Last Thursday, unexpectedly, we attended a concert by the Nomadi, an iconic Italian music band active for over 60 years. Their songs often resonate deeply, carrying profound and sometimes social messages.

One song, "Il fiore nero," struck a chord with me. Though I was familiar with it, I hadn't truly listened to its depths before. Essentially, it critiques those who judge and label, deciding that "the flower is black" merely because, in the absence of sunlight, its true color can't be seen. The song touches on how morality, religion, or societal norms can overshadow an individual's "sun" and prevent us from seeing their light.

Even if a flower loses its color, who determines it turns "black"? Narratives, biases, or distorted perceptions can shape our understanding of reality.

It reminded me of many individuals in the #Fediverse, shining in their uniqueness and freely expressing their personalities. Just like the various software on the Fediverse, distinct yet harmoniously interoperable.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5Yc_SMDsJs

#Mastodon #Society #Diversity #WeAreAllBeautiful #Nomadi #Music #ItalianMusic #SocietalNorms #FreeExpression

ISP's Should Not Police Online Speech: No Matter How Awful It Is

Special interests may seek pressure to expand censorship, to protect financial / influence interests

#ISP #censorship #freespeech #freeExpression #humanrights #civilliberties #rights #surveillance

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/08/isps-should-not-police-online-speech-no-matter-how-awful-it

Check out the latest #IFEXthisWeek newsletter: 🌍

🗨️ Global Solidarity Marathon for #Belarusian journalists; An in-depth look at #Zimbabwe's elections; New #cybercrime laws and more #FreeExpression news:

👉 Read more: https://ow.ly/RVm750PxPXf

📬 Subscribe: https://ow.ly/AGOb50PxPXc

#5yrsago #AmericanConservative laments #MarketConcentration and #PrivateProperty as bad for #FreeExpression https://www.theamericanconservative.com/i-was-banned-for-life-from-twitter/

#5yrsago #Missouri voters kill the state’s anti-union law with a massively successful ballot initiative https://www.governing.com/archive/gov-missouri-unions-ballot-primary-janus.html

#1yrsago A modest proposal to fix #contracts https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/10/be-reasonable/#i-would-prefer-not-to

7/

”In a new report, Booklash: Literary Freedom, Online Outrage, and the Language of Harm, PEN America warns that social media blowback and societal outrage are imposing new moral litmus tests on books and authors, chilling literary expression and fueling a dangerous trend of self-censorship that is shrinking writers’ creative freedom and imagination.”

https://pen.org/report/booklash/

#bibliotek #libraries #GoodReads #BookBans #literature #FreeExpression #SocMed

Good evening, friends of #BSDcafe and the #Fediverse!
@#
A user privately asked me why I increased the character limit to 5000.

In general, I believe brevity is a great skill, but reducing a text to "a few" characters can be limiting. The choice of 500 characters is purely from the Mastodon Devs, but other software in the Fediverse doesn't have this limitation. Even blogging platforms like Plume exceed this limit by far, and Mastodon easily supports much higher limits.

BSD Cafe aims to be a place of free expression, and I don't want to impose overly strict constraints.

With every Mastodon update, I'll make sure to check that the limit remains, and if necessary, I'll patch the relevant sources to maintain the current level.

#BSDCafeUpdates #FreeExpression #FediverseCommunity #OpenSourceLove

TITLE: Teaching on Eggshells: 75% of Students Would Report Profs for Saying Something They Find Offensive—81% of Liberal vs. 53% of Conservative Students—N=2,250 Students from 131 4-Yr Schools

Thank you Dr. Pope for this summary:

-------- Forwarded Message --------

Inside Higher Education includes an article: “‘Teaching on Eggshells’: Students Report Professors’ Offensive Comments
A recent survey shows about 75 percent of students would report professors for saying something they find offensive.”

Here are some excerpts:
Students sit in a lecture hall facing the instructor at the front of the room
Students are increasingly taking offense to comments by professors and peers.

Nearly three-quarters of all college students, regardless of their political affiliation, believe professors who make comments the students find offensive should be reported to the university, according to a new report.

A similar rate of students would also report their peers for making insulting or hurtful remarks.

The report by the Sheila and Robert Challey Institute for Global Innovation and Growth at North Dakota State University is based on a survey of 2,250 students from 131 public and private four-year institutions across the country and was released Wednesday.

Over all, the percentage of students who said they would report a professor was higher among self-identified liberal students (81 percent) than among self-identified conservative students (53 percent).

Sixty-six percent of liberal students and 37 percent of conservative students said they would also report peers who made offensive comments.

John Bitzan, author of the report, said the survey findings are troubling and reflect continuing challenges on college campuses to encourage students to think critically and engage in healthy debates—with each other and with faculty members—over issues on which they disagree.

“Of any place, a university should be a place that is open to a variety of points of view, and traditionally the universities have been,” said Bitzan, who is also director of the institute and a professor of management.

“To me, it’s alarming that students are saying, ‘You can’t have an opinion on something that differs from the correct or appropriate opinion without being reported to the university.’”

<snip>

In an attempt to identify exactly what kind of statements by professors students would report—be they opinions with which students disagree, or strictly racial slurs, sexual harassment or personal attacks—the survey provided 10 examples of comments the students would report as offensive. The options included “It is clear that affirmative action is doing more harm than good and should be eliminated” and “A civilized society doesn’t need guns.” Sean Stevens, director of polling and analytics at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a campus civil liberties watchdog group, said in his view most of the statements prompted would be “very reasonable statements to make.”

He said several of the example statements, while potentially controversial, are supported by data, have been published in peer-reviewed literature or have been debated and ruled upon in court. Others may reflect more of a professor’s personal opinion but are opinions held by “plenty of people.”

“I don’t think any of those are necessarily that unreasonable, albeit they may be offensive to some people,” Stevens said.

The likelihood of reporting instructors was higher among conservative students when the statements provided were liberal-leaning and higher among liberal students when the statements were conservative-leaning.

The findings on students’ likelihood to report offensive comments were part of a larger annual survey assessing student perceptions about campus culture and viewpoint diversity. About 60 percent of the students surveyed identified as liberal and 20 percent conservative, according to the report. These demographics are similar to those represented in a national analysis of free speech on college campuses by FIRE.

Stevens, director of polling at FIRE, said the survey findings on students’ level of comfort speaking on campus about controversial subjects are similar to results FIRE has seen in its student polls since 2020. He noted that FIRE has seen even lower rates of comfort, likely because its polls specifically asked students about their comfort discussing “controversial political topics.”

Although the survey questions were written and analyzed by Bitzan and the Challey Institute—a conservative-leaning interdisciplinary institute housed in North Dakota State’s College of Business—the poll was conducted by an independent survey group, College Pulse, in May and June. Its margin of error was plus or minus 2.4 percentage points.

<snip>

“I’m very confident that the results are accurate,” Bitzan said. “I do think that there are definitely differences between the way liberal students and conservative students view the campus climate in terms of openness to different points of view.”

Some of the poll answers suggest that a majority of students perceive their campuses as being generally open to the sharing of controversial or unpopular ideas. About 70 percent say they feel at least somewhat comfortable sharing their opinions on a sensitive topic.

But of the students who felt at least somewhat comfortable with the campus climate, about half said it was because they believe their views align with most other students’ and professors’.

“They say the campus climate is open to a variety of points of view,” Bitzan said of students surveyed. “But it could be a signal of, ‘I think that the campus climate agrees with my point of view. If there’s something that I view as unacceptable, or not aligning with my point of view, then I’m not tolerant of that.’”

“Students are saying you can’t have an opinion on something that differs from the correct or appropriate opinion without being reported to the university.”

Stevens, director of polling at FIRE, said the survey findings on students’ level of comfort speaking on campus about controversial subjects are similar to results FIRE has found in its student polls since 2020. He noted that the reported rates of comfort were likely even lower because students were specifically asked about discussing “controversial political topics.”

Jonathan Friedman, director of the free expression and education programs at PEN America, a free speech advocacy group, said the survey results align with what he’s heard is happening on many campuses across the country. The frequency with which students are reporting professors “is scaling up in a way that universities haven’t really dealt with before.”

Institutions lack “good, clear processes or apparatuses” to receive, process and investigate the reports, Friedman said, and as a result many faculty often feel like they’re “teaching on eggshells.”

“You do have to do some work to explain to students what might meet the bar for being reported, teaching some of the distinctions between speech that offends versus speech that harms, or the difference between disagreement and discrimination,” he added.

Ken Pope

Ken Pope, Nayeli Y. Chavez-Dueñas, Hector Y. Adames, Janet L. Sonne, and Beverly A. Greene
Speaking the Unspoken: Breaking the Silence, Myths, and Taboos That Hurt Therapists and Patients (APA, 2023)

“What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.”
― Salman Rushdie

~~~

#teaching #politics #fos #freedomofspeech #college #university #professor #classroom #research #psychology #liberal #conservative #freeexpression #offensivespeech #discrimination

Via #IsiahHolmes, Federal jury concludes #MilwaukeePolice arrest of #ACLUofWisconsin
observer filming police at #SyvilleSmith2016 protest wasn't #UnlawfulArrest. #FreeExpression

https://wisconsinexaminer.com/2023/07/18/aclu-observer-says-a-federal-jurys-ruling-is-a-bad-sign-for-civil-rights/

RT @PENamerica :
🧵How did PEN America defend and celebrate #FreeExpression this week? On Wednesday, we urged school officials in Nixa, #Missouri, to retain Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel Maus and two other books that were flagged by as "sexually explicit." https://pen.org/press-release/pen-america-urges-missouri-schools-to-keep-the-holocaust-graphic-novel-maus-on-shelves/

Wow. The #HK govt condemns the Office of the UN High Commissioner for #HumanRights, after the latter posted a tweet yesterday urging the HK authorities to release anyone detained for #FreeExpression and #FreePeacefulAssembly. Will it increase #China's reputation in the #UN… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1665715229479559175 https://nitter.hongkongers.net/laiyanhoeric/status/1665715229479559175#m

The New Censorship

As much as we might think that the Internet has increased information freedom, so called cancel culture has ushered in a new era of self-entitled censorship. Censorship applied to ideas that are important to be discussed, regardless of your particular opinion.

(Continued…)

#censorship #cancelCulture #intolerance #fascism #politicallyIncorrect #freeSpeech #freeExpression #ignoranceisstrength #orwellian #thoughtpolice

“To be sure, it might be that bad actors like ISIS are able to use platforms like defendants’ for illegal—and sometimes terrible—ends. But the same could be said of cell phones, email, or the internet generally.”

#Section230 #law #internet #America #SupremeCourt #freeExpression #technology #algorithms

https://themarkup.org/the-breakdown/2023/05/18/section-230-just-survived-a-brush-with-death

Twitter Stops Reporting Gov Requests As Data Reveals New Ownership Obeys Gov Demands Much More Than Old Twitter

(as someone w/had couple #RestrictAct posts #shadowbanned, no surprise here)

#Twitter #News #ElonMusk #censorship #freespeech #freeExpression #HumanRights #transparency #infosec #socialMedia

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/05/01/twitter-abruptly-stops-reporting-on-govt-requests-as-data-reveals-elon-obeys-govt-demands-way-more-often-than-old-twitter/

🔓 Anti-Encryption Laws Are Deadly & Real-world Examples Threaten Journalism

(made with #FOSS #Kdenlive)

#News #chatcontrol #encryption #e2ee #journalism #ethics #backdoors #StanSwami #ModifiedElephant #RestrictAct #EarnItBill #EarnItAct #freespeech #freeExpression #HumanRights #privacy #peertube #tilvids #infosec #cybersecurity

https://tilvids.com/w/1eBFN8q7HvhqAUsbGCPJ1T

If you’re interested in #Asia, #SoutheastAsia, #literature, #books, #art, #politics, #geopolitics, #writers, #history, #HumanRights, #FreeExpression, #democracy, #IndependentPress, etc. I would just like to say that this month you can get 20% off a year’s membership of #MekongReview by using the promo code APRIL2023 and support our small literary magazine: https://mekongreview.com/subscribe/

Restrict Act Can Ban So Much More Than Tiktok

As Broadly Worded As It Is: Could Threaten VPN's & Other Tech

#VPN #News #RestrictAct #restrictact #USA #civilliberties #FreeExpression #FreeSpeech #Constitution #Tiktok #Infosec #Cybersecurity #Journalism

https://www.vice.com/en/article/4a3ddb/restrict-act-insanely-broad-ban-tiktok-vpns

Journalists Targeted With Explosive RDX USB Sticks

#Journalism #News #FreeExpression #HumanRights #FreeSpeech #Ecuador #SouthAmerica #Accountability #Intimidation #Terrorism

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-65026522

RT @ncacensorship
Florida's legislative and administrative acts of intimidation to deter access to LGBTQ culture seriously attacks First Amendment principles. Read a joint response from the free speech community below. #Freespeeh #Florida #FirstAmendment #FreeExpression
https://ncac.org/news/free-speech-groups-condemn-suppression-of-lgbtq-expression-in-florida

FISA Court Hasn't Done Much To Keep Gov From Abusing Surveillance Tools

Including Repeated Searches For Congress Members

#News #Techdirt #FISA #FBI #Intelligence #SIGINT #surveillance #MassSurveillance #upstream #oversight #abuse #privacy #autonomy #freeExpression

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/03/20/congressional-rep-who-discovered-his-info-was-illegally-searched-by-the-fbi-likely-has-no-legal-remedy/

Preventing digital violence against women in Colombia, political prisoners released in #Nicaragua and “apology of terrorism” criminalised in #Peru

February 2023 in the Americas: A special feature on new legislation aiming to defend women's safety in the digital space in #Colombia plus the latest free expression news from t

https://ifex.org/preventing-digital-violence-against-women-in-colombia-political-prisoners-released-in-nicaragua-and-apology-of-terrorism-criminalised-in-peru/

#FreeExpression #FreedomOfExpression #HumanRights