Tag: free speech
Drag Shows Are Free Speech
Gun homicides and car accidents are the leading causes of youth death. American children confront challenges as varied as bullying, poverty, gangs, sexual abuse, mental illness, and drug addiction. A state legislator hoping to protect kids might reasonably focus on any number of issues. Drag shows, those improbable culture-war flash points, are not among them. Yet Republican legislators in at least seven states are pushing bills to restrict shows where performers may deviate from traditional gender norms.
The most sweeping
The GOP Can’t Hide From Extremism
The role of extremist white nationalists in the GOP may be approaching an inflection point.
The backlash against former President Donald Trump’s meeting with Nick Fuentes, an avowed racist, anti-Semite, and Christian nationalist, has compelled more Republican officeholders than at any point since the Charlottesville riot in 2017 to publicly condemn those extremist views.
Yet few GOP officials have criticized the former president personally—much less declared that Trump’s meeting with Fuentes and Ye, the rapper (formerly known as Kanye West)
Welcome to Elon Musk’s Casino
Recently, comedy clubs have begun doing this thing that seemed, when I first encountered it, both wildly hypocritical and more than a little sad.
I first noticed this new phenomenon at the Comedy Cellar, in Manhattan’s West Village. The Cellar, which was more or less my second home during my early 30s, is a warm and intimate-to-the-point-of-claustrophobia club that I have loved unconditionally. So it was particularly distressing the first time I saw a bouncer distributing padded envelopes and
How Old Is Too Old in Politics?
This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.
Last week, I asked: “How should voters assess the physical and mental fitness of politicians, and how should the press cover such matters?”
Bekke points out that voters have a tough job:
… Read moreHow to decide who is mentally fit to
The Environmental Laws Hindering Clean Energy
This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.
Question of the Week
Dysfunction is all around us, in public and private institutions, in large and small businesses, in systems and in personal relationships. What is an example you’ve observed of striking dysfunction—or, if you prefer, of something that
How to Fix the Bias Against Free Speech on Campus
A recent investigation of eight abortion-rights supporters at American University, in Washington, D.C., offers yet more evidence that college administrators and diversity-and-inclusion bureaucrats—some of whom undermine free speech as if their job duties demanded it—need new checks on their power.
This matter began in May, shortly after the Supreme Court’s draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization leaked, prompting numerous law students at American to join an online chat about the impending diminution of abortion rights. One student
Professors Need the Power to Fire Diversity Bureaucrats
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One of the most closely watched free-speech battles in higher education reached its denouement recently at Georgetown University’s law school, where that foremost obsession of the American intelligentsia––a problematic tweet!––sparked a months-long investigation of a newly hired legal scholar who was supposed to run Georgetown’s Center for the Constitution. Ilya Shapiro’s inquisition revealed how diversity bureaucrats and other administrators, seizing
The Silenced Students in the “Free Speech” Debate
Elon Musk Is Right About Free Speech on Twitter
Elon Musk, in his effort to buy Twitter, signaled that under his ownership, the company would allow all speech that the First Amendment protects. “By ‘free speech,’ I simply mean that which matches the law,” he tweeted on April 26. “I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law.”
Many commentators were quick to point out that, as a private company, Twitter is not required to follow the First Amendment, which applies only to federal and state governments.
What Should Twitter Forbid? Be Specific.
This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Every Friday, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.
Question of the Week
Elon Musk bought Twitter. Anticipating that the deal will go through, many are advising him on how to improve the platform, with a focus on the tension between free speech and content moderation. Musk called