freeDimensional

Limits to Free Speech? Symposium on Freedom of Speech & Online resource on Inflammatory Speech

Posted on January 20, 2011 | No Comments

The exhibition Freedom of Speech at Neuer Berliner Kunstverein and Kunstverein Hamburg questions and analyzes the concept of freedom of speech and the ideological role it plays in Western democracies. Everything revolves around the questions: What if only those who tell the truth were allowed to speak? What consequences does freedom of expression have for our society? The accompanying symposium will discuss the central issues via an interdisciplinary approach.

World Policy Institute Senior Fellow Susan Benesch, who directs the project, Dangerous Speech on the Road to Genocide and writes the Voices that Poison blog says “Thanks to new media, inflammatory speech is more pervasive and more influential than ever before. It is easy to jump to conclusions about that influence in particular Ray Ban outlet cases, but more research is needed in order to better understand the impact inflammatory speech has on individuals and groups. Responses to limit inflammatory speech need not be limited to government regulation; there are other ways of reducing the danger.” freeDimensional works on cases dealing with freedom of expression everyday; we would love to hear your views on whether freedom of speech, expression and thought is a relative issue, or (stated differently) what advice can you offer a US-based non-profit organization that seeks to have a non-nationalist, global approach to supporting free expression. Let us know your thoughts!

Conference news and image of Michel Foucault reprinted from e-flux.