I was on BBC Radio London this morning, talking to presenter Nikki Bedi about free speech. It’s a topic of conversation today because Universities Minister Jo Johnson is about to make a speech in which (apparently) he will suggest that higher education institutions should be fined if they fail to protect freedom of expression. He has taken aim at the practice of no-platform policies before.
You can listen to the discussion on the BBC London website. My contribution is 1 hour and 17 minutes into the show, at about 8:20AM. Continue reading
Author: Robert (Page 38 of 327)
Adam Wagner is a human rights barrister and founder of Rights Info, and organisation that promotes public understanding of human rights. I’m a huge admirer of the project (and Adam!) and have written for the site in the past.
Following yet another Daily Mail headline that disparages the idea of human rights, Adam posted a couple of Twitter threads in response. The first was about why investigations into alleged human rights abuses by British soldiers is important and necessary. The second was about how the tabloids ‘frame’ human rights stories, and how fact-checking them is not enough if we want to ensure public support for our rights.
I’ve blogged about this communications challenge before, but I think Adam puts it particularly well. I anticipate referring back to this in the future, and make no apology for reproducing the entire series of Tweets below. Continue reading
The Royal Court Theatre has cancelled a revival of Rita, Sue and Bob Too, Andrea Dunbar’s 1982 play about grooming and sexual exploitation. The cancellation came after it was revealed in October that Max Stafford-Clark, who directed the original production and co-directed the revival, had been forced to resign as creative director of Out of Joint due to multiple allegations of ‘inappropriate behaviour.’
The venue had recently staged No Grey Area, an event in which 150 stories of sexual abuse and exploitation were shared over the course of an afternoon. The Royal Court’s artistic director Vicky Featherstone has called for the British theatre community to reckon with the abuses of power, just as Hollywood is doing now that the extent of Harvey Weinstein’s monstrous behaviour has been revealed. In this context, says the theatre, staging Rita, Sue and Bob Too is “highly conflictual.”
I spoke to New York Times correspondent Anna Codrea-Rado about the cancellation and am quoted in her report: Continue reading
This checklist for ‘surviving an authoritarian regime’, posted in January this year by the Polish journalist Martin Mycielski, is uncanny in its alignment with the first year of the Trump administration.
Attempts to delegitimise independent media? Check. Creating chaos and constant conflict? Check. Denial of verifiable facts? Check. Fabricated scandals? Check. Continue reading
I have finally started reading The Great Dissent by Thomas Healy. It’s history of how United States Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes came to write a famous defence (or should I write defense?) of free speech in the case Abrams v. United States. It’s a fascinating account of how someone with entrenched conservative views changed his mind, and also a useful potted history of the concept of free speech. I’m making plenty of notes and bookmarking several passages. Continue reading