The state of free expression in China & 'Canceling' in Quillette

Weekend Free Speech Update (1/28/2024)

Story of the week

• This week, Quillette ran an excerpt of Chapter 3 of 'The Canceling of the American Mind’ by

  Rikki Schlott
  and me: ‘Campuses Remain Ground Zero’

By the time she came to NYU, Rikki was more than ready for whatever the university would throw her way. She arrived primed for campus cancel culture—and, as embarrassed as she is to admit it now, she acted to protect herself. An avid reader, Rikki brought many books with her to her dorm room and placed them on her bookshelf. But she hid her copies of Thomas Sowell’s Economic Facts and Fallacies and Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life, knowing that if the wrong person saw them her social life could be upended.

This week in ERI

• Yes, the last 10 years really have been worse for free speech: My response to David Cole’s review of ‘Canceling’ in The New York Review of Books

This week in FIRE’s blog

• Fursona non grata: Oklahoma lawmaker moves to ban ‘furryism’ in public schools by Greg Gonzalez

• After FIRE’s intervention, Florida city ditches unconstitutional restrictions on political protests by Aaron Terr

• Princeton keeps letting students weaponize no-contact orders against student journalists by Jessie Appleby

• WEBINAR: UCLA’s censorial culture — and how to fix it: This leading university is failing on free speech. But some are paving a better path forward by Talia Barnes

FIRE’s First Amendment News

• A monumental moment in the history of symbolic speech — Mamie Till-Mobley and Emmett Till’s open-casket funeral — First Amendment News 409 by Ronald K. L. Collins

FIRE’s ‘So to Speak’ podcast

• This ‘So to Speak’ episode from 2018 on The Great Firewall of China explores how the CCP tightly regulates what online content is available to Chinese citizens

‘Canceling’ update

• On Wednesday, I joined the radio show ‘Kresta in the Afternoon’ to talk Cancel Culture

• Last week, I joined The Adam Carolla Show to talk ‘Canceling’ and other news

Video of the week!

• This week, FIRE Senior Scholar of Global Expression Sarah McLaughlin spoke with Georgetown Law student Jinrey Zhang about his criticism of the Chinese government’s human rights abuses, its repression of free expression, and the consequences of his activism.

And keep an eye out for her upcoming book, ‘Authoritarians in the Academy’ — on how authoritarian regimes abroad crack down on free speech on American college campuses — due out early next year from Johns Hopkins University Press.