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Category Archives: Free Speech

International Threats to Freedom of Expression: 2023 Year in Review

EFF: “2023 has been an unfortunate reminder that the right to free expression is most fragile for groups on the margins, and that it can quickly become a casualty during global conflicts. Threats to speech arose out of the ongoing war in Palestine. They surfaced in bills and laws around the world that explicitly restrict… Continue Reading

Read it yourself: All 673 books removed from Orange classrooms

Orlando Sentinel: “These books are among the 673 rejected by Orange County Public Schools this year [read free] for fear they violate a new Florida law that prohibits “sexual conduct” in books available to students. The books were in teachers’ classroom libraries. The books will get another review by OCPS staff, and could be returned… Continue Reading

The lives upended by Florida’s school book wars

Washington Post (read free): “…The battle over what children should be allowed to read in school has riven Florida’s Escambia County School District. It’s part of a national battle, as school book objections surge to historic highs across the country. In Escambia County, the controversy kicked off in 2022, when a high school language arts… Continue Reading

Was it something I said? Legal protections for employee speech

Economic Policy Institute Paper: Executive summary – “At-will” employment is sometimes shorthanded as employers’ rights to fire employees (and employees’ right to quit) for a bad or arbitrary reason, or for no reason at all.  Among the bad or arbitrary reasons that employers sometimes fire workers: something the worker said, or something they didn’t say.… Continue Reading

Inside America’s School Internet Censorship Machine

Wired [read free]: “…WIRED requested internet censorship records from 17 public school districts around the US, painting a picture of the widespread digital censorship taking place across the country. Our investigation focuses on Albuquerque Public Schools (APS), one of the largest school districts in the US, which provided the most complete look at its web-filtering… Continue Reading

EU Fundamental Rights Report 2023

European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights Report 2023 reflects on the developments and shortfalls of human rights protection in the EU in 2022. Its focus section covers the fundamental rights implications of the aggression in Ukraine for the EU and the challenges that arose. For example, the EU’s Temporary Protection Directive provided welcome access to… Continue Reading

Human Rights Declined in 3 out of 4 Countries since Global Rule of Law Recession Began in 2016

“The rule of law has once again eroded in a majority of countries this year, according to the World Justice Project (WJP) Rule of Law Index 2023. More than 6 billion people live in a country where the rule of law weakened between 2022 and 2023.  Since authoritarian trends pushed the world into a rule… Continue Reading

Antisemitism has moved from the right to the left in the US − and falls back on long-standing stereotypes

Via LLRX – Antisemitism has moved from the right to the left in the US − and falls back on long-standing stereotypes – Prof. Arie Perliger, director of the graduate program in Security Studies at the School of Criminology and Justice Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell addresses the fact the the U.S. is… Continue Reading

Reading Between the Bars

PEN America Experts Report – Senior Manager, The Freewrite Project; Juliana Luna, Intern, The Freewrite Project. Published October 25, 2023. “…Carceral censorship is the most pervasive form of censorship in the United States. The Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) and the departments of corrections (DOCs) in all 50 states and the District of Columbia censor… Continue Reading

Lessig on why AI and social media are causing a free speech crisis for the internet

The Verge: Harvard Professor Lawrence Lessig – After 30 years teaching law, the internet policy legend is as worried as you’d think about AI and TikTok — and he has surprising thoughts about balancing free speech with protecting democracy. Nilay Patel: “…Larry and I talked about the current and recurring controversy around react videos on… Continue Reading

Meet ‘New Elites’ Who Control Twitter’s Israel-Hamas News

The ‘new elites’ of X: Identifying the most influential accounts engaged in Hamas/Israel discourse. Oct 20, 2023 RAPID RESEARCH REPORT University of Washington Center for an Informed Public: “Since the first news of the attack on Israel by Hamas, we have seen anecdotal reports from users of X (formerly Twitter) that the platform has become… Continue Reading