This is the Daily Media Update published by the Institute for Free Speech. For press inquiries, please contact [email protected].
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The Courts
By Eugene Volokh
.....From O'Handley v. Weber, decided Friday in an opinion by Ninth Circuit Judge Paul Watford, joined by Judge Susan Graber and Federal Circuit Judge Evan Wallach:
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By Eugene Volokh
.....As expected, the New York Attorney General is appealing the decision that preliminarily enjoined enforcement of the law. I'm glad to see that, because I expect the Second Circuit will affirm the District Court decision, and thus set a precedent that will be binding in the Second Circuit and likely quite influential in other circuits as well.
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Free Expression
By Vimal Patel
.....Amy Wax, a law professor, has said publicly that “on average, Blacks have lower cognitive ability than whites,” that the country is “better off with fewer Asians” as long as they tend to vote for Democrats, and that non-Western people feel a “tremendous amount of resentment and shame.”
At the University of Pennsylvania, where she has tenure, she invited a white nationalist to speak to her class. And a Black law student who had attended UPenn and Yale said that the professor told her she “had only become a double Ivy ‘because of affirmative action,’” according to the administration.
Professor Wax has denied saying anything belittling or racist to students, and her supporters see her as a truth teller about affirmative action, immigration and race. They agree with her argument that she is the target of censorship and “wokeism” because of her conservative views.
All of which poses a conundrum for the University of Pennsylvania: Should it fire Amy Wax?
The university is now moving closer to answering just that question. After long resisting the call of students, the dean of the law school, Theodore W. Ruger, has taken a rare step: He has filed a complaint and requested a faculty hearing to consider imposing a “major sanction” on the professor.
His about-face prompted protests from free speech groups, which cited one of tenure’s key tenets — the right of academics to speak freely, without fear of punishment, whether in public or in the classroom.
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Online Speech Platforms
By Stuart A. Thompson
.....Many social media companies, including Meta and Twitch, have banned deepfakes and manipulated videos that deceive users. Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, ran a competition in 2021 to develop programs capable of identifying deepfakes, resulting in one tool that could spot them 83 percent of the time.
Federal regulators have been slow to respond. One federal law from 2019 requested a report on the weaponization of deepfakes by foreigners, required government agencies to notify Congress if deepfakes targeted elections in the United States and created a prize to encourage the research on tools that could detect deepfakes.
“We cannot wait for two years until laws are passed,” said Ravit Dotan, a postdoctoral researcher who runs the Collaborative A.I. Responsibility Lab at the University of Pittsburgh. “By then, the damage could be too much. We have an election coming up here in the U.S. It’s going to be an issue.”
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By Chris Stokel-Walker
.....Twitter’s API is used by vast numbers of researchers. Since 2020, there have been more than 17,500 academic papers based on the platform’s data, giving strength to the argument that Twitter owner Elon Musk has long claimed, that the platform is the “de facto town square.”
But new charges, included in documentation seen by WIRED, suggest that most organizations that have relied on API access to conduct research will now be priced out of using Twitter.
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The States
By Sandra Fish
.....Denver’s Fair Election Fund, the taxpayer-funded campaign contribution matching program approved by voters in 2018...accounted for about 45% of the $5.3 million raised by the 17 mayoral candidates through the end of February. If you remove the $750,000 Andy Rougeot loaned his campaign from the equation, the Fair Election Fund share rises to 52%...
Critics of the Fair Election Fund say it’s pushing big spending in the mayoral race to outside groups...
Outside groups had spent nearly $1.8 million in the mayoral contest, compared with only $253,000 on City Council races, based on reports filed through Sunday.
“There’s a vacuum, and that vacuum is being filled by independent expenditure groups,” said Scott Martinez, a Denver election lawyer who is the registered agent for one of the super PACs that supports state Rep. Leslie Herod for mayor.
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By Brian Boucher
.....Artwork about abortion is, historically speaking, vanishingly rare. And the future display of such work seems dimmer after a small public college in Idaho removed six works about abortion and birth control from an exhibition, citing a state anti-abortion law.
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Read an article you think we would be interested in? Send it to Tiffany Donnelly at [email protected]. For email filters, the subject of this email will always begin with "Institute for Free Speech Media Update."
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The Institute for Free Speech is a nonpartisan, nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization that promotes and defends the First Amendment rights to freely speak, assemble, publish, and petition the government. Please support the Institute's mission by clicking here. For further information, visit www.ifs.org.
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