Free Speech | Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion - Part 48
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Free Speech Tag

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on July 09, 2017 19 Comments
Howard University law professor Reginald Robinson has been the subject of 504-day Title IX investigation based on two student complaints about a test question involving a Brazilian wax lawsuit. Robinson is now required to undergo mandatory sensitivity training, prior administrative review of future test questions, and classroom observation. As described by Cosmo, during a Brazilian wax, "they take the hair off the top and sides of the bikini line, but also all the way under and around the back, too. [emphasis not mine]" The test question is lengthy and quite specific about the nature of the Brazilian wax.  Its basic premise is described by Inside Higher Ed:

Posted by Miriam Elman on July 02, 2017 31 Comments
For a century Palestinians have been denying and denigrating the Jewish people’s attachment to the Land of Israel even as they’ve been doubling-down on their own fictitious claims to ‘Palestine’ in antiquity and to family lineages in the Holy Land that predate that of the ancient Hebrews. A former adjunct lecturer of Jewish history at Haifa University, now the creative director at a Tel Aviv advertising agency, decided to poke fun at this absurd situation in which Palestinians reject the historical accuracy of a Hebrew/Jewish presence in the land while simultaneously concocting an essentially fraudulent narrative of their own history. The literary product is History of the Palestinian People: From Ancient Times to the Modern Era.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on July 01, 2017 2 Comments
The anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement is becoming increasingly violent. We have seen this in the U.S. through frequent physical disruptions of Israel-related events. Indeed, as I have documented many times, disruption of Israel-related events was a precursor to the more general campus intolerance we are seeing at places such as Berkeley, Middlebury, and universities in Britain and Ireland. In my post, With campus shout downs, first they came for the Jews and Israel, I provide many examples of increasing BDS violence and physical intimidation that accompanies these shout downs. Disrupting Israel-related events is not limited to the U.S. and Britain. At Humboldt University in Berlin, a criminal complaint has been filed after an aggressive disruption.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on June 28, 2017 47 Comments
Politico magazine has a very detailed article on the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), for which I was interviewed, Has a Civil Rights Stalwart Lost Its Way?. The article, written by Ben Schreckinger, addresses several aspects of the SPLC, including its massive accumulation of wealth seemingly beyond its needs. But much of the focus is on SPLC's aggressive politics and use of "hate" and "extremist" lists:

Posted by Mike LaChance on June 28, 2017 18 Comments
In March of this year, the sociologist and writer Charles Murray visited Middlebury College to deliver a lecture. Before he could even begin, the event was set upon by a mob of students who shut it down and ultimately sent a professor to the emergency room. Students who participated in the mob received no real punishment but the incident drew national attention to the issue of free speech on college campuses. Last night, Murray made his first televised appearance since then on Tucker Carlson's show. He described the scene at Middlebury as the opposite of what higher education should be.

Posted by Mike LaChance on June 21, 2017 9 Comments
Respecting free speech has been an ongoing issue on college campuses for years now but reached a boiling point in 2017. So far this year, there was a riot at Berkeley over a planned speech by Milo Yiannopoulos. Berkeley also had to cancel a speech by Ann Coulter over threats of violence. Charles Murray was shouted down by a violent mob at Middlebury College and another student mob threatened Heather Mac Donald at Claremont McKenna. And then there's Evergreen State College. Those are just a few of the high profile examples. The situation is so serious that the Senate held a hearing on the subject. CNN reports:
Senate judiciary committee hearing focuses on campus free speech Two college students warned of increasingly stifled speech on college campuses at a Senate judiciary committee hearing Tuesday. Zachary Wood, a rising senior at Williams College, and Isaac Smith, a student at the University of Cincinnati College of Law, appeared before the committee at a hearing titled "Free Speech 101: The Assault on the First Amendment on College Campuses."

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on June 14, 2017 5 Comments
Despite the risk of litigation, the German newspaper Bild Zeitung has gone ahead with the streaming of an investigative documentary that exposed the extent of Antisemitism in Europe. The French-German broadcaster ARTE had previously shelved the 90-minute documentary that uncovered the complicity of the European Union and Germany government in financing antisemitic groups posing as charities and NGOs. On Tuesday, the German language documentary was streamed for 24 hours on the newspaper’s website. French-German ARTE and German broadcaster WDR, both funded by German taxpayers, commissioned the documentary "Chosen and Ostracised -- The hatred of Jews in Europe," but got cold feet after seeing the finished work. The broadcasters confined the documentary to the archives, hoping to dodge a bitter public reception.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on June 12, 2017 2 Comments
"Blasphemous" social media posts can get you killed in Pakistan. The first of its kind in the middle eastern state, Pakistan recently sentenced a man to death for making "derogatory" remarks about "Sunni religious figures and the prophet of Islam's wives," reports leading German news purveyor, DW. Taimoor Raza, a Shiite Pakistani, was charged and sentenced to death for engaging in a Facebook argument with a government official who later brought charges against him.