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Two weeks ago, I wrote about how my speech topic for public speaking was rejected. I spoke about how I thought it was unfair and how I think it went against the main principles of what college is for.

Since writing the article, I have had some response, as well as more speech topics that were banned, so I thought I would write an update.

As some of you may have seen in last weeks issue, a response was written to my column. Matt Gaffney wrote about his own paper getting silenced and spoke about how I am owed an apology. I personally do not think Mr. Gaffneys and my situations related to each other; I also dont think I am owed some kind of apology. All I want is for classes and professors to be open to adult discussion rather than treating the students like kids.

I also do not agree with the language in Gaffneys response. To me, it seemed like Gaffney was attacking professors at this school, which was absolutely not my intent. I do not have any ill will toward the communications department at all, nor do I with my own professor.

Although the situation irritates and angers me, all I want is for my professor, and others alike, to be more open to student discussion and respectful debate. Im not in search of gratification or justice for this situation; I want a more open learning environment where discussion is encouraged instead of silenced.

I have also had some positive response from my article. Another communications professor, who also teaches public speaking, reached out to me and requested a meeting. When I met with this professor, he told me he was happy that I wrote what I did, and that in his class, he welcomes more heated topics.

This was reassuring and made clear to me that this issue was with my own personal professor and not the department as a whole. The decision to deny topics is entirely up to the professors discretion, and there are not guidelines set by the department.

This professor and I had a nice discussion about the need for different opinions and talked about current and controversial topics. I was glad to know that not every professor is like mine, and some of them are open to discussion, which is a step in the right direction.

Recently, my class was assigned our final speech of the semester. For those of you who have not taken this class or do not remember, this speech is to persuade the audience to agree with your stance on a topic. This is the perfect opportunity to discuss a riskier topic, but once again, my class was denied this opportunity.

When given the requirements for this speech, my class was handed a sheet with topics that were not allowed for this final speech. This list includes topics such as: climate change, LGBT rights, drunk driving, hazing, pollution, child abuse, capital punishment, religiously oriented topics, politically oriented topics and 15 more restricted topics.

When I saw this list, I was shocked, as were other people in my class. I completely understand if a topic is inappropriate, but most of these topics werent, especially when analyzed in a professional academic setting.

My professor said some of these topics were restricted because they were overdone, which I think is also unfair, but that does not relate to this article as much.

I just could not believe that we are being told we cannot talk about things things that most of the class are passionate about. Things that are current and affect our lives.

I am going to submit a topic for my speech soon, and I will await to see if it passes through this insane list of banned topics.

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Censorship reaction - Standard Online

UNH Women's Studies Program Faculty and Staff April 3, 2017 Filed under Opinions

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The Womens Studies Program strongly condemns the universitys recent censorship of the anti-sexual harassment exhibit posted in the MUB.

We stand in support of the students who worked with the Sexual Harassment and Rape Prevention Program (SHARPP) to stage this creative and brave response to sexual violence on university campuses. The students solicited actual epithets that have been hurled at members of our campus community, and replicated these on the wall outside the MUBs main offices. Within only hours of the exhibits appearance on March 17, the university took it down.

The administration justifies its decision by citing the MUB policy manual (section 8.03): Any poster with hate speech as defined in the Students Rights, Rules and Responsibilities will not be posted. Any poster/flyer containing profane/vulgar language is prohibited. But this was not a poster, it was an exhibit. And the language it contained is, indeed, much more than profane and vulgar: it is real, and it is violent.

By invoking, interpreting and enforcing the MUB policy manual in this way, the university has shut this conversation down, and has done great damage to student and staff attempts to address campus sexual harassment and violence. The university has invested a great deal of resources on public relations campaigns to present itself as taking action on this problem. It would do well to let the people who understand the issue bestSHARPP, and the students who live with and experience the harassment and violenceto have a voice.

The Faculty and Staff of the UNH Womens Studies Program

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The New Hampshire : Women's Studies program condemns ... - The New Hampshire

The news that Ayaan Hirsi Ali has cancelled her speaking tour of Australia due to security concerns should concernanyone who believes in freedom. It is a dark day when a woman who fled to the West to escape the Islamist suffocations of Somalia, and precisely so that she might think and speak freely, feels she cannot say certain things in certain places. That even a Western, liberal, democratic nation like Australia cannot guarantee Hirsi Ali the freedom to speak her mind without suffering censorship or harm is deeply worrying. It points to the mainstreaming of intolerance, to the adoption by certain people in the West of the illiberalism that makes up the very Islamist outlook that Hirsi Ali and others have sought to escape.

Hirsi Alis Oz tour, Hero of Heresy, had been due to kick off this Thursday. She would have visited Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne, hosted by Think Inc., an organisation devoted to the promotion of intellectual discourse. But today, citing, among other things, security concerns, Think Inc. announced the tour was off.

This isnt the first time Hirsi Ali has effectively been hounded out of even tolerant nations, made to feel unwelcome in the West because of her strong, critical take on Islam and its treatment of women. She had to leave her adopted home of Holland after receiving death threats for her involvement in the 2004 Islam-critical film Submission (the films director, Theo van Gogh, was stabbed to death by an Islamist). She still has heavy security whenever she speaks in public. Certain campuses in the US have made it clear she isnt welcome, because shes Islamophobic. That is, she criticises Islam, which today is treated as a species of mental illness. How perverse that even a woman who has suffered under extreme forms of Islam can be treated as dangerous for daring to ridicule that religion.

Hirsi Alis troubles in Australia are striking because they point to a really worrying interplay between the polite intolerance of Islamophobia and the more violent urge in certain sections of society to punish and maybe even kill critics of Islam.

So before this mornings reports of a security threat to Hirsi Ali, there had been a respectable campaign to keep her out of Oz. Four hundred Muslim women and other concerned citizens, including academics, a museum director and, hilariously, human-rights activists, signed a petition saying Hirsi Alis rhetoric poses a threat to social peace and the safety of Muslims Down Under. Against a backdrop of increasing global Islamophobia, Hirsi Alis divisive rhetoric simply serves to increase hostility and hatred towards women, the petition says. In short, her words are inflammatory, violent even, and they directly harm Muslims. So shut them down, shut her up, keep her out. Australia deserves better than this, the petition said.

In a video watched and shared tens of thousands of times by both Islamic and so-called liberal activists, Muslim women are shown denouncing Hirsi Ali, accusing her of repeat[ing] the language of our oppressors. The video says Hirsi Ali uses the same Islam-critical rhetoric that has been used in recent years to justify wars, invasion and genocide. So her words are warlike, evil, destructive. It also says she uses the language of patriarchy. This is perverse. Its patriarchal to criticise the Islamist repression of women? And, by extension, is it anti-patriarchal to defend the Islamist ideology from a womans divisive criticism?

Then came some kind of security threat, some promise of violence that caused her to cancel her tour. Its time we realised that these things are intimately related; that respectable societys creeping intolerance of critical thought fuels other, more extreme peoples conviction that such thought must be punished harshly, if necessary.

The more people depict certain ideas as unfit for public life, the more they send out a signal that the people who hold those ideas are dangerous and wicked, and possibly fair game for violence. They branded Hirsi Ali an enemy of public order and decency, no doubt making it easier for others to fantasise about punishing her. They said she would harm Australia and its Muslims, no doubt giving others the idea that she should therefore be kept out of Australia by any means necessary.

Where somewant to crush the likes of Hirsi Ali or Charlie Hebdo with laws and bans, others want to crush them with violence. Different means, yes; but these two sections of society, the chin-strokers and the gun-strokers, share the same aim: to silence people whose ideas they dislike. The bookish censor lends moral authority to the violent censor. From thefailure to stand up for Salman Rushdie to the No Platforming of the likes of Hirsi Ali today, too many thinkers in the supposedly tolerant West unwittingly give a nod of approval to efforts to shut down dangerous people.The signal we should be sending to society is not that some ideas are too dangerous for public life, but that no ideas, even ridicule of Islam, will ever be silenced or punished; that it is unacceptable ever to harm someone simply for what they think and say.

Continued here:
The short path from censorship to violence - Spectator.co.uk (blog)

The San Francisco-based photo-sharing site Pinterest would seem to rank low on the list of potential threats to China. Beloved by fashion designers, photographers, cooks and hobbyists, the 7-year-old website is a global hub for the sharing of images, trends and ideas on topics ranging from living-room design to what to cook at a Saturday barbecue.

Unfortunately, Pinterests innocuousness couldnt save it from the same fate as other foreign internet companies in China, including Facebook and Alphabet (formerly known as Google). Earlier last month, the Chinese government blocked Chinese internet users from accessing the site. And that should make Pinterest of interest to the Trump administration, as well as China.

Pinterests troubles arent unique. Last year, China banned thousands of U.S. websites from China, including eight of the 25 most-trafficked global sites. Yet there was hardly a word of protest out of Washington against these systematic denials of market access. Similar restrictions against U.S. automakers, say, would almost certainly have prompted complaints to the World Trade Organization.

The costs imposed by this policy are adding up. In 2015, the global value of international data flows came to $2.8 trillion, exceeding the global flow of merchandise for the first time. The U.S. economy has benefited more than most from that trade. In 2014, the U.S. exported nearly $400 billion in digital services, accounting for more than half of all U.S. services exports and generating a $159 billion trade surplus in the sector.

Though its impossible to calculate what Facebook, Google and Twitter mightve earned in Chinas booming internet sector had they been allowed to compete, theres little question that they would have added measurably to that surplus.

The Chinese government is doubtless aware of the opportunities that online protectionism creates for domestic companies. In June 2009, China blocked Twitter; two months later, Sina Corp. launched a wildly successful knock-off microblog, Weibo, that has thrived for years in the absence of foreign competition. Likewise, when Google announced in May 2010 that it was contemplating the total shutdown of its Chinese offices, the stock of Baidu Inc. its leading Chinese competitor and a keen observer and imitator of Googles business rallied 16.6 percent in a single day, while smaller rivals enjoyed similar bumps.

Meanwhile, local Chinese versions of Pinterest have flooded Chinas market since 2012 with middling success. If the recent ban holds, at least one of those companies may enjoy a highly lucrative opportunity to become Chinas Pinterest.

Pinterests options, on the other hand, are limited. The Chinese government is notoriously opaque about why it blocks sites, and there are no formal procedures for appeal.

The idea of dragging China before the WTO to argue that its Great Firewall represents a trade barrier isnt a new idea. The European Union has contemplated such an approach since the late 2000s. And late last year, in a move that could lay the groundwork for a case, the Obama administration argued that Chinas worsening censorship posed a significant burden on foreign internet service providers. The next step, though a formal complaint and case before the WTO is up to the Trump administration.

Such a case wouldnt be a slam dunk. China has long cited WTO clauses that give countries room to impose measures to protect public morality and order. Even if it lost the WTO case, the Chinese government would be highly unlikely to abide by the decision in full.

But the WTO recently ruled against a Chinese attempt to invoke public morality as an excuse to restrict the import and distribution of American books, magazines, films and other published material. And any Chinese attempt to ignore WTO rulings would undermine its recent posturing as a champion of free trade. A negotiated settlement perhaps integrated into a long-delayed U.S.-China investment treaty that opens China to U.S. internet companies while acknowledging Chinas right to censor selectively (not wholesale) for morality and public order, might be the best outcome for all sides.

Adam Minter is a Bloomberg View columnist.

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China's 'Great Firewall' of censorship is yet another trade barrier ... - Press of Atlantic City

The influential social media site Reddit.com, which has hundreds of millions of users, came under fresh fire today for allegedly discriminating against users of the pro-Trump section of the site called/r/The_Donald. Critics accused Reddit ofunder-reporting how many "subscribers" the section has while telling advertisers that the section has a much higher number of users.

But Reddit tells Fox News that the flap was caused by a simple labelling error that Reddit made when it rolled out a new system for advertisers Thursday.

Reddit.comhas a live counter available to the public thatsays the pro-Trump section of the sitehas 385,000 subscribers. Reddit users closely follow such counters to gauge popularity. But between Thursday and Friday afternoon, if a user went to Reddit's advertising platform,ads.reddit.com, and expressed interest in advertising in the Trump subreddit, the user was shown a dramatically higher number of subscribers: more than 6 million.

The discrepancy was first reported by the blogRight Side Politics.Fox News confirmed the two differing Reddit counts.

PRIVACY ACTIVISTS WANT TO SELL TRUMP'S BROWSING DATA

Users of/r/The_Donaldsay this is just the latest example of Reddit discriminating against them. Reddit has takenother censorship measures in the pastand blocks most posts from the pro-Trump section of the site from appearing on the "front page" of Reddit.

A post in the Trump section Friday afternoon reads: "385,000 subscribers? TRY 6 MILLION... STOP LYING TO US."

Users also said thatReddit could be guilty of advertising fraudif it were to turn out that the 385,000 number were correct and the 6 million number were wrong.

Fox News asked Reddit about the discrepancy.

SOCIAL MEDIA SITE REDDIT CENSORS TRUMP SUPPORTERS

Reddit Director of Communications AnnaSoellner told Fox News that the high advertising counts were caused by a labelling error in a new service:

"When we released the new ads self-serve product yesterday, the ad interface said "Subscribers" in the targeting dropdown list. However, the actual number represented here was not "Subscribers" but was actually "Daily Unique Visitors" to the subreddit,"she said.

In other words, the advertising page was meant to say that the Trump section averaged 6 million unique visitors to the page each day; not 6 million subscribers.

She said the error has been partly fixed as of Friday afternoon.

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"We have just pushed out a change to rename this number Daily Impressions and will modify the numbers shown in the dropdown to show Daily Impressions."

"Daily Impressions" is the number of advertisement views available. Soellner alsolinked toadditional details about the difference between the three different terms.

As of 3 p.m. Friday afternoon, the Reddit advertisers page said the Trump section had 28 million "subscribers" -- but according to Soellner that should really (and soon will) read 28 million "daily impressions."

By 3:30 p.m. Friday, the page had been fixed to show 28 million "daily impressions." It no longer shows 6 million subscribers.

THE WEEK IN PICTURES

Prior to the fix, other sections of the site also had apparent discrepancies between the advertising count and the normal count, but not nearly as big as for the Trump section. Reddit's politics section, for example, was listed as having 6.3 million subscribers to advertisers and 3.3 million to the general public.

Other sections actually had advertising counts that are lower than the public counts: The Reddit Science section was shown to advertisers as having 10 million users while the general public saw 16 million.

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Reddit defends against accusations of ad fraud and Trump censorship - Fox News