of speech and academic freedom (colloquially known as the Free Speech Champion).

The act further empowered the right by making it possible to launch legal proceedings over alleged infringements on freedom of speech. As David Renton has shown, this has the potential to generate a multitude of court cases. These would effectively lead to campaigns led by wealthy right-wing donors intervening in university politics in the name of free speech.

During this period, the Johnson government demanded that universities adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which can be used to label all robust criticism of Israel as antisemitic. The man who first drafted that definition, Kenneth Stern, has strongly opposed its use for disciplinary purposes. Johnsons defense of the IHRA was part of his governments wider crackdown on alleged antisemitism on campus. Absurdly, at the same time, universities minister Michelle Donelan suggested that universities should permit Holocaust deniers to speak on campuses, provided they werent straying into racism.

Australian conservatives are following the same playbook. In February this year, as the senate debated the governments Higher Education Act, Liberal senator Claire Chandler claimed:

Reports into academic freedom and censorship in the UK have shown that radical activists within universities are generating and coordinating formal complaints and protests that agitate for academics to be fired or deplatformed. Too often the response by the university in question is not to support the academic freedom of its own academics but to give in to a Twitter pile-on. As a result, academics and experts are increasingly self-censoring and staying away from topics that may draw the ire of activists and may result in attempts to have them sacked. That is a hugely concerning and anti-intellectual trend that must be arrested.

Right-wing media outlets primarily the Australian have breathlessly reinforced this narrative. Figures like Janet Albrechtsen have endorsed the campaign on behalf of Toby Youngs Free Speech Union, which bills itself as GetUp for normal people. Hard-right Spiked columnists such as Brendan ONeill and Frank Furedi have added their voices to the chorus, promoting a local version of the myth of a free speech crisis on campus.

Likewise inspired by Spikeds 2015 Free Speech University Rankings, the IPA conducted three Free Speech on Campus audits between 2016 and 2018. The media covered these audits widely, but did not scrutinize the IPAs methodology and findings, which RMIT University social policy professor Rob Watts described as a mixture of anecdote and a spurious quantitative audit. Meanwhile, Brendan ONeill became a regular guest on the IPAs podcast, cohosted by Andrew Bolts son James.

This recent moral panic about free speech at universities is part of a wider attack on higher education and academic research. During the height of the pandemic, the crisis claimed seventeen thousand jobs. Despite this, the government designed the JobKeeper wage subsidy specifically to prohibit universities from claiming support.

At the same time, the Liberals raised fees for subjects in the humanities, law, and communications as part of the Job-Ready Graduates program. The moves have compounded the higher education crisis caused by years of neoliberal reforms and exceptionally high levels of casualization. As a 2019 report by the National Union of Students makes clear, cuts and job losses are a far greater threat to academic freedom of speech than woke students.

The war on higher education is ideologically motivated. The Right views the humanities in particular as an enemy because of its alleged focus on teaching critical social analysis of class, race, and gender. In parallel with their UK counterparts, Australian conservatives have attacked history courses for being dominated by identity politics and for criticizing Australias settler-colonial past.

Its part of the ongoing legacy of the History Wars, launched under John Howard, in which right-wing historians attacked the black armband view of Australians colonial history. Similarly, Howard politicized the Australian Research Councils (ARC) grant assessment process by giving the education minister a veto. Conservatives then used this veto to scupper progressive projects. Unsurprisingly, in 2018, it came to light that then Liberal education minister Simon Birmingham had also vetoed several ARC-funded projects.

Today, projects seeking ARC funding must pass a national interest test. This has led Australias peak research funding body to self-censor. In a senate estimates committee hearing, the ARC admitted to flagging potential sensitivities in projects that may represent Chinese influence over Australian universities and research programs.

In a recent Sky News interview, Alan Tudge hinted at further attacks, exclaiming that he had lost patience with universities for not implementing the French model code. In 2020, universities took a severe battering and administrations offered little resistance to the Morrison governments anti-university agenda. Theres every chance that vice chancellors will decide its not worth fighting on this issue as well.

There is a war on freedom of speech at Australian universities its being waged by conservatives who, sensing an opportunity, look set to escalate their attacks. The result will be job losses, intimidation of progressive academics, and restrictions on student activism and organizing. As the Right tries to coerce universities into promoting conservative ideology, it will fall to students and academics to defend freedom of speech on campus.

Original post:
Conservatives Are the Ones Attacking Free Speech at Universities - Jacobin magazine

Anti-racism is now routinely framed as a threat to freedom of speech, but the tactic is not new. In 1965, William F. Buckley Jr. argued in a syndicated column titled, Are You a Racist? that the word racism was being used indiscriminately. This risked preventing a focus on real racism, such as that perpetrated by Hitler, he wrote, and also led to innocent people being denounced merely for expressing controversial opinions.

Sound familiar? Buckleys warning about the censoriousness of anti-racist politics was issued the same year as the Selma-to-Montgomery civil rights march. More than 50 years later, the same tactic is being deployed in response to the Black Lives Matter movement. Across different contexts, the democratic importance of free speech is being misappropriated to advance reactionary politics.

The Conservative Party government in the United Kingdom, for example, has invested significant political energy in framing BLM-related protests as threats to freedom of expression. This has involved a campaign against censorship on university campuses, despite a lack of evidence supporting these claims. It recently culminated in the publication of a report on racism in Britain that blames wrong-headed youthful idealism for once again making everything about racism.

Buckleys ideological maneuvering and U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnsons culture war share an approach. Rather than denying the existence of racism, both insist on an artificially restricted definition that accepts nothing short of evidence of direct, intentional hostility. This closes off any discussion of the structural and institutional racism in society that the wave of BLM-inspired movements seek to confront.

It is also designed to put people subject to racism on the defensive. Unless they can definitively prove intentional racism as the cause of a behavior, they are said to be acting undemocratically and shutting down open debate by indiscriminately accusing others of racism.

Idahos new law banning the teaching of critical race theory in its public schools is an example of gaslighting politics in action. In a bid to defend dignity and non-discrimination, it criminalizes such teaching, arguing that it promotes division. No definition of critical race theory is provided.

If the concept is left fluid, critical race theory can be made to stand in for any attempt to account for the legacy and persistence of racist structures. At the same time, if it is presented as something solid, it can be viewed as an indoctrinating ideology and justify the censoring of, for instance, education and educators. This shape-shifting is exactly what former Vice President Mike Pence was playing with when he tweeted in response to the vote: We will reject Critical Race Theory in our schools and public institutions, and we will CANCEL Cancel Culture wherever it arises!

On the surface, Pence may seem to have little in common with French President Emmanuel Macron, whose liberal government has taken this assault even further. In a manufactured moral panic, the French government is accusing anti-racist groups of importing North American theories about systemic racism that threaten the universalism of the French republic. Consequently, these ideas are framed not as contributions to open debate, but as a menace to freedom of speech as an essential value underpinning the republic.

Brazen political moves like this must be opposed not just by anti-racists, but by anyone concerned with the democratic value of free speech. The first line of defense would be to expose the weaponization of freedom of speech as an opportunistic political tactic. Opportunistic, and dangerous, since it allows politicians to pay lip service to opposing racism while framing anti-racist movements and ideas as a democratic threat.

It is also crucial to demonstrate how free speech is being used for authoritarian ends. A vague rhetoric of free speech sounds perfectly democratic, but it is drawn on to suppress specific kinds of political expression. In milking a supposed free speech crisis, elected politicians in London, Paris and Idaho enacted measures that flagrantly restrict forms of democratic speech, in these cases the right to protest and academic freedom.

The media conditions that make these tactics viable in the public sphere are also part of the problem. That such intense disputes on the limits of speech take place in a context of apparently limitless speech should give us pause for thought. How can so many people claim to be silenced and loudly clamor for scarce attention at the same time?

As the writer Toni Morrison said in 1975, the serious function of racism is distraction. In the contemporary media environment, this distraction consists of staging heated and divisive debates where those combating racism are held up as irrational and excessive, unwilling to accept a reasonable definition of what racism really is, and limiting freedom of speech as a consequence.

Public debates are meant to be a contest of ideas. In a digital media swirl, debates are shaped by the incessant circulation of media content, and not everything that is set up as an idea should be treated as one. Contemporary debates are often spectacles made up from recycled talking points and recurring, polarizing controversies jostling for attention.

The internet-savvy far right, for example, takes advantage of the limitless opportunities of social media communication to reanimate discredited racist ideas about human difference and to present them as nothing more than innocent propositions for debate. And guess what? If you dont play along, and treat the same set-piece debates about the humanity of their targets as a good faith dialogue, you are the democratic problem.

The efficiency with which far-right movements have exploited social media has driven extensive public discussion of the failure of the platforms moderation practices and speculation on future forms of regulation. The bigger problem is this: Social media corporations provide us with important infrastructure for public debate in democracies, but we have no democratic relationship to these private, largely unaccountable entities.

The task then is to build something better, and we can start by recognizing that for speech to be meaningfully free, it needs to be heard and engaged with outside of the incessant noise of digital debates. This will require building more ways to communicate democratically, the political will to strengthen public media and the determination of everyday people to create communal spaces where sustained engagements can take place.

Gavan Titley is an associate professor in media studies at Maynooth University in Ireland. His most recent book is Is Free Speech Racist?)

2021 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

View original post here:
Commentary: How 'freedom of speech' is weaponized to fight anti-racism - Johnson City Press (subscription)

Black, Asian and ethnic minority academics and university staff increasingly encounter a cancel culture when discussing race as the usual free speech advocates stay silent, Sian Norris reports

The decision by a Cambridge University college to disband a group exploring Churchill and imperialism is having a chilling effect on anybody who departs from the official line on the British Empire and race, Professor Priyamvada Gopal has told Byline Times.

Churchill Colleges Working Group on Churchill, Empire and Race was set up to lead an ongoing critical dialogue about Churchills own legacy in global history. It met with significant criticism from the right-wing press including the Daily Mail, which accused the group of being left-wing academics intent on smearing the World War Two Prime Minister. The Sun reported its disbanding by declaring race group dumped under the banner of Wokepedia: a compendium of PC poppycock.

It was also criticised by the Policy Exchange think-tank which said that the disbanding was a wise decision and shows that the defeat [of small-c conservatives] at the hands of activists is not inevitable.

However, Prof Gopal, a teaching fellow at Churchill College, told Byline Times that this is a very public gesture of the college pandering to the tabloids, to Policy Exchange, to [Education Secretary] Gavin Williamson and wanting to be applauded for it.

A statement from the college master, Professor Dame Athene Donald, said that the group disbanded itself following a comment from Prof Gopal that it might as well dissolve after the college appeared rattled by the press reaction to an event it held.

The statement also said that the Working Group was intended to have a finite lifetime. Prof Gopal has said that it is untrue that the group disbanded itself and its members had not been told that it had been constituted for a limited period.

She is now concerned that the hostility faced by the group, and the decision by the college to disband it, has led to students feeling that Churchill College is not a safe space for students of colour.

The academic also expressed concern that the decision had a repressive effect on academic freedom, telling Byline Times that people are no longer comfortable, not only talking about Churchill, but even being on a panel where Churchill may be brought up.

The decision to disband the Working Group has prompted questions about who the real targets of cancel culture are a popular accusation thrown at the left from both the Government and the right-wing press, which argue that predominantly white men are being cancelled by woke universities.

However, when it comes to academics and students of colour being effectively cancelled, tabloids celebrate their axing and organisations such as Toby Youngs Free Speech Union are oddly silent.

Young, the Union and various members including the Spectators Douglas Murray and GB News Inaya Folarin Iman all found time to tweet about Andrew Neils new television channel in the days that followed the Working Groups cancellation but failed to condemn this cancelling of an academic debate on social media or on the Unions website.

At Cambridge, we had a group of people claiming they were all about free speech and forced the university to effectively outlaw no-platforming, Prof Gopal said. And these people have not had a word to say about what has happened at Churchill.

Professor Gus John, an internationally-renowned academic, told Byline Times that he believes the higher education sector is increasingly afraid of its shadow when it comes to discussing issues to do with race, racism and colonialism.

There is not a culture of open, free and democratic debate and discussion on racism in society as it affects black or global majority (BGM) staff and students, let alone as it helps to underpin structural and institutional arrangements and cultures in those institutions which BGM staff and students experience as racist, he said.

The right-wing press in the UK, US, and some Government ministers have also launched an attack on critical race theory an academic discipline designed to explore how racism shapes public policy.

It really is quite extraordinary that there has not been a hue and cry from university vice chancellors as a body about that disgraceful attack on critical race theory and on the Black Lives Matter movement, Prof John added. By its silence, the sector is complicit in the attack from media, Government and right/far-right actors, especially given the evident political lurch to the right by the Government.

There has been a growing trend of black, Asian or ethnic minority university staff being accused of racism themselves when discussing issues of race. This includes accusations of so-called anti-white racism, which, Prof Gopal says, ignore how racism is a structure, and when white supremacy is at the top of that structure, its about structural critique.

In the case of Aysha Khanom, reported earlier this year by Byline Times, it can involve losing a university position following allegations of racism on social media even when there is dispute as to whether the accusation of racism is valid or fair.

In February, Khanoms organisation The Race Trust posted a tweet asking Conservative activist Calvin Robinson: Does it not shame you that most people see you as a house n***o. Robinson had appeared on the BBCs The Big Questions where he said that this term had been directed at him in the past. The tweet was picked up by a variety of right-wing websites, as well as the Daily Mail. In response, Leeds Beckett University, where Khanom was affiliated as an advisor, publicly cut ties with her.

Prof John said he told the university that it was preposterous to call the tweet racist and challenged it to say why they defined it as such, which it did not do.

The Institute of Race Relations has argued that it is not a racial slur, although when used as part of an understanding of the history of black enslavement, it can certainly make people feel uncomfortable. Similarly, in an open letter, Professor Kehinde Andrews wrote that it is the height of anti-black racism to censor central concepts in black intellectual thought as racist or inappropriate and undermines the credibility of CRED and Leeds Beckett University.

In correspondence seen by Byline Times, Prof John expressed concern that the university had failed to determine how and why the term used was racist and its history as a racial slur. As a result, it leaves the impression that the decision to sever ties with Khanom was based on the reaction from social media, with PR rather than debate setting the agenda for the university.

As with the Churchill row, the activists and Government ministers who criticise cancel culture and claim to be fighting for freedom of speech have been strangely silent on Khanoms case.

The university is trying to dictate academic freedom, Khanom told Byline Times. We are being accused of racism more than white people.She is challenging Leeds Beckett Universitys decision on the grounds that it breached her right to freedom of expression, as well as its own statutory duties to ensure freedom of speech for academics, because of preconceptions about its views on race, colonialism, the civil rights movement and racial identity.

Leeds Beckett University told Byline Times that it is confident in the rigour of its discussions with Khanom and the integrity of the decision-making and stands by the decision to cut ties with her.

It added: We do not support the medias negative treatment of Ms Khanom. At no point was our decision-making influenced by comments made by the media or on social media except those made by Ms Khanom or the Race Trust.The university firmly believes in academic freedom and freedom of expression. This stance is central to the work of the Centre for Race, Education and Decoloniality too. We recognise the importanceof hearing and respecting different views and perspectives.But it is vital that disagreement is expressedwithoutpersonal attackas thisdamagesthe rigour of the debate.

The Government is pressing forward with plans to protect free speech and academic freedom, in places relying on evidence from a designated hate group. However, when it comes to the much-debated concept of cancel culture, questions must be asked about who is really being cancelled and whose voices are not being heard.

New to Byline Times? Find out about us

Our leading investigations include Brexit Bites, Empire & the Culture War, Russian Interference, Coronavirus, Cronyism and Far Right Radicalisation. We also introduce new voices of colour in Our Lives Matter.

To have an impact, our investigations need an audience.

But emails dont pay our journalists, and nor do billionaires or intrusive ads. Were funded by readers subscription fees:

View post:
Selective Free Speech: Academics Discussing Race Face the Real Cancel Culture Byline Times - Byline Times

By Ken PaulsonDirector, Free Speech CenterMiddle Tennessee State University

The 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence knew what they were getting into. As we celebrate 245 years later with flags and fireworks on July 4, its easy to forget these patriots risked death to give a new nation life.

If youve never read the Declaration of Independence in its entirety, this is a good time to do that. More than two centuries later, its still a good read. These rebels, who would be accused of treason by Great Britain, wrote the document in a reasoned manner, attempting to convey to the world that their cause was a just one.

At its most basic, its a demand for a divorce, with one party explaining why this marriage cant be saved. Whats fascinating, though, is how the list of complaints about the king of England not only cited justification for the break-up, but also telegraphed the principles the new nation would insist upon in establishing its own governance.

The entire document was a bold statement, speaking truth to power. As it established its own future, this new nation would have to find a way to guarantee free speech, particularly in regard to criticizing government.

The Declaration of Independence lists more than two dozen examples of why the king was unfit to be the ruler of a free people. The new United States of America would need to create a check on those who abused their power. That would come from a free press.

Much of the Declaration is devoted to examples of the king ignoring the colonies needs and maintaining a stranglehold on new legislation to address those needs. Clearly, the United States would have to guarantee petition and assembly.

Memorably, the Declaration states that all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. This was an acknowledgement of a higher power without a specific reference to any religion. This new nation would go on to guarantee freedom of faith.

Freedom of speech, press, and religion. The rights of petition and assembly. Today, we see all five nestled together in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It took a war for independence and 17 years, but those aspirations became the cornerstone for a young and vibrant country.

Fast forward to the 21st century. A new survey of citizens around the globe by legal public-policy center Justitia has assessed how citizens in 33 countries feel about freedom of speech. It found that most citizens in most countries feel free speech is important and positive, but they waver when presented with scenarios in which free speech offends others or hampers society.

In order, Norway, Denmark, the U.S., and Sweden top the list: Citizens of these nations say they are steadfast in their support of free speech. At the bottom of the list: Tunisia, Kenya, Egypt, and Pakistan.

In a telling passage, Justitia quotes free-speech expert and Columbia University President Lee Bollinger as saying the U.S. is the most speech-protective of any nation on earth, now or throughout history. The report also notes that a 2015 Pew research study determined no nation in the world was more supportive of free speech and a free press than the U.S.

At our best and not without lapses we walk that talk.

In 1776, our founders published a Declaration of Independence, but also a declaration of intent. Those early Americans sought life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness by creating a nation founded on freedom. But those freedoms must never be taken for granted, and our collective vigilance is essential.

On the most American of holidays, lets be sure to celebrate the most American of freedoms.

Ken Paulson is director of the Free Speech Center at Middle Tennessee State University and former dean of the College of Media and Entertainment at MTSU. Paulson has spent much of his career as a journalist, educator and advocate for First Amendment values.

Follow this link:
Celebrating the most American of freedoms | Ken Paulson - Wisconsin Newspaper Association