## Metadata - Author: Wonkhe - Full Title: Understanding the Free Speech Legal Balance - URL: https://wonkhe.com/blogs-sus/understanding-the-free-speech-legal-balance/ - Date: 2024-03-14 ## Summary The text discusses the challenges universities face in balancing free speech with protecting students from harm based on protected characteristics. It highlights the complexities of navigating legal principles, conflicting legislation, and ensuring a safe and inclusive environment while upholding free speech. The author emphasizes the importance of making difficult judgments, holding communities together, and considering the impacts of speech on different groups within the community. ## Highlights - extract from the debate from legal expert Smita Jamdar ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hryrbygzhxbthk3s3ez4shc0)) - So these are legal requirements that are pulling in opposite directions. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hryrd7z3vq44xcam43r8mwp2)) - On the other side, you’ve got this idea of can ==somebody reasonably feel harassed by what’s being said by someone else, and that is a reason to interfere with freedom of speech==. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hryre2b49fe4vcwtm6cs9hzf)) - But of course, ==the concept of reasonableness is quite different to the concept of being within or outside the law, that is a binary thing==. So if something’s within the law but outside of it in reasonableness, the problem is that reasonable people can reasonably disagree about what the option should be in a particular circumstance. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hryrekjez5g5xzvsqj83254j)) - That’s what reasonableness means. It means no right or wrong answers. So we’re constantly faced with having to make different judgments. And my fear is that the OfS, for example, sticks too closely to this idea of within the law outside the law, but ==that is not a test we can reasonably apply within a university==. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hryrf02zhyx58sk56c5yyspx)) - but there’s a collective impact on the community, how people react to it. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hryrjbsg72w49cj75wademzt)) - because it’s upsetting to the community without breaching those very individual concepts of freedom of speech? ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hryrjq57316yczvmnjqz97sp)) - There is this real benefit to people feeling they belong, this concept of feeling safe in the environment that you’re in. And that is something that’s really important to people being confident in expressing their speech. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hryrn49fjd3ms3ymg9h53t16)) - Psychological safety is quite narrowly defined, it doesn’t extend to that broad sense of, you know, feeling safe, it’s about psychological harm, or it’s about feeling harassed, etc ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hryrndmkp898ythtvdcrmrfm)) - is for is for institutional neutrality, you say nothing, because that will actually facilitate other people being able to fill the space – staff and students. But that really does then mean a lot of people do not feel comfortable speaking, because they feel they’re operating in a kind of corporate void. ==They don’t know whether the place they’ve joined is supportive to them==. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hryrphmz6bts07c9frwdv13p)) ## My notes - Need to cultivate the culture of inclusivity and mutual respect first, to avoid the situation. - [[LUU “No Surprises” Policy.pdf]] - this is essential. Must implement this - Must be clear on what amounts to harassment. Create a definition. - Prevention is better than cure.