- Video now online of Nadine Strossen at Cato speaking on her new book Hate: Why We Should Resist It with Free Speech, Not Censorship. And John Samples kicks off series of blog posts about book [first, second]
- Press vs. President: “the more tightly regulated media landscape of the early 1970s” played directly into Nixon’s hands [Matt Welch]
- Romance writer’s bid to stop authors from using word ‘cocky’ fails in court [Alison Flood/Guardian, earlier]
- “New law forces Google to suspend political ads in Washington state” [Timothy Lee, ArsTechnica]
- “The Minnesota criminal harassment statute is equally dubious, applying when a person sends two or more tweets ‘with the intent to abuse, disturb, or cause distress.’ Really…?” [Venkat Balasubramani, Technology and Marketing Law Blog] “Crime in D.C. to Negligently Cause ‘Significant Mental Suffering’ by Saying Two Non-Political Things About Someone” [Eugene Volokh] “NY State Legislators Unanimously Pass A Cyberbullying Bill That Can’t Be Bothered To Define Cyberbullying” [Tim Cushing, TechDirt; Eric Turkowitz]
- Blame failings of copyright law, not scholarly neglect, for long inattention to Zora Neale Hurston manuscript [Ted Genoways, Washington Post/Valley News]
Posts Tagged ‘hate speech’
Watch: Nadine Strossen at Cato
Today (Monday) at Cato, NYLS constitutional law professor and ACLU past president Nadine Strossen will speak on her new book “Hate: Why We Should Resist It with Free Speech, Not Censorship” with Prof. Louis Seidman of Georgetown Law and John Samples commenting and Roger Pilon moderating. You can watch here.
“This can’t possibly be consistent with the First Amendment”
California is prosecuting a man under state electronic-harassment law for posting five insults on an Islamic Center’s Facebook page [Eugene Volokh] A court filing by California Attorney General Xavier Becerra denies that the insults are protected speech or that the law is unconstitutional as applied. UCLA First Amendment expert Eugene Volokh writes, of California’s logic defending the prosecution: “This can’t possibly be consistent with the First Amendment.”
Related: New Jersey Supreme Court adopts narrow reading of criminal harassment statute so as to avoid covering repeated offensive speech which, though intended to annoy, does not invade privacy or put target in reasonable fear as to safety or security.
Can online media resist “creeping censorship” from EU?
Pressure from EU to keep extreme speech off social media risks “creeping censorship” affecting users in the U.S. How can and should companies push back? [Danielle Citron, Cato Policy Analysis]
Campus climate roundup
- Pauli Murray, civil rights activist after whom Yale recently named a residential college, stood up for her worst foes’ right to speak [Peter Salovey, New York Times] Viewing everything through lens of identity and power disables the intellect [Jonathan Haidt]
- Penn Jillette and free speech scholars ask Brandeis president to reconsider decision to ditch play about comedian Lenny Bruce [FIRE]
- Isolated outrages, or straws in the wind? Lindsay Shepherd and Wilfred Laurier University [Tristin Hopper, National Post] Student’s remark about religion at University of Texas, San Antonio [Robby Soave, Reason] Roll your eyes at a faculty meeting and you could be in so much Title IX trouble [Nicholas Wolfinger, Quillette]
- “Bias Response Teams Thwarted in Their Goal of a Sensitive Campus by the First Amendment” [Liz Wolfe, Reason, earlier]
- 49% of college students say supporting someone else’s right to say racist things “as bad as holding racist views yourself” [Emily Ekins on Cato free speech survey] Related: John Samples; Eugene Volokh;
- Testimony by Prof. Nadine Strossen at Senate hearing on free speech, hate speech, and college campuses [Collins/Concurring Opinions]
Cato survey: “The State of Free Speech and Tolerance in America”
I’m a bit late getting to this major survey from my colleague Emily Ekins and associates. Some highlights good and bad:
* By 71% to 28%, Americans lean toward the view that political correctness silences discussions society ought to have, rather than the view that it is a constructive way to reduce the giving of offense;
* Liberals are much more likely than conservatives to say that they feel comfortable saying things they believe without fear that others will take offense.
* By a 4-to-1 margin Americans consider hate speech morally unacceptable, while by (only) a 3-to-2 margin they do not want the government to ban it.
* “47% of Republicans favor bans on building new mosques,” notwithstanding the First Amendment’s protection of free exercise of religion.
* “51% of Democrats support a law that requires Americans use transgender people’s preferred gender pronouns,” also notwithstanding the First Amendment.
* Upwards of 80% of liberals deem it “hateful or offensive” to state that illegal immigrants should be deported or that women should not serve in military combat, with 36% and 47% of conservatives agreeing respectively. “39% of conservatives believe it’s hate speech to say the police are racist, only 17% of liberals agree.”
And much more: on college speaker invitations, microaggressions, whether executives should be fired over controversial views, media bias, forced cake-baking, and the ease of being friends across partisan lines, among many other topics.
Free speech roundup
- Florida “health coach” charges for nutrition advice, isn’t a licensed dietitian. Does she have a First Amendment defense? [Scott Shackford]
- Results of Russian social-media manipulation episode could include foot in door for regulation of Internet speech [John Samples, Cato]
- Some in Australia having trouble distinguishing “impersonation” of government from anti-government satire [Timothy Geigner, TechDirt]
- Before deep-pocket publications can report on sexual misconduct by persons in high places, gauntlet of legal review needs to be run with special attention to on-the-record sources [Mike Masnick, TechDirt]
- Ohio lawmaker introduces anti-SLAPP bill that pioneers novel protections for anonymous speakers [John Samples, Cato]
- “Nadine Strossen’s Next Book — ‘Hate: Why We Should Resist it With Free Speech, Not Censorship'” [Ronald K.L. Collins] “Sanford Ungar Heads New Free Speech Project at Georgetown University” [same]
Campus free speech roundup
- Many elements of First Amendment doctrine are applicable not at all to private universities and only in substantially modified form to public campuses. True enough, but few go as far in arguing this as does Yale’s Robert Post [Vox, Erwin Chemerinsky response, Will Creeley (FIRE) response, Post response to Creeley]
- Rundown of shout-downs: state representative kept from speaking at Texas Southern’s Thurgood Marshall Law School [Caron/TaxProf, Greenfield] University of Oregon president’s annual state-of-university speech [Oregonian] Pro-Trump hecklers shout down California Attorney General, assembly majority leader at Whittier College [Adam Steinbaugh, FIRE] College Republicans disrupted at UC Santa Cruz, not for inviting someone controversial, just for being them [Celine Ryan/Campus Reform, John Sexton/HotAir]
- Threats of violence against journal editors are one way to get a retraction [Sara Hebel/Chronicle of Higher Education, Jerry Coyne, Oliver Traldi, Quillette (Bruce Gilley, “Case for Colonialism” paper)]
- “New policy authorizes University of Wisconsin to expel students for repeatedly disrupting speakers” [ABA Journal] Will the new rules themselves improperly restrict speech? [Howard Wasserman, Joe Cohn/FIRE first and second posts]
- Debate over proposal by Rep. Anthony Brown (D-Md.) to prohibit “hate speech” on campus [Andrew King vs. Chris Seaton, Simple Justice]
- Federal court agrees that Title IX does not oblige university to ban (now-defunct) student gossip anonymous messaging app Yik Yak [Adam Steinbaugh, FIRE]
Free speech roundup
- “I believe in the First Amendment” and FCC has no authority to revoke licenses over newscast content, says commission chairman Ajit Pai [Jacob Sullum/Reason, earlier]
- She stoops to censor: British Crown and her Wiltshire police are not amused by your tweets [Andrew Stuttaford, BBC via Helen Pluckrose on Twitter; earlier here, here, here, here, here, here, etc.] Hate speech laws will in practice be used by the politically powerful against dissenters and radicals, part 761 [Guardian on case of woman questioned by detectives over banner denouncing conservative ruling party in Northern Ireland]
- “Congress members threaten Twitter with regulation if it doesn’t suppress ‘racially divisive communications’ and ‘anti-American sentiments” [Eugene Volokh on bill introduced by Reps. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-N.J.) and Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.)]
- On the old “shouting fire in a crowded theater” trope, read this whole thread and then you won’t have to catch up later [Popehat on Twitter] Neither “extremist” speech nor “fake news” can be defined and identified closely enough for regulation to work [Cato Daily Podcast with Flemming Rose and Caleb Brown]
- Encyclopedia of Libertarianism article on freedom of speech is by Alan Charles Kors;
- “Screen Actors Guild Tells Court There’s Nothing Unconstitutional About Curbing IMDB’s Publication Of Facts” [Tim Cushing, TechDirt; earlier here and here]
“That’s not free speech, it’s hate speech”
By now we should probably read a claim that the First Amendment doesn’t cover hate speech not as an ignorant flub, but more as a declaration of intent to curtail the First Amendment’s scope. More: Ken White, Los Angeles Times.