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