Columbia Global Freedom of Expression seeks to contribute to the development of an integrated and progressive jurisprudence and understanding on freedom of expression and information around the world.  It maintains an extensive database of international case law. This is its newsletter dealing with recent developments  in the field.

“It is the business of a university to provide that atmosphere which is most conducive to speculation, experiment and creation. It is an atmosphere in which there prevail ‘the four essential freedoms’ of a university – to determine for itself on academic grounds who may teach, what may be taught, how it shall be taught, and who may be admitted to study.”

This is the concurring opinion from Sweezy v. New Hampshire (1957), in which US Supreme Court Justices Felix Frankfurter and John Marshall Harlan II quoted scholars from South African universities. The four essential university freedoms that the opinion outlines are being challenged today.

Last week, CGFoE Founder Lee C. Bollinger and Aryeh Neier, President Emeritus of the Open Society Foundations, both cited Frankfurter and Harlan in Sweezy v. New Hampshire, contributing to the urgent conversation on academic freedom.

Writing for The Atlantic, Lee C. Bollinger, First Amendment scholar and President Emeritus of Columbia University, interrogated the role of academic institutions: “[Universities] are every bit as vital to our society as the political branches of government or quasi-official institutions such as the press.”

Should the universities have special standing similar to that of the press? Bollinger argued they should: “Universities, as institutions, are the embodiment of the basic rationale of the First Amendment, which affirms our nation’s commitment to a never-ending search for truth.”

When is the right moment for universities to make their case in courts? To Bollinger, it might be now: “In times of high crisis, one can often find the opportunities to delineate more sharply our doctrines and values,” and Harvard’s lawsuit against the Trump administration can be one such opportunity. Read the full article here.

Earlier last week, the New University in Exile Consortium hosted an online discussion, “Universities Under Attack.” Lee C. Bollinger shared the panel with Lisa Anderson, former President of American University in Cairo; Nicholas Dirks, former Chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley; and Michael Ignatieff, former Rector and President of Central European University in Budapest and Vienna. Aryeh Neier moderated the conversation.

“We need to be much more robust in the defense of the idea of […] academic freedom as institutional autonomy,” said Michael Ignatieff in closing. “We need to make a connection between that and democratic freedom itself. You can’t have a free society unless you have free institutions that are self-governing, whether it’s a university, a professional association, a union, a doctor’s association – these are the little platoons […] that keep a society free.”

Join the largest survey ever conducted on political cartoonists’ online experiences. Are you a political cartoonist? The Forum for Humor & the Law and CGFoE welcome your input. Do you know a political cartoonist? Please share the link to the survey: It is available in English, Spanish, French, and Arabic. The results will form the basis of an upcoming report by Cartooning for Peace, Cartoonists Rights, and their partners on the prevalence of issues such as censorship, abuse, and security threats faced by political cartoonists globally.

United Nations Human Rights Committee
Vasilevich v. Belarus
Decision date: March 14, 2023
The United Nations Human Rights Committee (UNHRC) held that Belarus violated the rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly of Aleksandra Vasilevich, Anatoly Lebedko, Vladimir Katsora, and Valery Repnin, by imposing administrative fines and detentions for their participation in unauthorized peaceful protests. They were prosecuted under Article 23.34 of the Belarusian Code of Administrative Offenses, which penalizes individuals for organizing or participating in public events that have not received prior approval from the authorities. The petitioners argued that the State failed to justify how the restrictions on their rights were necessary to protect national security, public safety, public order, public health, morals, or the rights and freedoms of others. Belarus held that the sanctions were consistent with articles 19 and 21 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). The Committee concluded that the restrictions were neither necessary to pursue any legitimate aim nor proportionate, and were therefore incompatible with articles 19 and 21 of the ICCPR.  The UNHRC argued that penalizing individuals for engaging in peaceful protests, even if unauthorized, was an unjustified restriction on freedom of expression. Hence, it ordered Belarus to provide the petitioners with adequate compensation, including reimbursement of fines and legal costs. The Committee also called on the State to review its domestic legislation to comply with international human rights standards and prevent future violations.

Baydildayeva v. Kazakhstan
Decision date: March 10, 2023
The United Nations Human Rights Committee held that Kazakhstan violated the right to freedom of expression of journalist and blogger Dina Baydildayeva after she was sanctioned for staging a peaceful single-person picket in Almaty in 2014. Baydildayeva called for the release of her detained colleagues and criticized the city’s mayor, a relative of the President. She was arrested – and a formal warning was issued against her – under domestic legislation requiring prior authorization for public gatherings. Her appeals were rejected at all judicial levels. The Committee held that penalizing an individual, even with a warning, for peacefully expressing political views constituted a disproportionate interference with freedom of expression. It held that Kazakhstan failed to provide a specific and individualized justification for the restriction and did not demonstrate that the measure was necessary or the least intrusive option available. The Committee concluded that Kazakhstan violated Article 19(2) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and ordered the State to provide compensation to Baydildayeva and review its legislation on public assemblies to bring it in line with international human rights standards.

Gulyak v. Belarus
Decision date: July 27, 2022
The United Nations Human Rights Committee (UNHRC) held that Belarus violated the rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly of Vitaliy Gulyak by imposing administrative fines for his participation in an unauthorized single-person picket and denying authorization to organize assemblies without proper justification. The Belarusian authorities rejected Gulyak’s requests for approval to hold street processions in favor of Ukraine’s membership in the European Union, claiming it was not permissible under the Public Events Act. In addition, national courts imposed fines against Gulyak for staging a solo picket against the Russian troops’ deployment in Ukraine. Gulyak argued that Belarus violated his rights under articles 19 and 21 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). On the other hand, Belarus argued that the restrictions were necessary to ensure public safety and order. The Committee held that Belarus failed to demonstrate how Gulyak’s actions violated public order or justified the imposed sanctions. It emphasized that domestic authorities did not provide specific grounds to justify the necessity of the restriction or prove that the fine was the least intrusive measure available. As a remedy, the UNHRC ordered Belarus to provide full reparations to Gulyak, including reimbursement of fines and legal costs. Furthermore, it noted that the case reflected patterns identical to those examined in previous decisions and, thus, recommended the State to review its normative framework on public events to ensure its compliance with international human rights standards.

MAY 16: Surveillance Ascendant, Democracy in Free Fall. The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University will hold a two-panel event on commercial surveillance, its threats to free speech and privacy, and policy solutions for consumer protection. The convening results from a collaboration between the Institute and Knight’s Senior Policy Fellow Olivier Sylvain of Fordham University. Julia Angwin, investigative journalist and author, will give a keynote address and join a Q&A with Ellen Nakashima, The Washington Post. May 16, 2025. 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM ET. The event will take place at the National Press Club, Holeman Lounge, Washington, D.C., and will be livestreamed. Register to join in-person or online.

● US: Court Sets Expedited Trial in Challenge to Deportation of Student Protesters. In a press statement on American Association of University Professors v. Rubio this week, the Knight First Amendment Institute cites a federal judge’s order, dated May 6, which sets the bench trial for July 7, 2025. The case challenges the US government and individual officials over the illegal “ideological-deportation policy” targeting pro-Palestine voices among students and faculty. The plaintiffs are represented by the Knight Institute, Ahilan Arulanantham, and Zimmer, Citron & Clarke LLP. “This repressive and unconstitutional policy has created a climate of fear on college campuses across the country,” said Ramya Krishnan, Knight’s Senior Staff Attorney. “We appreciate the court’s willingness to expedite the trial.”

● ECtHR: Case Law on Freedom of Expression – IRIS Themes Series, 10th Edition. Marking a decade of the IRIS Themes series – the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) case law insights on freedom of expression, the media, and journalists – the European Audiovisual Observatory, in partnership with the Institute for Information Law of the University of Amsterdam, launched a new database: VERBO. The database stores earlier IRIS Themes’ publications and will be the home of all its future editions on Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The IRIS Themes – now in the form of VERBO – span case law from 1994 to 2025 and make a go-to resource on the ECtHR’s freedom of expression decisions for lawyers, judges, policymakers, rights defenders, scholars, journalists, and students. Explore VERBO here.

● Belarus: UN Experts Urge Belarus to Release Political Prisoners with Disabilities and Serious Health Conditions. Independent UN experts, including Irene Khan, Special Rapporteur on the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression, and Gina Romero, Special Rapporteur on the Rights to Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and of Association, call on Belarusian authorities to release political prisoners with disabilities and chronic and acute diseases. The health conditions of at least 85 political prisoners – Andrei Navitski and Dzianis Salmanovich among them – are in danger of “irreparable and permanent harm.” The prisoners in question were convicted in the context of the 2020 protests, and most of them are being held in incommunicado detentions, which, the experts say, “expose these persons to the risk of enforced disappearance.”

This section of the newsletter features teaching materials focused on global freedom of expression which are newly uploaded on Freedom of Expression Without Frontiers

Justice in Shackles: The Global Persecution of Judges and Lawyers, by ​​Amy Slipowitz. In this policy brief published by Freedom House, Amy Slipowitz, who leads The Fred Hiatt Program to Free Political Prisoners, writes on autocrats’ persecution of legal and judicial professionals around the world. Citing Freedom House data between 2014 and 2024, Slipowitz points to at least 78 countries (varying from dictatorships to democracies), where judges, prosecutors, and lawyers have experienced retaliation in the form of detention, prosecution, and imprisonment. What gives rise to such large-scale repression? Slipowitz outlines two political contexts: 1) Persecution to protect the status-quo (Iran cracking down on the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom movement; Myanmar responding to the pro-democracy movement after the 2021 coup) and 2) Persecution to strengthen a new regime (early years of Xi Jinping in power in China and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in power in Türkiye). Slipowitz lists recommendations, urging for action against repression that targets legal professionals. 

Tamizdat Project: Banned Books from the Cold War to the Present. Based at Hunter College, CUNY, Tamizdat Project is a public scholarship and philanthropic initiative that calls attention to censorship, banned books, and displacement, centering on the former Soviet bloc and Eastern Europe. Tamizdat is running a charity book auction, “Manuscripts Don’t Burn 2025,” in support of students and scholars sent into exile due to war or political repressions. The books up for bidding include “Secondhand Time. The Last of the Soviets,” signed by the author and 2015 Nobel Prize Winner in Literature Svetlana Alexievich, and “To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement,” signed by the author and 2025 Pulitzer Prize winner in General Nonfiction Benjamin Nathans. By placing a bid, you are supporting a student.

This newsletter is reproduced with the permission of Global Freedom of Expression.  For an archive of previous newsletters, see here.