The New Speech Wars

2025/12/02 2 Comments

Recognition that speech policing under the Trump administration and its followers is significantly worse than more organization and individual specific policing:

…Mchangama’s observation was made during a discussion about free-speech hypocrisies (also recorded as a Persuasion podcast) in which three of the four panelists had been strong critics of progressive illiberalism: Mchangama himself, Persuasion magazine founder and editor-in-chief Yascha Mounk, and Brookings Institution fellow Jonathan Rauch, whose critique of progressive speech-policing, Kindly Inquisitors, appeared in 1993. Now, he is adamant that speech-policing by the government is unequivocally worse: “I would argue it is an order of magnitude more concerning because government can yank your license, investigate you, try you, put you in jail.” We have seen, for instance, television networks being dragged into a Trump-friendly orbit through a combination of bogus lawsuits from Trump and strong-arming by the Federal Communications Commission via its power to regulate media-company mergers. Rauch expressed his dismay at “how quickly we are moving toward Hungary,” where Viktor Orbán’s ruling party has consolidated much of the media landscape in its hands through a combination of direct government control and ownership by Orbán cronies. Except that, Rauch said, America’s slide toward authoritarianism-lite has been happening “on a very fast time scale”—it is already perhaps halfway there after only eight months of Trump’s second term, compared to the fifteen years it took Orbán. It’s not creeping Orbánisation so much as galloping Orbánisation.

Other summit sessions also bore witness to the changed climate in America. The two panels dealing with higher education would once, no doubt, have focused solely on the speech-chilling effects of campus conduct codes or investigations based on student complaints over offensive language, or on the problem of left-skewed ideological uniformity. Now, the focus was also on the Trump administration’s efforts to wrestle universities into submission—including a “compact” offering expanded federal benefits contingent on the promotion of conservative viewpoints—and the danger of non-citizen students being targeted by the feds in retaliation for the expression of disfavoured opinions.

Is there room for a “both sides” argument here? In the session on challenges to academic freedom, some speakers pointed out that federal arm-twisting of academic institutions did not exactly start with Trump. Fourteen years ago, the Obama administration pressured schools to change their handling of Title IX sexual-misconduct cases in ways that weakened due process for accused students. And yet Rauch, who was also on this panel and who was also highly critical of the Title IX reform push under Obama, emphasised the difference: where the Obama administration conducted investigations and took legal action, arguably with “abuse of regulatory authority,” the Trump administration simply issues demands, makes threats, and cuts off or freezes federal funds, including money for vital medical research, to force compliance. It’s not just overreach, said Rauch; it’s “flatly illegal.”

Do universities need reform to promote more open debate and intellectual diversity? At the free-speech summit, the answer was a resounding yes. But there was an equally strong consensus that presidential bullying is not the way, and not just because of principle. Rikki Schlott, the self-described right-leaning libertarian journalist who co-authored The Canceling of the American Mind with FIRE’s Greg Lukianoff, pointed out that “grassroots organic change is the only way that’s actually a meaningful and lasting effect: what happens when the next administration has a different set of demands?” Rauch also disputed the notion that no such organic change was possible within academia until Trump rode to the rescue. In fact, he said, “campuses all over the country were adopting institutional neutrality and the Chicago principles,” which emphasise open discussion and free inquiry. And, if anything, the administration’s heavy-handed interventions “may lead to backlash in the other direction,” assuming that at some point the heavy hand will be gone.

While there is no need to pretend that past American administrations were devoted to free expression, both-sideism under Trump is unconvincing. The Biden administration’s sometimes tense and even heavy-handed interactions with social-media companies about moderating disinformation related to COVID-19 and to election integrity are a favourite “whatabout” response to criticism of the Trump administration’s aggressions against the media.

And yet, as Georgetown professor and social-media researcher Renée diResta argued on the summit’s free-speech hypocrisy panel, the comparison is entirely fallacious: it relies on uncritical acceptance of questionable GOP narratives as well as a bizarre “amnesia” that blames the “Biden censorship regime” for things that happened under the first Trump administration, such as the brief social-media blocking of links to the New York Post story on Hunter Biden’s laptop. (DiResta herself once became a target of right-wing attacks as a “government censor” because of her research on online disinformation and her past receipt of government grants. She says that while she used to support private tech-platform moderation to reduce the visibility of disinformation and extremism, she has since come to believe that giving users more control over their social-media algorithms is a far better and less antagonising solution.)…

Source: The New Speech Wars

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Coyne: A government can’t kill people for no reason? When will this judicial madness end?!

2025/08/18 Leave a comment

Valid points. Mandatory immunization provides another example:

…Nothing in the decision obliges the government to build new bicycle lanes. As such it involves no “positive rights,” which conservatives are right to oppose. It simply requires that before a government takes the extraordinary step of ordering the removal of lanes that have already been built – an action guaranteed to cost some lives and put many more in peril – it ought at least to have some basis in evidence or logic for doing so.

That’s arguable, but it’s not crazy. To be sure, ordinarily we leave the balancing of risks and returns to governments to figure out. The exception in law is where rights are involved. And of these the right to life is surely the most fundamental.

Again, let’s compare the Nova Scotia case. I don’t get to take a stroll in the woods for a couple of months, at a time of severe fire risk, versus I am put permanently at risk of getting killed, to save car drivers a couple of minutes off their route – which it won’t even do! 

These are the sorts of distinctions conservatives used to be able to make without difficulty. What happened?

Source: A government can’t kill people for no reason? When will this judicial madness end?!

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Globe editorial: Cheap excuses for betraying free speech, Lederman

2025/08/16 Leave a comment

Agreed:

…The other disturbing commonality is that officials are failing to reflexively protect the invaluable right to freedom of artistic and political expression in Canada.

We have no doubt that if noisy protesters demanded the withdrawal of a TIFF movie because of its glorification of violence, TIFF officials would be the first to stand up for the filmmaker’s right to artistic expression. 

But when it comes to telling stories or singing songs that some deem offensive, that reflex has been replaced by a knee-jerk run for cover.

This is an alarming development in Canada. In difficult times, we need people in positions of authority to stand up for freedom of expression – not look for excuses to abandon it. That never ends well for anyone.

Source: Cheap excuses for betraying free speech

And Marsha Lederman’s take, TIFF’s latest censorship controversy is more than just a tiff. It’s existential:

…All of this has created not just chasms in the arts community and a chill on artistic expression, but a disincentive for organizations considering ponying up to support the arts. You want your brand associated with something positive and meaningful: a literary prize, a film festival, maybe a theatre festival that claims to push the boundaries. (Vancouver’s PuSh International Performing Arts Festival also caved to dissenters, cancelling the Canadian play The Runner last year.) But shell out money to get embroiled in this? In this economy?

The arts are in trouble and need corporate support. The world is in trouble and needs art to guide and inform, and artists who help us understand the issues and inspire us to be brave and fight for what’s right.

Which is something TIFF should be doing.



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Nicolas: Chers collègues

2025/08/15 Leave a comment

Of note. One question that I always have is the degree to which Palestinian journalists can report on domestic issues and politics, not just the obvious and needed coverage of Israeli actions:

…Troisièmement, j’aimerais qu’on se parle de la place qu’on fait dans toute cette destruction et cette horreur aux voix qui sont elles-mêmes palestiniennes — et même arabes, de manière plus générale.

Vu les positions que je prends moi-même dans mes chroniques, j’ai reçu les confidences de plusieurs collègues qui travaillent ou ont travaillé comme recherchistes dans différents médias francophones et anglophones. On m’a parlé à plusieurs reprises d’une hésitation à mettre en ondes des invités pourtant compétents et qualifiés, mais arabes, sur des questions liées au « Moyen-Orient ». Du surtravail effectué en préentrevue, pour bien vérifier que tout sera bon, lorsqu’on se rend même à l’étape de la discussion.

La question a aussi été dénoncée ces dernières années par des journalistes qui sont eux-mêmes arabes ou palestiniens, surtout dans le Canada anglophone, certains après avoir démissionné de salles de nouvelles et s’être dits fatigués d’être constamment soupçonnés de « manquer d’objectivité », d’être moins professionnels à cause de leurs origines.

Pour les journalistes qui sont eux-mêmes à Gaza — pendant qu’il en reste —, j’aimerais finalement nous amener à réfléchir au fait que la simple notoriété internationale peut rendre politiquement plus épineux de bombarder des individus. Le fait d’interviewer des gens qui vivent un conflit garde non seulement le public informé sur ce qui se passe sur le terrain, mais, dans le contexte, peut aussi être une manière directe de contribuer à sauver des vies.

Source: Chers collègues

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Turley-Ewart: Canada’s risk-averse businesses are slouching toward AI

2025/08/05 2 Comments

Arguably, the hardest issue to address:

…Yet, the slow adoption of AI raises questions about Canadian businesses. What are they doing to invest in their own success? The inability of so many to effectively manage AI integration that will enable them to help themselves and improve productivity, economic growth and GDP per capita points to a culture of complacency.

Canada’s aging digital infrastructure is a monument to that complacency. “Canada trails every other G7 nation in AI computing infrastructure, possessing only one-eighth to one-tenth of the available compute performance per capita compared to countries like the U.S.,” according to RBC. AI is the high-speed train that needs high speed tracks and engines. Canadian AI is running on 1960s era rails built for plodding diesel engines.

What makes business AI-adoption rates so puzzling, as Minister Solomon hinted at in a recent interview, is that Canada is known for its “pioneering frontier AI research.” It is home to the “Godfather of AI,” and Nobel Laureate in Physics, University of Toronto’s Geoffrey Hinton. The country also has AI research organizations that do world-leading work: The Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms, the Vector Institute in Toronto, as well as the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute.

That Canada is blessed with such rich AI research and innovation, and yet 88 per cent of our businesses have not even started to integrate AI into their operating models, speaks to a troubling lack of curiosity.

We face a future where an inquisitive person writes a prompt in their AI tool of choice asking: Why didn’t Canadian businesses adopt AI sooner and prosper? 

If we don’t change course the answer will be: “Risk aversion.” Most Canadian businesses lacked the courage to innovate.

Source: Canada’s risk-averse businesses are slouching toward AI

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Jobs survive, pay and purpose don’t: The quiet risk of workplace AI

2025/07/22 Leave a comment

Interesting and a cause for further consideration of implications:

…As sociologists of work, we see several reasons for concern, even if fears of immediate and widespread AI displacement are potentially overblown. Claims of a “white-collar bloodbath” and “job apocalypse” – that is, “something alarming happening to the job market” – certainly make for attention-grabbing headlines (and, at this stage of the purported advancements, they probably should).

Erosion before displacement

If predictions about future AI capabilities are even partly correct, we may be seeing only the early contours of what lies ahead. Already, signs are emerging that the conditions and perceived value of some white-collar work is shifting. At Amazon, software engineers report that AI tools are accelerating production timelines while reducing time for thoughtful coding and increasing output expectations. According to New York Times reporting, many now spend more time reviewing and debugging machine-generated code than writing their own. The work remains, but its character is changing – less autonomous, more pressure, and arguably less fulfilling.

This shift in work quality may be creating broader economic ripples. Barclays economists have found that workers in AI-exposed roles are experiencing measurably slower wage growth – nearly three-quarters of a percentage point less per year for every 10-point increase in AI exposure. Employers may already be recalibrating the value of these positions, even as hiring continues.

Uneven impacts

Different forms of white-collar work may face vastly different futures under AI, depending on professional autonomy and control over the technology. Consider radiologists, initially seen as vulnerable given AI’s strength in image analysis. Yet, the profession has grown, with AI enabling faster analysis rather than replacement. Crucially, radiologists retain control. They make final diagnoses, communicate with patients and carry legal responsibility. Here, AI complements human expertise in what economists refer to as Jevons Paradox – where technological efficiency increases demand by making services cheaper and more accessible.

Medical transcription offers a more cautionary tale. As AI speech-to-text tools improve, transcriptionists have shifted from producing reports to editing and error detection. In theory, this sounds like higher-skilled oversight work. In practice, it often means scanning AI output under time pressure and reduced job discretion. While jobs such as this one still exist, their perceived value is diminishing. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects a 5 per cent employment decline between 2023 and 2033 – and given the rapid improvement in transcription models, that estimate may prove conservative.

Adaptation isn’t necessarily promotion

AI will undoubtedly create new roles and opportunities, particularly where human judgment remains essential. But we shouldn’t assume this future will preserve job quality. The story of retail banking offers a sobering lesson: automation first increased the number of teller jobs – but didn’t raise pay. Ultimately, tellers weren’t replaced by machines but by digital banking, shifting many to call centre jobs with less autonomy and lower wages. Even in the absence of widespread job displacement, AI may follow a similar pattern –reshaping many jobs in ways that reduce discretion, increase surveillance and erode its overall value.

There remains considerable debate about how disruptive AI will be. But amid that uncertainty lies a risk of public complacency – or even disengagement from the issue. As Canadians, we need a sustained and open conversation about how these workplace changes are unfolding and where they might lead.

Paul Glavin is an associate professor of sociology at McMaster University. Scott Schieman is professor of sociology and Canada Research Chair at the University of Toronto. Alexander Wilson is a graduate student in sociology at the University of Toronto.

Source: Jobs survive, pay and purpose don’t: The quiet risk of workplace AI

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Colby Cosh: The lifelike nature of artificial intelligence

2025/07/21 Leave a comment

Interesting test:

…Well, fast-forward a dozen centuries, and along come Copernicus asking “What if Earth isn’t at the centre after all?”; Kepler asking “What if the orbits aren’t circular, but elliptical?”; and Newton, who got to the bottom of the whole thing by introducing the higher-level abstraction of gravitational force. Bye-bye epicycles.

None of these intellectual steps, mind you, added anything to anyone’s practical ability to predict planetary motions. Copernicus’s model took generations to be accepted for this reason (along with the theological/metaphysical objections to the Earth not being at the centre of the universe): it wasn’t ostensibly as sophisticated or as powerful as the old reliable geocentric model. But you can’t get to Newton, who found that the planets and earthbound objects are governed by the same elegant and universal laws of motion, without Copernicus and Kepler.

Which, in 2025, raises the question: could a computer do what Newton did? Vafa’s research group fed orbital data to AIs and found that they could correctly behave like ancient astronomers: make dependable extrapolations about the future movements of real planets, including the Earth. This raises the question whether the algorithms in question generate their successful orbital forecasts by somehow inferring the existence of Newtonian force-abstractions. We know that “false,” overfitted models and heuristics can work for practical purposes, but we would like AIs to be automated Newtons if we are going to live with them. We would like AIs to discover new laws and scientific principles of very high generality and robustness that we filthy meatbags haven’t noticed yet.

When Vafa and his colleagues found is that the AIs remain in a comically pre-Copernican state. They can be trained to make accurate predictions by being presented with observational data, but it seems that they may do so on the basis of “wrong” implicit models, ones that depend on mystifying trigonometric clutter instead of the beautiful inverse-square force law that Newton gave us. The epicycles are back!

The paper goes on to do more wombat-dissecting, using the game of Othello to show how AI reasoning can produce impressive results from (apparently) incomplete or broken underlying models. It is all very unlike the clean, rigorous “computing science” of the past 100 years: whatever you think of the prospects of AI, it is clear that the complexity of what we can create from code, or just buy off the shelf, is now approaching the complexity of biological life.

Source: Colby Cosh: The lifelike nature of artificial intelligence

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Canadian researchers are being asked politically charged questions when trying to secure U.S. grants

2025/03/31 Leave a comment

Further counter-productive chill:

Academic researchers are used to filing out forms when applying for grants, but Canadian scholars have expressed shock over a new questionnaire they are receiving when applying for funding issued in part of wholly by the U.S. government.”Can you confirm that this is no DEI project or DEI elements of the project?” asks one question, with an accompanying link to U.S. President Donald Trump’s executive order to nix funding from government programs dealing with diversity, equity and inclusion.”Can you confirm this is not a climate or “environmental justice” project or include such elements?” asks another.Yet another asks if a project “defends women from gender ideology” — another reference to a Trump executive order.Peter McInnis, President of Canadian Association of University Teachers, which represents 72,000 staff across more than 125 institutions, says they’ve been receiving messages about what he says is “most unusual, not only just to receive a questionnaire at all, but this one was clearly screening for ideological questions.”

It is unclear how many Canadian scholars received the questionnaire, or how many people’s work depends on funding from granting bodies associated with the U.S. government, but most tend to be in the fields of health, science, agriculture and climate researchFor example, the U.S.-based National Institute of Health last year poured about $57 million into projects involving Canadian researchers, according to McInnis.

Source: Canadian researchers are being asked politically charged questions when trying to secure U.S. grants

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Andrew MacDougall: A lunatic running Asylum America

2025/03/07 Leave a comment

Captures the change and dangers all too well:

…Only the gatekeepers are now gone.

First, the press. A mainstream news ecosystem that was centered on cost and curation and powered by expertise (backed by civil liability) has been replaced by a “free” Attention Economy where “content” that provokes the quickest and biggest reaction wins the consequence-free prize of algorithmic amplification and the engagement (and monetization) it brings.

And the money is mostly on the Bongino side of the equation. It’s true that nobody ever really read the majority of the quality daily journalism produced by mainstream outlets; the sports, funny pages, horoscopes, and ads that used to come alongside that quality is what paid for it. Even so, under that model the people in power at least knew they were being scrutinised. 

Now you make money by what people are willing to click on — and that’s, by and large, not original journalism (even if, ahem, people are willing to pay for smart commentary). Now content creators make (big) money by mobbing up and preaching to the converted.

And this is the point of Bongino. He is there to activate his mob in support of his political master. This is also the point of Elon Musk, the serial entrepreneur and amateur ketamine and ambien enthusiast turned “efficiency” czar, who now has his fingers on the scales of information via his platform X in a way that news barons of old could only have dreamed of. They are the enforcers in Trump’s universe. They set an agenda by setting off unsourced fireworks in every direction and then watch as the universe is forced to react to their inaccurate insanities as their mobs pile in.

It’s a complete inversion of the old informational order. And it’s breaking us apart.

In the olden days, Bongino and Musk would have been the men at the end of the bar raging against the machine. They’d be the weird uncles at the family party the other family members did their best to avoid. Now they’re the stars of the show. They are tribunes for the end of the bar and weird uncle crowd, a crowd that can glom together without risking the embarrassment of floating their unorthodox views in crowds of random people. Bognino, Musk and Patel can all rage against the “deep state” and decry the treatment of groups like the January 6th rioters — and be handsomely rewarded for it.

Forget the FBI. It’s these men who are the real threat to liberty.

Source: Andrew MacDougall: A lunatic running Asylum America

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PEN: Cover to Cover – An Analysis of Titles Banned in the 23-24 School Year

2025/03/06 Leave a comment

Cover to Cover

Of note:

In the 2023-2024 school year, there were more than 10,000 instances of banned books in public schools, affecting more than 4,000 unique titles. These mass book bans were often the result of targeted campaigns to remove books with characters of color, LGBTQ+ identities, and sexual content from public school classrooms and libraries. As book bans reached an unprecedented high in the last school year, PEN America sought to further understand the impacts of this censorship – the identities, content areas, genres, and types of books that are being erased from America’s public schools.

In November 2024, PEN America previously reported on the content of titles that had experienced two or more bans (1,091 titles); here, we include a more comprehensive analysis of all 4,218 titles banned during the 2023-2024 school year. 

What have we found? 

Book bans are not a hoax.

How do we know?

  • Certain identities are being removed from library shelves en masse. During the 2023-2024 school year, 36% of all banned titles featured characters or people of color and a quarter (25%) included LGBTQ+ people or characters. Of titles with LGBTQ+ people or characters, over a quarter (28%) feature trans and/or genderqueer characters.
  • Erasure of identities is pervasive within banned illustrated and graphic-heavy titles. For example, 73% of all graphic and illustrated titles feature visuals with LGBTQ+ representation, of people or characters of color, or that address race/racism. More specifically, 64% of banned picture books have pictures or illustrations that depict LGBTQ+ characters or stories.
  • For all the inflammatory rhetoric about “explicit books,” only 13% of banned titles had “on the page” descriptions of sexual experiences, compared to 31% with “off the page” sexual experiences. Overall, 40% of banned titles include sexual experiences (some contained both “on” and “off the page”). 
  • Books banned during the 2023-2024 school year overwhelmingly address violence (65%), death and grief (55%), and abuse (43%); all very real human experiences.

Source: Cover to Cover

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