A CPTRG-sponsored research event
Hate Speech Law and Political Philosophy
Thursday 12 November 2015
Senate House, University of London
This workshop is sponsored by the Society for Applied Philosophy and by the Contemporary Political Theory Research Group at Royal Holloway.
The new wave of Islamophobia that followed the Charlie Hebdo attack in January 2015 has brought the issue of hate speech back to the forefront of public debate in western liberal democracies. At the same time, academic debates on hate speech in contemporary legal and political philosophy have been reignited by a number of original contributions and edited collections.
One of the key challenges in the recent debates has been that of offering a comprehensive analysis of different categories of hate speech laws and regulations that can be found across different jurisdictions, and finding normative principles for or against hate speech legislation which may apply to all these clusters rather than only to one or a few of them.
By engaging with this growing body of work, and contextualizing it within the framework of related debates in contemporary legal and political philosophy, the workshop addressed a number of key questions: what is hate speech? Which groups should be protected via hate speech laws and why? What kind of harm, if any, does hate speech contribute in producing? Does hate speech undermine individuals’ dignity and self-respect? Which conception of liberty best helps us to understand the conceptual and normative distinctiveness of hate speech, as opposed to other types of speech (e.g. offensive speech)?
Eric Barendt (University College London): ‘Some Bad Arguments for Hate Speech Bans’
Respondent: Jeffrey Howard (University College London)
Chair: John Horton (Keele University)
Alexander Brown (University of East Anglia) - ‘The “Who” Question in the Hate
Speech Debate’
Respondent: Matteo Bonotti (Cardiff University)
Chair: Lois Lee (University College London)
Eric Heinze (Queen Mary, University of London) - ‘Hate Speech and Democratic Citizenship’
Respondent: Jonathan Seglow (Royal Holloway, University of London)
Chair: Aurelia Bardon (University College London)
