2020 Symposium: Free Speech Around the World
Free speech and expression are the cornerstones of any modern society. The ability of individuals to exercise these freedoms has produced a vibrant marketplace of ideas. Speech and expression are inextricably linked to the way corporations, governments, and individuals function on a daily basis. These omnipresent concepts shape communication, commerce, and political participation.
The Michigan State College of Law International Law Review will be hosting its annual symposium exploring the ideas of speech and expression globally. The symposium will touch on the social and legal history, and introduce predictions of the field’s trajectory in years to come.
We invite you to join us at the MSU College of Law building in the Castle Board Room (room 343) on Friday, February 14, 2020.
Erik Bleich is Charles A. Dana Professor of Political Science and Chair of the Department of Political Science at Middlebury College. His scholarship focuses on race and ethnic politics in Europe and North America. He is the author of The Freedom to Be Racist? How the United States and Europe Struggle to Preserve Freedom and Combat Racism (Oxford University Press, 2011) and Race Politics in Britain and France: Ideas and Policymaking since the 1960s (Cambridge University Press, 2003). He is co-editor of a 2015 special issue of the French journal Esprit on “Punishing Hate,” and author of “From Race to Hate: A Historical Perspective,” in Hate, Politics, Law: Critical Perspectives on Combating Hate (Oxford University Press, 2018). He participated as a co-PI on an NSF grant funding the Global Free Speech Repository, for which he helped oversee research on the European Court of Human Rights. He has published articles in journals such as Comparative Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Social Forces, Theory and Society, and World Politics, and has contributed to public discussions in Al Jazeera English, the Atlantic, the Financial Times, the Guardian, and the Washington Post/Monkey Cage.
Miriam F. Elman is the Executive Director of the Academic Engagement Network, a DC-based non-profit that combats campus antisemitism, champions academic freedom and free speech, and seeks to advance Israel literacy on American universities and colleges. She is currently on leave from Syracuse University where she is an associate professor of political science and the Inaugural Robert D. McClure Professor of Teaching Excellence at the Maxwell School of Citizenship & Public Affairs. At the Maxwell School, Elman has been a research director in the Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflict and Collaboration (PARCC) for over a decade. Elman received her Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University and completed her B.A. in International Relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She has authored over 65 articles and book chapters and has edited six books, including most recently Democracy and Conflict Resolution: The Dilemmas of Israel’s Peacemaking and Jerusalem: Conflict and Cooperation in a Contested City, both with Syracuse University Press. Recently she also co-edited a special issue of the journal Israel Studies entitled Word Crimes: Reclaiming the Language of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. She is currently researching the impact of the anti-Israel movement within the US academy.
Koji Higashikawa is professor of law at Kanazawa University, Japan. He teaches Anglo-American law to Japanese students with particular emphasis on American law, and also teaches Japanese law to international students. He earned his Ph.D. with the dissertation on American election law system and minority voting rights from Kobe University Graduate School of Law in 2001, and published a dozen of academic articles in the field of election law. As a free speech scholar, he has been interested in reconciling possible conflict between free speech right of aggressive, violent, and offensive speakers and the victims of such speech. He is the author of case notes on recent cases from the Supreme Court of the United States including Snyder v. Phelps (funeral picketing), Brown v. EMA (violent video game regulation), and US v. Alvarez (false speech). He has given presentations on hate speech issue both in Japan and in the United States, one of which is “Recent Development on Hate Speech Controversy in Japan” in the Law and Society Association Annual Conference of 2015 held in Seattle where he discussed the impact of Zaitokukai case, the first judicial ruling on hate speech in Japan. One of his English publications is Japan’s Hate Speech Laws: Translations of the Osaka City Ordinance and the National Act to Curb Hate Speech in Japan. His research interests include comparative analysis of judicial system as well as free speech issue and election law in the United States. He is a councilor and a member of editorial board at Japanese American Society for Legal Studies.
JANE E. KIRTLEY is the Silha Professor of Media Ethics and Law at the Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota, and directs The Silha Center for the Study of Media Ethics and Law. Prof. Kirtley is also an affiliated faculty member at the University of Minnesota Law School, and has held visiting professorships at Suffolk University and Notre Dame law schools. She was a Fulbright Scholar teaching U.S. media law and media ethics at the University of Latvia’s Law Faculty in Riga during Spring 2016, and has received numerous Speaker and Specialist grants to lecture abroad for the U.S. State Department, most recently in Brazil in May 2019. Prof. Kirtley has written friend of the court briefs filed in the U.S. Supreme Court, two books, and many book chapters and articles for scholarly journals and the popular and professional press, including The New York Times, The Conversation, and the Guardian (UK). For 10 years, she has prepared the course handbook chapter on Global Privacy and Data Protection for the Practising Law Institute’s annual Communications Law in the Digital Age conference in New York City. Prof. Kirtley served as Executive Director of The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press for 14 years. Before that, she practiced law in New York, Virginia, and Washington, D.C., and was a reporter for newspapers in Indiana and Tennessee. She was a Pulitzer Prize juror in 2015, and is a long-time member of the board of the Society of Professional Journalists Foundation. Prof. Kirtley’s J.D. is from Vanderbilt University Law School, where she was Executive Articles Editor for the Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law. Her bachelor and master of journalism degrees are from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.
Nadine Strossen, the John Marshall Harlan II Professor of Law at New York Law School and the immediate past President of the American Civil Liberties Union (1991-2008), is a leading expert and frequent speaker/media commentator on constitutional law and civil liberties, who has testified before Congress on multiple occasions. She serves on the advisory boards of the ACLU, Electronic Privacy Information Center, Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), and Heterodox Academy. The National Law Journal has named Strossen one of America’s "100 Most Influential Lawyers," and several other publications have named her one of the country’s most influential women. Her many honorary degrees and awards include the American Bar Association’s prestigious Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement Award (2017). At NYLS’s 2019 commencement, Strossen made history by receiving both the award for outstanding teaching and the award for the best book. When Strossen stepped down as ACLU President, three (ideologically diverse) Supreme Court Justices participated in her farewell/tribute luncheon: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Antonin Scalia, and David Souter. Strossen’s 2018 book HATE: Why We Should Resist It with Free Speech, Not Censorship has earned praise from ideologically diverse experts, including progressive Harvard University Professor Cornel West and conservative Princeton University Professor Robert George. HATE was selected by Washington University as its 2019 “Common Read” for all incoming students. Her earlier book, Defending Pornography: Free Speech, Sex, and the Fight for Women's Rights, was named a New York Times "notable book" of 1995. Strossen has made thousands of public presentations before diverse audiences around the world, including on more than 500 different campuses and in many foreign countries, and she has appeared on virtually every national TV news program. Her hundreds of publications have appeared in many scholarly and general interest publications. Strossen graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard College and magna cum laude from Harvard Law School. Before becoming a law professor, she practiced law in Minneapolis (her hometown) and New York City. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Schedule of Events:
Castle Board Room (Law School Room 343)
8:00am Coffee Hour
9:00am Opening Remarks:
Dean Melanie Jacobs
Prof. Michael Lawrence - Faculty Advisor
Joseph Chletsos - Editor in Chief
Samantha Rothman - Executive Editor
Land Acknowledgement
9:30-10:30am First Speaker, Erik Bleich
10:30-11:30am Second Speaker, Miriam Elman
11:30am-12:30pm Third Speaker, Jane Kirtley
12:30-1:30pm Break for Lunch
1:30-2:30 Fourth Speaker, Nadine Strossen
2:30-3:30 Fifth Speaker, Koji Higashikawa
3:30 Closing Remarks, Samantha Rothman - Executive Editor
Disclaimer: The views expressed in the program are not the official views of the International Law Review or Michigan State College of Law. The journal does not endorse or adopt any views as its own.
Safe Space: In the event any audience member or participant wishes to step out, the International Law Review office and the Diversity & Equity Services Office are designated safe spaces. Both offices are located on the second floor in rooms 209 and 201A respectively.