It is hilarious to us that the prez of Harvard and people in similar positions at similar schools are supporting the pro-Hamas students on the grounds of free speech. It is the discouragement of free speech at these schools which leads to the blinkered mindsets that could make a person a Hamas supporter (not a Palestinian supporter, not an oppressed-people supporter, but a Hamas supporter, and specifically a Hamas-killing-children supporter).
We think this is an area in which the CL2P/ICL2P have a lot of experience to share having been the victims of five decades of dictatorship by Biya in Cameroon and his creatures over freedom of expression where dissents are always consistently criminalized.
From experience, we know that this crisis over Pro-Hamas, at Harvard, and similar campuses that support pro-Hamas’s students in the name of free speech, is not an exercise in free speech, but the logical result of its deletion. Of course, there are more constructive ways to manage free speech and the big market of ideas, starting with a strong focus on verifying and minimizing the harms of misinformation. Seriously addressing concerns about disinformation and other false narratives with nuance and countering propaganda is the best way to defeat an ecosystem in which the microphone will only be used by the so-called most extremist voices. The same thing happens in any echo chamber where the speakers are forced into silence.
Thus, it is only in places where the freedom of speech is mismanaged that we have this kind of free speech cacophony. The way the market of ideas work is that freedom of speech has consequences and there must have liabilities for misinformation.
The Committee For The Release of Political Prisoners Institute – ICL2P / CL2P
