Campus Protests and Free Speech Values
As protests rock several campuses, free speech rights seem to be up for debate. But there is no reason that equality and free speech should be considered opposing values.
Yale Campus in Singapore Causes Concern For Academic Freedom
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Michael O’Neil, NCAC Communications Director [email protected] or 347 788 1646. Yale University’s first joint campus is set to open in Singapore this August, and the Ivy League school needs to answer some tough questions about how its educational mission, which includes a tradition of respect for academic freedom, and freedom of thought and expression, can succeed [...]
Fear and censorship: Or, how strong is our commitment to free speech?
Violence against those who create and disseminate controversial words and images is not new. But for the last couple of centuries, commitment to free speech has trumped fear of violence in Western liberal democracies. As late as 1989, Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses continued to be published and read in the face of a fatwa issued against its author and in [...]
Bad times for t-shirts, Yale
T-shirts printed by the Freshman Class Council for football games against Harvard have traditionally featured taunts and put downs of the rival institution, and vice-versa, but this year the featured text - “I think of all Harvard men as sissies,” - proved too provocative for the increasingly sensitive Yale palate. After the LGBT co-op criticized the text (as it happens, [...]
NCAC, AAUP and Others Issue Call to Action Over Censorship in Response to Threats of Violence, Real and Imagined
The National Coalition Against Censorship and the American Association of University Professors, joined by leading groups in the academic, civil liberties, journalism, and free speech fields, issued a Statement of Principle and Call to Action urging governments, institutions and private individuals to support freedom of expression and academic freedom, and to resist caving in to threats of violence, real and [...]
Letter to Yale University Opposing Removal of Mohammed Images from Book
We write to protest the decision to remove all images of Mohammed from the forthcoming book, The Cartoons That Shook the World, by Jytte Klausen, which will be published by Yale University Press in early October. The University’s role in that decision compromises the principle and practice of academic freedom, undermines the independence of the Press, damages the University’s credibility, and diminishes its reputation for scholarship.
Images of Muhammad Banned from Book by Yale Press
The NY Times reports today that Yale University Press has not only decided to remove the controversial Danish cartoons of Muhammad from "Cartoons that Shook the World" by Jytte Klausen; they have decided that all images of Muhammad have to go on the recommendation of a group of "diplomats and experts on Islam and counterterrorism". "...they suggested that the Yale [...]