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Free Speech

The Australian Royal Commission Turning Anti-Zionism Into A Crime

September 8, 2026 Lana Tatour and  Noem Peleg, Mondoweiss. , , , ,
In January 2026, the Prime Minister of Australia, Anthony Albanese, announced the establishment of a Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion following the deadly attack at Bondi Beach in December 2025, when two gunmen killed 15 people and injured 40 others. In Australia, a Royal Commission is an independent public inquiry of the highest form, rarely established for matters of public importance. It holds unique powers to subpoena evidence and documents, and its recommendations carry significant public and political weight, often informing legislative and policy reforms. 

A Defence Of Academia At The End Of The World

August 31, 2026 Simon Mair, Resilience. , , ,
There is a widespread frustration among activists, civil society leaders and even within academia itself. The prevailing wisdom is that academia falls somewhere between an impact-less ivory tower – where small groups of academics write for and read one another – and acting as the handmaiden of capitalism – a bourgeois class refining and reproducing the logic of the dominant destructive system. There is truth to both these claims. There is pressure to publish at ever faster rates. And some of this work will only be read by a handful of people. And, yes, much academic work acts to legitimate business as usual.

Free Speech Groups Sound Alarm On ‘Red Scare’ Repression

August 30, 2026 Mike Ludwig, Truthout. , , ,
Free speech groups across the country are sounding the alarm over the Trump administration’s surveillance of social movements in Minnesota and the prosecution of the Minnesota 15, a group of activists from Minneapolis-St. Paul who face federal conspiracy charges after organizing protests against brutal immigration sweeps earlier this year. President Donald Trump and his allies in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Justice Department have targeted the First Amendment-protected expression of protesters, civil society groups, journalists, universities, and the lawyers representing them at a scale that has “not been seen since the Second Red Scare,” according to an amicus brief filed with a federal court in Minnesota on August 25 by Protect Democracy and other groups.

UK Court Rules Anti-Zionism ‘Legally Protected Belief’

August 5, 2026 News Desk, The Cradle. , , ,
The UK Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) declared on 3 August that anti-Zionism qualifies as a “protected philosophical belief” under the Equality Act 2010, Professor David Miller announced via social media, marking a significant win for anti-genocide advocates. "It is coherent to describe as 'racist' an ideology that promotes the establishment of a state for only one race of people in a territory that formerly contained a large number of people of a different race," the court said in its ruling. "Such an ideology, which supports the migration of members of the first group into the territory with the support of an imperial power to dislodge an indigenous population, could also coherently be described as colonial and imperialistic,” the ruling goes on to state.

Bellevue City Council Adopts Ordinance Criminalizing Protests

May 19, 2026 Fight Back! News. , , , , , ,
On Tuesday evening, May 2, the Bellevue City Council voted to adopt an ordinance making protests at U.S. Congressman Adam Smith’s house illegal. The ordinance changes the city’s definition of criminal conduct to include targeted residential protests. The ordinance states that any gathering of people “with four or more persons” in a protest that is “targeted, directed or focused at a particular occupant of the residence” would be a gross misdemeanor. “Protest means any protest, demonstration or picketing activity including but not limited to marching, congregating, standing, posting, parading, demonstrating, picketing, with our without signs, with or without making audible or amplified noise.”

PhD Student Yousof Azizi Is Illegally Abducted, Imprisoned And Abused

April 24, 2026 The Yousof Azizi Defense Committee, Popular Resistance. , , ,
Maryland - Without warning, on April 13, after returning home from dropping off his 11 year-old daughter at school and his 3 year-old son at daycare, public policy PhD student Yousof Azizi was abducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in front of his home in Germantown, MD on fabricated charges regarding his visa status. Azizi and his wife, Aliyeh Hashemi, who recently completed her PhD in the field of health, have been living in the United States for over a decade and have complied with all visa requirements throughout that time. Both of their children were born in the United States.

Washington DC Protest Demands Freedom For Yousof Azizi

April 22, 2026 Cameron McLaren, Fight Back! News. , , , ,
Washington, DC – On Saturday, April 18, about 20 protesters gathered outside the Customs and Border Patrol headquarters to protest the ICE detainment of Yousof Azizi, a PhD student and outspoken anti-war activist. On Monday, April 13, Azizi was on his way home from dropping off his two children at school when ICE agents kidnapped him. Since then, he has been transferred first to a detention facility in Louisiana, then again to Arizona, against his will. Azizi has also been denied access to his lawyer, and allowed limited contact with his wife.

War On Free Speech Expands To Detention, Sanctions Of Individuals

April 20, 2026 Margaret Flowers, Clearing the FOG. , , , , ,
The plutocratic power structure in the United States is clamping down on our right to know and to dissent by illegally detaining individuals who speak out or shutting down their access to financial services. Clearing the FOG speaks with political analyst Ali Alizadeh about the unlawful detention of Iranian public policy PhD student at Virginia Tech, Yousof Azizi, who is frequently a guest on major media outlets. The second guest is Rainey Reitman of the Freedom of the Press foundation, who discusses her new book, "Transaction Denied: Big finance's power to punish speech."

Free Yousof Azizi!

April 17, 2026 The Yousof Azizi Defense Committee, Popular Resistance. , , , , ,
Yousof Azizi, a final-year PhD student in public policy at the University of Virginia, was arrested on the morning of Tuesday, April 14, in front of his home by ICE forces, and up to this moment he has not been allowed to meet with his lawyer. ICE officials have informed him that he will soon be transferred to a detention camp for undocumented immigrants in Louisiana. This arrest is highly questionable, because the duty of ICE forces is to detain undocumented immigrants, while Mr. Azizi holds a valid visa and absolutely no deficiencies exist in his visa record.

‘Everyone’ To Defy UK’s Farcical ‘Cat And Mouse’ Game Of Arrests

April 9, 2026 The Canary. , , , ,
On Saturday 11 April 2026, thousands of ordinary, peace-loving people will gather in Trafalgar Square, London. They’ll be there in open defiance of the UK government’s misguided crackdown on peaceful protest. This peaceful vigil, called ‘Everyone Day’, will demonstrate the unwaning resistance to the ban on Palestine Action. The UK government unlawfully proscribed this direct action movement as a ‘terrorist group’, paving the way for numerous arrests. The action will be a peaceful vigil, with people sitting down holding their handwritten paper signs.

In Defense Of De-Platforming Zionists On College Campuses

February 27, 2026 Tarik Aougab, Mondoweiss. , , ,
Recently, Haviv Rettig Gur— political analyst for the Times of Israel— visited Haverford College to give a talk entitled Roots, Return, and Reality: Jews, Israel, and the Myth of Settler Colonialism. Knowing what I already knew about Gur’s politics and analysis, and having made the mistake of attending previous events organized by the same small group of Zionist faculty members, I had no intention of attending. Given the first-hand accounts from students who did attend— and given the shared tactics of Zionist agitators all over the country— I didn’t need to be there to have a fairly clear view of what transpired.

Organizers Fight Back As Missouri Cracks Down On Free Speech In schools

February 18, 2026 Marianne Dhenin, Mondoweiss. , , , , ,
A bill moving through the Missouri legislature threatens to censor public school curricula, lead to attacks on teachers, and chill First Amendment speech. If passed, HB 2061 would adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism into codes of conduct for Missouri’s public schools and universities. That definition has been the subject of intense critique from dozens of civil society and rights groups since its adoption in 2016, including Jewish organizations and thinkers who warn that legislating a definition of antisemitism singles out Jews in a way that runs counter to the goal of decreasing antisemitism.

Mahmoud Khalil Vows To Oppose Trump Efforts To Deport Him

January 27, 2026 Michael Arria, Mondoweiss. , , , ,
A Trump administration official has declared that Palestine activist Mahmoud Khalil will be deported to Algeria. “It looks like he’ll go to Algeria. That’s what the thought is right now,” Tricia McLaughlin, Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, told NewsNation. Khalil, a former Columbia University student and lead negotiator during the school’s Gaza protests, was arrested in 2025 and detained at a Louisiana facility for three months on orders from the State Department. Khalil was never charged with a crime.

Trump Sought To Deport Student Over Pro-Palestine Op-Ed

January 27, 2026 News Desk, The Cradle. , , , , ,
Newly released court documents confirm that US immigration authorities arrested a Turkish university student in the state of Massachusetts last year over an opinion article she wrote criticizing Israel's genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, rather than for “terrorist activity,” CNN reported on 26 January. In March last year, Rumeysa Ozturk, a PhD student at Tufts University, was walking on the street when plainclothes immigration officers suddenly detained her. She was transported to a detention center on the other side of the country, in Louisiana, and held there for six weeks.

Hate Crime Laws Can Chill Free Speech

January 23, 2026 Anne Twomey, Consortium News. , , , , ,
What impact will the criminal hate provisions in the Albanese government’sCombatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism Act 2026have on the ability of ordinary Australians to protest? An earlier version contained a criminal offence of promoting or inciting racial hatred. The government dropped this part of the legislation after both the Coalition and the Greens opposed it. However, inciting racial hatred remains relevant to the other key provisions, which permit the banning of “prohibited hate groups”. A group can be prohibited under the new law if the governor-general makes a regulation prohibiting it. The governor-general acts on the advice of the minister for the Australian Federal Police.
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