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Sherman Alexie on Book Banning and Censorship
Sherman Alexie is the winner of the 2010 PEN/Faulkner Award, the 2007 National Book Award for Young People #39;s Literature, the 2001 PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story, and...
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Sherman Alexie on Book Banning and Censorship - Video
Needless to say, Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate will strike close to home for many Wesleyan students. This book, written by Greg Lukianoff and published in 2012, explores the evolution of free speech rights on college campuses and unveils what Lukianoff perceives as a rise of censorship that has swept the nations institutes of highereducation.
Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), writes articles regularly on free speech and education. His work at FIRE served as the foundation for Unlearning Liberty; the organizations mission is to defend free speech, religious liberty, and due-process rights across campuses. FIREs cases are usually submitted by students, and are handled by FIRE staff intervention or, when necessary, litigated with FIREs LegalNetwork.
Lukianoff prefaces his book with a note on the political dynamics surrounding campus censorship. He writes that although he considers himself liberal and that his mission to defend student and faculty speech rights is consistent with this view, he is often vilified as an evil conservative. This is because, he says, much of the speech FIRE works to defend is advocating conservative positions; on college campuses, this speech tends to face morescrutiny.
Unlearning Liberty is a smooth read, with an emphasis on case studies and a smattering of political philosophy. Lukianoff cites John Stuart Mill, focusing on his argument that dissenting voices need to be protected not only because there is some possibility they could be right, but also because the discussion inspired by dissent can strengthen and clarify everyonesviews.
Unfortunately, Lukianoff argues, the ability to present dissenting opinions is being eroded. One focus of the book is the adoption of speech codes by many universities. These are often vague and unenforceable, for example including a complete prohibition of hurtful or offensive speech. Not only is speech that falls under these categories integral to free thought and free discussion, but these codes are also often enforced arbitrarily by administrations to silence speech they find personallyobjectionable.
Lukianoff also makes the point that people have lost the drive to protect their own Constitutional rights, accepting certain limitations without really questioning them. He attributes this to dynamics rooted in elementary and high schools, where rules are structured to emphasize protection of feelings and the image of the administrations rather than on protection of student rights. As a result, he adds, apathy abounds as people internalize a newnorm.
The book, while getting perhaps a bit repetitive with its reliance on case studies that are all similar in nature, definitely provides readers with plenty of anecdotes with which they can pepper their conversations. For example, readers learn that in 2006, Drexel Universitys speech code included a ban on inconsiderate jokes and inappropriately directed laughter. At Indiana UniversityPurdue University Indianapolis, a janitor was threatened with disciplinary action on the grounds of racial harassment for openly reading a historical account of the Ku Klux Klan while on hisbreak.
I would recommend this book to any Wesleyan student who is looking to feel slightly uncomfortable. In addition to no-brainers such as the Ku Klux Klan anecdote, Lukianoff defends, or at least entertains, situations that many would find repugnant, such as fat-shaming dorm posters and exclusionary religiousgroups.
It seems very much that the book is directed at an audience that would naturally disagree with many of its conclusions. It aggressively forces readers to consider difficult questions. At what point does expressing a view become the equivalent of censoring another one? Where is the line drawn between insensitivity and harassment? Can preventing another persons free speech be defended on the grounds that you are expressing yourown?
Although the Wesleyan administration is nowhere near instituting free-speech corners (designated spots that are the only free-speech protected locations on campus), as has happened at several universities discussed in the book, it is interesting to consider the extent of our free speech rights, given the framework Lukianoff outlines. Another type of censorship, perhaps, comes from within the student body; often I have heard the complaint that as tolerant as our population claims to be, it is difficult to express unpopular views without coming underfire.
Excerpt from:
Book Review: Unlearning Liberty
September 11, 2014 - 16:38 AMT
PanARMENIAN.Net - Censorship in Turkey has advanced because many were happy to see that with respect to Kurdish and Armenian Genocide issues. Now it has spread onto everything else, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said during an online Q&A session with the participants of the Internet Governance Forum in Istanbul, Turkey, Panorama.am reported.
Samvel Martirosyan information security expert who was invited to participate in the event told Life.Panorama.am that Edward Snowden was also scheduled to appear online in the forum, however in the last minute he was replaced by Assange due to technical issues.
In general, Assange criticized internet governance methods. He cited Turkey as an example of internet censorship with regards to Kurdish and Armenian Genocide issues, with open discussions on the issue avoided in the country. He stressed that Turkey keeps the Ottoman archives closed due to the Armenian Genocide issue, Martirosyan said.
According to Martirosyan, in another event entitled Human Rights Protection on the Internet an internet activist from Turkey slammed suppression of the freedom of speech in his country, alluding to the 45.000 websites and YouTube video hosting ban. A Turkish official responded that the measure aimed to protect children rights in the Internet. The explanation was laughed off by everyone in the audience. Turkey is one of very few countries where freedom of speech is in dire situation, with the issue as a matter of concern among the event participants, added Martirosyan.
Read more:
Present-day Turkish censorship result of Genocide denial policy: Assange
This story first appeared in the Sept. 19 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine.
NancyDubuc, JeffBewkes, James Murdoch, Tom Freston and Martin Sorrell are media executives cut from a similar button-down, corporate-culture cloth. So perhaps it is thrilling or titillating for them to meet someone like Vice's Shane Smith, 44, who is all showman and promoter, a media type more reminiscent of the wild old days than the constrained new ones.
In late August, A&E Networks president and CEO Dubuc invested $250 million for a 10 percent interest in Vice, valuing the company at a whopping $2.5 billion (A&E is owned by Hearst and Disney). A tech venture firm, TCV, followed with $250 million for another 10 percent. Bewkes, Time Warner's chairman and CEO, was set to do a deal with Vice at the beginning of the summer that would have valued the company at $2 billion but Vice's valuation rose more quickly than Bewkes' ability to act. Murdoch bought 5 percent for $70 million in 2013 on behalf of 21st Century Fox and got a seat on the board; Sorrell, CEO of WPP, put $25 million in; and Freston, a former Viacom CEO, invested his own money early on and signed up as one of Vice's key advisers. One might be forgiven for thinking of Zero Mostel in The Producers selling a Broadway show many times over.
In theory, these executives are drawn to Smith's purported Pied Piper ability to attract that most sought-after and hard-to-reach (nearly always modified by "hard-to-reach") demographic: distracted young men, more reliably playing video games than consuming traditional media. But they also are drawn to his Pied Piper ability to attract ever-more media executives and the ever-larger multiples they and their colleagues seem willing to pay for a piece of Vice.
Arguably, the latter has been proved out much more completely than the former. These days one can attach many superlatives to Vice it might be the hottest, savviest, coolest, richest, Brooklyn-est (according to Smith, it is the biggest employer in Williamsburg, the epicenter of Brooklyn-ness) new media company on the block but one thing it does not necessarily have is a supersized audience. Vice makes a torrent of YouTube videos, but most, according to YouTube stats, have limited viewership. The New York Times, in its coverage of Vice's TCV deal, seemed eager to believe in Vice and at the same time was perplexed by it, quoting the company's monthly global audience claim of 150 million viewers but, as well, comScore's more official and low-wattage number of 9.3 million monthly unique visitors. BuzzFeed, with an audience many times greater, has been valued at less than a third of Vice's $2.5 billion.
That is, of course, part of Smith's showman appeal. Even with his company's obvious limitations YouTube is an unreliable platform he has boasted of producing a range of superhuman business-model breakthroughs.
It doesn't much matter, for instance, that Vice has low audience numbers because it does not sell the usual CPM-based advertising. Instead, Smith sells high-priced sponsorships marketing the Vice idea, in other words, rather than the Vice numbers. What's more, playing coy, he does not seem to sell advertisers very much, often offering big consumer brands like Anheuser-Busch modest sponsorship credit at the ends of videos.
Then, too, Vice's growing profits come in part because it continues to act like an outsider and pay young workers catch-as-catch-can alternative-media wages, even though it now is a richly funded enterprise.
Another of Vice's accomplishments has been to position itself as a cutting-edge technology company rather than a media company, thereby achieving a techlike valuation. But Vice really has few tech skills beyond Final Cut Pro, running much more by old media seat-of-the-pants instincts and aggressive salesmanship than new digital algorithms. (Vice, with its many fledgling music writers looking for a byline, often is compared inexactly to BuzzFeed, with its ever-growing staff of engineers able to game the social-media world.)
Smith also, counterintuitively, has launched his company into the news business, making it a veritable Zelig of multiple international conflicts. Its tipping-point moment might have been Dennis Rodman's Vice-sponsored embrace of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il and its step into legitimacy with its earnest HBO world-report show. But this is at a moment when it never has been more difficult to monetize news programming. Indeed, so bizarre is the notion that Vice's young-male audience will watch international news that puzzled media minds only can seem to conclude it must be true and another epochal media disruption. (YouTube widely advertises Vice as a type of new-wave 60 Minutes.)
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