civil liberties

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• SOURCE: Salon
  5/14/2022
  

  We're Facing the Results of the Dems' Retreat from Secularism

  by Jacques Berlinerblau

  By trying to match the Republicans on bringing Christian faith into policy, Democrats abandoned the difficult but necessary struggles to define how a diverse society protects religious freedom for majority and minority faiths – and those of no faith. 

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• SOURCE: PEN America
  5/4/2022
  

  Virtual Event: Scholars Discuss Free Speech at American Writers Museum May 18

  This event looks at historical moments where strident expressions of political thought, widely perceived to be anti-democratic in their own place and time, provoked new strictures.

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• SOURCE: The New Republic
  4/21/2022
  

  How the Public Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Wiretapping

  by Andrew Lanham

  Brian Hochman shows that the white backlash to civil rights and racial justice protests helped to undermine longstanding civil libertarian opposition to electronic surveillance and normalize the idea of the government spying on Americans. 

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• 4/24/2022
  

  Footage in NYC's Archives Sheds Important Light on the Northern Civil Rights Movement and Police Efforts to Undermine It

  by L.E.J. Rachell

  Surveillance footage in the New York City Archives helps to highlight the importance of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) to the northern civil rights movement – and the techniques the NYPD used to disrupt it. 

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• SOURCE: New York Review of Books
  4/7/2022
  

  How Rights Went Right

  by David Cole

  Is an all-or-nothing view of constitutional rights at the root of growing cultural clashes pitting civil rights against the free exercise of religion? A new book suggests alternatives. 

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  3/25/2022
  

  Law Prof: KBJ Hearings Show Right Won't Stop at Smashing Roe v. Wade

  by Melissa Murray

  Conservative skepticism of "unenumerated rights" indicates that they seek a judicial regime that peels back a host of rights implicit in the constitution that protect intimate freedom and the liberty of minority groups. 

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• 3/20/2022
  

  On the Illogic of War

  by Don Fraser

  The logic of war rejects dissent and the moderating influence of political concerns in the pursuit of destruction, and liberal democracies aren't exempt. 

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• SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
  3/17/2022
  

  Russian Academics See "No Future" at Home

  While many Western academics have focused on the danger faced by Ukrainian scholars, it is clear that the domestic politics of Russia are increasingly dangerous for academic freedom as well. 

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  3/7/2022
  

  The "Who Cares if You're Innocent" Project on the Right

  Recent Senate hearings for Biden's court nominees, and the opinions of some Supreme Court justices on criminal cases, suggest that constitutional protections for the right to counsel are in jeopardy, says legal historian Sara Mayeux. 

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• SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
  2/24/2022
  

  Lessons From the Struggle Against the Old McCarthyism

  by Benjamin Mitchell-Yellin

  For a Texas professor, the Lieutenant Governor's push to abolish tenure and punish faculty for teaching certain ideas calls to mind the experiences of his grandparents in the heyday of McCarthy and HUAC. 

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• SOURCE: Editorial Board
  12/21/2021
  

  Should Your Taxes Fund Religious Schools? Why SCOTUS Might Say Yes

  Christopher Jon Sprigman of NYU Law discusses the oral arguments in Carson v. Makin, and how the conservatives on the Court seem to be maximizing "free exercise" over "establishment." 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  11/17/2021
  

  Law Enforcement Has Long Practiced Double Standards for Activists

  by Denise Lynn

  Nobody should be shocked that the FBI has aggressively surveilled Black Lives Matter organizers while deciding that the online organizing of the January 6 attack on the Capitol was protected speech; this double standard has characterized law enforcement's approach to racial justice protest. 

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• SOURCE: Boston Review
  9/9/2021
  

  9/11 Forever

  by Joseph Margulies

  "By creating the impression that the stakes were not merely consequential but existential, the attacks of September 11 normalized previously unimaginable cruelty."

• 
• SOURCE: The Guardian
  7/1/2021
  

  The ACLU on Fighting Critical Race Theory Bans: ‘It’s About Our Country Reckoning with Racism’

  Historian Adam Laats give background to an interview with ACLU Staff Attorney Emerson Sykes about the climate of backlash and censorship around teaching the history of racism in America, comparing it to the 1920s uproar over the teaching of evolution. 

• 
• SOURCE: The New Republic
  5/27/2021
  

  The Lies Cops Tell and the Lies We Tell About Cops

  by Stuart Schrader

  "The core of policing is not safety. It is social control. All the other lies obfuscate this function."

• 
• SOURCE: The New Republic
  4/14/2021
  

  How Americans Lost Their Fervor for Freedom (Review of Louis Menand)

  by Evan Kindley

  Before lamenting the death of "freedom" as the highest social ideal, it's important to reckon seriously with what the term means outside of the context of the Cold War.

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• SOURCE: Reason
  1/13/2021
  

  Reviving Sedition Prosecutions Would Be a Tragic Mistake

  by David Beito

  A libertarian historian argues that the use of sedition law to charge participants in the Capitol riots would revive a dangerous pattern of prosecuting ideology instead of action, one which those on the left should also treat with suspicion. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  12/3/2020
  

  A Lesser-Known Trump Immigration Policy Needs Biden’s Attention

  by Smita Ghosh

  Biden should reverse the Trump policy of using "expedited removal" to deport migrants without a hearing, which is part of a historical pattern of deportation programs that harm communities, separate families, and sometimes result in legal residents being expelled from the United States.

• 
• SOURCE: CNN
  11/2/2020
  

  Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Black Lives Matter Organizer

  "The Supreme Court has long recognized that peaceful protesters cannot be held liable for the unintended, unlawful actions of others," said American Civil Liberties Union National Legal Director David Cole.

• 
• SOURCE: Mother Jones
  10/29/2020
  

  The Dossier That Destroyed Frank Wilkinson’s Dream of Public Housing in LA

  by Eric Nusbaum

  Frank Wilkinson's advocacy for racially integrated public housing in Los Angeles set off a red-baiting campaign that landed him in prison.