Recent cases of tweets by a Boston University professor about racism and others have raised questions about what might be the limits to academic freedom.
Two people are dead and five injured – including the suspected perpetrator – in what has been described as a cynical act of terror against Denmark. Though they may have resulted in fewer deaths, the twin…
Julian Disney is preparing to depart as chairman of the Australian Press Council after five years in the role.
AAP/Lukas Coch
Julian Disney, the outgoing chair of the Australian Press Council, made a singularly powerful argument in his valedictory speech to the National Press Club on Wednesday: that freedom of the press is strengthened…
No platform policies are morphing into bans that threaten free speech.
Chris Radburn/PA Archive
Freedom of speech is at the heart of academic life and a university should be a place where every issue is discussed and debated. Not so, according to the findings presented in the first ever Freedom of…
In Samuel Roth’s time, there was no Constitutional protection for expression deemed subversive, obscene or indecent.
Columbia News
Jay Gertzman, Mansfield University of Pennsylvania
In 1957, publisher Samuel Roth spent his 63rd birthday in federal prison. His appeal denied by the United States Supreme Court, he would end up serving every day of his five year sentence. The crime? He…
What does free speech mean for today’s young generation?
Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire
One of the many debates generated by the recent terrorist attacks in Paris has been centred on the different ways that older and younger generations understand and support the concept of free speech. In…
Family First senator Bob Day’s proposed changes to Section 18C have been given fresh prominence since the Charlie Hebdo attacks.
AAP/Lukas Coch
Early in 2014, federal Attorney-General George Brandis released a proposal to significantly amend our law against racial vilification, Sections 18C and 18D of the Racial Discrimination Act, on the strength…
Liberal senator Cory Bernardi has argued for Australia’s racial discrimination laws to be revisited in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks in France.
AAP/Alan Porritt
Let’s be clear about one thing as the loony right once more revisits with slavering lips their thwarted desire to allow racial vilification to run untrammelled through Australian society. Nothing that…
This candlelit rally in Tunisia was one of the many condemnations from Muslim nations of the terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo.
EPA/Mohamed Messara
The tradition of freedom of expression on religious matters is not quite so venerable as many seem to imagine in the outcry at the killing of Charlie Hebdo journalists and cartoonists in Paris. While modern…
Any attack motivated by the pen upon that pen’s purveyor is an attack on free speech.
The slaying of the Charlie Hebdo journalists and cartoonists because of their work is the grossest attack on the value of free speech, and of course the right to life. In the deadly attack on the magazine’s…
Freedom of speech is often seen as a cornerstone of democracy, but the unfettered right to express opinions can infringe other fundamental rights. Minority groups are especially at risk of verbal attacks…
While African Australians can express themselves in ethnic events such as Sydney’s Africulture festival, they still have almost no presence in mainstream media debate, even when it’s about them.
AAP/Newzulu/Teresa Parker
Recent debates about freedom of expression in Australia have largely neglected the ethnic minority media sector. These debates came to a head in the lead-up to the federal government’s recent decision…
Open justice sometimes best served by secrecy.
Clare Molden/PA
Tim Crook and I agree that, ideally, for justice to be done, it must be seen to be done. We also agree that the media should be free to publish within the law and that we are all better off without Levesonian…
It was June 4 2014. That was the date the British public learned that, in spite of their relatively free media, the power of the state – as expressed by the executive and the judiciary – was poised to…
Not all Thais have reacted with anger and dismay to the military takeover of their country. In fact, for those on the anti-government side, these are welcome developments. But that is no reason not to…