Identifying academic freedom as a major casualty of rapid and extensive reforms to the governance and practices of academic institutions worldwide, this timely Handbook considers the meaning of academic freedom, the threats it faces, and its relation to rights of critical expression, public accountability and the democratic health of open societies. An international cohort of leading scholars discuss the historical conceptualisations of academic freedom and explore the extent of its reconfiguration by neoliberalism and economic globalisation. Chapters examine the threats posed to academic freedom by interventionist government, economic fundamentalism, political conservatism and extremism. The Handbook finds that these threats endanger the intellectual ambitions at the core of academic freedom: contesting established 'truth' and holding power to account. Examining a matter of urgent social and political importance which is crucial to the future of democracy and intellectual autonomy, this Handbook is an invigorating read for students and scholars researching academic freedom, free speech and democratic governance in higher education institutions.

The Most Dangerous Man in the World is the definitive account of WikiLeaks and the man who is as secretive as the organisations he targets. Through interviews with Julian Assange, his inner circle and those who fell out with him, Fowler tells the story of how a man with a turbulent childhood and brilliance for computers created a phenomenon that has become a game-changer in journalism and global politics. In this international thriller, Andrew Fowler gives a ringside seat on the biggest leak in history. He charts the pursuit of Assange by the US and Sweden and how in the eyes of many Assange had become, according to the Pentagon Papers whistleblower, Daniel Ellsberg, 'the most dangerous man in the world'. This title is only for sale in the UK and Republic of Ireland.

*Winner of the European Award for Investigative And Judicial Journalism 2021* *Winner of the Premio Alessandro Leogrande Award for Investigative Journalism 2022* 'I want to live in a society where secret power is accountable to the law and to public opinion for its atrocities, where it is the war criminals who go to jail, not those who have the conscience and courage to expose them.' It is 2008, and Stefania Maurizi, an investigative journalist with a growing interest in cryptography, starts looking into the little-known organisation WikiLeaks. Through hushed meetings, encrypted files and explosive documents, what she discovers sets her on a life-long journey that takes her deep into the realm of secret power. Working closely with WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange and his organisation for her newspaper, Maurizi has spent over a decade investigating state criminality protected by thick layers of secrecy, while also embarking on a solitary trench warfare to unearth the facts underpinning the cruel persecution of Assange and WikiLeaks. With complex and disturbing insights, Maurizi's tireless journalism exposes atrocities, the shameful treatment of Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden, on up to the present persecution of WikiLeaks: a terrifying web of impunity and cover-ups. At the heart of the book is the brutality of secret power and the unbearable price paid by Julian Assange, WikiLeaks and truthtellers.

This book is about Freedom of Speech and public discourse in the United States. Freedom of Speech is a major component of the cultural context in which we live, think, work, and write, generally revered as the foundation of true democracy. But the issue has a great deal more to do with social norms rooted in a web of cultural assumptions about the function of rhetoric in social organization generally, and in a democratic society specifically. The dominant, liberal notion of free speech in the United States, assumed to be self-evidently true, is, in fact, a particular historical and cultural formation, rooted in Enlightenment philosophies and dependent on a collection of false narratives about the founding of the country, the role of speech and media in its development, and the relationship between capitalism and democracy. Most importantly, this notion of freedom of speech relies on a warped sense of the function of rhetoric in democratic social organization. By privileging individual expression, at the expense of democratic deliberation, the liberal notion of free speech functions largely to suppress rather than promote meaningful public discussion and debate, and works to sustain unequal relations of power. The presumed democratization of the public sphere, via the Internet, raises more questions than it answers-who has access and who doesn't, who commands attention and why, and what sorts of effects such expression actually has. We need to think a great deal more carefully about the values subsumed and ignored in an uncritical attachment to a particular version of the public sphere. This book seeks to illuminate the ways in which cultural framing diminishes the complexity of free speech and sublimates a range of value-choices. A more fully democratic society requires a more critical view of freedom of speech.

Catalan-language publishers were under constant threat during the dictatorship of Francisco Franco (1939-1975). Both the Catalan language and the introduction of foreign ideas were banned by the regime, preoccupied as it was with creating a "one, great and free Spain." Books against Tyranny examines the period through its censorship laws and censors' accounts by means of intertextuality, an approach that aims to shed light on the evolution of Francoism's ideological thought. The documents examined here includes firsthand witness accounts, correspondence, memoirs, censorship files, newspapers, original interviews, and unpublished material housed in various Spanish archives. As such, the book opens up the field and serves as an informative tool for scholars of Franco's Spain, Catalan social movements, or censorship more generally.

Fake News in Digital Cultures presents a new approach to understanding disinformation and misinformation in contemporary digital communication, arguing that fake news is not an alien phenomenon undertaken by bad actors, but a logical outcome of contemporary digital and popular culture, conceptual changes meaning and truth, and shifts in the social practice of trust, attitude and creativity. Looking not to the problems of the present era but towards the continuing development of a future digital media ecology, the authors explore the emergence of practices of deliberate disinformation. This includes the circulation of misleading content or misinformation, the development of new technological applications such as the deepfake, and how they intersect with conspiracy theories, populism, global crises, popular disenfranchisement, and new practices of regulating misleading content and promoting new media and digital literacies.

This book is about Freedom of Speech and public discourse in the United States. Freedom of Speech is a major component of the cultural context in which we live, think, work, and write, generally revered as the foundation of true democracy. But the issue has a great deal more to do with social norms rooted in a web of cultural assumptions about the function of rhetoric in social organization generally, and in a democratic society specifically. The dominant, liberal notion of free speech in the United States, assumed to be self-evidently true, is, in fact, a particular historical and cultural formation, rooted in Enlightenment philosophies and dependent on a collection of false narratives about the founding of the country, the role of speech and media in its development, and the relationship between capitalism and democracy. Most importantly, this notion of freedom of speech relies on a warped sense of the function of rhetoric in democratic social organization. By privileging individual expression, at the expense of democratic deliberation, the liberal notion of free speech functions largely to suppress rather than promote meaningful public discussion and debate, and works to sustain unequal relations of power. The presumed democratization of the public sphere, via the Internet, raises more questions than it answers-who has access and who doesn't, who commands attention and why, and what sorts of effects such expression actually has. We need to think a great deal more carefully about the values subsumed and ignored in an uncritical attachment to a particular version of the public sphere. This book seeks to illuminate the ways in which cultural framing diminishes the complexity of free speech and sublimates a range of value-choices. A more fully democratic society requires a more critical view of freedom of speech.

Free Speech on America's K-12 and College Campuses: Legal Cases from Barnette to Blaine covers the history of legal cases involving free speech issues on K-12 and college campuses, mostly during the fifty-year period from 1965 through 2015. While this book deals mostly with high school and college newspapers, it also covers religious issues (school prayer, distribution of religious materials, and use of school facilities for voluntary Bible study), speech codes, free speech zones, self-censorship due to political correctness, hate speech, threats of disruption and violence, and off-campus speech, including social media. Randall W. Bobbitt provides a representative sampling of cases spread across the five decades and across the subject areas listed above. Recommended for scholars of communication, education, political science, and legal studies.

The theatre and drama of the late Georgian period have been the focus of a number of recent studies, but such work has tended to ignore its social and political contexts. Theatric Revolution redresses the balance by considering the role of stage censorship during the Romantic period, an era otherwise associated with the freedom of expression. Looking beyond the Royal theatres at Covent Garden and Drury Lane which have dominated most recent accounts of the period, this book examines the day-to-day workings of the Lord Chamberlain's Examiner of Plays and shows that radicalized groups of individuals continuously sought ways to evade the suppression of both playhouses and dramatic texts.
Incorporating a wealth of new research, David Worrall reveals the centrality of theatre within busy networks of print culture, politics of all casts, elite and popular cultures, and metropolitan and provincial audiences. Ranging from the drawing room of Queen Caroline's private theatrical to the song-and-supper dens of Soho and radical free and easies, Theatric Revolution deals with the complex vitality of Romantic theatrical culture, and its intense politicization at all levels. This fascinating new study will be of great value to cultural historians, as well as to literary and theatre scholars.

"Did the artistic aspirations of Ulysses make its salacious parts any less salacious? This work of scrupulous scholarship is an entertaining and important book that traces the fascinating historical details behind the Ulysses trials. It shows that judge Woolsey's famous decision was based on testimony by experts who were calculating, fuzzy, and illogical. Vanderham exposes some of the facile pieties about Art that have prevailed in the academy and the courts ever since. His analysis has important implications for the law, helping us see that such judicial decisions should have a different basis altogether."
--E. D. Hirsch, Jr.Author of Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know

When James Joyce's Ulysses began to appear in installments in 1918, it provoked widespread outrage and disgust. The novel violated a long list of taboos by denigrating English royalty, describing masturbation, and mingling the erotic with the excremental--in a style that some early reviewers called literary bolshevism. As a result, U.S. Postal authorities denied several installments of Ulysses access to the mails, initiating a series of suppressions that would result in a thirteen-year ban on Joyce's novel. Obscenity trials spanned the next decade. Using personal interviews and primary sources never before discussed in depth, James Joyce and Censorship closely examines the legal trials of Ulysses from 1920 to 1934.

Paying particular attention to the decision that lifted the ban on Ulysses in 1933, a decision that the ACLU cites to this day in cases involving censorship, Vanderham traces the growth of the fallacy that literature is incapable of influencing individuals. He argues persuasivelythat underneath every esthetic lie ethical, political, philosophical, and religious convictions. The legal and the literary aspects of the Ulysses controversy, Vanderham insists, are virtually inseparable. By analyzing the writing and revising of Ulysses in the context of Joyce's lifelong struggle with the censors, he argues that the censorship of Ulysses affected not only the critical reception of the novel but its very shape.

This entertaining and insightful book is the first devoted exclusively to the films that have earned a special place in motion picture history by pushing the 'cinematic envelope' with their treatment of provocative subjects and themes. "Obscene, Indecent, Immoral & Offensive: 100+ Years of Censored, Banned and Controversial Films" chronicles the history of Hollywood censorship and the films that were banned, censored, and condemned by the Production Code Administration and the Legion of Decency. Stephen Tropiano offers readers insightful and accessible analysis of films that were branded 'controversial' at the time of their release due to explicit language, nudity, graphic sex, violence, and their treatment of 'adult' subject matter and themes.The films profiled include "The Birth of a Nation", "Anatomy of a Murder", "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?", "Baby Doll", "Blackboard Jungle", "Bonnie and Clyde", "The Wild Bunch", "A Clockwork Orange", "Natural Born Killers", "Caligula", "Rosemary's Baby", "Life of Brian", "The Last Temptation of Christ", and "The Passion of the Christ".

Censored Art Today is an accessible, informed analysis of the debates raging around censorship of art and so-called 'cancel culture', focusing on who the censors are and why they are clamping down on forms of artistic expression worldwide. Art censorship is a centuries-old issue which appears to be on the rise in the 21st century - why is this the case? Gareth Harris expertly analyses the different contexts in which artists, museums and curators face restrictions today, investigating political censorship in China, Cuba and the Middle East; the suppression of LGBTQ+ artists in 'illiberal democracies'; the algorithms policing art online; Western museums and 'cancel culture'; and the narratives around 'problematic' monuments. His fascinating study, which draws on extensive research and interviews, reveals why censorship has become the hottest of topics, impacting substantially on artists.

Today, we are inclined to believe that intellectual freedom has no greater adversary than the censor. In eighteenth-century France, the matter was more complicated. Royal censors envisioned themselves not as fulfilling a mission of state-sponsored repression but rather as guiding the literary traffic of the Enlightenment. By awarding pre-publication and pre-distribution approvals, royal censors sought to insulate authors and publishers from the scandal of post-publication condemnation by parliaments, the police, or the Church. Less official authorizations were also awarded. Though censors did delete words and phrases from manuscripts and sometimes rejected manuscripts altogether, the liberal use of tacit permissions and conditional approvals resulted in the publication and circulation of books that, under a less flexible system, might never have seen the light of day. In essence, eighteenth-century French censors served as cultural intermediaries who bore responsibility for expanding public awareness of the progressive thought of their time.