We do not want our children to grow up in a world where they live in fear of speaking their minds. We want them to grow up in a world where their ideas can be expressed, explored and debated openly – a world that the founders of our democracies envisioned when they enshrined free speech into our laws and constitutions.
—Westminster Declaration, 2024 (143 signatories)
The Westminster Declaration that demands the end censorship is just out. Given that
… [a]uthorities in India and Turkey have seized the power to remove political content from social media. The legislature in Germany and the Supreme Court in Brazil are criminalising political speech. In other countries, measures such as Ireland’s ‘Hate Speech’ Bill, Scotland’s Hate Crime Act, the UK’s Online Safety Bill, and Australia’s ‘Misinformation’ Bill threaten to severely restrict expression and create a chilling effect… the Censorship Industrial Complex [also] operates through more subtle methods. These include visibility filtering, labelling, and manipulation of search engine results. Through deplatforming and flagging, social media censors have already silenced lawful opinions on topics of national and geopolitical importance… Some politicians and NGOs[9] are even aiming to target end-to-end encrypted messaging apps like WhatsApp, Signal, and Telegram…
this declaration has been long overdue. It was expected, and it is welcome. What is remarkable is the breadth of the political spectrum of the signatories, from Marxists, through whistleblowers, all the way to the conservative psychologists. There is something in the air, and it’s not political. Life is slowly coming back. And we can laugh again.
…Or can we, here, at UMass Boston? Our Leaders are not that committed to free speech and open inquiry. They never were (despite pretending, post-October 7, to pay lip service). It started with the most batshit crazy attempt at a mission statement, continued through the all encompassing, all powerful (and currently defunct) restorative justice commission, scoffing at the 2022 College of Science and Mathematics adoption of the Chicago Statement, a failed attempt to impose a DEI statement on faculty candidates, and more recently, a big-brother style totally unacceptable “IT acceptable use policy”, that gives the university the authority to seize your personal cell phone, which is something even the police can’t do without a warrant (details coming soon).
More to work on...