There was a time when an organization was formed for a purpose, usually one that transcended partisanship and stood for a principle. Think ACLU, the one that backed the right of neo-Nazis marching in Skokie despite deploring what they stood for, before it became the ACLU that supported only free speech when it supported the content of the speech. Or think PEN America.

PEN America stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect free expression in the United States and worldwide. We champion the freedom to write, recognizing the power of the word to transform the world. Our mission is to unite writers and their allies to celebrate creative expression and defend the liberties that make it possible.

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There was an infamous line employed by the terminally insipid Nancy Grace, “where there’s smoke, there’s fire.” It was her way of saying that evidence of wrongdoing wasn’t necessary when the smell was bad.  In the New York Times, gender columnist Jessica Bennett does Grace one better.

Until Thursday, it seemed that we had entered a new age of accountability, legal and social, not just for Mr. Weinstein but also for the abusers who’d come after him. Even as the #MeToo movement fell short in some ways, the Weinstein case felt like a cultural marker — an Arthur’s sword in the stone moment, in which something irreversible happened. The monster of #MeToo had been vanquished, and it changed something about the way we understood vulnerability and power. Continue reading →

Lina Khan was a controversial choice to head the Federal Trade Commission, and she’s shown that the controversy was justified. While the historical role of the FTC was to police the marketplace, she’s now taken the affirmative step, by a 3-2 vote of the commissioners, to ban essentially all non-compete clauses. There are two rationales for this action.

The easy prong of the ban for the F.T.C. to justify is the one that applies to nurses, hairdressers, truck drivers — actually, every kind of worker except for senior executives. For 99 percent of the American work force, the F.T.C. said, requiring workers to sign noncompete agreements as a condition of employment is “coercive and exploitative conduct.”The agency’s 570-page ruling cites articles in The Times and The Wall Street Journal in which workers came forward to say, in the F.T.C.’s words, that noncompete agreements “derailed their careers, destroyed their finances, and upended their lives.”

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Mostly peaceful protests had come to Driftwood County. At least that’s what the six o’ clock news called them. Sheriff Roy Templeton, the highest ranking law enforcement officer in the county, wasn’t sure he agreed with that assessment.

It started when Shelly Silverberg got into an argument with Fatima Brooks during a lecture on “Ethnic hairstyles of the Middle East” at the Kendall Jenner School of Cosmetology. The simple spat over whether split ends were “halal” quickly escalated into name calling and reached a crescendo when Fatima started yelling obscenities at Shelly in Farsi.

One word Fatima uttered set the entire campus off in a fit. Continue reading →

In a 4-3 split, the New York conviction of Harvey Weinstein was reversed based on the trial court’s allowance of promiscuous propensity evidence against him under the guise of Molineux exceptions. Much as Weinstein was one of the most despised targets of #MeToo, four judges of the Court of Appeals, in an opinion written by Judge Jenny Rivera, held that smearing a defendant with collateral accusations bearing no relevance to the crimes with which the defendant was charged went too far. No serious criminal defense lawyer was surprised.

Under our system of justice, the accused has a right to be held to account only for the crime charged and, thus, allegations of prior bad acts may not be admitted against them for the sole purpose of establishing their propensity for criminality (see People v Molineux, 168 NY 264 [1901 ]). Nor may the prosecution use “prior convictions or proof of the prior commission of specific, criminal, vicious or immoral acts” other than to impeach the accused’s credibility (People v Sandoval, 34 NY2d 371 , 374 [ 1974]). It is our solemn duty to diligently guard these rights regardless of the crime charged, the reputation of the accused, or the pressure to convict (see Boyd v United States, 116 US 616, 635 [1886] [“It is the duty of courts to be watchful for the constitutional rights of the citizen, and against any stealthy encroachments thereon”]).

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Unsurprisingly, colleges across the country have taken up arms, by which I mean encampments, in sympathy with Columbia and its clones. House speaker Mike Johnson went to Columbia, because that’s where the cameras were, and announced it has to stop.

So too did Bibi Netanyahu, as if he gets a vote in the matter. Johnson called for the resignation of Columbia President Nemat Shafik for her failure to control her campus, while students rushed into Harvard Yard to set up a tent city on the fly. And at the University of Texas, Austin, troops were sent in to prevent students from seizing the campus in a massive show of force, with Gov. Greg Abbott saying the students belong in jail. Continue reading →

The word on Columbia’s president, Nemat Shafik, calling in the NYPD to arrest students who refused to leave what they called the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment,” a tent city they set up on the lawn that seized control of a portion of campus, was that her actions were predicated on showing Congress that she was doing something to protect the Jewish students at Columbia. Neither the students nor the faculty took her decision well.

Rather than put an end to the tent city, and to attacks on Jewish those students who didn’t join the protest to show they were the good, progressive Jews rather than the evil Zionists who deserved to be raped and murdered, it fueled a renewed effort. Who could have seen that coming? So Shafik issued another ultimatum, this time setting a deadline of midnight on Tuesday. The “or else” did not turn out well for Shafik. Continue reading →

Biden promised it would happen, and if there was any doubt he would keep his campaign promise, appointing Catherine Lhamon as chief of the Office of Civil Rights at the Department of Education left little doubt that he meant it. For Lhamon, it was a matter of religious zealotry. This was what she lived for. The changes to Title IX rules by Betsy De Vos, requiring at least minimal due process in campus sex tribunals, are gone. The new rules are finally here, and they’re about as bad as everyone expected.

With the release of new Title IX regulations today, the Department of Education encourages institutions of higher education to violate students’ free speech rights and to eliminate essential due process protections for students accused of sexual misconduct.

“Justice is only possible when hearings are fair for everyone,” said FIRE Legal Director Will Creeley in a statement. “Today’s regulations mean one thing: America’s college students are less likely to receive justice if they find themselves in a Title IX proceeding.”

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Judge Juan Merchan’s admonition to the media was “apply common sense.” If that seems less than satisfying, whether because there is no such thing as “common sense” or because it’s an invitation to do whatever they want, the problem is somewhat clear. The defendant is entitled to a public trial, and the media is entitled to report on things that happen in public. Whether that includes the workplace of a juror or the mole on the left side of the nose, it can be inappropriate and dangerous to disclose it, and also protected under the First Amendment, every last detail. Continue reading →

As Columbia University president Minouche Shafik was testifying before the House, students were setting up a tent city on the campus south lawn which they called “Gaza Solidarity Encampment.” The encampment was a violation of Columbia’s rules, so Shafik announced that students involved would be suspended and called in the New York Police Department to arrest them. That, too, was against Columbia’s rules.

In her letter to the NYPD authorizing the arrests, Shafik wrote that “All University students participating in the encampment have been informed they are suspended.” Continue reading →