this because a lot of times when we have carved out these areas where we say they are not protected forms of amendmenter the first , we say in terms of hate speech. but the rationale with a lot of this hate speech is going after minority communities in awful ways. and yet we look at something and a lot ofy times in our history in these categories the minority groups i believe have been the ones that have been harmed from this. in many ways why the courts have been very leery about going into things that we have these very visceral reactions. we have these human-based reactions to. the second thing i want to bring up about this as far as the actual harm, on the one hand the reason to change the way we consider hate speech is there is actual harm here. can link discussions of hate speech from my corner of the

world about lgbt publics to increased rates of depression. and suicide. andnow there are media agenda setting affects that if this is shared even on twitter or whatever it may be it's going to impact people. way we see parallels to libel law. the reason we can't say that. the reason i can't destroy you, destroy your career by things i say is there's a physical harm which is the principles of how we have a legal system in the first place for beyond speech. we kind of start with these ideas of a free society. of course we have to say you can't murder people because there's physical harm. there are certainly harms involved when we don't restrict this kind of hate speech. at the same time i think charlottesville to me as a great example about why it is so important that we allow this speech. this is essentially the view of groups like the aclu. imagine if this

speech was not heard or self-centered. -- self censored. the unfortunate thing to me about charlottesville is charlottesville happens multiple times a day. hate speech occurs all the time. the number of times i can say i , thebeen called a faggot number of times i have been degraded in public environments. i have been at events where western -- westboro baptist church has held up the same signs. i think it's important to see that and i think it's important to discuss that. what i think is really tragic are all of those stories we don't hear about every day because we can only focus on one new story topic of the day. we are appear citing starlets fell -- charlottesville which happened at most a year ago.

it is a seminal moment. at the same time imagine the other 13,000 or 3 million examples of hate speech that we are not discussing and then we are not processing and not combating. that is still where i come from the perspective of where the courts still as far as saying as file as this is, this still leaves the same kind of protections. unlike how we have carved out for things like libel. briefly i just want to flag something. i know we are going to talk about info wars. is as where i think this little bit closer to some of my areas as far as public relations and minority groups. this is where we often have the conversation. it's not about government regulations. this is about facebook taking things down. youtube taking things down. or they have every right to do this.

and the implications are public relations environments for them. what kind of company do they want to be? but there are also a lot of policy implications. facebook has been in the news russian dataeir hacks etc. more than hate speech per se. but i think it's very important when mark zuckerberg goes in front of congress and as we are not a media company, we are a tech company. for that is because they don't want to be involved in this discussion from the communication perspective. stuff. just make they happen to make a platform where we communicate, but that's the focal point. that's where i think we also will get in some discussions of goes on in the court. joe [applause] . our third panelist is chelsea

reynolds. she teaches classes on journals meant digital media in the department of communications at cal state fullerton. proud to brag about hiring chelsea on our faculty. she earned a phd in math medication from the university of minnesota and and and they in journalism from the university of missouri. her work has been recognized with numerous awards including the mary della smith award for feminist scholarship. her research investigates media representations of sexuality, gender, race and sexual health. please welcome chelsea reynolds. [applause] thiswill follow up discussion which is primarily focused on hate speech with a discussion of reprehensible speech. speech made by communities that are marginalized in the public sphere. i am not a legal scholar. i'm a scholar representation and sexuality primarily. my discussion will focus on those issues which i am most

familiar with. as a queer woman i think it's important that we recognize that queer people are marginalized in both the immediate sphere in mass media and also digitally in online communities. i'm going to talk little bit about craigslist, backpage.com but -- two new block laws that have recently passed called foster and system -- fosta and sesta. online disembodiment is the idea that we can transcend lived experiences as people by using digital spaces. was andisembodiment interesting theoretical idea until about four months ago. public with these ndw laws called sesta am fosta. sesta is the stop enabling sex traffickers act and fosta is the

fight online sex traffickers act. they have pulled down more than 40 websites. including craigslist forums andng sex backpage.com. exception to section 230 of the communications decency act which was basically the gold standard libertarian internet. the free speech for all online. section 230 says no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider. that is craigslist, backpage.com. not responsible for the speech that is made by users on their website. andfosta make exceptions to that policy. these laws were written to

protect child sex trafficking and make craigslist and back pages responsible for child sex trafficking occurs on their websites. the laws as they are written actually police online prostitution and prevent sex workers, consenting sex workers, often queer people who need money to pay rent using these web forms for themselves as well. also prevent queer folks like me and joe from using digital spaces which were incredibly important for our community. craigslist, can -- backpage.com. not just for sex. to explore identity, meet others who have experienced marginalization due to their sexuality or gender and to explore communities that you wouldn't become triple exploring -- be comfortable exploring in your physical life. sesta and fosta create a couple

problems. online sex trafficking obviously continues even though these laws have forced craigslist and back page to shut down their sex forums. online sex trafficking continues on the dark web. into digitalved spaces that are more difficult to survey a by police and incredibly easy to access by people who are internet savvy. it is not as if these laws are preventing child sex trafficking . they are merely moving them into less visible spaces. police across the country have realized as of now that this is a huge problem in terms of surveillance and apprehension of similar -- criminal activity. sesta and fosta doesn't distinguish between consensual sex work and human trafficking. it merely eliminates an important screening tool. sex workers have used craigslist and backpage.com to identify their clients before meeting them. this tool has been illuminated from their repertoire and they are forced onto the streets or the dark web where identifying

and screening clients becomes more difficult. so that's an issue as well. personal ad sites are used by many communities, not just by sex workers or sex traffickers or tim st. john's. many communities like queer people, people with disabilities, polyamorous communities, kink communities, trans communities use personal ad forums to express themselves. not for criminal activity. for sexual expression. again that online disembodiment includes exploring sexuality in a space that is safer online. this creates self-censorship among marginalized communities which is an important thing to consider here. who are on the margins of society use these digital spaces as their safe spaces and when they are not available we self don't use these forums because we could perhaps be perceived by the law to be doing something criminal when we are regularly speaking about our communities as queer people.

fostak that sesta and also set an arbitrary moral standards and a precedent for removing sexual and erotic content. instagram,n twitter, facebook removing any content that could be perceived as prostitution because of sesta and fosta. that includes images of women's bodies, images of queer bodies. accounts being disabled and removed from online spaces because there is concern that now with the law would make facebook, twitter, instagram liable for the behavior of their users. i think that's a concern as well. this is a big problem obviously for proponents of the first amendment in that it creates self-censorship and has also forced -- these websites were not removed by the government. they self censored because they didn't want legal action to be taken against them. that's problematic.

we need to think about sesta and fosta as being a first step in that couldy steps lead to censorship of other sexual communities online. first it's craigslist and back page. these sort of a bore and stephen spaces online. but where is it going next? i don't have any answer for it does the first amendment protect too much offensive speech but i have concerns about what this government is doing with offensive speech at the moment. thank you. [applause] >> thank you, chelsea. , sally ann cruikshank's assistant professor in the school of journalism and strategic media. she researches press freedom and post-genocide and post-conflict societies and has conducted field research in rwanda and ethiopia. her research has been presented at international conferences and peer-reviewed journals.

she received her phd from the e.w. scripps school of journalism at ohio university. following several years working a television news producer for cbs in miami and pittsburgh. [applause] >> i'm going to take us out of the u.s. just a little bit to talk a television news producer for cbs in miami and pittsburgh. about the genocide in rwanda. before you think, genocide is a stretch for what we are seeing today in the u.s. and this discussion over hate speech just bear with me for a second. because i think it's actually way more relevant than a lot of people think it would be. the rwanda and media played a key role in the 1994 genocide that left at least 800,000 people dead. particularly am going to talk about a radio station. this radio station was an active participant in the genocide and it is kind of the model for if you want to marginalize and

dehumanize a group of people and then make it ok to physically attack them, this radio station is the model for that. thepower party founded station in july 1993. about a year before the genocide started. was it went on the air it the only radio station besides the government station to air. dry officiale information that the radio rwanda gave the people, it presented a very colorful cast of djs. the djs came on the air. they started popularizing call-in shows. so you could call them, request a song for your boyfriend or girlfriend. you could wish someone a happy they and they played very .opular congolese music they medially brand themselves as the voice of the people.

greatrted out as a really happy easy radio station to listen to. once they had their audience and once they had brand of themselves as the voice of the people they started to slip in utsi propaganda. and before you know it they were being called cockroaches. they started singling out tutsis and sympathizers and branding them as the enemy of the people. which is a phrase that should sound familiar right now. once the genocide was actually underway they went as far as urging people to kill tutsis. there was a broadcast where they said, if you see a pregnant woman, don't forget about the baby. at some point in time they were saying things like, look at a person. notice his height and physical appearance. at some point in time they were saying thingsif you see his pree

nose, smash it. the importance of the radio was actually highlighted in the movie hotel rwanda which a lot of people have seen. there was a convoy the human was trying to evacuate some people from the country. the radio station found out about it, aired it. the convoy was stopped and they had to turn around and go back. that are some issues with movie but that is a pretty accurate representation of what happened. on, theis was all going head of the un's peacekeeping had said before during the genocide that the radio contained key points for what was about to happen. initially those signs were missed because the un's peacekeeping troops didn't have the capacity to monitor the media. and i think that a lot of time -- because it went unnoticed

they didn't know what a key player the media was becoming in the anti-tutsi propaganda. when the peacekeeping force finally realized what was going on, he appealed to the united nations several times both before the genocide and during the genocide to have the radio transmission blocked. but it was denied. u.n. leaders argued that jamming the station's frequency would be ornternational law violation also it was expensive to block the radio station. make a think you could very very good argument that if the radio station had been intervened earlier it could have had a much different course of action. , in a couple of other notes that are worth mentioning a year after the rwandan genocide they station in burundi started a similar approach to hate speech.

at this time the penn state actually put the plan in place to block the radio transmission. the international criminal tribunal for rwanda rtlmcted two directors of of several crimes including genocide, the direct and public incitement to commit genocide and crimes against humanity. they rtlm played broadcast in te trial which made a huge impact on the decision. and in its judgment the trial aled that the station was drumbeat calling on listeners to take action against the enemy and that they had whipped people into a frenzy of hatred and violence that was directed tsi and against the tus that people should be aware of the power of the human voice. a lot of people have misconceptions about the role of the media in the rwandan genocide. they think it just started out as hate speech. that's not how it went. it is subtle.

that's why it's important to discuss some of the questions that we have around this because as a press freedom scholar it is a very difficult question. i defend free speech and press freedom to my very last breath but also it is important to pay attention to the nuance. it's not an easy thing to define this ise between protected speech and this is hate speech but it is very important because words matter. when you work to dehumanize a group of people it makes it much easier to yell things at them or to attack them without warning on the street. and we are seeing more of that happened. charlottesville was a turning point but like you said, there are incidents every day where someone is yelled at or attacked or discriminated against. i think it's really important to have these discussions as difficult as they might be. >> thank you. [applause]

rfid analyst is hadar harris. he is student director of the student press law center. one of the most important organizations in the country doing god's work. prior to joining he served as executive director of the northern california innocence works to exonerate innocent and reform the criminal justice system. she previously served for 13 years as executive director of the center for human rights and human chair in american university washington college of law. she has worked on freedom of expression and assembly issues through the broad lens of civil and political rights as an international human rights attorney. she brings a comparative perspective of work in over 25 countries. following her graduation from law school she worked in private practice. she holds a ba in political science from brown university and a jd from the university of california los angeles. please welcome hadar harris.

[applause] >> we are to need to shorten that bio. i really appreciate being here and i appreciate the comments of all of the panelists as well as the framing of what is a very conversation. what has been interesting to me about our conversation is nobody wants to define what hate speech is. nobody wants to really lay down some clear lines about where there is incitement where there is not incitement, where we crossover. even in the beginning of our conversation we talked about should we be overturning kind of established really basic tenets of law because maybe the world has moved past that? and we will come back to that i'm sure in our conversation. i have been given the job of cleaning up.

which we will talk about afterward how hard is this. but because i have been given that job i also have the flexibility of adding a few more things into the conversation. i appreciate the fact that i come after your remarks about rwanda. the things that i think gets lost in this conversation about freedom of speech and freedom of the press and the first amendment in the united states is that there is an additional body of law to which the united states is legally obligated. and as much as many people don't like to talk about it, i love to talk about it. it is international human rights law. the united states has ratified, not just signed ratified two international treaties that have aboutpecific provisions speech. they are the international covenant on civil and political rights and the international convention for the illumination of all forms of racial discrimination.

in both of those treaties, there civil andions in the political rights treaty that talk about freedom of expression that is protective of freedom of speech and freedom of expression. freedom of the press. the next article, article 20 it says that any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law. it's pretty sweeping what it's also kind of specific. an interesting frame to put to the side. of the convention for the limitation of all forms of racial discrimination, it prohibits all incitement to racism. and racism in the racial discrimination treaty is very broad. looks at nationality,

ethnicity, whole bunch of different categories. so the united states has said that it is obligated under those provisions, which are in some ways sweeping and in some ways narrow but do provide additional framework. -- hate speech, incitement, and freedom of the press. we can go into a really long conversation about the various reservations the united states has made on these treaties. we can go into the nuances, the grappling the international community is doing, but the way in which the international community is defining these terms in operational ways. but know that, and many of you are very familiar with the fact that, europe is moving in a very different direction on freedom

of speech and freedom of expression issues and social media regulations than we are here in the united states. i was appreciative of the conversation about sesta and fosta because you laid out so many pieces of where it falls flat and where it is very problematic in this first effort to regulate and self censor social media, where germany has just passed and implemented the state spoke law, not really called that, but it gives specific takedown provisions something is af very extreme case of incitement and provocation, the platform has 24 hours to take it down. if it is a little less bad, and i'm not sure how that gets determined, they have seven days and have to write reports and be transparent in their processes about why and how they are taking things down. is it a perfect law?

i doubt it. i have not followed it carefully, so do not ask detailed questions about it. but it is important to know that there are efforts out there in other parts of the world to contend with the things that we're discussing here in very concrete ways, and in many ways the united states is behind. if you watched mark zuckerberg testified before congress, which i have -- i am such a nerd about these things. i turned the tv on and go, oh, shh, we have to listen. i was in palo alto at the time and the streets were empty because everybody was watching on their phone or whatever. we are not a tech company. you know what, they are an enabler for speech, and we need to figure out what that means in terms of how that is regulated. the questions congress was asking to mark zuckerberg kind of showed how little our members of congress understand what it

would mean to regulate the platforms in some meaningful way that would strike a balance that we may feel comfortable with. i want to throw those ideas out there for further discussion. i want to do two more things quickly, one is to just note dot on august 2, because i want to bring it back to the title of our conversation, two special groups, one from the united nations, an american that is a law professor at the university of california irvine, special repertoire on freedom of expression, and the special repertoire of the inter-american commission on human rights, which again the united states is a party to, issued a joint statement condemning u.s. president donald trump's repeated attacks on the free

press, urging him and his administration to seek efforts to undermine the media's role of holding government accountable, honest, and transparent. it said these attacks are encountered to the obligations to respect press freedom and international human rights law, and we're especially concerned that these attacks increase the risk of journalists being targeted with violence. if you have followed the last "theeeks of columnists in washington post" and "new york times" and all over the place, journalists are getting more and more concerned about this. after the shooting a few weeks which was theis, largest deliberate killing of journalists in the history of the country, they were targeted not for political reasons, but certainly the enabling environment that talks about the enemy of the state, i believe, enabled that murder to take

place. it was interesting though in the wake of the killing. immediately, journalism organizations kind of put out a lot of "thoughts and prayers" statements, and journalists a reticent to make strong statements, the kinds we have heard over the last couple of weeks, i think after the "new york times" meeting with the president and everything kind of falling apart after that. at the student press loss and, we did something a little unprecedented, which was to write a statement and ask for joint sign-ons. aejmc signed on to that statement, and we do have copies available here. not only did they sign on to it, but more than 500 organizations and individuals signed onto that statement. the statement itself condemned in the strongest terms the deadly targeting of journalists at the capital gazette. and it goes on to talk about the

fact that this enabling environment is very dangerous to the profession of journalism and to students. with that, i hope i have tied together many of our themes and enable us toto move forward into more discussion. thanks again. moderator: thank you, hadar. [applause] moderator: so we have heard quite a range of thoughts and comments, some with a thread running through comments and others somewhat disparate. something that struck me as interesting, we had queer scholars arguing that we should let hate speech be out in the open and that the historical gains that minority communities have made has come in part because of free speech principles. we have heard a little about the role that media through

propaganda have played elsewhere in encouraging genocide and fears about similarities to some of the more extremist expressions today. we also heard a first amendment scholar. that work, which i so many of us want to learn more about in this room. i have a couple of questions, and then we will open it up to the audience for questions. for anybody, one of the key tensions, i think, we're struggling with on this issue is that, especially first amendment scholars, we believe that sunshine is the best disinfectant, and if expression gets out into the open, we have this maybe misguided belief that truth will ultimately prevail, that a clash of ideas will resolve with good overcoming evil. on the other hand, we can

recognize that there are some forms of what we are inartfully calling hate speech that has no value in the marketplace of ideas. so how do we hold those two thoughts in the same head? do not all rush at once. [laughter] >> i will take issue with the premise of the question. i think the simplistic narrative that i usually give, which is long, is that, for the first 50 thes, the morality theory -- dominated free-speech law, and that it all changed in the 1960's. we flipped over to the lmes, brandeis, classic kind of libertarian theory. felonious isat is that what happened is that in the open marketplace, we made that flip.

so someone can wear the f-bomb on his jacket in the marketplace, actually a los angeles court reporter, but it is considered a public space in society, but we have not abandoned the order and morality theory, and that part of american life, either culturally or legally, we have not abandoned it. formal versed commitment doctrine retains a theory for public schoolchildren and public school teachers. the american workplace is not an open marketplace, brandeis free-speech, neither are private and public workspaces. private and public employees cannot wear that jacket to work. good luck with that. there are many places in society which we have said, in these spaces, border, morality, do corm, respect for human dignit