Pregnant pause

Speaking our mind is taking a break for the time being, as the contributors pursue some of the themes raised on the blog in more detail. For starters, see Josie Appleton’s Manifesto Club Think Piece: A New Deal for Public Debate. The fraught quality of contemporary debate – the widespread readiness to take offence rather than make an argument – has been one of the major themes highlighted on the blog, and this is a trend we hope to challenge in a bid to rejuvenate and raise the level of public debate.

Other recurring themes on Speaking our mind have included confusion about academic freedom (invariably leading to its erosion), race, religion and offence (again), and newly emerging etiquette and speech codes. These ideas will be further explored in a variety of forums by contributors to the blog and others. If you are concerned about the issues raised on the blog, and would like to get involved in our work around free speech, please get in touch, or better still join the Manifesto Club.

Virtual desecration and the fall of man

Fast on the heels on the UK banning of 'Manhunt 2' the censorious cry over 'violent' video games issues again. For religious reasons, the Dean of Manchester cathedral has voiced his dissent over the inclusion of Sony's Resistance: Fall of Man in the PC World gamers' awards shortlist. What exactly his problem is remains a mystery. The official line is that wily game-makers filmed the interior of Manchester Cathedral without permission (they have in fact already apologised). If they don't now remove a shoot-em-up scene set in the sacred space, the dean claims the producers will encourage further "virtual desecration", leaving other churches wide open to similar "exploitation".

The Dean further calls for "sacred digital guidelines" to advise games producers. Sorry, what? If angst over the Danish cartoons earlier this year seemed blown out of all proportion, this is palpably absurd: both incidents show a worrying trend towards religion becoming increasingly sacred ground in public discourse. Whilst Moses had only to take off his sandals to approach the burning bush, society has to bow in cowed 'respect' to the whims of anybody talking loudly about 'their faith', removing all possible objects of (often petty) offence without question. 'Desecration' means violation of the sacred, but 'sacred' today is a term that sleeps around: facts are sacred, Torahs are, freedom of expression is. The issue isn't what people think is sacred, but why they do.

In an increasingly timid culture that obsesses over respecting 'differences of belief' (read: 'religious' belief), it seems the religion card is the only trump in what is quickly becoming a boring game of snap loudly at anybody you don't agree with. If you've not got religion to back you up, you may as well shut up and go home, because nobody will listen. It would actually be nice to see somebody playing the censor for reasons other than 'my religious beliefs' for a change.

Sarah Boyes

Comedians bovvered by Evangelical Christians

In a reversal of the familar pattern, a Christian publisher is being threatened with legal action by comedians upset by the use of their catchphrases on evangelical posters aimed at teenagers.

The catchprases, such as Catherine Tate's adolescent 'Am I bovvered?' and Little Britain character Vicky Pollard's 'Yeah but no...' have long been popular in playgrounds (much to the annoyance of teachers), and indeed on other TV shows and the media generally. While the agency acting for the Little Britain creators insists that it would do the same with any business violating their copyright, it seems likely that the offence is compounded by the fact that Evangelical Christians promote values different from those current among the media class, especially on the subject of homosexuality. No doubt the comedians' objections have merit politically, but enforcing 'copyright' like this is a churlish and censorious way to register displeasure. Whatever the legal case, objecting when someone else uses your catchphrase is ridiculous as well as mean-spirited. Wouldn't these comedians be better off making a joke of the Evangelicals if they dislike them so much, rather than making a po-faced joke of themselves?

Dolan Cummings

The trouble with tenure

The current controversy surrounding Abu El-Haj, an anthropologist at Barnard College in the US, highlights important questions about academic freedom. Essentially, it seems El-Haj’s work suggests that prevailing ideas about the ancient Israelites are the product of modern Israeli politics as much as archaeological or genomic discoveries. Predictably, especially given El-Haj’s Palestinian background, she has come under fire from those who see this as a challenge to the legitimacy of the Israeli state, and the usual polarisation of opinion has ensued. The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that there are currently two online petitions, one to deny El-Haj tenure and another to grant it to her.

The situation is complicated by the fact that many of the criticisms are academic: El-Haj is alleged to lack knowledge of Hebrew, for example, and to employ an unscientific ‘social constructivist’ approach. This means her supporters have been caught between a straight ‘academic freedom’ defence, and a substantive defence of her work. Ultimately, it is impossible to separate the two. If someone’s work is entirely without academic merit, there is no meaningful argument for academic freedom: she can be dismissed from a university to pursue her work independently. Things are rarely so clear-cut, though: often academics disagree about what is a worthy line of enquiry, and thus the notion of academic freedom depends on colleagues granting one another the benefit of any reasonable doubt.

Where things get really complicated, as in this case, is when political disagreements take an academic form, and especially when non-academics weigh in, as with the petitions. Fellow anthropologist Paul Rabinow, who is sympathetic to El-Haj, has nonetheless refused to sign the petition in favor of granting her tenure, on the quite reasonable grounds that “Petitions about people’s tenure cases are completely out of order…It’s a breakdown of the standards of debate. I guess the alternative then is demagoguery.” The Chronicle also quotes mathematician and ‘science warrior’ Norman Levitt, who has signed the petition against El-Haj, arguing that “It is wiser to acknowledge that the educated public has something to say about “professional” matters... than to fill the air with pompous resentment when such criticism arises”. Levitt has a point, too, inasmuch as the public has a right to criticize and dispute the merits of academic work. But to suggest that academics should be influenced by public opinion when assessing the work of their colleagues is indeed to open the door to demagoguery.

The whole point of academic freedom, as opposed to simple free speech, is that it is both more demanding (because framed by an academic discipline) and to an extent insulated from the outside world (because criticisms from outside that discipline, however popular, are not relevant). However acrimonious their disagreements might be, academics should have the confidence and integrity to maintain their professionalism amid controversy. As long as El-Haj’s colleagues agree her work has merit - which seems to be the case - she should enjoy full academic freedom. Others are free to challenge her work and disagree with her politics, but the dispute over her tenure is the wrong arena for such arguments.

Dolan Cummings

Too rude for YouTube

YouTube, the online video-sharing site, has recently been called on to remove ‘animal cruelty’ clips from its sites, reports The Times. The clip that most ‘distressed’ viewers shows a goat being squeezed to death by a python whilst onlookers laugh in delight. Teachers have further called for the site to be banned in schools, due to ‘cyber-bullying’. Hentai (the more violent strain of Manga) should be removed, according to its Japanese makers, because its posting violates copyright. Still, most violent scenes from Hentai episodes have been cut from YouTube, leaving surreal senseless narratives and montages set to eighties dance music. Rumours of a blanket ban in Thailand have yet to be confirmed, whilst the Chinese are marching ahead launching their own version also to be available in train stations.

Having successfully created a ‘false’ account (I was a 37-year old man, but both ‘paedo’ and ‘paedophile’ were unavailable as names, as were ‘despot’ and ‘goatkiller’), I searched for ‘offensive’ clips of animal death. I discovered they aren’t difficult to find, but most are for pro-animal rights campaigns; and even then, they’re just not very good. Let alone original. It’s not the depiction of animal killing that people complain about, but the fact that it’s not condemned. Likewise, it’s not so much the depiction of tentacle rape, but the thought that you might get off on it.

This censorship is both petty and pointless: it attempts to crack down on certain actions by attacking the products of animal cruelty, bullying and copyright violation rather than their root causes. If you don’t buy into animal rights, or think bullying is part of growing up, and are too broke to pay extortionate DVD prices - in short, if you think that things weren’t actually better in the 1950s, and that people should get a life and get over themselves - it is patently ridiculous.

If you shared the vision of the internet finally providing unlimited access to information and facilitating the open exchange of ideas without monitoring and moralising, think again. YouTube is supposed to be a forum for individuals to upload and watch whatever they like - a sort of free market of clips - with demand set and met by a community of users. Viewers rate clips from one to five stars, with higher-rated material returned first in searches, ensuring greater distribution.

But then comes the need for centralised intervention - users must complain to admins if a clip is “inappropriate”, and these mysterious admins decide whether to take any notice. Often media coverage puts pressure on the site. Extra vigilance and tighter control is justified by the existence of ‘digital-paedophiles’. Governments restrict access and companies attempt monopoly through asserting financial pressure. The python-killing-goat clip apparently had three stars (mediocre), but this played no role in any discussion about its removal. Nobody complained about bad camerawork or boring storyline; just as nobody pointed out the set up was sort of innovative, the image fantastical.

With the ongoing rise of social networking sites promising peer-to-peer relationships and community control of content, which offer unfettered spaces for expression and discussion with likeminded people, the anaethetisation of YouTube is a sorry sign of people’s pettiness. It shows our apparent inability to create alternative spaces where we can truly be free, and signals the stunted potential of self-governance on the web.

Sarah Boyes

Arresting thinking

German sociologist Andrej Holm has just been released on bail by German federal police. After his arrest under paragraph 129 of the German Penal Code on suspicion of “membership of a terrorist organisation”, he was held in solitary confinement for a week, only being allowed out of his cell for one hour a day. His home and office were searched, his mail intercepted, and his defence lawyers still don’t have access to the evidence being used against him. What was Holm’s crime? Apparently, he used the word “gentrification”.

In what has to be one of the most absurdly Orwellian attacks on academic freedom this year, Holm and another academic were apparently targeted on the basis of the police’s amateur discourse analysis that found “key words and phrases” in common between their academic work and the leaflets of a radical group opposed to gentrification, militante gruppe (mg). Apparently, they both use such seditious terms as “gentrification”, “inequality” and “imperialism”, and according to American professor Peter Marcuse the police’s 80,000-page dossier (so far not shared with the defence) also compares the use of punctuation and abbreviation. The evidence presented so far really is as thin as whether Holm uses “G8” or “G-8”. Apparently the similarities are “striking, and not to be explained through a coincidence”.

The police have been sure to pepper these pathetic accusations with accusations of “comprehensive conspiratorial contacts and meetings” with “Florian L.”, another arrestee, but these are equally fatuous. The fact that Holm didn’t take his mobile phone to meetings supposedly adds to their “conspiratorial” nature, and he is also accused of attending the protests against the 2007 G8 Summit in Heiligendamm – along with about 25,000 others. The most striking charges, though, relate directly to the academic qualifications of the accused. Dr “B”, the academic arrested alongside Holm who isn’t even accused of writing anything inflammatory – it’s simply that he is “intellectually in a position to compile the sophisticated texts of the militante gruppe” and “as [an] employee in a research institute has access to libraries which he can use inconspicuously in order to do the research necessary to the drafting of texts”. If the capacity to write a document and access a library is now grounds for arrest, then millions are potentially at risk of such treatment, and academics are signing an open letter demanding their colleagues’ release.

Many academics choose to devote their energies to assisting the state, developing problem-solving analyses to combat “extremism” and “terrorism” and other government objectives. These individuals are left alone while those more sceptical academics whose work openly criticises the status quo - while never advocating violence- are subject to criminal prosecution. The heavily politicised nature of this assault on academic freedom is clear. Academic freedom means academics must be at liberty to study what they please and publish what they think after following a rigorous process of research and peer review by which the academic community regulates itself. It also means a certain distancing from the possible consequences of the research. Academics can’t legitimately be held responsible for what’s done with their work in the public, political sphere, since this would stifle their pursuit of knowledge and truth. However unpalatable the truth might be, its pursuit is the specialised role of the academic and its value to society is recognised in the very idea of academic freedom.

Academic freedom doesn’t shield academics from the consequences of the actions they undertake outside the profession, such as engaging in political or criminal activity – in these spheres they’re subject to the same rough-and-tumble debate or judicial sanctions as anyone else. But it does mean that even if Holm’s work is being used by mg, and even if he knows it, he can still publish and not be damned. It does mean that neither Dr “B” nor anyone else can legitimately be harrassed for having a PhD and access to a library, just in case he provides some intellectual grounding for a radical group, or anyone else. To hold Holm or “B” responsible for what mg do makes no more sense than holding Karl Marx responsible for Josef Stalin’s brutal inversion of the emancipatory promise of Marx’s analysis of capitalism, or holding the moral philosopher Adam Smith responsible for Margaret Thatcher’s economic policies. The capacity to think should never be criminalised.

Lee Jones

Is speaking your mind gay?

Users of Facebook will know there are thousands of ‘groups’ you can join, for everything from political parties to favourite bands or daft ‘just for fun’ stuff that often makes no sense to the uninitiated. The group pages show news, pictures and videos relating to the topic, and members can make friends with one another and take part in discussion forums. Membership of a group also shows up on your personal profile page, so even if you’re not that interested in getting involved, joining is still a bit like wearing a badge.

Once such group seems to be The word "gay" is not a synonym for "stupid", which currently has an impressive 78,232 members, and, more alarmingly, 28 ‘Officers’ and 14 ‘Admins’. On one level, the group simply expresses frustration with the use of the word gay as a term of disparagement. Actually, I don’t think this usage is quite synonymous with ‘stupid’ – more like ‘naff’ or ‘lame’, but that’s by the bye. The group’s general attitude wavers between pedantry and prudery, and is not very attractive, but that’s not important either – for a critique of this kind of censoriousness, see Censoring students at Oxford? That is so gay, by Maria Grasso.

What’s really interesting about the group is the enormous, 925-word preamble. Before doing anything else, visitors are told: ‘**STOP AND READ ALL OF THIS FIRST**’ What follows is a pre-emptive rebuttal of possible objections of various kinds, referring people to earlier discussion threads about censorship and the idea that language simply evolves, for example. To be fair, some of the points made are well-argued, but they are hardly the last word on the subject, as is implied. This preamble is followed by ‘Recent news’, which is really more of the same, but with added warnings against advertising and unsolicited friendship requests. The group’s ‘wall’ – a general posting area found on all Facebook pages – has been disabled too. Whatever else it is, this group is not gay. ‘Frigid’ might be a more apt insult.

Ultimately it is not surprising that a group set up to police language should end up trying to police debate about policing language. No doubt our choice of words reflects how we look at the world, and to some extent our political views, and it is fair enough to draw attention to it – though the connection between the new use of the word gay and prejudice against homosexual men and women is tenuous to say the least. More importantly, the attempt to stamp out particular words or their particular usage betrays a simplistic understanding of how the process works. The redefinition of words is a side effect of political debate and cultural production - books and films are rather more influential than speech codes. It isn’t established by edict, and the self-consciousness generated by this approach is anathema to intellectual freedom and good humour. There can be no better illustration of that than this Facebook group.

Dolan Cummings

Peter Tatchell and Reggae-bashing

Peter Tatchell has in recent years been running a campaign against Jamaican dance-hall artists who use homophobic language in their songs. His most recent article attacking ‘murder music’ on the Guardian’s Comment is Free blog was a revealing demonstration of practically every dismal contemporary anti-free-speech argument and prejudice going. Let’s take a look at these censorious shibboleths.

• ‘This is not a free speech issue’

Er, yes it is. Attempting to prevent someone from expressing a view is censorship - no ifs, no buts. It’s fine if you want to argue against free speech, but you should come out and say it. Tatchell’s claim that free speech advocates are hypocrites because they don’t defend the free speech of Nazis. Er… again, often they do. Is he ignorant of the ACLU’s defence of the Ku Klux Klan’s right to free speech for instance? He’s either setting up straw men, or he’s profoundly ignorant of the position he’s criticising.

• Censoring thought as well as speech

Peter Tatchell has a great interest in whether Banton and Beenie Man have only ‘cynically’ signed up to his charter to avoid the financially costly campaign that Tatchell waged against them, or whether they’ve really converted to his nice liberal viewpoint. Who cares? He has shut them up. Tatchell’s demand that they think appropriate thoughts is worthy of a medieval Inquisitor.

• Contempt for the audience

The most degrading aspect of attempts to restrict free speech is that they are implicit attacks on the rationality of the listening (and thinking) public. He sees Jamaican reggae fans as a potential mob ready to tear people apart at the mention of the words ‘batty-boy’; a vision worthy of the most fevered white-colonial imagination. There’s no denying there are regular homophobic attacks in Jamaica, but to reduce this complex social phenomenon (hatred of, and violence against homosexuals) to some song lyrics’ supposed capacity to incite hatred is laughable.

• The campaign is chauvinistic

Like so many commentators nowadays, Peter Tatchell jet-sets around the world to find examples of foreigners being beastly to one another (see also his recent trip to Russia). There’s nothing wrong with international solidarity, but grandstanding demands that foreigners comply with our standards only strengthens the hand of our own governments to intervene abroad, and distracts from the hard work of winning the fight for equality in Russia or Jamaica.

• PC censorship sets an awful precedent

Peter Tatchell forgets the case of Canadian feminist Andrea Dworkin, who became the target of her own anti-pornography laws. If Tatchell really wants to imagine that our enlightened government might never use censorship against gays, he’s welcome to his illusions. Let us hope the rest of us aren’t so foolish. As was mentioned on this blog a few days ago, Islamists in Britain were banged-up using laws against ‘incitement’ of the same type that Tatchell argues for. Tatchell may have no sympathy with Hizb-ut-Tahrir or whoever; but his line of argument would criminalise legitimate expressions of violent thought, including everyone from old Irishmen singing Fenian songs in a pub, to angry young rappers insulting the police.

The lesson of the UK to Jamaican gays is that they need the solidarity of the wider community to win freedom and equality. The censorious arguments of Tatchell and other British ‘liberals’ who see their peers as violent idiots, do them a disservice.

Robin Walsh

Race out of the closet

Doreen Lawrence, mother of Stephen Lawrence, the black teenager murdered in 1993, has launched a broadside against Boris Johnson, citing a 2002 article in which he refers to ‘flag-waving piccaninnies’ (a pejorative term for black children) and suggesting that when Tony Blair visited the Congo, ‘the tribal warriors will all break out in watermelon smiles to see the big white chief’. According to Lawrence, ‘This is the most offensive language of the colonial past and it shows that the Tory party is riddled with racial prejudice. No one with such views can be the mayor of a city with the largest black population in Britain.’

Have Lawrence, or the MPs Diane Abbot and Dawn Butler who have jumped on this bandwagon, even read the article? The Telegraph op-ed piece is actually an attack on the British political elite – not black people. Johnson suggests the Queen travels to the Commonwealth so often because it’s the only place she can attract large crowds of flag-waving kids – which is arguably true. More substantively, he lambastes Tony Blair for his constant jet-setting around the world’s troubled hotspots with his arrogant conviction that he can bring peace – while ignoring problems at home such as transport, healthcare and education. It is in fact a perfectly reasonable article that uses the ‘offensive language of the colonial past’ to ridicule Blair’s liberal imperialism and his disconnection from the ordinary people who elected him to solve their problems – not gallivant around the world dispensing his own brand of messianic wisdom. The failure of the ‘liberal’ media to explain this in their reports means Johnson’s enemies can slur with impunity.

It seems pretty obvious that Lawrence has been put up to this by Ken Livingstone’s office. On Radio 4’s Today programme last week, he said he was half-way through reading Johnson’s old columns to dredge up muck against him. Very likely the quotations in this article were fed to Lawrence so she could use her apparently apolitical position to attack Johnson as a racist. These are smear tactics of the worst kind, playing on the iconic status of a 14-year-old murder (the police’s role in which, incidentally, Boris recognised – despite his broadsides against political correctness – was marred by ‘racialist’ attitudes) to score cheap political points.

If this is the best evidence they could dig up to ‘prove’ Johnson is a racist, their case is pretty weak and reflects the Labour party’s own desperation – its tactics of trying to discredit Tories by suggesting they’re all closet racists is wearing decidedly thin. Moreover, Lawrence’s attack reveals the regulatory thought-policing that is commonplace among supposedly ‘liberal’ opinion today. In another article, Johnson slammed proposals to make racist speech in private illegal, noting that ‘not even under the law of Ceausescu’s Romania could you be prosecuted for what you said in your own kitchen’. Lawrence refused to accept this, saying: ‘clearly it can never be acceptable to hold those views. Anyway, what is said in private normally manifests itself out in public’. Since Johnson’s enemies are apparently woefully unable to find any public ‘manifestation’ of his supposed racism, perhaps their next call will be for MI6 to bug his kitchen.

Lee Jones

Chants, rants, Rangers and racism

Glasgow Rangers’ new American winger DaMarcus Beasley may have helped his club by more than just scoring the only goal in Tuesday night’s Champions League qualifier against FK Zeta in Montenegro. Rangers went through 3-0 on aggregate, but it was Beasley’s complaints about racist chants from the Zeta fans that made the headlines the next day. Abuse of visiting black players is still common at matches in that part of the world, and no doubt unpleasant for those on the receiving end, but the real significance of the story was that it meant for once it wasn’t the Rangers fans who were being scrutinised.

In recent years, fans of the Glasgow team have been under increasing pressure to stop singing their traditional songs and chants, which have a notably anti-Catholic flavour (long story – I refer curious readers to something I wrote last year). While the songs in question are undoubtedly offensive – as with many if not most football songs, that’s kind of the point – they have little bearing on the real world, and it is not at all clear who is supposed to be harmed by them. The growing clamour to stamp out these songs, with official threats to deduct points from the club if the fans persist, has less to do with the behaviour of Rangers fans themselves than with a colossal loss of perspective on the part of the chattering classes. The sentiment behind calls for something to be done was perfectly expressed by Mike Small, a Scottish lefty from central casting, in a Guardian Comment is Free post this week. It is not only unworldly, but mean-spirited and unbearably self-righteous; I’m tempted to say bigoted.

While the Scottish Premier League delegate (or chief inquisitor) reported fans for shouting ‘Fuck the Pope’ at Rangers’ opening game of the season in Inverness on Saturday, it seems those who travelled to Montenegro heeded the club’s warning to ‘behave’ rather than risk having the team forced to play behind closed doors. The attention given to racist chants by Zeta fans may be a welcome relief for the time being, but ultimately any defensive finger-pointing (like the tiresome insistence that Celtic fans sing sectarian songs too) is only likely to reinforce the censorious culture that threatens to make Ibrox sound more like a kindergarten than a football stadium.

As a Rangers fan, I’m looking forward to the new season, and hope we stick it to the Celtic. I’m less interested in DaMarcus Beasley’s colour than in whether he can be the new Peter Lovenkrands, but with more consistency. That’s the sort of question people should be debating the morning after a match, rather than scrutinising the repertoire in the stands. The inquisitors of UEFA, the SPL and the comment pages can just fuck off.

Dolan Cummings

Won't somebody please think of the children?

Two stories came out in the UK last week that dealt with risks or threats to 'our children'. Both mooted solutions to are censorious in character.

In the first, the Professional Association of Teachers demanded, at their annual conference, that YouTube be banned on account of 'cyber-bullying'. Some people evidently have more sense, such as the head of the BeatBullying charity (who no doubt has added to the bullying paranoia itself) who proclaimed, 'calls for social networking sites like YouTube to be closed because of cyber-bullying are as intelligent as calls for schools to be closed because of bullying.'

Secondly, following the implementation of the junk food advertising ban, The Guardian reports that marketers are following kids online, sometimes using social networking sites to created branded 'friends'. Although Ofcom's remit doesn't stretch to online advertising, The Guardian notes that, 'the Advertising Standards Authority's code of conduct was recently extended to include online marketing to children, [but] it has left open a loophole that many brands exploit. That is that anything classed as 'editorial' is exempt from the ASA code.' One fears that calls to extend these regulatory bodies' purview are not far away...
[NB: Against the contention that advertising is not a free speech issue, see this article by Brendan O'Neill].

Not to be outdone by the poms, the Australian Labor party is seeking to stop marketers using cartoons to advertise their greasy/sugary wares to children. For an attack on such nonsense, read the Manifesto Club Interest Group in Australia's blog on the subject.

Alex Hochuli

A Danish denier and irate Israelis

The recent decision by the Danish Arts Council to grant research funding to a holocaust denier has attracted criticism from commentators in Israel. This is both baffling and alarming when you consider that the subject of the student’s study is the involvement of Danes in Hitler’s SS, and not the existence or otherwise of the Final Solution. There is no need here to extrapolate from the particular abhorrence of holocaust denial, the legitimacy of the moral indignation that it provokes, and the need for it to be fought wherever it raises its ugly head. But it must be fought on the proper grounds, using the proper tools; and that is the ground of open and informed debate, using the tool of reasoned argument. What is not acceptable is the attempt to suppress unfavourable beliefs through legislation or through the refusal of funds for academic study.

The fact is that morality and moral censure, no matter how justified, have no say in the process of allocating research funding. It is worth remembering that some of the greatest advances in human history have been the product of research considered heretical or immoral at the time. In the context of fund allocation, the only relevant criterion is the academic merits of the scholar's submission. This doesn’t mean that, free from the shackles of moral oversight, any offensive crackpot theory may count on megabucks for its investigation as, clearly, part of what it means to have academic merit is not to fly in the face of extensively researched historical data. If the Danish student in question had attempted to get money for a project on holocaust denial, it would have been rejected on this basis.

But the fact is, he did not. His submission wasn’t a crackpot theory, but a legitimate area of study. It was merely his incidental belief in an offensive theory that has attracted so much controversy. Not only is this idea absurd (should hard-line but non-violent Muslims be barred from studying the ecology of the Galapagos Islands? Are anti-immigration campaigners to be denied access to Quantum Theory?), but it is hugely dangerous and self-defeating for a thriving democracy. The moment the determination of government funding for students depends on the applicant’s personal beliefs is the moment academic freedom wheezes its last breath, to be replaced by a stultifying and oppressive conformity in the academic community - supposedly the vanguard in thought and attitude - which would then suffuse society as a whole. The fact that such obvious dangers are lost on the detractors of the Danish Arts Council’s decision is worrying, and indeed hypocritical given the much-lamented boycott by British institutions that Israel’s academics are currently enduring. So it seems that denial and myopia are the order of the day.

Beau Hopkins

'English, motherfucker, do you speak it?!'

Although it is not a 'free speech' story, strictly speaking, this news item from the Scotsman indicates that people who immigrate to the UK will no longer be free to learn to speak...English, that is. Or certainly not as freely as before.

The UK government has decided, in yet another authoritarian clampdown on freedom of movement, to shut down 'bogus' language colleges to dissuade immigrants from entering the country. Now, anyone who has ever walked down London's Oxford Street will have noticed a number of first floor offices advertising themselves as reputable language schools. You may even have thought to yourself, 'that might be a bit dodgy'. Or if you're 'a bit dodgy' yourself, you may even have thought them to be a front for any number of illicit activities, starting with prostitution, via forgery and money laundering, and ending with drug-smuggling. But most people don't think like that. I certainly don't.

In any case, the government seems to have found yet another way to plug those mythical 'porous borders' that allow those 'foreign hordes' looking for work to slip through. It is unclear from the report whether the schools are alleged actually to be fronts for other illegal activity (dope, cash, ho's) or whether the colleges are simply fakes that allow foreigners to pretend to be students to allow them to stay and work in the UK. It seems though that the latter is true, in which case the government doesn't even have the 'crime-fighting' justification - it's simply a brute crackdown on immigrants. Further, it seems to be a knee-jerk reaction to a couple of dodgy language schools that have popped up. Worse, many of these schools provide a service (at the cost of a few hundred pounds per student) that the state no longer adequately provides - i.e. a place for new immigrants to learn English. If the government were indeed serious about being 'able to offer international students the assurance that they are applying to trustworthy and good quality learning institutions in the UK', in the words of the higher education minister, Bill Rammell, they would fund language schools.

Regardless, Bill Rammell, felt compelled to make the point that, 'the government welcomes the many genuine international students who come to study in the UK each year.' But anyone wanting to learn to speak the language, or worse, only pretend to for something as spurious as earning a living, is NOT WELCOME. To Rammell, 'genuine' international students are probably those that are well-educated, middle-class, and who more likely than not already speak some English.

The irony of this story is that Gordon Brown told The Sun on the very same day: 'We are going to take a far tougher line. I want a message to go out - if you come here you work and learn our language.' That's right, and if you think you can sneak in to this country and work by signing up to learn our language, well buddy, you're seriously mistaken! Er...?

The insistence that immigrants learn English, integrate and take part in civil society is a desperate and populist move. It is a further irony that the ability to converse with fellow citizens, to speak freely - integral to taking part in the political process, being an active citizen as well as a good neighbour, etc - has been so seriously limited by this government in other ways. Now they are even making it difficult to learn English in the first place, or to use that avenue to covertly get in, get a job, get paid, get involved, get educated, get the vote, get a life... Get it?

It's like being stuck between a rock and a... an... er... um... er... what's that word again?

Alex Hochuli

Is it cuz I iz in your mind?

Nigel Marlow, principal psychology lecturer at flagship managerialiser of universities, London Metropolitan University, has developed a programme for businesses to test for ‘implicit racist attitudes’ in job applicants. Dubbed 'violator of the subconscious' by the mainstream press, and recently bemoaned by shadow work and pensions secretary Philip Hammond ('where does it stop?'), the test has quickly gained stardom as the 'thought-police' of our times.

Its celebrity, however, is likely to be short-lived, given its utterly reductive measurement criteria: the test consists of a quick-fire flicking of black and white faces on a screen which the potential racist immediately puts into categories of ‘good/positive’ and ‘bad/negative'. It begs the question: which is worse? That all people are exhaustively either black or white or that we’re allowed only two responses to those we meet – positive or negative? As the Telegraph points out, people hold associations for all sorts of reasons. The test assumes our primary reaction to each other is based on skin colour, not, for example, on whether we are attracted to each other’s faces or are distracted by that spot under your nose. It will only ‘catch’ people who aren’t aware enough of their reactions to control them. If you’re one of those pesky racists with phenomenal mind-control however, you get to prolong your silent and harmless affront to humanity.

Throw in the language of ‘unmasking’ racists, and you have the perfect game of tag for bored office-workers. But beyond the distraction of the test's obvious absurdity lies the more worrying assumption that an instantaneous, pre-rationalised generalisation based on skin-colour counts as racism, and that civilised society is therefore being undermined by our subconscious. Apparently, for Nigel Marlow and London Met, attempting to monitor and manage attitudes I’m not even conscious of and making my knee-jerk emotional responses more important than my rationally reflected ones counts as upholding civility. If this is the thought police, they'll be no more effective than the body police who hang around London tube stations, glaring at all the brown people.

Sarah Boyes

Putting free speech behind bars

Four radical Islamists have recently been imprisoned for participating in last year's demonstrations against the Danish cartoons of the prophet Mohammed. Shockingly, three have been sentenced to six years, and the fourth to four years. However objectionable these men's opinions are, and however obnoxious their means of expressing them, they have essentially been jailed for several years for taking part in a non-violent protest.

How is this possible? The three men sentenced for six years were convicted of soliciting murder. This is patently ridiculous. Whose murder did they solicit? Whom did they expect to carry it out? Their conviction might have been defensible if the men had corralled impressionable youths into carrying out suicide bombings, or hired a contract killer to take someone out. In fact, what they did was stand outside the Danish Embassy shouting stupid slogans about killing British soldiers and bombing Britain and Denmark. The fourth man was convicted of incitement to racial hatred. Incitement is a dubious enough concept, which assumes that those 'incited' have little or no moral agency of their own. But the notion of 'soliciting' is even worse: it attributes the accused with direct responsibility for crimes that never happened, where there can have been no reasonable expectation that any crime would ensue.

No doubt the sentences were meant to be shocking, to 'send a message' to other radical Islamists that their hateful ranting will not be tolerated. The rest of us should be shocked too, for the message is loud and clear: you can now be locked up for several years for nothing more than hateful ranting. It doesn't take a great leap of imagination to think of other situations in which such a liberal interpretation of criminal responsibility might condemn other non-violent protesters with very different political views. The threat to free speech is clear and present.

Dolan Cummings

The prosecution of Bo.J.

Allegedly loveable buffoon Boris Johnson has thrown his multicoloured ski-hat into the ring for the race to become London’s mayor. Boris, like the Conservative Party itself, has no actual programme, (replying to a reporter who asked him what his policies would be, “London is a great city”), but the root of his popularity lies not in his political outlook, but his frequent outspoken faux pas, which delight many who see him as an eccentric antidote to the stuffed grey suits who populate political life today.

Boris has taken a swing at many of the worst aspects of contemporary politics, expressing in a fairly bluff and blundering way a perfectly understandable wish for people to be robust and autonomous. In October 2004 he famously criticised Liverpudlians for ‘wallowing’ in their ‘victim status’ following the execution of Ken Bigley by Iraqi insurgents. At the 2006 Conservative Party conference he caused uproar for criticising Jamie Oliver and the government’s insidious regulation of lifestyles, saying ‘if I was in charge, I would get rid of Jamie Oliver and tell people to eat what they like;’ he also stood up for the reviled women who give junk food to their kids at break time: ‘I say let people eat what they like. Why shouldn’t they push pies through the railings?’ In April 2007 he called Portsmouth ‘one of the most depressed towns in southern England,’ being ‘too full of drugs, obesity, underachievement and Labour MPs.’

The reason people warm to Boris is that he dares to say things that mainstream politicians don’t. Indeed, the reactions to his various outbursts (which are invariably described as ‘gaffes’ rather than as legitimate expressions of opinion) show the extent to which free speech is curtailed even for our elected representatives. Michael Howard despatched Boris to Liverpool to do penance, he was made to revoke his comments about Jamie Oliver (while the Conference passed a resolution commending the celebrity chef), Portsmouth LibDem MP Mike Hancock called for Boris to be sacked over his Portsmouth ‘insult’, and Boris also had to apologise to the entire population of Papua New Guinea when its High Commissioner protested against a flippant remark about ‘Papua New Guinea-style orgies of cannibalism and chief-killing’ in the Conservative party. He was backed by his party only once, over Portsmouth.

It’s disappointing, but not surprising, that even our elected leaders feel a need to back down, self-censor and apologise for speech that sensitive individuals find insulting. Although I’m pretty sure that Boris couldn’t run a piss-up in a brewery and would be a disastrous mayor of London, he deserves commendation for the sheer (and deliberate) insincerity of his enforced apologies. Over Liverpool (where surely no more than three copies of the Spectator are read annually, in any case), he said, ‘I am a squeezed lemon on this subject’, and his comedic media blitz betrayed both a good sense of humour and his total lack of genuine remorse. Over Jamie Oliver, he recanted in ridiculously fulsome terms, saying Oliver was ‘a national saint’. And over Papua, he said, ‘I meant no insult to the people of Papua New Guinea, who I’m sure lead lives of blameless bourgeois domesticity in common with the rest of us,’ promising to ‘add Papua New Guinea to my global itinerary of apology.’

Now, if only serious politicians could take a leaf out of Boris’s book, and dare to break, rather than make, taboos.

Lee Jones

The posture of victimhood

Unsurprisingly, Lydia Playfoot, the 16-year-old English schoolgirl who took her school to court after she was banned from wearing a 'purity ring' at school, has lost her case. The High Court ruled that Millais School in West Sussex had not violated the girl's human rights by preventing her from wearing a ring, even one symbolising her commitment to chastity until marriage. The verdict is sensible enough: school dress codes are surely best left to schools rather than fought out in the law courts. But the fact that the case did require judicial arbitration says a lot about contemporary society's confusion over both free expression and sexual morality.

It does perhaps seem odd that the school refused to tolerate such an innocuous piece of jewellery, but it is even more bizarre that rather than accepting the decision with good grace - turning the other cheek, you might say - Lydia and her family chose to turn the affair into a national media circus, even claiming that this was an example of the persecution of Christians. First of all, 'the silver ring thing' is hardly a tenet of the Christian faith, but rather a recent innovation of the American evangelical movement. Second, and more importantly, in turning this into an issue of self-expression and martyrdom, the Playfoots actually detracted from the moral purpose supposedly so close to their hearts.

Just as we hear more about the victimisation and demonisation of Muslims than we do about the virtues of Islam, we now hear more about the 'persecution' of Christians than the persecution of Christ and the moral message associated with it. We do hear a lot about the spiritual emptiness and moral decadence of contemporary secular society, but much less about what religion has to offer as an alternative. Instead, whenever things come to a head, religious groups are all too ready to adopt the all-too-secular strategies of crying victimisation and going to court. Indeed, when asked about her belief in chastity, Lydia highlighted the dangers of sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancy rather than invoke Biblical morality or spiritual concerns. Even this libertarian atheist can think of more profound reasons than those to be wary of sexual licence.

If Christians and other religious communities have a moral critique to make of secular society, they would do better to spit it out and let us all debate the matter, rather than hiding behind made-up religious symbols and the posture of victimhood.

Dolan Cummings

OfCom Slams Channel 4 Reality TV Racism! … Oh… wait… no they don’t…

Anyone who’s been following the news in Britain in the past few months can’t have escaped the Big Brother racism rows. Firstly, ‘celebrity’ Jade Goody became a national hate symbol for her bullying of Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty, calling her amongst other things “Shilpa Poppadom”. Channel 4 were roundly condemned by everyone from Gordon Brown, to a Bihari mob (who burnt effigies of executives), to Ofcom, Britain’s self righteous post-hoc TV censors. Then, in the next series of BB, Emily Parr was unceremoniously cast out of the house for using the “N word” (bizarrely quite innocently) to another contestant. The chastening effect of Ofcom’s condemnation and the media furore around CBB seems to have prompted the producers’ tough action.

But almost simultaneously, on the show Shipwrecked, ex-public schoolgirl Lucy Buchanan was busy declaring that black people were “bad”, that she hoped for the restoration of slavery and the British Empire, and that she didn’t like fat and ugly people (insert uncharitable joke here). Ofcom’s recently published reaction this time defended Channel 4’s right to include unpopular views in the programme (of course with the proviso that these were “in context”).

Whilst of course it’s always good to hear anyone attacking limits on freedom of expression, frankly what the hell is going on? To me, Lucy’s views are a lot more coherently obnoxious that the rather arbitrary faux pas committed by the other two; more reminiscent of the traditional racism of the elite, rather than the ‘chavtastic’ chauvinism of someone like Goody. However in a time where xenophobia is seen as a rather proley pursuit, and often as a tool to bash the white working class, Goody makes a good punchbag.

However I think incoherence is more of a motivation than class war. Without a clear idea of what it wants to censor or why (unlike for instance with Irish Republicans in the 1980s), Ofcom has made it up on the hoof, condemning displays of pseudo-racism one day, and permitting real displays on another. But as was noted previously on this blog, the encouraging part of this story was the reaction of the other contestants who argued against Lucy’s bigotry- they had faith in talking and arguing rather than shutting people up. If only the same could be said for Ofcom.

Robin Walsh

Banhunt

The sequel to violent video game Manhunt has been banned from release in the UK, reports the Sun (UK). The game, first released in 2003 by Rockstar Games to what was mostly critical acclaim, involves the character James Earl Cash being forced to make violent snuff films to please his macabre ‘Director’. Set in Carcer City, where “nothing matters anymore and all that’s left are cheap thrills”, it requires the player to hunt and kill gang members in a variety of gruesome ways. The sequel sees Cash again, only this time as the hunted rather than the hunter.

Controversy around Manhunt mushroomed after the murder of a fourteen-year-old boy by seventeen-year-old Warren Leblanc on 29th July 2004. Leblanc, who hit Pakeerah with a hammer before stabbing him sixty times, was reputedly obsessed with the Manhunter game, which Pakeerah’s parents blamed as inspiring the murder. In the Sun today, Pakeerah’s father, who is obviously still suffering, is quoted saying, “Stefan’s mother Giselle and I have absolutely no doubt that Leblanc was inspired by this game when he killed our son”.

A BBC article from 2004 reports that detectives investigating the case denied there was any link between the game and the murder, claiming the motive for the incident was robbery. The Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers’ Association (Elspa) further complained about media coverage of the crime, adding that no link had yet been found from any research at all. However, the Sun cites Dr Barbara Krahe, “a leading authority on the link between aggressive teenagers and violent games”, as saying her research shows that there is a definite link, though what this is exactly is not elucidated. Now, whilst the first Manhunter was withdrawn from many retail outlets voluntarily, the second has been banned completely from sale anywhere in the UK.

Paying due respect to the anguish of Pakeerah’s parents, their insistence that they “have absolutely no doubt” that playing Manhunt was inspiration for the killing does not amount to a case that it did, or it didn’t. The media coverage at the time provided the pair with an emotionally-charged national platform for their call for censorship. But it’s too simple to play the media blame game. If the killer was inspired in some way by Manhunt, the question needs to be asked why he, out of thousands of responsible gamers, was the only one to be so. And if one person has been unable to properly distinguish their imagination from reality, that is not a good enough reason to impose a blanket ban on the ‘inspiring’ material. But how should society deal with these cases? But even this gets the explanation the wrong way round: it is not so much the case that violent media cause violent activity, but an impulse within the subject himself, towards violent media and violent activity. In which case, removing the violent media may have little preventative effect.

And with this sort of censorship now acceptable, a simplistic view of people’s emotional life and motivations is accepted as a starting point for legislative decisions, which then sets a low benchmark for future freedom of expression. Not only is it discouraging that material can be banned because it is thought by one or two people in the spotlight to be directly responsible for violent behaviour (cf the gun shooting case) but it is also saddening to see a further nail being driven into the coffin of unfettered, private, and utterly harmless recreation. The destructive impulses many people share are ignored rather than accepted as part of a healthy emotional and intellectual life, and must not be expressed in even a controlled and private environment. Worse, any engagement with material considered ‘dark’ is automatically perceived as being borne out of these terrible dirty urges and not out of a desire to simply engage with friends, have a hobby, siphon off a lively imagination or just relax after work. I cannot help thinking of American Psycho.

Sarah Boyes

Importing speech codes

It seems Western 'liberal' hate-speech laws are being taken up in Kenya. In this column from The Nation (Nairobi), it is suggested that hate-speech be banned post-haste. The author, Peter Mwaura, is clearly concerned with preventing inter-tribal or ethnic conflict by making incitement illegal; but interestingly he is also keen on applying said laws at the individual level as well - something that resembles the harassment laws pioneered in the US.

To buttress his argument, Mwaura refers to the prevalence of hate-speech laws in Europe and, while recognising certain cultural-historical national specificities to these laws, implies that these are positive innovations. It appears that, in an effort to further his point, the author points to the greater degree of freedom of speech enjoyed in America, suggesting this allows the Ku Klux Klan free reign.

This should be seen as a worrying trend, though no doubt some Western observers will champion it, perceiving this to be a move away from old style authoritarianism (read 'barbarian despotism/anarchy') to a new softly-softly approach to 'democracy' (speech management/modification). This is certainly a development to follow...

Alex Hochuli

In a further case of the internet providing new opportunities but also challenges for academic freedom, Prof David Colquhoun of University College London has struck a victory for academic freedom. It is not worth retelling the whole story (it would inevitably take on the tone of playground tittle-tattle - "he said and then she said and then teacher did and then what happened was..." - best to read it in The Guardian), but suffice to say that hopefully the outcome of this case will set a precedent: simply because an academic's potentially controversial, offensive, or even subversive words are spoken via the medium of a webpage hosted by their own institution, this does not justify curbs on their autonomy to pronounce on important matters.

While on the one hand we can see cases such as these as being merely teething problems to do with the recent advent of blogging, social networking and the like - and there must be some truth to this - the prevalence of such cases, of which only a tiny sample have been documented on Speaking our Mind , indicates a wider culture of unfreedom in the academic sphere.

A further element which is indicative of this culture: as Ben Goldacre correctly notes in The Guardian, the appeal to authority (the Provost of UCL and the law) made by Colquhoun's antagoniser was pretty much immediate. That is to say, the plaintiffs in this case evidently didn't bother to engage with Prof Colquhuon at all, instead putting legal pressure on the university to create the conditions in which Colquhoun would have to remove the offending post, or even take down his whole blog.

Of course, not all cases are as clear-cut as this one, which is why attempts to clarify what we mean by academic freedom, versus free speech in general or employment rights in particular, are essential (1, 2). Nevertheless, Prof Colquhouns' intransigence in this case remains an example to follow.

Alex Hochuli

Murdering free speech in Manchester?

A new Playstation 3 game called Resistance: Fall of Man features Manchester Cathedral… as the site of a spectacular gun battle. Predictably, this has prompted an outcry from the bishop, and demands for an apology and compensation.

Interestingly, the objections don’t focus so much on the ‘sacrilegious’ aspects of this supposed affront, as on encouraging a perception of victimhood. The clergy have called on the support of families of gun crime victims to lend moral weight to their campaign. Whilst one can have every sympathy with them, to suggest a link between Sony’s sci-fi shoot-‘em-up and the real-world violence found in the reality of poverty in parts of Manchester, is laughable; using these families’ grief could even be seen as exploitative on the part of the church! Their self-victimisation is taken to its logical conclusion by one unnamed ‘church source’, with his aspiration that his ‘offence’ to be taken as seriously as those perennial victims, Muslim community leaders.

The CofE needs to develop a thicker skin – although this is hardly a fashionable trait nowadays. If having your territory as the setting for a violent video game were sufficient to get in a hissy-fit over, there’d be a new complaint from the Russian or Colombian government practically every week.

Like rap music, computer games are seen by many as not really a free speech issue. But whilst what they have to ‘say’ is in general not particularly profound, restrictions on what a programmer can put in his game make him not answerable to gamers, his peers, or the market, but to self-appointed censors, ignorant of the fact that a computer game is just a bit of fun.

Robin Walsh

Bully for you!

Josie Appleton's post attracted a number of comments and was reproduced with dismay on the Bullied Academics blog. The post had argued that the Sal Fiore case championed by Bullied Academics was not really a case of academic freedom, since Fiore had been disciplined for maligning his bosses rather than for the content of his work. In the comments, Lee Jones quite reasonably argues that even if this is not an academic freedom issue, employees should be free to criticise their bosses. While, legally, employers may be entitled to sack employees they judge to be harming their interests, it is certainly in the spirit of this blog to argue that they should err on the side of tolerance. Depending on the job, of course, there may come a point when free speech leads inevitably to the sack - Josie Appleton gave the example of a deputy company director publicly disagreeing with his boss; similarly, everyone understands that civil servants' freedom of speech is constrained by their position.

Academic freedom forms an important exception to the very basic rule that employers can sack whoever they want, but the point of the original post was that not everything an academic says comes under the rubric of academic freedom, or even ordinary toleration. Whatever the merits of Sal Fiore's case - about which I make no comment here - it would actually demean free speech to argue that people should be protected from the reasonable consequences of unprofessional or abusive speech, for example. There comes a point when it is fair enough for an employer to sack someone for expressing views that are incompatible with the job, or expressing views in such a way that is incompatible with the job. As long as state sanctions are not involved, the employee keeps his freedom of speech, but loses his job. It's a hard-knock life.

Again though, academic freedom is sufficiently important that it must be defined generously enough to give the benefit of the doubt to academics and prevent university or other authorities from silencing people on spurious grounds: as a rough guide, it is legitimate to sack a lecturer for hurling racist abuse at students, but not for espousing views deemed to be 'racially offensive'. Clearly such distinctions depend on a certain degree of good faith. Another problem thrown up by this case, then, is the shrill rhetoric about 'bullying', 'fascists' and 'fourth rate administrators'. It is telling that while Sal Fiore accused his university of bullying, a disciplinary letter from the university accused him of 'inappropriate and aggressive behaviour'. This spectacle of accusation and counter-accusation is the unedifying consequence of a legalistic and bureaucratic culture in universities, which is utterly at odds with academic freedom. For academics who feel pushed around by their bosses to style themselves as victims of bullying is counterproductive, since in the end it can only exacerbate the bureaucratisation of universities by entrenching anti-bullying codes and procedures. What is needed instead is a robust defence of academic freedom as a collective enterprise marked by thoughtful engagement with the ideas of others.

Dolan Cummings

'Which witch?' or, The trials and tribulations of the world of work

Harry Potter has again made an appearance in the world known to fans as the world of 'muggles', or to the rest of us, 'reality'. It was reported on Friday that a South London teaching assistant, Sariya Allen, is taking her former school to an employment tribunal. Allen recently quit her job over a kerfuffle with her school after refusing to listen to a child read from a Harry Potter book. She is now launching an appeal against the decision, on religious discrimination grounds. Cries to ban the potty Potter generally come from the Christian community (this case being no exception, as Allen is a Pentecostal Christian) with the arguments usually focusing on protecting children against the evil and biblically-banned 'glorification' of witchcraft. Not this time. Reacting against the book in the way Allen did was not motivated by fears of the 'damage' it might cause to the impressionable mind of the youngster involved. Rather, it was a straight-forward refusal from an adult to engage in an activity supposedly at odds with her religion (erm… reading?). Allen was not damning the book under the guise of child protection, but was candidly 'protecting' herself.

But at whose cost? A child keen on the ever-popular Potter series is no rare, and indeed no bad, thing. Refusing to allow children to engage with imaginative material on the grounds that it might affect their ability to make meaningful and honest decisions about the world is bad enough, but (implicitly) conceding that youngsters may eventually do so if they please, but that adults cannot shows an alarming lack of confidence in an adult's ability to distinguish fact from fiction. More importantly, Allen’s reaction against the alleged ‘religious discrimination’ practiced by the school administration demonstrates an inability to distinguish between one’s responsibilities as a teacher and any responsibility one may feel as a member of a religious community or as a ‘person of faith’.

Interestingly, many children's books are set in magical universes and involve portrayals of witchcraft, most obviously CS Lewis' Narnia series, championed by many Christian institutions for its redemptive Christian message. Apparently this is permissible because the wicked white witch Jardis is killed – yes, murdered in cold blood by the Christ-like talking lion Aslan and his upper-class London friends. As for JK Rowling's Harry Potter, the books do not so much champion witchcraft as demonstrate that there are universal values which can be adhered to by people irrespective of religious conviction, such as friendship, honesty and bravery, which can help people to live decent and fulfilling lives. And to point out again: it is a work of fiction. Perhaps we should be asking, which witch is the one worth wailing about? - Potter, Aslan, or Allen herself?

Sarah Boyes

Debate at the Tate

On Friday 1st June the Tate Britain hosted a debate on the limits of freedom of speech. The event was advertised as an inquiry into the principles of free expression and what could constitute the moral imperative to transgress the law and exercise the right to speak out. The assembled speakers promised an engaging discussion. They included Lisa Appignanesi, Deputy President of the English branch of PEN, a worldwide association for the protection of writers’ rights to free expression; novelist Hari Kunzru; Claire Fox, director of the think tank the Institute of Ideas; and Maya Sikand, a criminal defence barrister. So it was unfortunate that free speech was not discussed more than it was. Instead, much of the argument centred on the current exhibition by Mark Wallinger, which displays the assembled placards, banners, flags and posters of Parliament Square protestor Brian Haw.

Nonetheless, the event provided a brief but compelling insight into the health of contemporary free speech debate. The chair, Lisa Appignanesi, opened the discussion by highlighting what she saw as the two principle restrictions on freedom of speech: security and the need for social harmony. She also stressed the need for free speech advocates to address the conflict between the right of the individual, usually an artist, to free expression and the right of a larger group to express itself in opposition to it. She added that in such cases the government usually sides with the majority, citing the example of Gurpreet Bhatti’s play ‘Beshti’, which enraged parts of the Sikh community, whose protests forced the play to close. However, she did not explore the issue further.

The second speaker, Claire Fox, offered a far more comprehensive analysis of the need for limitless free speech and the role it plays in shaping contemporary attitudes. She argued that one of the effects of multiculturalism was to encourage various groups to identify themselves as victims in need of protection. She went on to say that although legislation enacted to protect such groups may not directly affect the praxis of free speech for ordinary people every day, it still creates an atmosphere whereby people are entitled to feel offended by certain statements or viewpoints, with this entitlement leading to the proscription of the offending views. The consequence of such an atmosphere was a cultural conformity, with a dominant orthodoxy holding sway on the majority of current issues, from the environment to immigration.

Maya Sikand seemed slightly overawed by the discussion. When she was asked by the chair whether or not there should be limits to free expression, she replied that there should be, but seemed unable to explain why. Hari Kunzru was similarly evasive, and instead focussed on the current exhibition and the legitimacy of artistic protest, a topic that was to dominate the rest of the debate.

What made the debate so disappointing, but ultimately instructive, was not so much the lack of attention that the keynote issue received, but the conspicuous absence of coherence and intellectual rigour in the arguments employed by the panel. With the exception of Claire Fox, none of the speakers attempted to contextualise and explore the intellectual basis of the free speech debate. It is all very well saying that free speech is a good thing, and that we should have more of it, but this does not amount to a defence, or even a debate. As part of a coherent argument in favour of free speech, it must be shown why here and now, in this particular place, at this particular time, an unqualified right to free speech is necessary. Free speech is not a fringe issue that only touches a select group of extremists and artists. A suffocating discursive atmosphere that encourages people not to speak their mind for fear of offending others or saying the wrong thing or getting sacked is something that affects us all. Nor is free speech independent of contemporary social and political issues. It is absolutely fundamental in shaping our response to those issues: when certain views are excluded for being offensive or contrary to mainstream opinion, the spectrum of debate of a particular topic is narrowed, which can lead to artificial consensus. So the notion of a robust discursive culture is not a luxurious ornament: it is necessary to the critical exploration of politics and society, and thence to the political and social health of the nation. As such, it must remain at the forefront of public discussion. The poverty of argument on show on Friday suggests that there isn’t enough debate on this issue. Greater discussion of free speech will develop a more rigorous and coherent intellectual arsenal for its defence, and, if the debate at the Tate is anything to go by, free expression currently stands in dire need of stronger arguments and stronger arguers.

Beau Hopkins

Big Brother is re-educating you

Brendan O'Neill argues on spiked that Channel 4's dramatic and santimonious response to a contestant's use of 'the n-word' is far more offensive than the 'incident' itself.

'What could be more offensive than a 19-year-old middle-class girl from Bristol (hell, she even has blonde hair and blue eyes) calling a black fellow contestant on this year’s British Big Brother a ‘nigger’? Well, how about Channel 4’s cynical transformation of this silly incident – which everyone admits was a slip of the tongue – into a national spectacle to re-educate (read hector) the public?'

Back to the boycott

Delegates at the first conference of the new University and College Union in Bournemouth, England, have voted to support a call by Palestinian trade unions for a boycott of Israeli academe. The motion was passed by 158 votes to 99. The full text of the boycott call will be sent to all branches of the union for information and discussion.

Does this give you a sense of déjà vu? If so, it’s not surprising. Barely a term passes without someone in Britain calling for a boycott of Israeli academics, or Israeli goods and Israeli films. Old-fashioned boycotts of products, such as oranges from South Africa or tea from China, have always been problematic: they encourage a passive form of solidarity, and it is ridiculous to believe that our shopping choices can really impact on people’s struggles for democracy elsewhere. But boycotts of academia are especially problematic. They are about slapping an embargo on ideas and arguments. Academic boycotts are an insult to academic freedom and free speech, and they negate the idea of the university as a space for open debate.

The full text of this article is published on spiked.

Nathalie Rothschild

Real academic freedom

Academics should be free to call into question our most cherished beliefs - to slaughter a whole herd of sacred cows, if that's what is required. Critical inquiry is the starting point for stable and enduring knowledge about the world, and that often means upsetting people.

But academic freedom doesn't mean that academics can say whatever they like, whenever they like. Academic freedom doesn't mean freedom to swear at their students in class, just as it doesn’t mean freedom to behave badly at dinner parties. There are certain standards and restrictions that academics should be expected to comply with, given their position as professional - and adult - members of society.

So that is why the case of Sal Fiore, a senior lecturer in computing at Wolverhampton, sacked for criticising his employers online, is not really an academic freedom issue. In an online discussion forum, Fiore linked Wolverhampton to bullying allegations, and he also conributed to a blog, 'Bulliedacademics.blogspot.com', discussing his university. Heretical books are one thing, but this is an academic behaving like his students on Facebook, who moan about people they don't like.

Academic freedom means something very specific: the pursuit of knowledge and understanding. This is inherently valuable, and can be exempted from normal administrative and professional regulations. The deputy director of a company would not expect to keep his job if he criticised the ideas of the top director. This is not the case in academia, a sphere based on the free contest of ideas. But an academic could expect the sack if he criticized his boss's hair colour or personality, which is not a matter of ideas at all, but merely a matter of bad behaviour.

So defend academic freedom - for academics that know the difference between ideas and tittle tattle.

Josie Appleton

Showing the race card

With depressing predictability, incoming Fifa vice-president John McBeth is to be investigated by a new ethics committee following some unguarded comments to a group of Scottish Sunday newspaper reporters. The former Clyde FC chairman's brief with football's international governing body - assuming he still gets the job - will be to tackle corruption, and he suggested that the African associations are particularly guilty: 'I know two or three whom I'd want to count my fingers after shaking hands with them', he said. Inevitably this has provoked charges of racism. In reality, McBeth's only crime was to be in possession of conventional prejudices about Africa (which may be well-founded in this case) in lethal combination with a sense of humour. He also joked that he only got Britain's vice-president slot because everybody hates the English. Didn't he know football bureaucrats are supposed to be boring?

Dolan Cummings

Liberties taken?

Up flashes news footage of a protestor wrestled from a crowd of party activists, whilst a younger Blair quips, ‘Isn’t it good we have a democracy and free speech in this country so this man can speak’. The delivery is without a sense of irony. ‘Taking Liberties’, directed by Chris Atkins, then moves forward to 2005 as Labour party goons drag 83 year old peace activist Walter Wolfgang from the party conference. Was there a difference between the two sequences? 2005 was uglier, by virtue of Wolfgang’s frailty and the fact that a fellow party member who protested against this was also dragged out to a stairwell and received injuries. However, what seemed to have really changed was that he was then arrested under new terrorism laws; criminalised for shouting ‘nonsense’ at a politician.

In ‘Taking Liberties’, director Chris Atkins charts the serious erosion of civil liberties in Blair’s Britain during the ‘war on terror’. Following the now populist format of docu-film, ‘Taking Liberties’ adeptly navigates between the new terror legislation, the extradition treaty, ID cards and the assault on freedom of speech. Atkins has created a collection of candid interviews with very human people, grounded in real footage. Interviewees of all shapes and sizes describe their experiences of protest – at Fairford, Menwith Air Base, against arms producers, and in Parliament Square, or airports. The common thread throughout is that of a paranoid state and the use of new draconian legislation to frustrate dissent.

Should we care about these lost freedoms? The restriction on our freedoms has occurred as a response to terrorism, and in a climate of fear exploited by the government. The political currency of fear is also adopted by Atkins, who advances a rationale for the protection of civil liberties based upon the fear of the state: loss of civil liberties is a precursor to dictatorship, atrocity and war. Whilst I do not contest that dictatorships are characterised by such restrictions, it is a shame that the film only justifies protection of freedoms by way of reference to the lowest common denominator. Arguably it is fear over rationality which has got us into this mess, something which Atkins acknowledges. It would have been of real benefit to the debate to include a brief discussion of the positive qualities of civil liberties.

Freedom of speech is valuable not only because it permits protest against undesirable state actions but also because it can lead to positive, substantive action by the state or other groups. An opportunity was missed in this film to stress that social growth and improvement only occur where all have freedom of speech, and all innocent people are free. When images of the Stop the War march were shown, the conclusion offered was that whilst it did not stop the war, it at least said ‘we told you so’. Might there also have been space for the thought that the march actually demonstrated to people that apathy did not reign? Or that the march has informed the debate in ways we may not yet have fully appreciated?

This is a well-paced film which covers a lot of ground and gives a frank account of ordinary citizens on the front line, fighting the good fight. Of real value is the fact that the film is ultimately more than a stock-taking exercise for it aims to motivate the audience to stand up for freedom.

Andrew Gilbert

Jew really know what I'm thinking?

In a fascinating article in Forward, 'Judaism and the Culture of Outburst', Jay Michaelson considers the peculiar censoriousness of modern American society (and probably wider Western society) in religious terms:

'Today we have cooked up a toxic brew of the Jewish and the Protestant. On the one hand, our taboos are very "Jewish." They govern the external (what one says), not the internal (what one feels); in the hyper-PC world, you can be as racist or communist as you like, as long as you keep your mouth shut. On the other hand, our response to these Old Testament transgressions is a New Testament assumption that racist speech means a racist heart... At the risk of oversimplification, the Jewish approach is "Thou shalt not say this word." The Christian approach is "Thou shalt not have this thought." And our current approach is "If you say this word, you probably have this thought, and so we condemn you."'

The result is a caginess about speaking freely, since saying the wrong thing will not only offend, but reveal us to be bad people. Inevitably this leads to occasional un-PC and otherwise offensive outbursts, when frustration about issues that can't be discussed combines with resentment about the fact that they can't be discussed to make us plain angry. Furious outbursts rarely lead to constructive arguments, however. We desperately need to be able to discuss controversial issues without taking offence. That means having the courage to speak freely, and giving the benefit of the doubt to others who do the same: you might say combining Protestant conviction with Jewish humour.

Dolan Cummings

It's a Shoah-down!

To those searching for the new political battleground of the 21st century - I've found it! The intellectual artillery of the forces of progress and reaction will be fired over... wait for it... er... the speaker's roster at numerous public lectures across the world(!) Armies of Jewish terrorists and Muslim Zionists [sic], dubious academics and free-world vigilanties will square-off over who is allowed to speak where and to whom (and how the promotional material is to advertise the event).

I'll cite a few random recent examples:
- David Irving, professional Holocaust denier, was recently asked to leave a Polish book festival.
- Last week the leader of the New Black Panther Party (a man apparently prone to anti-Semitic conspiracy-mongering) provoked outrage in Toronto's Jewish community after being invited to speak to the 'Black Youth Taking Action' group.
- In February, Muslims at the University of California, Davis, protested the invitation to speak extended by campus Republicans to a 'former Islamic terrorist' turned 'Zionist-Islamofacism-warrior'.
- Last week, Muslims at that same university welcomed Norman Finklestein - son of Holocaust-vicitms, anti-Zionist, and alleged Holocaust-denier - which was duly opposed by Jewish students.
- Also in the past week, an Italian university prevented a French Holocaust-denier from speaking on campus.

Now, each case does have its intricacies which complicates the cases slightly. For example, while in the UC Davis cases students invited the contentious speaker, in the last case Robert Faurisson (the denier) had been invited to speak at the University of Teramo by the very director of the master's programme in Middle Eastern studies (for the sake of 'balance', here's a link to the Italian story from an Iranian site, the previous link above being to the Jerusalem Post - though both stories say much the same thing). In addition, the university cited 'security concerns', rather than 'objectionable content' as the reason for denying the denier. In the David Irving case, the festival's planners had legal concerns as Holocaust-denial is illegal in Poland. At UC Davis, the Jewish students complained that while the anti-Islamofascist speaker had been funded privately, the university had paid some $400 to the Muslims group to fund Finkelstein's lecture expenses.

But actually these details are hardly relevant - in fact they're a total distraction (and in most cases they were merely spurious excuses for what was really censorship). The real story of note here is the total absence of political content to these cases. Rather than a proper argument about the Israel-Palestine question or even about the historical understanding of the Holocaust (though really there should be little need to discuss the latter), partisans of both sides engage in lectern-wars over who can and cannot speak. The censorious nature of no-platform policies has been widely discussed (in fact, the columnist for the Sacramento Bee is quite good on this question), but equally worrying is the promiscuous use of inflammatory terms to describe 'the enemy' - something I just indulged in, above. For these political questions - one of the few to still genuinely inflame passions - it is almost as if we need a new language to discuss the issues. The old terms have become tainted through association with the dog-whistle-politics being practiced on university campuses thousands of kilometres (or indeed decades) away from the site of actual political conflict. The bans and counter-bans, the Zionist/Islamofascist name-calling, the promiscuous use of bad historical analogies - these do not constitute politics, they are the enemy of politics.

Alex Hochuli

It's NOT just academic

The latest efforts to restrict the freedom of bloggers come not from authoritarian governments or oversensitive lobby groups, but university administrators. Increasing numbers of academics are being disciplined for criticising their bosses, or other colleagues, on blogs like Bullying of Academics in Higher Education, other online forums or even in emails. As Dennis Hayes of Academics for Academic Freedom tells this week's Times Higher Education Supplement, 'Despite continually promoting the supposed benefits of new technology, in reality universities fear it. Blogs, simple emails or discussion groups and podcasts are new forms in which academics and students can explore ideas freely without permission from any authority. [University managements] view academic freedom of speech as something that happens in the classroom and not something that is to be tolerated elsewhere.' In truth, academic freedom cannot be limited to classrooms, but depends on the more general freedom to speak freely in a variety of contexts, blogs included.

Dolan Cummings

Making Offending An Offence

Enough has been said, on speaking our mind and elsewhere, about the 'blogging code of conduct'. Tim O’Reilly’s proposal will undoubtedly remain a point of discussion as it gets taken up by bloggers and commentators around the world. Most recently, Tessa Jowell, UK Minister for Culture, endorsed the idea in a (very lightweight) speech to Progress. She then elaborated on it on the Guardian’s Comment is Free blog on Wednesday 2 May. It is easy to dismiss this: firstly one can ridicule her air-headed effort to re-brand the public sphere, including the new virtual space provided by the internet, as ‘Ourspace’ (yes, she is soooo 'in' with the kids). Secondly we can mock her attempts to legitimise the call for speech codes: on the Guardian blog, she unfavourably compares degenerate online discussions to the ‘boorish’ House of Commons, thereby evading any charges of elitist condescension (‘us lowly MPs ain’t perfect either’) or hypocrisy. But both these approaches miss the point. What is at issue here is a more profound discomfort with incivility.

Witness the recent attempt by five MEPs (from all sides of the political spectrum, harmoniously united against 'hate') to coerce internet service providers (ISPs) into including an injunction on hosting ‘hate sites’ in their terms and conditions. Never mind that such a policy is bound to fail and will never eliminate 'hate sites' (or indeed hate/prejudice/discrimination itself). What is at issue here again are two separate, but connected, ideas. Firstly is the idea that 'consumers' of information cannot cope with offensive material. This has been widely commented on here at speaking our mind. Secondly is that 'producers' of information, or indeed anyone engaged in online person-to-person or group discussion, has an obligation to behave 'reasonably'. The concomitant idea to this is that discursive activity online can (and should) be regulated by some external authority or by a pre-determined compact between participants and the host. This is incorrect: it is high time we stood up for our prerogative to be uncivil.

There is no a priori code that must be adopted before entering the public square. A truly free public space means we can be uncivil, disruptive, unpleasant, subversive or aggressive if we want to. Of course, I do sincerely hope that the standard of discussion on the internet improves beyond the name-calling and harassment we find today. But faced with establishmentarian exhortations to 'be nice', I think I'll politely decline. Faced with the prospect of a placid and passionless public space, give me puerility and pugnacity any day.

Alex Hochuli

R-A-C-I-S-T, find out what it means to me

A local Standards Committee last week cleared Councillor Gail Kenney of Cambridgeshire of the ‘racial offence’ of ‘offending a group of Muslim girls’. Kenney met with the Soni Kuriz Young Asian Women’s Group last June. She demanded to know why someone would want to wear a headscarf, saying she found burkhas ‘frightening and intimidating’ and that they could be used by terrorists as a disguise (which is true, and has already happened). Kenney also said in response to a request for another mosque that, ‘we’ve got one already – do you want one on every street?’, and suggested that a college drop-out present at the meeting would ‘end up getting married to someone illiterate from back home’. Not the most diplomatic of performances, certainly – but did Kenney’s remarks really deserve a 9-month long investigation?

Article 2 of the Local Authorities Model Code of Conduct (2001) states that councillors should ‘promote equality by not discriminating unlawfully against any person’ and should ‘treat others with respect’, while Article 4 cautions against bringing one’s ‘office or authority into disrepute’. The young Muslim women claimed Kenney had broken these rules.

The danger in submitting elected representatives, or indeed anyone else, to codes of conduct that prescribe ‘respect’ is of course that in today’s censorious climate, almost anything can be (and is) interpreted as disrespectful. Indeed, the Cambridge Campaign Against the Arms Trade has accused another Cambridgeshire councillor of violating the Code of Conduct by calling them ‘pathetic’. Rather than focusing on the issues at stake – say, the right to dress as one pleases, rallying community support to demand the council build a mosque, or take action against the arms trade – groups instead cry foul about the way they are treated and spoken to. The claim is not that Kenney is corrupt, incompetent, or even wrong to hold the views she does, but that her replies conveyed inadequate ‘respect’ for someone else’s point of view.

But whether someone’s view is worthy of respect is contestable, not something to be pre-determined by a Code of Conduct, or indeed by someone's identity. Ideas should be judged on their merits and be debated openly and robustly – that is the only way we can test their validity. The Soni Kuriz group could have responded to Kenney by explaining their desire to wear headscarves, or making the case for additional mosques. If they felt strongly enough, they could have campaigned against her publicly and let the electorate decide her fate. Instead, they threw their hands up and cried foul, attempting to have her removed by a Standards Board comprised of mostly unelected representatives, on the grounds that she was rude to them.

Events like this are increasingly common and show up three troubling trends. The first is the use of unelected authorities to try to get rid of or silence elected representatives – highlighted most memorably by the campaign to have London’s Mayor, Ken Livingstone, removed from office for a supposedly anti-Semitic comment. This degrades public life by allowing a handful of ‘offended’ individuals to pursue a politically-motivated campaign that is not subjected to public involvement.

This is facilitated by the second trend, the rise of speech codes in public life. This gives ammunition to those who want to bring down elected officials without going to the trouble of using democratic means.

This produces a third, and possibly the most dangerous trend: the tendency to suppress all speech on ‘controversial’ racial or religious issues. This simply reinforces the public image of Muslim groups as particularly sensitive to criticism and as unable or unwilling to engage in robust discussion. Indeed, the Soni Kuriz group has now vowed to never invite a councillor to speak again. Speech codes that seem to pander to such groups simply tend to infuriate everyone else. More importantly, they do absolutely nothing to challenge racist or other discriminatory attitudes in society. Councillor Kenney’s views were never countered with better arguments and shown to be wrong. In this case they are not even ruled to be disrespectful. No one has changed their minds after this episode about the nature of burkhas, the socio-economic conditions of young Muslim women, or the need for another mosque in Arbury. Its only outcome is the further retreat of the Soni Kuriz group from public engagement, and a chilling effect on free speech.

Lee Jones