President Donald Trump recently entered into the national debate over the NFL protests by criticizing football players taking a knee before games during the national anthem. Some were enraged and called for his impeachment — a call that I previously discussed as unfounded and dangerous. I saw no reason why the President was out of line in giving his opinion on the controversy. There is however an even more pressing matter involving an American professional athlete that would warrant a strong and public statement from President Trump. He is New York Knicks player Enes Kanter who is the subject of an abusive charge in Turkey for allegedly insulting its blood-soaked authoritarian leader President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. President Trump should publicly support Kanter and his right to exercise free speech — a right that Erdogan has curtailed in Turkey in his crackdown on dissidents and journalists alike.
Category: Free Speech
I previously praised the position of my alma mater, The University of Chicago, in refusing to limit free speech with the creation of safe spaces and speech codes. Indeed, the courageous position of UChicago stood in sharp contrast to the troubling position of my other alma mater, Northwestern University (which has only grown more hostile to both free speech and academic freedom). Now, Northwest Vista College president Ric Baser has declared himself squarely on the speech regulation side of academia with a chilling rejection of a broad array of speech as hate speech, including words that “spread” or “provoke” or “create” “animosity and hostility.” Baser’s San Antonio Express-News op-ed titled “Hate speech does not equal free speech shows not only a disturbing lack of understanding of constitutionally protected speech but an intolerance for the speech of those with which he disagrees. Baser’s disturbing comments are part of a letter signed with 12 other members of the Higher Education Council of San Antonio, a group that he heads as president, which include the presidents of other colleges and universities.
We have previously discussed the alarming rollback on free speech rights in the West, particularly in France (here and here and here and here and here and here) and England ( here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here). Much of this trend is tied to the expansion of hate speech and non-discrimination laws. Once allowed to criminalize speech, individuals and groups demand more and more prohibitions. England is in a free fall over free speech and this week is yet another example. The police have indicated that they are considering making wolf whistles the latest category of hate speech.
Continue reading “UK Moves To Make Wolf Whistles and Misogynistic Speech A Hate Crime”
There is a brewing controversy at Fordham University where students were thrown out of a coffee shop called Rodrigue’s Coffee House simply because they were wearing pro-Trump “Make America Great Again” hats. The manager of the shop insisted that the hats violated its “safe space” policy as if being conservative is now a de facto threat to other students. We recently discussed an increase in such conflicts in coffee shops targeting conservatives and Trump supporters. In this case, the encounter was captured on tape (below) and raises serious questions about the function of some “safe spaces” and whether it is code for an area protected from conservative views or voices.
The GW Hatchet, our award-winning student newspaper, has another interesting article this week on the establishment of a new group on campus, the Internationalist Students’ Front, an anti-fascist, anti-nationalist organization. They are advocates of internationalism, a position similar to the prior world socialist movement. The addition of such groups are a good thing for our university in bringing diverse and passionate views to our campus debates. However, it is worrisome that the first organized effort of the group is reportedly to ban a book on campus.
Conservative commentator Lucian Wintrich was arrested recently after he grabbed a protester who stole his speech notes during an event at the University of Connecticut. The video however shows Wintrich trying to stop a woman who acted to prevent him from speaking and grabbed his notes. That led to many asking why the woman was not arrested. Now she has been identified and it is worse than thought. Her name is Catherine Gregory and she is associate director of career services and advising at Quinebaug Valley Community College. It is particularly disturbing to see someone associated with an institution of high education acting to silence opposing speakers and actually stealing material. Update: the charges against Wintrich have been dropped and Gregory has turned herself in for charges based on her outrageous conduct.
Former Donald Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort has reportedly scuttled his own deal to secure release from home confinement under a deal Manafort with prosecutors. Prosecutors learned (from an unspecified source) that Manafort was working with a ghostwriter on an opinion piece on his case. The second man reportedly had ties to Russian intelligence — hardly ideal for a man at the center of the Russian investigation. The work was deemed to be in violation of a court order for all parties to refrain from “trying the case in the press.” However, the order raises a long-standing question of the need and constitutionality of orders limiting the free speech of defendants and counsel. While once the exception, gag orders have become the rule with many judges. Yet, Manafort is presumed innocent and the order prevents him from responding to those questioning his loyalty and honesty.
Texas State University is this week’s ground zero in our campus speech debate. The most recent controversy was triggered by an opinion column by student Rudy Martinez on November 28th in The University Star titled “Your DNA is an abomination.” While insisting that he cannot by definition be racist, Martinez declares that “white death will mean liberation for all.” Martinez is a racist and the column is deeply disturbing. However, as will come as no surprise to regulars on the blog, I still support his write to publish such views. My concern is that universities continue to be selective in affording free speech rights to students. It is doubtful that the university would be so circumspect if the the column called for the death of minorities. UPDATE: The student columnist has been fired by the newspaper.
The University of Illinois is facing criticism over the actions of one of its graduate students and its own failure to act against him. Tariq Khan, a PhD student at the university, was videotaped at a rally and then going bananas after spotting members of a conservative group called Turning Point USA. Khan was later arrested but the question is how the University of Illinois will respond to yet another assault over the exercise of free speech. The university can clearly review Khan’s conduct on the videotape and judge whether it meets the standards of the university for faculty and students alike.
University of California -Riverside student Edith Macias achieved a degree of fame (or infamy) when she was involved in an ugly incident in September with a fellow student wearing a Make America Great Again hat. Macias ripped the hat off the head of student Matthew Vitale and then spouted profanities in a college office. Now Macias is looking at a charge of misdemeanor grand theft with the possibility of jail time.
Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, is the latest focal point for the growing free speech crisis on college campuses. University student Lindsay Shepherd, 22, teaches tutorials on language use for first year communications students in a class called “Canadian Communication in Context”. She showed brief clip featuring psychology professor Jordan Peterson who is against forced use of genderless and “made-up” pronouns. Shepherd said that the clip spurred a lively and beneficial discussion in the class. However, one student filed a compliant and now Shepherd is facing an investigation for creating a “toxic environment” for showing the clip without publicly denouncing the views expressed in the clip. It appears that the school’s motto, Veritas Omnia Vincit (“Truth Conquers All”), applies only to university sanctioned truth.
We have hit another milestone today with over 33,000,000 views. We are also expected to reach 35,000 followers on Twitter. That hardly makes us competition for the largest sites but it is still an impressive collection of people seeking a place for civil but passionate discourse on legal and policy issues of our time (and perhaps a few wacky stories). We often use these milestones to look at the current profile of the blog and its supporters around the world.
As always, I want to offer special thanks for our weekend contributors: Mike Appleton, Larry Rafferty, Darren Smith, Kimberly Dienes, and Cara Gallagher (particularly Darren who continues help up with periodic technical problems etc).
I particularly want to thank our regular commentators and readers. We try to keep this blog as an open forum with as little interference or monitoring of the comments as possible. Given our free speech orientation, we try not to delete comments and, for that reason, we are deeply appreciative of how most people avoid personal or offensive comments in debating these issues. We have had to delete a handful of comments with personal attacks or profanity but the number remains quite low for a blog of this size. The success of this blog is due to the fact that we offer something more than the all-too-common troll-driven, angry, and insulting commentary of the Internet. Thank you for voluntarily assuming restraint over the tenor and content of your comments. Continue reading “RES IPSA HITS 33,000,000”
Juli Briskman is out of a job. The 50-year-old mother of two became a national hero for anti-Trump advocates when she gave President Donald Trump the middle finger as she bicycled along a road in Sterling, Virginia. Trump was returning from a golf game when he encountered the middle fingered salute. Now, her employer government contractor Akima LLC has fired her in a move that she says is both political and arbitrary. Briskman was a marketing and communications employee for Akima and the company clearly decided that flipping off the President was not an optimal marketing strategy for a government contractor. Brishman only worked for the company for six months.
Continue reading “Company Fires Bicyclist Who Flipped Off Trump”
I have often criticized Saudi Arabia for its application of a medieval Sharia system of law and its intolerance for both free speech and freedom of religion. It is important however to recognize improvements in the Kingdom, such as the recent decision to allow women to drive and the expanding political rights of women. This week brought another such positive development. Saudi Arabia’s next king, Mohammed bin Salman, gave a surprising speech where he clearly set the Kingdom apart from the long domination of Saudi clerics. He declared “We are returning to what we were before, a country of moderate Islam that is open to all religions and to the world.” If true, that would be a moment of true leadership by the Crown Prince and a real hope for the citizens of Saudi Arabia.
We recently discussed the free speech and associational implications of a Kansas teacher barred from a job due to her church’s support for the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement. Now there is a story out of Dickinson, Texas where residents were told that they had to guarantee that they do not support boycotts of Israel as a pre-condition of hurricane relief. Again, this is nothing to do with the merits of the BDS controversy or Israel. The question is the constitutionality of the federal or state government demanding such commitments from citizens to secure employment or relief.