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  • President David Wippman’s most recent co-authored essay, “The campus war of words over antisemitism and the BDS movement,” began with these words, “The Hamas terrorist attacks of October 7 have highlighted sharp disagreements — among college and university leaders, students, faculty, alumni, politicians and the general public — over where to draw the line between protected speech and impermissible harassment or threats.”

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  • As algorithms and online platforms come to define our daily lives, how do we navigate the social responsibilities of platforms and our own online freedoms?  These were questions addressed at the Common Ground panel on March 27. Guest speakers were Shoshana Weissmann, the digital director of the think tank R Street, and David Brody, the managing attorney of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law’s Digital Justice Initiative. Professor of Government Robert Martin moderated the conversation.

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  • “What Does Freedom Mean in Online Speech?,” Hamilton’s next Common Ground presentation, will take place on Monday, March 27, at 7 p.m. in the Fillius Events Barn. The program, which is free and open to the public, features two experts who will examine the issue of online speech from different perspectives.

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  •  “U.S. government officials have long recognized that what Americans don’t know about foreign languages, cultures, and histories, has — and will — hurt us,” began President David Wippman and his co-author Cornell Professor Glenn Altschuler in a Jan. 29 op-ed in The Hill. The essay chronicles legislation in the 20th and 21st centuries focused on Americans’ increased knowledge of other countries and their languages.

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  • Growing efforts to curtail free speech and academic freedom endanger the ability to cultivate the informed citizenry on which our democracy depends, write President David Wippman and Cornell Professor Glenn Altschuler in an Inside Higher Ed essay.

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  • Most people know that social media has played an important role in the spark and maintenance of protests across the globe and that, as a result, authoritarian governments attempt to censor these platforms. What is less clear, however, is the point at which this censorship becomes repression. Mary Gallagher, professor of political science and director of the Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan, discussed China’s repression progression, specifically since the rise of social media on Oct. 17.

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  • Sam Lebovic, assistant professor of history at George Mason University, delivered a lecture on Oct. 16 discussing the ideas in his book Free Speech and Unfree News: The Paradox of Press Freedom in America. In a country where free speech is extremely protected it should follow that the press is extremely free. But, according to Lebovic, that is not the case. There are two key crises facing the free press today–corporate consolidation and the rise of state secrecy. Both are grounded in history, having originated in the 20th century as the country decided what exactly freedom of press meant.

  • Programs have been developed on campus around the same and similar themes as those offered via Wednesday's Common Ground event.

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  • On Oct. 3, several distinguished scholars in the field of free speech jurisprudence gathered to discuss the implications of free speech restrictions at both the national and college campus levels.

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