Category Archives: Censorship

July 25, 2017, 10:04 pm

Gretchen R. Hammond, a transgender reporter, was personally threatened, subject to sexist and anti-Semitic abuse and Neo-Nazi slurs as retribution against an article she wrote, losing her job as a result and the National Review is the only major American publication reporting on it. How did this happen? Hammond was the first reporter to write about the Chicago Dyke March removing three Jewish women from the march for having Jewish symbolism on their flags. While the Dyke March holds that there is nothing anti-Semitic about forbidding Jewish symbols while allowing other religious imagery, they were evidently unhappy with anyone reporting on their totally not anti-Semitic actions and letting the public draw its own conclusions. Shortly after the article was published, Hammond and her employer, the LGBT newspaper Windy City Times, began receiving insults and threats, which included anti-Jewish and sexist slurs. Shortly after, Hammond was forced off of reporting and placed into sales, which she blames on harassment from the Dyke March.

Instead of condemning this harassment, the Chicago Dyke March bragged about it, tweeting Zio tears replenish my electrolytes. Zio is an anti-Jewish slur popularized by the KKK, and the Dyke March initially defended the comment before deleting and replacing the original tweet.

If other organizations used derogatory slurs towards or celebrated the abuse of an individual by people angry at her reporting, the outrage would be deafening. After all, when CNNs Andrew Kaczynski faced harassment from redditors after publishing an article perceived as threatening to dox the private individual responsible for a gif that president Trump tweeted, Vox and the New York Times were quick to document the harassment that he faced. When a bunch of angry videogame fans harassed feminist journalist Anita Sarkeesian and game developer Zoe Quinn for criticizing sexism in videogames, it kicked off a 3+ year cycle of story after story on what became known as Gamergate. Surely, harassment that cost someone their job and that has the support not just of fringe internet users, but a large mainstream institution is the sort of bullying and intimidation that people would be up in arms against. And yet, the same organizations that have long campaigned against what they see as harassment and intimidation of progressive writers are suddenly silent, or even supportive of this bullying when its done by supporters of the Chicago Dyke March. Are journalists falling for the disingenuous invocation of LGBT rights by the March to distract from the racism, sexism, harassment, and courting of fascism that their movement is engaging in? Or have journalists seen what happened to the last left-wing writer who tried to expose intolerance and hypocrisy in the Chicago Dyke March and decided that is safer to turn a blind eye? Whatever the answer, the Chicago Dyke Marchs successful war on the media should be deeply disturbing for those interested in a free and honest press.

Wiki Commons

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Pinkwashing Censorship: How the Chicago Dyke March Won its War on the Media - American Spectator

Canada's highest court recently upheld a controversial order requiring Google to remove certain results from its worldwide search listings. Now, Google is asking a federal judge to rule that that the Canadian order is unenforceable in the U.S.

"Without a declaration from a United States court that enforcement of the Canadian order in the U.S. is unlawful, Google believes that Equustek will continue to pursue enforcement of the Canadian order," the company writes in a complaint filed Monday in San Jose, California. "Google now seeks a declaration from this court that will protect its rights."

The battle over the search results dates to 2012, when technology company Equustek asked a judge in British Columbia to order Google to remove search results for Datalink Technologies -- which allegedly stole trade secrets from Equustek and engaged in counterfeiting.

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The Canadian issued a worldwide injunction prohibiting Google from displaying search results for Datalink. That order was upheld last month by Canada's Supreme Court.

The digital rights groups Electronic Frontier Foundation, which weighed in on Google's side, criticized the Canadian court's ruling.

"The courts decision will likely embolden other countries to try to enforce their own speech-restricting laws on the Internet, to the detriment of all users," the EFF wrote. "Its not difficult to see repressive regimes such as China or Iran use the ruling to order Google to de-index sites they object to, creating a worldwide hecklers veto."

Google argues in its new court papers that enforcing the Canadian court's order in the U.S. would violate free speech principles. Among other arguments, Google says that the First Amendment prohibits injunctions that are not "narrowly tailored" to achieve a substantial interest.

"The existence of the Datalink websites is, and remains, a matter of public record," Google writes. "Equustek cannot show that it has no alternatives available other than enjoining Googles search results outside of Canada."

Google adds that Equustek has not sought injunctions against other search engines and social media sites and has not stopped Amazon from selling Datalink products.

Google also argues that the order shouldn't be enforced because it's "repugnant" to public policy in the U.S. "The ... standard applied by the Supreme Court of Canada did not come close to satisfying well-settled United States law for imposing injunctions," Google writes.

"The Canadian court placed the burden on Google, a non-party, to disprove Equusteks rights in every country outside of Canada, rather on Equustek, the plaintiff in the action, to prove its entitlement to removal of search results in each country in which it sought removal," Google writes. "Moreover, the Canadian standard took no account of the 'public interest' at all."

While Google says it's trying to protect the company's rights, it's uncertain how this lawsuit will do so, according to Santa Clara University law professor Eric Goldman. That's because even if Google prevails, it's not clear that a victory in the U.S. would prevent a Canadian court from holding the company in contempt, Goldman says.

"There could still be Canadian enforcement actions that would not be governed by U.S. law," he says.

Read the rest here:
Google Wants Federal Judge To Nix Canadian Censorship Order - MediaPost Communications

SEOUL

Despite North Koreas increased efforts to prevent outside information from entering the country, international activists say technology and market forces will eventually overcome state censorship.

North Korea is one of the most isolated nations in the world, where foreign media is prohibited and most people don't have access to the Internet. The repressive state has even executed citizens for distributing media from South Korea, according to the Transitional Justice Working Group that documents human rights abuses in North Korea.

Familiar pattern

Still it is following a pattern similar to other authoritarian regimes that view knowledge as power and have tried to limit and control access to outside information. This according to leaders from Cuban and Myanmar (or Burmese) independent organizations working to evade authoritarian censorship and outside information restrictions in their own countries, who were recently in Seoul to share their experiences and strategies with Korean counterparts.

I believe that the increasing Internet penetration is going to be inevitable. Eventually the government will need this and needs this for its own development, said Rafeal Duval with the independent news organization Cubanet.

In Cuba, as in North Korea, growing demand for foreign movies and television dramas, not political news, has made smuggling in outside information an increasingly profitable venture.

Using a variety of USB drives, Micro SD cards and DVD discs, Cubanet distributes through the black market a weekly compilation of video content, audio podcasts and entire webpages known as El Paquete for its growing list of customers in Cuba.

Duval said Cuban authorities charged with preventing the influx of foreign media are eventually co-opted by being bought off and often becoming users themselves.

Theyre going to realize the impossibility of a ban because of corruption, he said.

Another Cuban project called Apretaste targeted the countrys elites, the estimated 25 percent of Cubans who have access to email. Apretaste works as a proxy search engine in which volunteers in places like Florida email results to over 100,000 Cuban inquiries each month.

Right now we are giving to the people in Cuba something that they really need. We are giving them a window to see you outside the island, said Salvi Pascual who founded Apretaste.

Prior to democratic reforms that began in Myanmar in 2011, the military government highly censored the Internet. But the porous border with Thailand and the proliferation of satellite TV receivers in the country made it easier for exile opposition groups to penetrate the countrys information blockade.

Emerging black market

The North Korean economy has been steadily growing in recent years despite increased international sanctions imposed on Pyongyang for its continued nuclear and ballistic missiles tests. In the last year, the countrys gross domestic product rose 3.9 percent, driven in part by the exports of coal and other minerals, according to Bank of Korea in Seoul.

However an emerging private market that is tolerated but not sanctioned by the communist state is also driving economic growth. A survey by the Beyond Parallel project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC says most North Koreans now earn 75 percent of their household income from the black market. The Illicit export of North Korean seafood, shoes, cigarettes and cooking oil has given people new purchasing power to bring in outside information and technology.

The number of households with TVs and DVD players in North Korea has grown to the point of being ubiquitous said Nat Kretchun, Deputy Director of the Open Technology Fund, a group that promotes internet freedom and is funded by the U.S. government through the Voice of Americas sister organization Radio Free Asia.

And the number of legal North Korean cell phones users has also been growing in recent years. Initially many of these domestic phones were used to transfer unsanctioned media and information files but recent updates to the phones operating system installed inhibiting censorship and surveillance software.

It effectively blocks all unsanctioned files from being used on domestic phones, said Kretchun.

However for every measure taken by authoritarian governments to block outside information, activists are developing technological counter measures.

That said North Korean defector Kim Seung-chul, who founded North Korea Reform Radio, which broadcasts into the North, expressed frustration that the South Korean government seems to provide less funding to groups working to penetrate the Norths closed information environment than do these Cuban and Myanmar exiles groups.

The South Korean government, conservatives, veterans, and famous people have a lot of money but they do not use the money for this. They get angry about North Koreas situation, but they do not act, said Kim.

Youmi Kim in Seoul contributed to this report.

Continued here:
Cuban Activists Say North Korea Fighting Losing Censorship Battle - Voice of America

A controversial op-ed published in the New York Times earlier this month argued that it was reasonable for universities to ban lectures by speakers such as Milo Yiannopoulos on the grounds that certain speech can constitute violence. Author Lisa Feldman Barrett, a professor of psychology at Northeastern University, sought to provide substantive weight to a refrain used increasingly by liberal campus activists in their attempts to censor controversial speakers, most of whom happen to be right-of-center.

In that respect, her op-ed was a welcome contribution to the discussion, since these activists rarely appear capable of offering substantive defenses of this contention, which is key to their pleas for censorship.

But if Barrett's argument is the best their side has, and given her credentials I imagine that's the case, they're still in trouble.

In her op-ed, Barrett did concede that "offensiveness is not bad for your body and brain."

"In contrast," she asserted, "long stretches of simmering stress" can be "bad for your nervous system."

If you spend a lot of time in a harsh environment worrying about your safety, that's the kind of stress that brings on illness and remodels your brain. That's also true of a political climate in which groups of people endlessly hurl hateful words at one another, and of rampant bullying in school or on social media. A culture of constant, casual brutality is toxic to the body, and we suffer for it.

Barrett concluded, "That's why it's reasonable, scientifically speaking, not to allow a provocateur and hate monger like Milo Yiannopoulos to speak at your school." Yiannopoulos, per her assessment, "is part of something noxious, a campaign of abuse."

"There is nothing to be gained from debating him, for debate is not what he is offering," she wrote.

But isn't that a different argument? Is Yiannopoulos objectionable because he's not offering debate or because he creates "long stretches of simmering stress"? And how does one hour of Yiannopoulos' speech on one night of the school year reasonably create such a "long stretch of simmering stress"?

Barrett compares Yiannopoulos to Charles Murray writing, "On the other hand, when the political scientist Charles Murray argues that genetic factors help account for racial disparities in I.Q. scores, you might find his view to be repugnant and misguided, but it's only offensive. It is offered as a scholarly hypothesis to be debated, not thrown like a grenade."

But where is that line drawn, and who gets to draw it?

There are stark differences between the two men in question, but the same arguments about speech are made to block more scholarly speakers such as Ben Shapiro who don't shy from communicating with a bolder style, but do so with the intention of facilitating a productive conversation. (That, for the record, is why I've argued elevating Yiannopoulos, a non-conservative who is perceived as one, confounds the larger debate about campus censorship.)

Notably, Yiannopoulos claims to have the same intentions of "offering debate" as Murray and Shapiro. Barrett can argue that's insincere or inaccurate, but his allies, and some of his detractors, make reasonable arguments otherwise.

What is the "scientific" explanation as to why his speech is "part of a campaign of abuse"? Many would (wrongfully) argue the exact same is true of Murray's speech. Unless Barrett can supply convincing answers to these questions, proving exactly what words cross the line into psychologically-violent territory, her attempt to draw objective parameters is still just as subjective as the ones one made by protesters of Murray's lectures, with whom she disagrees.

If Barrett could objectively prove how one hour of speech creates "a culture of constant, casual brutality," and why we should trust the arbiters of that definition, her argument would be more persuasive. In the meantime, students should still consider themselves psychologically capable of tolerating hour-long intervals of offensive speech, "noxious" as it may be, and attend a few lectures when they return to school in the fall.

Emily Jashinsky is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.

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Another failed argument for campus censorship - Washington Examiner

Beijing said in January it would restrict virtual private networks, or VPNs, and this month reportedly told the three big telecoms companies to block individuals' access to them by early next year.

China's regulator defended the crackdown on Tuesday, saying recent measures were part of an ongoing campaign aimed at "cleaning and standardizing" access to the internet.

"Our restrictions target service providers without licenses or operating illegally," said Zhang Feng, spokesman for the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, at a press conference.

"Law-abiding individuals and businesses won't be affected," he said.

Related: WhatsApp is being targeted by China's censors, experts say

China's internet is tightly controlled by censors, who block access to services such as Google (GOOGL, Tech30), Facebook (FB, Tech30) and even the New York Times. To get around the firewall, many people use VPNs, which use encryption to disguise internet traffic.

Authorities are cracking down on local Chinese companies offering VPN services without registering properly with the authorities, said Charlie Smith of GreatFire.org, a group that monitors internet censorship in the country.

"These companies largely offer cheap access to VPNs, so in that regard, Chinese are losing an affordable way to access internet freedom," Smith said.

The ministry's comments followed widespread reports of dozens of popular China-based VPNs being shut down, and the country's largest internet provider telling corporate customers that VPNs can only be used to connect to a company's overseas headquarters.

Related: Apple yanks New York Times apps in China

The moves mean it will become increasingly difficult to find a working VPN. Soon, only technically savvy people will be able to get around China's Great Firewall, says Maya Wang, senior researcher with Human Rights Watch.

"All this means the difficulty of getting access to an uncensored, unmonitored internet is ever increasing," she said.

Beijing acknowledges, however, that China can't completely get rid of VPNs -- certainly not for businesses.

Related: China fortifies Great Firewall with crackdown on VPNs

"We have noticed the need for direct international connections by foreign trade companies and international businesses. They can apply for such services with approved providers," Zhang said.

"This is one of the rare instances when the authorities admit to the necessity of VPNs," said Smith.

The U.S. views China's censorship as a barrier to trade, arguing in an annual report that China's "extensive blocking of legitimate websites" imposes significant costs on suppliers and users of services and products.

"U.S. industry research has calculated that up to 3,000 sites in total are blocked, affecting billions of dollars in business, including communications, networking, news and other sites," according to the report published by the Office of the United States Trade Representative.

China has tightened internet censorship across the board ahead of the Communist Party's 19th Congress this fall, where a major senior leadership reshuffle is expected. A new cybersecurity law that took effect in June is expected to make it harder for foreign firms to operate in China.

-- CNN's Steven Jiang contributed to this report.

CNNMoney (Hong Kong) First published July 25, 2017: 8:15 AM ET

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China says VPN crackdown aimed at 'cleaning' the internet - CNNMoney

Jordanian police outside Israeli embassy in Amman . (photo credit:SOCIAL MEDIA)

The world knew about it, reported on it but in Israel there was nothing. For about 11 hours between Sunday night Monday morning, Israelis were forbidden from reporting on the events taking place in Jordan.

The fact that social media was full of the news about the anapparent attacknear the Israeli embassy in Amman and stories had been published by Reuters, Fox News, the Independent and elsewhere, meant nothing. In Israel, journalists could not send out a tweet or post a word on Facebook. Everything about the attack was banned for publication by the Military Censor's Office.

Shortly before the incident was placed under censorship, some information got through. Zionist Union MK Ksenia Svetlova managed to launch a tweet saying only that there was a dangerous security incident at the embassy in Jordan.

Initially, reports were unclear, but it was learned that at least one Israeli security officer at the embassy had been injured after he was stabbed by a Jordanian who was subsequently shot. Svetlova called on the Jordanian government to take all the necessary steps to ensure the security of the personnel at the embassy.

According to a Foreign Ministry statement, the Israeli had been stabbed in the stomach in Amman by a man with a screwdriver moving furniture in one of the residences in the embassy compound Sunday night. The guard shot the assailant identified as Mohammed Zakaria al-Jawawdeh, 17 in self defense. Al-Jawawdeh was killed, and another man at the scene the owner of the compound was injured and later succumbed to his wounds.

These details became available as the night progressed and foreign outlets, including news agencies, reported on the developments. But in Israel, complete radio silence.

Of course anybody with internet access and basic English or Arabic reading skills (or the ability to use online translation services) could learn all about it easily. News reports appeared throughout the entire international media - on Reuters, Fox News, the Independent and elsewhere. Everyone was reporting about the incident. The only ones who didn't know were Israelis.

Slightly before midnight, the Jordanian General Security Administration released an official statement saying that the incident was being investigated. But Israeli media couldn't even report that.

Reporters couldn't even alert readers in Israel to the fact that the Foreign Ministry decided to evacuate all it staff from the Israeli embassy in Amman out of concern that the incident may cause riots outside the embassy, or that the move was stymied by Jordan.

It was that reason that the full censorship of the incident remained in place until Monday morning, hours after the incident. International and local Jordanian media, who began reporting the event shortly after it occurred continued to release details which Israeli media and foreign journalists with Israeli press cards were barred from reporting on.

Censorship was finally lifted early Monday morning. At this point Israel still has not fully evacuated embassy staff and the Jordanians have still refused to let the guard be transferred back to Israel. Jerusalem claims the guard enjoys diplomatic immunity and is exempt from investigation by Jordanian authorities.

The decision to leave Israelis in the dark was criticized by Israeli journalists and politicians. Unlike previous incidents in this case Israelis were also prohibited from citing foreign media sources for the story.

Even former chief IDFcensor Rachel Dolev characterized the information blackout as excessive. In an interview to Army Radio she said the "aggressive actions by the censor were unjustified," and only lead to a rumor mill breaking out on social media. She added that this was not the first time in recent weeks that the censor decided to act this way and as a result harmed the democratic value of having a free press.

At a time when information flows freely on the internet, many questioned the need for the censorship, which journalists and pundits argued Monday morning, was out of touch.

More details to follow.... maybe.

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Censor keeps Israelis in the dark as world learns of Jordan embassy saga - The Jerusalem Post

MOSCOW -- Hundreds of demonstrators took to the streets of Moscow on July 23 to protest Internet censorship and demand the resignation of the head of Russia's state media regulator.

The protest came amid a broad crackdown on online speech in recent years that rights activists say is targeting legitimate dissent under the pretext of battling extremism.

Organizers of the rally, which received official permission from Moscow authorities, called for the rehabilitation of Internet users convicted for reposting material on social networks.

Protesters also called for the sacking of Aleksandr Zharov, the head of Roskomnadzor, the state agency that plays a central role in regulating online speech.

Demonstrators chanted slogans that included "No to censorship, no to dictatorship!" and "Down with the police state!" They also adapted a slogan against Russian President Vladimir Putin frequently chanted at opposition rallies: "Russia without Putin and censorship!"

The protest came two days after Russia's lower house of parliament passed a bill that would prohibit the use of Internet proxy services, including virtual private networks, or VPNs.

The bill, approved in its third and final reading on July 21, would also ban the anonymous use of mobile messaging services.

It will face a single vote in the upper house before going to Putin, who rarely rejects bills adopted by the Kremlin-controlled legislature.

Sarkis Darbinyan, head of the Center for the Defense of Digital Rights, a Moscow-based advocacy group, said he believes the solid turnout for the rally was driven by "typical Internet users" who are "tired of the volume of crazy laws."

He specifically cited the bill that would ban the use of proxy services and the anonymous use of mobile messaging services.

"This really does create problems for the connectivity of the Russian segment of the Internet and for access to services," Darbinyan told RFE/RL. "I think this is why many citizens truly want to come out and openly state their opposition to such ham-fisted regulation of the Internet."

Police estimated the turnout for the demonstration at around 800 people. Opposition activists frequently accuse authorities of playing down the size of public protests.

OVD Info, a website that monitors detentions of political activists, reported that three people had been detained at the rally -- one for distributing leaflets promoting Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny.

Two of the detainees were released later in the day, OVD Info reported, including the minor reportedly hauled in for the Navalny leaflets.

The Washington-based rights group Freedom House says Internet freedoms continued to slide in Russia last year, and other international watchdogs have criticized the country's treatment of online speech as well.

Russian officials have repeatedly rejected such criticism. Vyacheslav Volodin, the current speaker of the lower house of parliament, said last year that the Internet in Russia is "more free than in the United States."

In one recent high-profile case, a Russian blogger was convicted of inciting hatred and insulting religious believers' feelings with videos he posted on YouTube -- including one showing him playing Pokemon Go in a church.

The blogger, Ruslan Sokolovsky, was handed a 3-1/2 year suspended sentence that was reduced by more than a year earlier this month.

Sokolovsky was also added to an official list of "terrorists and extremists" maintained by Russia's Federal Financial Monitoring Service.

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Russian Protesters Rally Against Internet Censorship - RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty

BBC News

The writers who defied Soviet censors BBC News The replication and dissemination of prohibited poetry became part of a culture of samizdat an underground method of publishing that sought to evade strict censorship in the Soviet Union. We can read Mandelstam's poetry today because individuals took ...

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The writers who defied Soviet censors - BBC News

By Nancy Powell

If there was one takeaway from Thursdays CBLDF: She Changed Comics panel, it was the critical role that women play in advocating for the key social and cultural issues in todays world, and that these women as writers, artists and historians act as the collective voice to challenge the status quo.

Betsy Gomez (She Changed Comics) moderated a roundtable discussion of women who have created and continue to create some of the most important works in comics today. The panelists included Joyce Farmer (Special Exits, Tits & Clits), Caitlin McCabe (She Changed Comics contributor), Thi Bui (The Best We Could Do), and Newberry Honors and Eisner Award-winning writer Jennifer Holm (Babymouse series, Squish).

Gomez started off the hour-long discussion by asking each woman how she came into comics. Farmer read comics with her father and found comics to be an easier medium to communicate ideas than writing. Farmers $1 per week allowance allowed her to buy five candy bars and five comics.

McCabe had a more unconventional childhood; she grew up in a family that encouraged the reading controversial materials, including comics, and so enamored was McCable of the medium that she went on to earn a Masters degree in the subject matter. Bui discovered comics at an older age, concentrating mostly on women-written or women-centered comics.

Like Farmer, Holms father shared with her and her brothers his love of comic strips, such as Prince Valiant and Flash Gordon, from his youth. I wanted the girl version of Peter Parker, a teenage version that I could relate to,

Gomez then asked each of the panelists to share their experience of creating comics. Farmers Abortion Eve in 1973 as a way to distribute information about birth control birth control before Planned Parenthood took off. Her anti-Catholic stance on birth control made the comic unsaleable, and the comic was not well received because it did not fit into the underground comics genre. As history would play out, Abortion Eve is being reproduced in full by the University of Pennsylvania and has since increased in relevance as a result of the ongoing debate on womens reproductive rights.

But Farmers first comic, Tits & Clits, found itself on the banned books list after a Laguna Beach, California bookseller, Fahrenheit 451, got in trouble for selling it. Farmer was advised by the ACLU that she could potentially lose everything if she continued to publish the title, and while the suit was thrown out on account of its violating free speech, the effect of that experience was traumatizing. Censorship damages the creativeness of people who are working, Farmer said.

Buis call to creativity occurred in response to her anger about the incorrect stereotypes of the Vietnameses role in the Vietnam War. At the time, she was also trying to figure out her own origins, so The Best We Could Do became as much a project that was personal as it was a historical journey. Comics were my revenge against Hollywood. I didnt have a Hollywood budget, but I had pens, and I could draw, remarked Bui.

On the other end of the spectrum, Holms involvement with comics was family business; her brother Matt was an illustrator, which made collaboration easy. The comics you read as a kid stay with you forever, recalled Holm, who found plenty of opportunity to become involved in a medium she loved by writing kids comics. They [publishers] are open to taking risks on graphic novelist and women. It may not be Marvel material, but Scholastic snapped it up. Childrens publishers are willing to take risks, and they really helped the whole movement start.

McCabe used her scholarship in the genre to advocate for notable, but lesser known, female comic book writers as a contributor to She Changed Comics. Comics scholarship is really importanthow it impacts our lives, how it makes us feel, and how it makes us represent ourselves.

Gomez final question revolved around the issue of censorship, specifically regarding the overrepresentation of women on the censorship lists. Bui felt that people used censorship as a weapon to shut down important voices. McCabe went further to highlight the point that women comic book creators do not represent the status quo, and any challenges to the status quo could scare people. Holm punctuated the point by citing the popularity and performance of bestselling, questionable titles co-authored by women, such as This One Summer by Mariko Tamaki, Drama by Raina Telgemeier, and Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi.

Farmer ended the discussion by pointing out an obvious fact; that these five women were sitting in a panel and discussing the success of their own careers, a defiant contradiction to naysayers questioning womens impact on the medium. And each of the panelists confirmed, through personal experience and in their discussion of upcoming projects, that they continue to push the boundaries on important cultural and social issues.

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Women Comics Creators Talk Censorship, History and Social ... - Comics Beat

What should we do about the scourge of sexual violence on American college campuses?

I dont know, to be honest. But heres what I do know: Well never get good answers to the question if we silence each other.

When the federal government threw its weight behind sexual-assault victims by invoking Title IX, the 1972 law barring sex discrimination, I celebrated. But now I worry that the law has become a weapon of censorship, which harmsthe campaign against sexual assault in the guise of assisting it.

Earlier this month, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos announced that she would be reviewing federal sexual-assault policies to make sure that the rights of the accused as well as of victims were protected. Under a 2011 order issued by the Obama administration, colleges must discipline people accused of sexual assault if a preponderance of evidence suggests their guilt.

Thats a much lower bar than beyond reasonable doubt, which is the standard in the criminal-justice system. Colleges failing to institute the new rule can be held in violation of Title IX, which puts them at risk of losing federal funding.

Opponents of DeVos immediately claimed that she was undermining the struggle against sexual assault, while supporters congratulated her for bringing due-process concerns into the conversation. But almost nobody noted that Title IX has sometimes been used as a bludgeon against, yes, anyone who questions the use of Title IX.

Witness the case of Northwestern University professor Laura Kipnis, who found herself the focus of a Title IX complaint in 2015. Her alleged transgression? Writing an article in defense of a fellow professor who had been charged with sexual misconduct with students.

To Kipnis, the accusations against her colleague reflected the excessive policing of sexuality on campus and the coddling of female students. But to her critics, including the two alleged victims of her colleague, she was engaging in retaliation.

Thats illegal, under federal law. So is creating any kind of hostile environment that targets women or other protected groups. But it turns out that you can invoke that rule to prohibit, well, almost anything.

At the University of Denver, a professor was suspended for addressing sexual themes in a class about the war on drugs. Officials cited a course unit entitled Drugs and Sin in American Life: From Masturbation and Prostitution to Alcohol and Drugs. Surely, the argument went, that topic would create a hostile environment for some students.

Meanwhile, a professor at Louisiana State University was fired for describing someone who had exhibited cowardly behavior as being a pussy. She also joked that sex got worse as relationships got longer.

The professor said she made these in-class comments to get students attention, but the university said she was creating a hostile learning environment. It was the schools legal duty to sanction her, or so officials claimed.

Indeed, someone on my own campus could read this column and claim that it created a hostile learning environment under Title IX. My hope is that they would be laughed out of the deans office. But how can I be sure?

True,Kipnis was eventually exonerated by Northwestern. But that was after many months of Kafkaesque investigation that she details in her new book, Unwanted Advances. The dismissed Louisiana State faculty member hasnt been so fortunate, at least not so far. She has sued to get her job back; in reply, the university said it would vigorously defend students rights to a harassment-free educational environment.

Lets be clear: For too many years, our colleges and universities swept sexual assault under the rug. Thats why I applauded the aggressive stance taken by the Obama administration, which put all of our institutions on notice that sexual violence would not be tolerated.

But we wont serve that cause if we do violence to our basic traditions of free speech. Of course, no professor should be allowed to sexually harass students or make truly threatening remarks. But when we call any controversial statement about sex or about Title IX itself a form of harassment or threat, we empty these terms of their meaning. And we make it even more difficult to establish a sound policy on sexual assault, which like any public question can only benefit from a full and free public debate.

So if you dont like what Betsy DeVos has been saying about campus sexual assault, by all means say so. And if you dont like this column, shout that to the rooftops as well. Just dont try to shut down discussion on the subject by claiming that the words assault you. Thats simply not the American way. And it wont work, either.

Read more from the original source:
Sexual violence on campus must not be tolerated but using Title IX as a censorship tool is not the answer - Salon