By The University of Massachusetts Amherst. Campus Demonstration Policy Taskforce

Formed by Chancellor Reyes on June 17, 2024, the Campus Demonstration Policy Taskforce was charged with: • Reviewing demonstration-related policies/guidelines including, but not limited to, the land-use policy, picketing code, and demonstration guidelines and make recommendations to the appropriate university governing bodies. • Making recommendations, based on best practices in higher education, regarding methods of demonstration-related intervention, including, but not limited to, the deployment of and composition of the Demonstration Response and Safety Team (DRST). • Making recommendations, based on best practices in higher education, regarding how to increase awareness of university policies and First Amendment protections as they apply to on-campus demonstrations. Between its formation on June 17, 2024, and the delivery of this report on August 30, 2024, the taskforce met six times. The subcommittees met ten times. Significant asynchronous discussion and document review was also completed via a shared Teams channel. The Campus Demonstration Policy Taskforce (CDPT) was guided by and fully endorses the text and spirit of the UMass Amherst Picketing Code, excerpted above, which is itself informed and backed by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. The importance of clear policies – and the consistent application of them without regard to the subject matter of demonstrations (content neutrality) or the viewpoints expressed in them (viewpoint neutrality) - was a near-universal theme in a national workshop co-hosted by UMass Amherst during the CDPT’s work. This underscored the criticality of the CDPT’s charge. Throughout its work, the CDPT set out to ensure that the university’s policies reflect a commitment to the free and open exchange of ideas while equally protecting the rights of all to live, work, teach, and learn in a community of inquiry. The CDPT makes several recommendations in three areas: • clarify policy where reasonable interpretations could lead to divergent understandings; • strengthen the ability of the Demonstration Response and Safety Team (DRST) to serve the campus through its role providing demonstration-related safety, education, and deescalation; and • delineate the e distinct roles of university administrators and UMPD in terms of handling violations of policy and illegal acts, respectively. Specifically, we make the following substantive recommendations regarding the Land Use Policy: 1) adopt a definition of “Structure” informed by Massachusetts law; and 2) clarify the role of the University of Massachusetts Police Department (UMPD) in relation to policy enforcement and law enforcement Regarding the DRST, the CPDT recommends the following: 1) create an advisory council to the DRST that includes representatives from outside the university administration; 2) actively seek out post-action reports from other universities for review by the DSRT and advisory board; 3) develop off-ramps oriented towards de-escalating the potential for conflict, including building up a mediation infrastructure; 4) specify procedures for the identification of demonstrators that are UMass community members; and 5) clarify the use of law enforcement in relation to illegal acts, including violent acts, threats of public safety, substantial disorder, trespass, and the invasion of the rights of others, as opposed to policy violations. This also applies to a recommended edit in the Land Use Policy. The CDPT was also asked to provide guidance around “increasing awareness” of demonstration related policies. To that end, the task force 1) created a Free Expression FAQ, attached to this report, that we recommend sharing with the university community; 2) updated DRST handouts that can be shared with demonstrators; and 3) recommends a central website that shares all demonstration-related policies and guidance. e distinct roles of university administrators and UMPD in terms of handling violations of policy and illegal acts, respectively. Specifically, we make the following substantive recommendations regarding the Land Use Policy: 1) adopt a definition of “Structure” informed by Massachusetts law; and 2) clarify the role of the University of Massachusetts Police Department (UMPD) in relation to policy enforcement and law enforcement Regarding the DRST, the CPDT recommends the following: 1) create an advisory council to the DRST that includes representatives from outside the university administration; 2) actively seek out post-action reports from other universities for review by the DSRT and advisory board; 3) develop off-ramps oriented towards de-escalating the potential for conflict, including building up a mediation infrastructure; 4) specify procedures for the identification of demonstrators that are UMass community members; and 5) clarify the use of law enforcement in relation to illegal acts, including violent acts, threats of public safety, substantial disorder, trespass, and the invasion of the rights of others, as opposed to policy violations. This also applies to a recommended edit in the Land Use Policy. The CDPT was also asked to provide guidance around “increasing awareness” of demonstrationrelated policies. To that end, the task force 1) created a Free Expression FAQ, attached to this report, that we recommend sharing with the university community; 2) updated DRST handouts that can be shared with demonstrators; and 3) recommends a central website that shares all demonstration-related policies and guidance.

Amherst: University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2024. 11p.

By Timothy Cubitt, Anthony Morgan and Isabella Voce

Recent protest activity in Australia has related to a range of political and social causes, including climate change, women’s rights, pandemic-related government policies, and a range of ideological movements. While peaceful protests were held in parts of the country, some resulted in arrests, fines and violence (ABC News 2021; Bavas & Nguyen 2021). Over time, fringe and conspiratorial rhetoric increased across social media (De Coninck 2021) and began featuring more prominently in anti-authority ‘freedom’ protests (Khalil & Roose 2023). While the public health measures have ceased, these freedom protests—and related social movements—have persisted. Conspiratorial and far-right actors have become increasingly prominent among anti-government or anti-authority protests

Trends & issues in crime and criminal justice no. 693. Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology. 2024. 16p.

By Amy Lai

In this book, Amy Lai examines the current free speech crisis in Western universities. She studies the origin, history, and importance of freedom of speech in the university setting, and addresses the relevance and pitfalls of political correctness and microaggressions on campuses, where laws on harassment, discrimination, and hate speech are already in place, along with other concepts that have gained currency in the free speech debate, including deplatforming, trigger warning, and safe space. Looking at numerous free speech disputes in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada, the book argues for the equal application of the free speech principle to all expressions to facilitate respectful debates. All in all, it affirms that the right to free expression is a natural right essential to the pursuit of truth, democratic governance, and self-development, and this right is nowhere more important than in the university.

Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2023. 306p.

By Jackson, Dean; Adler, William T.; Dougall, Danielle; Jain, Samir

From the document: "In March 2023, internet scholar Kate Klonick wrote a counterintuitive essay entitled 'The End of the Golden Age of Tech Accountability' in which she argues that '2021 was a heyday for trust and safety,' a time when tech companies felt public pressure to take a number of positive (if insufficient) self-regulatory steps. She laments that platforms are now backtracking as a result of economic headwinds and the failure of many governments to pass meaningful regulation while public outrage was at its peak. A few months later, in June 2023, the prominent technology journalist Casey Newton cited Klonick's argument in a newsletter, asking, 'Have we reached peak trust and safety?' The trends detailed in this report will probably tempt most readers to answer 'yes.' There are many reasons to be pessimistic about prospects for improvement. But improvement is possible if the field accepts that election disinformation is an environmental hazard to be managed, not a disease to be cured. Few signs in the near term point to huge gains in the health of the U.S. media ecosystem. Steps can be taken to protect and better support researchers, diminish the prevalence and severity of harm, achieve incremental improvements in tech accountability and transparency, and set up the trust and safety field for long-term success."

Center For Democracy And Technology. 2023. 108p.

By Sirje Laurel Weldon

A must-read for scholars across a broad sweep of disciplines. Laurel Weldon weaves together skillfully the theoretical strands of gender equality policy, intersectionality, social movements, and representation in a multimethod/level comparative study that unequivocally places women's movements at the center of our understanding of democracy and social change."" ---Amy G. Mazur, Washington State University "Laurel Weldon's When Protest Makes Policy expands and enriches our understanding of representation by stressing social movements as a primary avenue for the representation of marginalized groups. With powerful theory backed by persuasive analysis, it is a must-read for anyone interested in democracy and the representation of marginalized groups." ---Pamela Paxton, University of Texas at Austin ""This is a bold and exciting book. There are many fine scholars who look at women's movements, political theorists who make claims about democracy, and policy analysts who do longitudinal treatments or cross-sectional evaluations of various policies. I know of no one, aside from Weldon, who is comfortable with all three of these roles."" ---David Meyer, University of California, Irvine What role do social movements play in a democracy? Political theorist S. Laurel Weldon demonstrates that social movements provide a hitherto unrecognized form of democratic representation, and thus offer a significant potential for deepening democracy and overcoming social conflict. Through a series of case studies of movements conducted by women, women of color, and workers in the United States and other member nations of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Weldon examines processes of representation at the local, state, and national levels. She concludes that, for systematically disadvantaged groups, social movements can be as important---sometimes more important---for the effective articulation of a group perspective as political parties, interest groups, or the physical presence of group members in legislatures. When Protest Makes Policy contributes to the emerging scholarship on civil society as well as the traditional scholarship on representation. It will be of interest to anyone concerned with advancing social cohesion and deepening democracy and inclusion as well as those concerned with advancing equality for women, ethnic and racial minorities, the working class, and poor people.

Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011. 244p.

Edited by Bharath Ganesh and Jonathan Bright

Extreme digital speech (EDS) is an emerging challenge that requires co-ordination between governments, civil society and the private sector. In this report, a range of experts on countering extremism consider the challenges that EDS presents to these stakeholders, the impact that EDS has and the responses taken by these actors to counter it. By focusing on EDS, our consideration of the topic is limited to the forms of extreme speech that take place online, often on social media platforms and multimedia messaging applications such as WhatsApp and Telegram. Furthermore, by focusing on EDS rather than explicitly violent forms of extreme speech online, we (as Matti Pohjonen writes in this report) ‘depart’ from a focus on violence and incorporate a broader range of issues such as hateful and dehumanising speech and the complex cultures and politics that have formed around EDS. This focus brings into view a much broader range of factors that help assemble extremist networks online.  

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  This perspective is necessary, given the role that hate speech plays in extreme right-wing networks and the complexity of Daesh propaganda which uses videos to synthesise utopic images of life in the so-called ‘Khilafa’. Following JM Berger’s recent book, Extremism (2018), we can think of EDS as a core practice that produces an archive of online extremist resources that reinforce the sense of in-group belonging across a network of geographically dispersed users, whether this be the networks of jihadists connected on Telegram, or right-wing extremists that use trolling tactics to hack mainstream opinion on Twitter. All the same, while it is well-known that EDS is prolific online, there is little understanding of what kind of impact participation in these networks actually has on the likelihood of an individual’s engagement in political violence. Moreover, very little is known about what methods are being used to challenge EDS and what solutions are  best suited for this problem. This report seeks to provide policymakers, researchers and practitioners with an overview of the context of EDS, its impact, and the responses and solutions being mobilised to counter it. In order to do this, this report assembles a set of ten brief essays intended to serve as a starting point for further exploration of a range of topics related to the management of EDS across government, civil society and the private sector.

Dublin: VOX-POL Network of Excellence, Dublin City University, 2019. 123p.

Edited by: Stavros Assimakopoulos, Fabienne H Baider, et al.

A Discourse-Analytic Perspective. This open access book reports on research carried out as part of the European Union co-funded C.O.N.T.A.C.T. project which targeted hate speech and hate crime across a number of EU member states. It showcases the bearing that discourse analytic research can have on our understanding of this phenomenon that is a growing global cause for concern.Although 'hate speech' is often incorporated in legal and policy documents, there is no universally accepted definition, which in itself warrants research into how hatred is both expressed and perceived. The research project synthesises discourse analytic and corpus linguistics techniques, and presents its key findings here. The focus is especially on online comments posted in reaction to news items that could trigger discrimination, as well as on the folk perception of online hate speech as revealed through semi-structured interviews with young individuals across the various partner countries. This work was published by Saint Philip Street Press pursuant to a Creative Commons license permitting commercial use. All rights not granted by the work's license are retained by the author or authors.

Springer (2020) 97 pages.