Harm in Hate Speech

Course Objectives:

1) Introducing students to key concepts related to freedom of speech, and hate speech.

2) Introducing students to key court cases related to freedom of speech, and hate speech.

3) To provide students a general knowledge about main figures in the area of freedom of speech and hate speech.

4) To encourage students to think/ be able to discuss freedom of speech, and hate speech from different perspectives

Course Content:

This course will examine the topic of freedom of speech and hate speech from the philosophical perspective. The discussion will focus on the role of the protection of freedom of speech in a democratic society, and how such societies should deal with hate speech. Among the questions we will examine are: What is hate speech? Can we make a meaningful distinction between harmful and offensive speech? Does hate speech legislation undermines democratic legitimacy? Should laws protecting speech only protect content or should insulting speech also be protected as well? What do we mean when we say that freedom of speech should be absolute? We will mainly focus on Jeremy Waldron’s book The Harm in Hate Speech. Among the authors we will discuss are: John Stuart Mill, Anthony Lewis, Jeremy Waldron, and Ronald Dworkin. In addition to reading the works of a these philosophers, we will also discuss a number of court cases involving freedom of speech.