Protests and criticism are one thing-- calls to defund a Wesleyan student newspaper over an op-ed go too far. Student government officers, and the newspaper itself, must do more to support free expression.
On Monday, June 27th, the Supreme Court announced that upon returning from its summer recess in October, it would revisit the Federal Communication Commission's rule that allows it to fine broadcasters for “indecency.” Last year, the New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the FCC was violating broadcasters' free-speech rights. The Court also stated that [...]
Social media has reached a level of pervasiveness that cannot be ignored - and corporations are paying very close attention. Earlier this year, Goldman Sachs received flak for banning Facebook at work while investing $450 million in the company. Perceived hypocrisy may have played a role, but acknowledging the chilling effect that corporate 'social media policies' have on free speech is another [...]
We couldn’t make this up. Not so long ago, Yale University Press, on direction from the university, pre-emptively self-censored images of Mohammed from The Cartoons that Shook the World by Jytte Klausen, a scholarly examination of the controversy that erupted over the publication of cartoon images of Mohammed by the Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten. Yale’s action was met by a torrent [...]
When I first heard that Fred Phelps, the famous anti-gay activist, planned to protest the funeral of one of the modern heroes of journalism, the late Walter Cronkite, I thought I had missed something in The New York Times obituary. I combed through it again, revisiting those classic moments in broadcast history that have been replayed over and over: the [...]
A new book, Closed Minds?: Politics and Ideology in American Universities (Brookings Institution Press, 2008), by Bruce L. R. Smith, Jeremy D. Mayer, and A. Lee Fritschler examines claims that America’s universities are dominated by faculty members who indoctrinate students in a leftist or liberal ideology and, instead found evidence of an “emerging risk-averse campus climate that threatens to impoverish [...]
Were there times you were afraid to speak up? Do you sometimes wish you spoke your mind more? Do you wish you censored yourself more? Have you changed what you’ve written for fear it would get you into trouble? In your art, music, writing, or filmmaking do you ever stop yourself from doing what you want because you are [...]
A study published this month in PLoS Medicine, documents self-censorship of scientists in response to a political controversy. According to Joanna Kempner, the study’s author, the controversy at issue began in July 2003 when Patrick Toomey, a Republican Congressman, proposed the discontinuance of five NIH grants that were unworthy of taxpayer funding. As a result, the Director of NIH received [...]
