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

Bad language

As was pointed out in a recent post below, the case of George, the 10-year-old whose parents were shocked to receive a visit from the police after he called another boy ‘gay’ in an email, is indeed disturbing. But what is the proper response to this kind of incident? We can cry ‘police state!’ and remonstrate about ‘PC gone mad’. We can also be sensible and point to the waste of police time. We can even be more nuanced and take issue with the policing, in the place of the parenting, of children. But that misses the point.

This is a free speech issue at heart. And it’s more complicated than it appears.

As a way of clarifying the matter, let’s compare George’s case with a hypothetical ‘hate crime’: a gay man is bullied, perhaps even assaulted, during the course of which he is called ‘gay boy’ in a derogatory manner. In such a case, it would be foolish to focus on the aggressor’s use of the word ‘gay’. Firstly there is the criminal issue to deal with and then, more importantly (socially speaking), there is the real underlying problem of homophobia. A case such as this would warrant our moral condemnation and a political argument against homophobia, not speech codes against the use of the word ‘gay’.

On the other hand, you have little George in Cheshire. In his ‘bullying’ of the other boy, his use of the word ‘gay’ is purely incidental. It bears about as much relation to homophobic assault as the fumigation of your house to deal with a pest problem does to Saddam Hussein’s attack on Halabja (i.e. they both used gas). This emphasises the real problem with the above responses to this case: they all work on the assumption that the boy is at fault and that the very use of the word ‘gay’ is wrong.

Leaving aside the question of bullying, what is there to suggest that George’s use of the word ‘gay’ is problematic? Do we think he is a homophobe, that he’ll grow up to attack gay men? As I’ve argued before, this relatively recent tendency to endow words with greater meaning than that which was intended by the speaker draws undue attention to the capacity of language to cause offence, rather than language’s paramount importance in permitting rational argument. The consequence of taking issue with the language we use amongst ourselves is the legitimisation of third party intervention, which in this particular case seems so utterly preposterous.

Alex Hochuli

Speech police

That it is ridiculous to try to ban the use of the word ‘gay’ in the sense of ‘naff’ or ‘rubbish’ has already been amply demonstrated. Any attempt to impose such a ban not only fails to address the issues surrounding its use in a properly homophobic sense -thereby doing nothing to tackle real homophobia in society- but it also imposes a creed of appropriateness on people's behaviour. The response to the use of the term is more concerned with creating an atmosphere of ‘ooh, you can’t say that!’ than actually defeating any underlying prejudice, which is actually more often imagined than real.

These speech codes are usually policed by self-righteous, hand-wringing ‘liberals’ in human resources departments, local councils or student unions. But if you want evidence that the codes are becoming more rigorously enforced, look no further than an incredible incident in Cheshire on Saturday, when no fewer than four police officers turned up to reprimand a 10-year-old child for using the word ‘gay’ in an email to his friend. The friend’s parents reported this to the police, who tracked down the dangerous perpetrator with the help of his school – which is appropriate, since the boys in blue now seem to be very concerned about playground banter. Reportedly, 10-year-old George is now terrified of being thrown in jail, though the police insist their response was ‘proportionate’. Still, he won’t be saying ‘gay’ again any time soon, eh?

Lee Jones