Comedy on campus is under threat, as more students choose comfort over openness and creativity. Comedians like Jerry Seinfeld have hit out at American colleges for being too “politically correct”. A new documentary about free speech and comedy, set for release this summer, seeks to amend this state of affairs.
Can We Take a Joke?, which features comedians and free speech advocates including Gilbert Gottfried, Penn Jillette and Jim Norton, examines the link between comedy and outrage.
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) partnered with DKT Liberty Project and director Ted Balaker of Korchula Productions to produce the film, which was originally released in November 2015. However, Samuel Goldwyn Films has now acquired the distribution rights to the film meaning it will be in cinemas across the USA this summer.
FIRE’s president and CEO Greg Lukianoff, who is featured in the film, said in a recent announcement: “I am absolutely thrilled about Samuel Goldwyn Films purchasing the rights to the documentary. I think everyone could use a reminder that you can either have a right to not be offended, or you can have good comedy, but you can’t have both. I hope every living person in this universe (and every other) goes to see it.”
Through interviews, Can We Take a Joke? gives viewers an insight into the perspectives of comedians and free speech advocates with the aim of showing the importance of free speech in the context of comedy.
Lukianoff told Index: “Far too many people today don’t value free speech as much as they should because they can’t imagine getting in trouble for what they say. But even if you don’t ever personally get into trouble for what you say, a world without free speech – a world with a right to not be offended – is a world without comedy.”
Ahead of its summer release, FIRE will be screening the film at 300 campuses across the USA between 13 April and 20 April, in partnership with political organisation Young Americans for Liberty. The hope is that the film will introduce many to new themes.
With universities in the UK and USA both facing criticism for no-platforming and protecting people from being offended rather than protecting academic freedom, Lukianoff believes it is important the film is shown on campus.
He told Index: “I think we as a society do a poor job of teaching students about the importance of freedom of speech, and I think Can We Take a Joke? is an entertaining and funny way to help them learn more about the history of comedy and the current situation on campus.”
2016 Freedom of Expression Journalism Award winner Zaina Erhaim (Photo: Elina Kansikas for Index on Censorship)
While journalists and citizens fled, Syrian-native Zaina Erhaim returned to her war-ravaged country and the city of Aleppo in 2013 to ensure those remaining were not forgotten. She is now one of the few female journalists braving the twin threat of violence from both ISIS and the president, Bashar al-Assad.
I am honoured to receive this award here today. I believe this is not for Zaina as a person, but to the Syrian journalists and citizen journalists who refused to be turned into propagandists to the Assad regime, instead they chose to report the truth and the facts despite the very high price of that.
That’s why here I should be mentioning my great friends and colleagues who are greatly missed, Obaida Battal who has been kidnapped by ISIL in Aleppo for more than three years, Ossama Hassan also abducted by ISIL in Raqqa for more than 2 years. We don’t know whether they are alive or dead.
Baseel Safadi, who won this award and is still being detained in the regime’s prisons for his activism.
Hasan Azhari, who was killed by Assad forces under torture in Latakia; Basel Shehad, killed in an Assadi air strike in Homs; Wasim Al Idel, killed by a Russian strike; and sadly the list is too long to be cited. Different means of killing and killers all for one cause, and one crime: Journalism, freedom of expression, echoing the silenced voices of Syrians demanding their freedom.
2016 Freedom of Expression Journalism Award winner Zaina Erhaim and Jake Hanrahan of Vice News (Photo: Elina Kansikas for Index on Censorship)
Those are the ones who I believe deserve all the honouring awards in the world.
I want to give this award to the Syrians who are being terrorised by one of the worst tyrants, ISIL, international jihadists and strikes, and above all those trying to flee and are being treated as potential terrorists themselves, and are being discriminated against for demanding justice, peace and a respected life in a free, democratic country.
This award is for the journalists and citizen journalists still taking this dangerous, difficult path, sacrificing everything, playing hide and seek with death to get the stories of the Syrian people out. So please keep your eyes on our news, pictures and videos, because great heroes are dying to get them to you.
Farieha Aziz, director of 2016 Freedom of Expression Campaigning Award winner Bolo Bhi (Photo: Elina Kansikas for Index on Censorship)
Bolo Bhi are a digital campaigning group who have orchestrated an impressive ongoing fight against attempts to censor the internet in Pakistan. The all-women management team have launched internet freedom programmes, published research papers, tirelessly fought for government transparency and run numerous innovative digital security training programmes.
I would like to thank everyone at Index on Censorship who has provided us with the opportunity to come here and speak about our work as well as meet with people who are fighting similar battles in their own countries. I would also like to thank whoever nominated us and all those who voted for us. It feels great to know the work we do matters to so many. That’s really what we want to achieve through our efforts: for the average citizen to get involved and take ownership — to take this on as their own fight.
Bolo Bhi hasn’t been around very long. My colleagues and I co-founded it in 2012 and we started out fighting a China-like firewall the then government of Pakistan wanted to install. Challenging government censorship, preventing the exercise of arbitrary and discretionary powers, pushing for greater transparency and openness in the policy-making and law-making process is at the very core of what we do at Bolo Bhi. As citizens, our right to know, question and speak our mind holds great importance to us.
Our most recent fight has been against the government’s proposed cybercrime bill which seeks to criminalise speech, award broad and discretionary powers to investigation agencies and empower the telecom regulator with content management powers online. Together with local industry associations, digital rights and civil society organisations and human rights group, as well as members of opposition parties, we’ve been able to hold off on the passage of this bill. This is a struggle that remains ongoing and it is a struggle many citizens are involved in around the world because of the kind of laws their governments are trying to usher in, in the name of protection and security. We need security and rights, and governments around the world need to understand it cannot be an either/or approach.
Many times in our struggles we get disillusioned because there are no visible results or quick victories. That shouldn’t be our benchmark. What’s important is the process, and that we keep at it.
Sage’s global publishing director Ziyad Marar, Fareiah Aziz, director of the 2016 Freedom of Expression Campaigning Award Bolo Bhi and human rights barrister at Doughty Street Chambers London, Kirsty Brimelow (Photo: Elina Kansikas for Index on Censorship)
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales read anonymous collective GreatFire’s acceptance speech.
We are honoured to have been chosen as the winner of Index’s 2016 digital activism award. We’d like to take this opportunity to highlight the incredible and important work being done by the other digital activism nominees who are as, if not more, deserving of this award.
We would not be in this position if it were not for the support of others.
Thank you to those who have provided us with the means to dedicate ourselves to GreatFire. Thank you also to the many individuals within China who have made personal donations. Sadly, many news organisations have their content blocked and censored in China, but we thank those organisations that have chosen to work with us to deliver uncensored information across the great firewall.
A big thank you to our developers, past and present, who have contributed to all of our projects. Without you, none of this would be possible.
And finally, thanks to all Chinese who have supported our efforts from the start. Millions of people have visited our websites, shared our content and downloaded our apps. This incredible support not only gives us the energy to continue our work, it also highlights the great demand that exists in China for unmitigated access to an uncensored internet.
Since the early days of the internet, technology has been used to censor online speech — and to circumvent this censorship.
The Communist Party of China built the Great Firewall, which one-by-one has closed down access to YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Google, most Chinese-language news sources hosted outside China and, most recently, Wikipedia. In response, VPN services, proxies and other circumvention tools were developed.
On domestic social media websites like Sina Weibo (pronounced “way-bow”), sophisticated keyword and message filtering has been developed by the censors. In response, clever users made use of homophones and images to bypass the filters.
Because there is always a workaround, it may seem as if online censorship is failing. Such an optimistic conclusion, however, would be based on a misunderstanding of the intent of the censors. Their goal is not to completely deny access to certain topics, but rather to prevent these topics from reaching the mainstream. Unfortunately, in this mission they have been successful.
VPNs are only an option for people with knowledge and the means to pay. Free circumvention tools are usually difficult to find, complicated to use or unstable. Homophones on domestic social media are only understood by those who already know the story background.
We believe that to make a real impact we have to reach beyond these users and offer a compelling, uncensored, mainstream service. With these goals in mind, we created FreeBrowser, a free Android browser app with built-in circumvention. On the default start page of the app, we promote uncensored news from a wide range of sources.
To reach more users, we all need your support. Feel free to visit our websites, including freebrowser.org, or reach out to us directly via email or social media. We believe that our impact as well as the impact of all projects combating censorship should be measured by the degree to which we bring censored topics back into the mainstream. Freedom of speech was declared a human right 67 years ago. To make it a reality requires us to raise our ambitions, to collaborate and to demand change. Thank you!
Google’s Anthony House and tech entrepreneur Bindi Karia presented the 2016 Freedom of Expression Digital Activism Award to anonymous tech collective GreatFire (Photo: Elina Kansikas for Index on Censorship)
