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
Wednesday, 30 May 2007
Tuesday, 29 May 2007
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
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
Wednesday, 23 May 2007
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
'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
Tuesday, 22 May 2007
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.
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
Thursday, 17 May 2007
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
Dolan Cummings
Sunday, 6 May 2007
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
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
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