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By Anshuman A. Mondal

The prime minister was recently accused of tolerating racism by posing with some blacked-up Morris dancers for a publicity photograph. His accusers have, in turn, been accused of being over-sensitive or guilty of misreading.

It's a wearyingly familiar scene, played out every time there is a controversy of this kind. One side claims the right to freedom of speech, the other insists that other fundamental rights have been violated (for instance, to be free from racial discrimination). A stalemate ensues that is never resolved, but life moves onuntil the next controversy flares up.

The giving and taking of offence is at the heart of these controversies. But what exactly is going on when people give or take offence? Is it simply a difference of opinion or interpretation, or are there deeper motivations and explanations?

To answer these questions we need to re-think not just freedom of speech, but also the idea of 'speech' on which it rests.

The common sense view of language is that is simply a vehicle of communication. It sees expression as merely the passing of information, ideas, concepts and images from one human to another. 'Speech' is therefore separated from action. While making speech always involves an act writing, verbalisation the expression, once it is made, stands on its own, apart and distinct from the act which created it.

This underlies most contemporary understandings of freedom of speech. The first amendment of the US constitution, for instance, states that "Congress shall make no lawabridging the freedom of speech". If speech is not distinct from action, then this would effectively mean that Congress shall not make any law, which is absurd.

However, in his seminal book How to Do Things with Words, the Oxford philosopher J L Austin developed something known as 'speech act theory'. He argued that there were two broad categories of speech: the first, which he called 'constatives', are simply descriptive and informational; the second he called 'performatives', and they dont simply say something, they do something. These forms of speech are therefore a kind of action.

In my book Islam and Controversy: The Politics of Free Speech after Rushdie, I argue that the giving and taking of offence are performative speech acts in Austins sense. They act upon the world and the work they do is political insofar as they aim to establish a power relation between offender and offendee. Put simply, to offend someone is to subordinate them, to put them down. Conversely, to take offence is to draw attention to that subordination.

The link between abusive speech and the performance of power is demonstrated by a simple thought experiment how many offensive terms of abuse can you think of that apply to the white race, male gender or heterosexuality?

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Comment: Don't fear censorship it protects the vulnerable

By EVE NEWMAN / even@laramieboomerang.com Wednesday, October 29, 2014

University of Wyoming professor Jeff Lockwood is scheduled to speak about censorship by the energy industry during a talk this weekend in Sheridan.

Lockwood, who works in the UW Department of Philosophy, is set to present the keynote address for the Powder River Basin Resource Councils 42nd annual meeting at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at the Holiday Inn in Sheridan.

The talk, Living Behind the Carbon Curtain: Wyoming, Energy and Censorship, is a preview of a book by the same name thats due out in 2016, to be published by University of New Mexico Press.

Im digging into the ways in which the energy industry has colluded with the government in both Wyoming and nationally as well as internationally, Lockwood said, to shape public discourse, and in some cases to explicitly censor free speech, particularly forms of speech the industry finds inconsistent with its interests.

The book highlights five examples of such censorship that have taken place in Wyoming, he said.

His talk this weekend will focus on two chapters and one example, about the cancellation of an art show.

Art work was censored from the Nicolaysen Art Museum in Casper because it was deemed offensive to the energy industry, Lockwood said.

His motivation for the project came from the handling of a sculpture at UW called Carbon Sink: What Goes Around Comes Around. It consisted of a spiral of logs from beetle-killed trees arranged around a pile of coal. The sculpture, by artist Chris Drury, was installed on campus in 2011. It was removed in May 2012, a year ahead of schedule.

University officials initially said water damage necessitated its early removal, though emails requested by the media suggested the sculpture might have been removed because some lawmakers and coal companies found it offensive. Much of UWs funding comes from taxes paid by coal mines and oil and gas fields in the state, plus donations from energy companies.

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UW professor to talk about energy, politics, free speech

FINAL FANTASY XIV: Unnecessary Censorship #1
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By: Zodical Candy

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FINAL FANTASY XIV: Unnecessary Censorship #1 - Video

PISCATAWAY The decision to pull an article from the Northern Highlands Regional High School newspaper was used to highlight a growing trend of censorship Monday at a gathering of student journalists from across the state.

The keynote event, "Press Rights, No Fear," at the Garden State Scholastic Press Association's 35th annual Fall Press Day on Rutgers University's Busch Campus included two student panelists for the first time.

"We're putting them out in center for you because of the work that they did in terms of fighting for their rights when their articles were censored at their schools," said John Tagliareni, the moderator and a retired adviser for Bergenfield High School's student paper.

Student press censorship is a growing problem, experts say.

"Where we had gone for years with getting very few calls, in the past year and a half we've had several significant incidences some in which the advisers were either ousted or forced to resign in order to not compromise their principles," said Susan Everett, treasurer for the scholastic press group.

Among them was the censorship of an article by Adelina Colaku, the former editor of the Highland Fling at Northern Highlands.

Colaku, one of the two student panelists, spoke about her three-month legal battle with the administration to get published a story detailing a rift within the administration. A revised version of her story was eventually published.

"When you think of authority figures who are meant to be responsible and reinforce the rights that you have students don't expect that they would violate them," said Colaku, who now attends Bard College. "So I think many students are shocked to hear this and I'm glad I can bring it to light and hopefully they can do something as well if this is occurring in their school system."

The other student panelist, Kylie Sposato, now a freshman at Rowan University, wrote a column at Pemberton Township High School lamenting smoking in the girls' bathroom.

After several meetings with the principal and superintendent, a revised version of her story was published.

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Censorship and rights at summit

Asbury Park Press 11:25 a.m. EDT October 28, 2014

Protestors attend the Metropolitan Operas season opening on Sept. 22 to protest the Mets decision to premiere the controversial opera Death of Klinghoffer. (Photo: AP )

NEW YORK It is a tale of two cities. Well, one ultraliberal metropolis of 8.4 million, and one teeny, conservative town of 3,340. But both face the same threat: dangerous art.

Here in New York, the threat is a world-renowned opera companys production about terrorism. In Maiden, N.C., the threat is a high school play about love.

Almost, Maine has enjoyed nearly 2,000 school productions since its premiere in 2004. It is, in fact, currently the most frequently produced full-length play in U.S. high schools, edging out even A Midsummer Nights Dream. Set in a fictional town in remotest Maine, the whimsical rom-com features nine interlocking vignettes of romance and heartache, playing on familiar idioms about love. The figurative act of falling in love, for example, is illustrated by actors literally falling down. Its a bit like a better-written, slightly surrealist version of Love Actually.

High school students around the country, including those in Maiden High Schools theater club, are drawn to an appealing combination of slapstick, wit and wholesome schmaltz. School administrators likewise appreciate that the most explicit dialogue in John Carianis PG-rated script is the minced oath Jeezum Crow. Who could object to that? The community leaders of Maiden, it turns out to one vignette in particular.

Remember that scene with the falling-down gag? Theres no sex, or kissing, or even allusions to lust. But the gravity-prone characters are both men, which was incendiary enough to lead the principal to cancel the production, citing sexually explicit overtones and multiple sexual innuendoes.

Suspecting that the gay storyline might be an issue, the students had asked the principal to OK their play choice several weeks earlier. After consulting with the superintendent, he did, on the condition that parents sign permission slips allowing their kids to audition for a play with homosexual characters. Then, after the 16-year-old student-director started rehearsals, word got out to local churches that the show contained gay people. Just a few days after same-sex marriage became legal in the state, the students were told the community isnt ready for this play after all.

They were distraught. Theyd already broken their budget securing the rights, and they worried about the message the principals decision sent to their openly gay classmates. The American Civil Liberties Union offered to help the group fight the decision as happened in 2011, during a similar battle at a Maryland school but the students declined legal help, not wanting to cause more conflict. They still hoped to produce the play, though, so when a former teacher offered to help mount an off-campus production, they agreed. Their Kickstarter page set a goal of $1,000. Less than a week later, they had already raised six times that amount.

Many of the donations, and accompanying petition signatures, have come from sympathizers far from Maiden. On social media and in national news reports, far-flung supporters of the students accuse the town of bigotry, backwardness and intellectual suppression.

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RAMPELL: Censorship alive and well in Maine and NYC