scholarly journals Free Speech Rhetoric and Normalizing Violence: Setting Higher Standards for University Guest Speaker Policies

2020 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-45
Author(s):  
Madison McDonald

In response to recent protests against controversial guest speakers, many Canadian universities have implemented new policies that conflate academic freedom and freedom of speech. The resultant free speech policies often protect speakers regardless of the content of their speech; this paper discusses the importance of barring speech that normalizes acts of harm.

Author(s):  
Sean Stevens ◽  
Lee Jussim ◽  
Nathan Honeycutt

This paper explores the suppression of ideas within academic scholarship by academics, either by self-suppression or because of the efforts of other academics. Legal, moral, and social issues distinguishing freedom of speech, freedom of inquiry, and academic freedom are reviewed. How these freedoms and protections can come into tension is then explored by an analysis of denunciation mobs who exercise their legal free speech rights to call for punishing scholars who express ideas they disapprove of and condemn. When successful, these efforts, which constitute legally protected speech, will suppress certain ideas. Real-world examples over the past five years of academics who have been sanctioned or terminated for scholarship targeted by a denunciation mob are then explored.


Author(s):  
Julee T. Flood ◽  
Terry L. Leap

Two key issues stemming from the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution are discussed: freedom of speech and academic freedom. These two ideals are largely non-existent for faculty members working at private colleges, and universities and they are probably more restricted than faculty at public institutions might imagine. This chapter focuses on U.S. Supreme Court cases (e.g., Garcetti v Ceballos) as well as AAUP definitions of academic freedom. Defamation and other free speech issues are also discussed.


Societies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 82
Author(s):  
Sean T. Stevens ◽  
Lee Jussim ◽  
Nathan Honeycutt

This paper explores the suppression of ideas within an academic scholarship by academics, either by self-suppression or because of the efforts of other academics. Legal, moral, and social issues distinguishing freedom of speech, freedom of inquiry, and academic freedom are reviewed. How these freedoms and protections can come into tension is then explored by an analysis of denunciation mobs that exercise their legal free speech rights to call for punishing scholars who express ideas they disapprove of and condemn. When successful, these efforts, which constitute legally protected speech, will suppress certain ideas. Real-world examples over the past five years of academics that have been sanctioned or terminated for scholarship targeted by a denunciation mob are then explored.


Paragraph ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 114-130
Author(s):  
Thomas Docherty

This paper looks at intrinsic disputation within proposition, and specifically within propositions that offer a moderated version of the freedom of speech and expression. It begins from a consideration of what is at stake in Othello's ‘Rude am I in my speech’, a rhetorical gesture that frames an act of great eloquence, and in which the eloquence serves to formulate a quarrel by ostensibly resolving it. This example reveals that there is a conflict between empirical quarrel and articulated spoken resolution. This leads the essay to explore the way in which diplomacy works, whereby we establish the pretence that there is peace between disputatious positions through the power of the logic of ‘but’, thus: ‘I agree with you, but …’. Finally, this is extended to a consideration of the limits of and/or on free speech: ‘I defend free speech, but …’, where the ‘but’ is a gesture in which the defence of free speech is modified to the point of being obliterated.


Author(s):  
Jennifer Lackey

This chapter provides an introduction to the volume and to each of the individual chapters, and it is divided into three sections. In the first section, the rationale for academic freedom is discussed, focusing particularly on truth-based and justice-based arguments, as well as on the connection between academic freedom and free speech. The parameters of academic freedom are taken up in the second section, where three issues are addressed: the scope of outside threats to academic freedom, whether academic freedom protects extramural speech, and the extent to which academic freedom permits a change to research areas. In the last section, academic freedom is discussed in connection with specific issues, including silencing, microaggressions, content warnings, campus protests, civil disobedience, and no platforming.


2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 190-208
Author(s):  
Khalil M. Habib

AbstractAccording to Tocqueville, the freedom of the press, which he treats as an extension of the freedom of speech, is a primary constituent element of liberty. Tocqueville treats the freedom of the press in relation to and as an extension of the right to assemble and govern one’s own affairs, both of which he argues are essential to preserving liberty in a free society. Although scholars acknowledge the importance of civil associations to liberty in Tocqueville’s political thought, they routinely ignore the importance he places on the freedom of the press and speech. His reflections on the importance of the free press and speech may help to shed light on the dangers of recent attempts to censor the press and speech.


Author(s):  
Andrew T. Kenyon

This chapter explores the positive structural dimensions of the freedom of speech by using a democratic free speech rationale. While far from the only aspect of positive free speech, it offers a useful example of the freedom’s positive dimensions. The chapter focuses on legal conditions underlying public speech and their links to democratic constitutional arrangements. It outlines the general approach before drawing brief comparisons with two well-known US approaches to free speech and media freedom. The chapter then highlights two of the multiple ways in which ‘positive’ can be used in relation to free speech. Positive may concern positive freedom, the idea that freedom is not only a negative liberty but requires support or enablement. It can also be used in terms of a positive right, typically a legal right enforced through courts.


Author(s):  
Sean Stevens ◽  
Lee Jussim ◽  
Nathan Honeycutt

This paper explores the suppression of ideas within academic scholarship by academics, either by self-suppression or because of the efforts of other academics. Legal, moral, and social issues distinguishing freedom of speech, freedom of inquiry, and academic freedom are reviewed. How these freedoms and protections can come into tension is then explored by a sociological analysis of denunciation mobs who exercise their legal free speech rights to call for punishing scholars who express ideas they disapprove of and condemn. When successful, these efforts, which constitute legally protected speech, will suppress certain ideas. Real-world examples over the past five years of academics who have been sanctioned or terminated for scholarship targeted by a denunciation mob are then explored.


2021 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 239-256
Author(s):  
Karolina Palka

This article is about the limits of the right to free speech. The first section provides a brief introduction to this topic, primarily in the context of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The second section describes the case of Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, which was fundamental to the topic of this paper because the United States Supreme Court created the so-called "fighting words" doctrine based on it. In the next two sections, two court cases are presented that perfectly demonstrate the limits of the right to free speech in the United States: Snyder v. Phelps and Village of Skokie v. National Socialist Party of America. The fifth part shows the right to freedom of speech in the context of Polish civil, criminal, and constitutional law, as well as acts of international law binding on Poland. The last part is a short summary.


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