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 Now, whilst the first Manhunter was withdrawn from many retail outlets voluntarily, the second has been banned completely from sale anywhere in the UK.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