22 Jul 2021 | Academic Freedom, News and features, United States
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”117096″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][vc_column_text]A high school cheerleader has won an important victory for the right of students to express their opinions freely while off campus.
At the end of June, the US Supreme Court ruled eight to one that the rights of high school student Brandi Levy had been violated in a case dating back to 2017.
After failing to make the varsity cheerleading team, Levy had posted profanity-laced criticisms of the team roster on Snapchat while off campus at a local convenience store. The team captain kicked her off the junior varsity cheerleading team for a year as punishment.
The Supreme Court was asked to consider whether schools had the right to regulate off-campus speech; it ruled that her posts did not disrupt school operations so Levy’s rights had been violated. The court maintained that schools have a right to regulate speech in some “school-related, off-campus activities” without defining what that would look like.
David Cole, the legal director of the ACLU, called the ruling a victory for students, saying “the message from this ruling is clear – free speech is for everyone, and that includes public school students”. The director of the Pennsylvania ACLU, which represented Levy, characterised the precedent established by the ruling, saying they successfully argued that “students have greater free speech rights out of school and on their own time.”
Despite the nature of her comments, Levy was motivated to fight for her rights. She commented publicly that she was proud to have advocated for the rights of students saying, “young people need to have the ability to express themselves without worrying about being punished when they get to school”.
Recent graduates from Blake High School in Maryland broadly agree with the principle the court ruled on – that her speech did not disrupt the safety of the school.
Cole Shankel, class of 2023, said, “She’s overreacting… cheerleading is lame,” but added, “I don’t think public schools should be allowed to punish students for off-campus speech.”
Jeniffer Ventura, class of 2021, pointed out, “Being held accountable for your actions online is important,” expressing concern about online hate speech and racism affecting the safety and security of the community. Julian Kabik, also the class of 2021, stated simply, “If you are not making a deliberate threat online, then I don’t think you should be punished.”
This is the first student free speech case to favour students since the landmark 1969 case Tinker v Demois. The case considered students who had been suspended for wearing black armbands in protest at the war in Vietnam; the court ruled schools must show a substantial disruption to school operations, besides the speech being unpleasant, to restrict a student’s right to free speech.
The right of students to exercise free speech established in the case has been eroded by others since then. In 1986, Bethel v Fraser ruled that schools could regulate certain styles of expression if they were sexually vulgar. In 1989, in Hazelwood v Kuhlmeier, the court ruled schools had the right to regulate the content of school publications. In 2007, the Supreme Court ruled in Morse v Frederick that schools may restrict speech at or in view of a school-supervised event if it promoted illegal drug use. The US Court of Appeals Fourth Circuit Court in 2013 and Ninth Circuit Court in 2014 ruled a student’s dress could be restricted in two separate cases related to wearing the confederate flag or American flag, respectively. The courts ruled student dress had incited disruption, and the Supreme Court declined to hear both cases.
The Levy ruling has broken the trend in student speech law, affirming students’ off-campus rights and considering the role of extracurricular activities for the first time. A ruling against Levy would have further crippled the original 1969 ruling, allowing schools to restrict students based on their speech being unpalatable and extending a school’s authority to restrict student speech to include online and off-campus speech.
Despite this, the Levy ruling is not a decisive victory for American students’ right to free speech.
When students are on campus, schools act in loco parentis – they function in place of parents. This gives schools legal authority over minors’ rights while they are at school and formally gives all other authority over minors to their legal guardians. This doctrine and the fact that Levy was off campus when she made the posts was at the centre of the majority opinion’s arguments. Since the Levy ruling reaffirms the school’s on-campus authority over student’s rights, this aspect can be interpreted as an opening to further restrict student speech when on campus.
In questioning, some justices raised concerns about a school’s ability to punish off-campus speech that was threatening to other students. Other justices raised concerns of what schools would do with authority over off-campus speech that was politically controversial.
The justices’ questions indicate that they feel the issue of off-campus speech needs to be further unpacked. All but two of the justices are under the age of 70, and all three of former President Donald Trump’s appointments are under the age of 60. With the composition of the court being unlikely to change any time soon, the right of students to express themselves freely may yet be further eroded.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][three_column_post title=”You may also want to read” category_id=”581″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
24 Sep 2020 | News and features, United States
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”114982″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][vc_column_text]Ruth Bader Ginsburg did not set out to be an advocate for gender equality. Coming of age during the McCarthy Era of the 1950s, when freedom of speech and freedom of association were subject to intense scrutiny and repression in the United States, her initial goal was to uphold constitutional rights.
“There were brave lawyers who were standing up for those people [targeted by McCarthyism] and reminding our Senate, ‘Look at the Constitution, look at the very First Amendment. What does it say? It says we prize, above all else, the right to think, speak, to write, as we will, without Big Brother over our shoulders’,” she said in a 2011 interview. “My notion was, if lawyers can be helping us get back in touch without most basic values, that’s what I want to be.”
But as one of only nine female students in her 552-strong class at Harvard Law School, she quickly realised that she would face an uphill battle. This put her on track not only to become a feminist icon, but to become a voice for the few.
“Throughout her career she has not been afraid to push back against the power of the crowd when very few were ready for her to do so,” Index on Censorship magazine’s outgoing editor-in-chief Rachael Jolley wrote in her most recent editorial, not knowing then that RBG’s was to die the following week.
As a Supreme Court Judge, her dissenting opinions (which opposed the majority views that gave rise to judgements) became legendary. The fact that dissents do not carry the weight of the law did not dissuade Ginsburg from putting forward extensive opinions.
“Dissents speak to a future age,” she explained. “But the greatest dissents do become court opinions and gradually over time their views become the dominant view. So that’s the dissenter’s hope: that they are writing not for today, but for tomorrow.”
Ginsburg knew how to use her voice, but she also knew when to use it. “In every good marriage, it helps sometimes to be a little deaf,” she often told students, repeating the advice offered to her by her mother-in-law on her wedding day. It was advice that she followed assiduously, she said. “Reacting in anger or annoyance will not advance one’s ability to persuade.”
She often moulded her silences into thoughtful pauses. “This can be unnerving, especially at the Supreme Court, where silence only amplifies the sound of ticking clocks,” wrote Jeffrey Toobin, who profiled Ginsburg for the New Yorker in 2013. But her considered interludes likely amplified her voice too.
Ginsburg also understood how to express herself in other ways. In her later years at the Supreme Court she began to accessorize, wearing a golden flower-like crochet collar on days where she would announce a majority view, and a black beaded collar for dissents.
She apologised after criticising Donald Trump in July 2016, saying that as a judge her comments were “ill-advised” and that she would be “more circumspect” in the future. But her decision to wear her so-called “dissenting collar” the day after Trump’s election spoke volumes nonetheless.
Ginsburg’s respectful and dignified expression, her consensus-building approach, and her mission to uphold women’s rights, alongside other fundamental freedoms, made her an antidote to the Trump Era.
At a time when it seems so crucial, Ginsburg inspires us to choose our moment – and our words – carefully, and to stand up for those who need our support. And, when necessary, to fearlessly diverge and wear our dissent with purpose.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][three_column_post title=”You might also like to read” category_id=”581″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
26 Sep 2019 | News and features, United States
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_video link=”https://youtu.be/KSxDIAuOCdI”][vc_column_text]Libraries are often the first place children experience the joy of reading. But what happens when a community attempts to censor the collection so that it reflects just one worldview?
Courtney Kincaid, assistant library director at North Richland Hills Library, told her harrowing story of being at the frontline of a battle over books at her library in Texas, in which she was followed from her work and did not eat out for fear people would spit in her food.
All of this because the library stocked two children’s books.
Kincaid was speaking as part of the event Three Ways Librarians Can Combat Censorship, which was organised by Sage Publishing as part of Banned Books Week. Kincaid was joined by two other panellists, Molly Dettmann, a school librarian at Norman North High School in Oklahoma, and Adriene Lim, dean of libraries at the University of Maryland. It was chaired by deputy editor of Index on Censorship magazine Jemimah Steinfeld.
Kincaid said how in 2015 she was director of Hood County Library in Granbury, Texas, which she described as a ‘tea-party town’. When two children’s books, My Princess Boy by Cheryl Kilodavis and This Day in June by Gayle E. Pitman, were added to the shelves, a 21 week ordeal began for Kincaid as she defended the books against determined protestors.
Both books featured themes of diversity and acceptance of sexual difference, but were accused of promoting an LGBT lifestyle and perversion. Kincaid was faced with increasingly aggressive demands to remove the books. Some people wanted them burned. Kincaid said how she became a pariah in her town. She feared eating in restaurants in case people spat in her food. A state senator contacted her to admonish her for her fight to keep the books in the library. Kincaid attempted to reach a compromise by moving the books to the adult non-fiction section, but found this did not satisfy the protestors. She said: “They cared about their agenda and their agenda only, and it was anti-LGBT.” On 13 October 2015 the library won a legal battle for the books to remain.
Kincaid had since moved out of Granbury, Texas and was awarded for her efforts to protect the collection in Hood County Library with an I Love My Librarian award in 2015. She told the panel that the lesson she learned from her experience is to never try to find a middle ground with those attempting to censor. Her advice to librarians feeling pressure to self-censor: “Don’t be scared of what would happen. If you think your community needs a book, buy it. Stand your ground.”
Dettman, who herself is familiar with battles over which books should be on library shelves, highlighted her concerns over self-censorship which she said is widespread amongst librarians. She emphasised her belief that a school library should be a safe and welcoming place for all children and encouraged teachers to stock the library with an inclusive range of books. “Your kids deserve that so much. They need it, you have to remember that,” said Dettman.
She said books can transform lives, with it therefore being crucial to therefore have a library stocked with a very broad mix of books.
Lim spoke of when a mural was vandalised at the library in the University of Oregon when she was dean of libraries there. The mural depicted what Lim described as a white male supremacist narrative about the building of civilisation. Whilst not personally agreeing with the sentiment of the mural, Lim saw it as historical artefact and integral to the library’s original architectural design. She said that open and honest sharing of perspectives is a good thing because when voices are oppressed, when dialogues are shut down, “it is those with less power who will suffer the most.”
“If people pick and choose which historical perspectives can be displayed according to current values, where does that leave libraries?” Steinfeld added.
While the webinar was held as part of Banned Books Week, Dettman urged everyone to celebrate books and continue to fight against censorship in libraries throughout the year. “Don’t wait for Banned Books Week. Do it all the time,” she said. [/vc_column_text][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1569574933173-1fc994b1-338d-3″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
7 Jun 2018 | Events, Media Freedom, United States
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”100169″ img_size=”full”][vc_column_text]Media freedom in the United States of America has been under threat for several years, and the findings from an unprecedented mission to the US by leading human rights and media freedom organisations working on freedom of expression, reveals the true extent of the decline.
Over the last two decades, the situation has become steadily worse. Growing numbers of prosecutions against whistleblowers and journalists’ sources, attacks against and arrests of reporters covering protests, sweeping national security justifications to restrict public access to information, and border checks of journalists’ equipment, and an increasingly precarious economic situation for many news outlets, are among the pressing concerns that media workers relayed to the media freedom mission.
In our ever-shrinking globalised world, domestic policy is felt as keenly abroad as at home. That is why the impact of the decline in the US affects all of us. Our freedom to know, to criticise and to question those who hold power over us is reliant on the free flow of pluralistic and independent information.
How do we protect those freedoms?[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”Speakers” use_theme_fonts=”yes”][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”100677″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”100678″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”80210″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
When: Thu 14 Jun 2018, 6:00 – 8:00pm
Where: Free Word Centre, Clerkenwell, London EC1R 3GA, UK (Directions)
Tickets: Free. Registration required.
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