Ideas - Is our right to freedom of expression limitless?

Episode Date: July 10, 2025

In an era of great polarization and cancel culture, our right to freedom of thought and expression is especially resonant. Written over 75 years ago, the UN's Declaration of Human Rights requires an update to reflect the times of today. In this fourth episode in our series on human rights, IDEAS explores the history and future of free expression. *This episode originally aired on Sept. 5, 2024.

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and welcome to a live taping of Ideas at the Stratford Festival. How do we create a better world? How do we articulate the kind of future in which we want to live? A little more than 75 years after the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights at the United Nations, we're talking about that document and how well it stands up to the test of time. Born out of the devastation of the Second World War, the Universal Declaration was intended to set the world on a new course. Some of the questions we'll be asking here, what new world were these rights supposed

to create? What's the relationship between the rights and realities between calling for a more just world and actually bringing it into being? Today's panel is the fourth in the series and we're looking at articles 18 and 19 in the UDHR, the rights to free thought and free expression. On our panel today starting at my far right, James Turk is director of the Center for Free Expression at Toronto Metropolitan University. His work focuses on promoting expressive freedom and the public's right to know, which underpin democracy and social justice.

Next to Jim is Noora Aljizawi, senior researcher at the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto's Monk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. Formerly, she was a prominent figure in the Syrian uprising and a survivor of abduction, detention and torture. Kajiso Leseho Molope is an Indigenous South African novelist and playwright of The Sand People. She is the author of four novels that centre the history and perspectives of Indigenous South Africans. Thank you.

So let's start with the articles themselves and what they say. Article 18 states, everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. This right includes freedom to change his or her religion or belief and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private to manifest his or her religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance. or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance. Article 19 states, everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression. This right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference

and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. So, guys, so I'd like to start with you, if you don't mind. In thinking about the last 75 years, could you paint a picture of a moment in time that embodies the ideas behind those articles in the UDHR that brings to life the idea behind those rights for you? I don't know that I can think of one moment, but I can think of like a big situation.

True. Which is that South Africa was one of the countries, the original members, right? And so they signed onto this. This was 1948. This 1948 was an apartheid came into the law in South Africa. So for me, I'm always thinking, who was signing this? Who had these ideals? And what did that look like for them in their countries? So it was this big lie, you

know, that they were signing the document with all of what you just read, but they were suppressing freedom of thought and freedom of expression in their own country. Yeah. That's a very powerful moment and example. Thank you for that. Noura, what would be your moment or picture that you would describe to us? It's really hard to call when, but growing up in a country under dictatorship, that since I was a child,

I was being told that walls have ears. I grew up on these stories of political prisoners who dared to speak. I knew that I have an exiled uncle who dared to speak and who dared to challenge the authority in the country that he spent his life in exile. He passed away even without having the chance to say goodbye to his family. He returned to the country as a dead body, just to rest in peace in his grave.

So I was always dreaming that one day we will have freedom of expression in our country. When I first read the Declaration of Human Rights, when I was in the first year of my university, I felt somehow safe and protected because our rights are being acknowledged out there somewhere. And our job is to fight for them. And this is what I did when I took the decision

to join the revolution in 2011. Thank you, Noura. We'll come back to those themes from both of these images later in the conversation. Jim, what's your moment? I guess the key moment for me, I was a young student at Harvard and was involved in a progressive religious group and somebody came to me and said, well, I was supposed to go to Selma, Alabama To join Martin Luther King's March and I'm not able to go. Would you like to go? Which I did I wasn't particularly political at the time

But it was a transformative moment for me to see The people who'd come together to try to uphold a fundamental series of rights of which they were engaging in their right to freedom of expression through their march. I mean, that's one of the ways in which we express freedom as the students who are in pro-Palestinian encampments at universities.

I mean, it's through those kinds of gatherings. But to be there and to see both the camaraderie and the spirit under very difficult circumstances, and I was never so happy the President of the United States had called out the National Guard, and it had not been for them, I probably would be dead now, because along the whole route there were people who I've never seen such visible anger and hatred. And the soldiers standing between them and us is all that kept things alive. So it brought home for me how these rights, which are aspirational, are always a struggle to realize. And it's in moments of taking them on and upholding them even in difficult circumstances that's the key

to making them a reality. What an extraordinary range of stories that really embody this idea that we're going to discuss today. And I wonder actually if we could stay with you, Jim, and take us to another moment that's important to this conversation. And that is one that Cariso has already raised,

which is the formation of the UDHR and the articulation of that aspiration of protecting freedom of expression and freedom of opinion. How do you think that the waters that were the political waters of the time shaped the way those rights were imagined? Well, the United Nations was founded in 1945 in the aftermath of the Second World War. There was great concern about what had happened during that war, and especially the Nazis and the Holocaust and the horror of that. And so there was a desire to identify what are the basic rights that all of us have, not because of our nationality or our ethnicity, but as a result of being

a human being. And they spent three years trying to articulate those, which they did, and the UDHR, I believe, is the most translated document in the world. The last count I saw, it's been translated into 540 languages. Wow. But it's important, I used the term earlier, aspirational. These are rights, but they're rights that only exist insofar as we can make them a right.

And that's a struggle everywhere, in every country. But that doesn't make them unimportant. I mean, people say, well, that's right. I mean, they signed this document, but what's the point of it? Well, the point of it is we can't fight for something if we haven't identified what our goals are. And that list of rights is so important. And I would argue that they're all equally important, all the rights listed there. But in some sense, the freedom of expression, Article 19, is foundational. Because rights are only rights if they're obligatory rather than discretionary.

So a government doesn't have the discretion to, they're obligatory rather than discretionary. So a government doesn't have the discretion, they're obligated and they can only become rights if there's a means to enforce them. And when the enforcement fails, if you don't have the right to freedom of expression, to protest, to dissent, to speak out, then there's no chance of them being right. So we can't realize the other rights

unless we have the right to freedom of expression. It doesn't make freedom of expression more important, but it does make it foundational. Foundational to all the other rights. Yes. Yeah. Kariso, can we come back to you just to the story that you told at the very beginning? You are a storyteller, a very accomplished storyteller for novels and other writing that you've done. What do you make of that story that was told by the drafters at the time?

As you say, the contradiction between what was in the document and what was already being lived in places like South Africa. Yeah. I mean, I think when we look at these documents, it's important to ask ourselves questions about who was writing them and where they were coming from. So as Jim was saying, this was happening post World War two right now This was after the horrors of the Holocaust is after the the horrors of what had happened during the war Now that was great motivation for all these states to come together. However They had already been several

genocides right perpetrated around the world and There had already been several genocides perpetrated around the world and quite a lot within Africa. And that wasn't the moment. That was not the motivation. So I think we ask ourselves, who came together? Who was sitting at the table? Who chaired these meetings? So in terms of storytelling, I always think it's important to look at who's telling the story, who they're speaking for for and who they're speaking with.

Right? Yeah. Noor, coming back to you, how do you understand the relationship between those two rights enshrined in those two articles, the free thought and free expression? Like is one the outside expression of the other? Or how do you see the relationship between those two things? I think they are very much interconnected and I always recall George Orwell in 1984. Always it starts from the attempts of dictators and authorities to control the thoughts.

After controlling the thoughts they try to control the pens, the voices. This information is all about controlling the thoughts, controlling the information, manipulating and gaslighting people who are thinking differently. And then the attempts to silence them. Noura, just to underline this, because there are so many ways of, as you say, controlling people's opinions and their thoughts and expressions. Could you speak to how it was, how did that manifest itself in Syria?

How does it manifest itself in Syria? We have like in Syria, and also I believe it's a global, we have the traditional methods, and then the technology made it quite more sophisticated In traditional methods, I believe like it was the era when my uncle Was acting and mobilizing with his colleagues This is why we kept repeating this say that walls have ears because you cannot trust anyone sitting in the room Including the walls if you are speaking to yourself.

And then people will not be executed in the streets. They will be taken to so-called courts. So we have all of this system around the repression and the prosecution of these people, of these individuals who were thinking freely, practicing their humanity. And then the second phase of the authoritarianism and this control on thoughts came with the technology. This is like the way when I first started being exposed to this,

how the government manipulated the internet, I thought when I first started my online activism, searching, trying to find answers to all of these questions, I thought that when we go to the internet, we are free, it's a free area. Back then we didn't have internet at home. I used to go to this internet cafe.

And I started reflecting on things in my country after learning all the hidden information about the dark history of our government. After a few months, I was sitting in one of my loved classes to find myself being approached by two men in the class. My professor just was frozen, couldn't say a word, and I was taken from the classroom. To be questioned, interrogated, back then I was 18, and confronted with all of my log search and all of my writing. So I got terrified because you cannot erase anything.

Here your words are confronting you. But it was really shocking moment to realize how this window to the world became weaponized in a way that could collect all evidence against me. And then it's not the story of one single individual being backed with all of these laws and regulations. And naturally, there's a direct line between that experience and you sitting here today talking about freedom of expression

and working for the Citizen Lab. I wonder if I could ask the other two guests to reflect on that and think about your own political context. If you could talk about your own origin story in intersecting with these rights and how that changed the way you think about those rights. So in the South African context, are you able to speak to that? For me, my parents were activists and my father was jailed and tortured. And I remember this really big moment for me was when they cleared my father's library because it had all these books that were banned and they just in frantic,

they just threw all the books and all this information and all this, you know, I mean, if you have freedom of thought, you're allowed to read whatever you want to read, right? But they were so afraid of being jailed again, that it's like this big memory from my childhood of my parents emptying the study, throwing all the books on the back lawn and like starting a fire. So they burned all these books, all these documents, and then I also, personally in my work, I write what we call resistance literature. So I write books for and about indigenous people and kind of where I outline and talk of struggles

during apartheid. For me, this is where it comes up, where my freedom of speech is very rooted in the, my work, let me say this way, my work is rooted in my belief in freedom of speech. And I always say I will, I work with artists in freedom of expression and I always say I will defend people's right

to freedom of expression, even I always say I will defend people's right to freedom of expression, even if I completely disagree with them. Yeah. And Jim, you began to tell us the story of where your life changed, where you were not political at all, and then you became political. Can you just talk about how that experience

actually altered the way you think about freedom of expression? I think it made me aware that in our context in Canada, it's a very different situation than in Syria or South Africa. We don't have police coming in and detaining us. We don't have the kind of explicit racist violence that South African activists for democracy faced. But there's never a time when you're advocating for rights that it's easy. I think back to LGBTQ times in the 1980s and think of the bathhouse raids in

Toronto and advocates for LGBTQ rights faced serious problems. And the transformations occurred over the time from when in much of North America, there were sodomy laws, there were a variety of restrictions, gay marriage was something that was on to now where, and that was a result of a lot of struggle by a lot of people who paid a price for that struggle, even if now we treat it as something we've achieved.

But it's the same thing for workers' rights. Uh, during the McCarthy period in the United States, tens of thousands of Americans were jailed. Uh, there were, there was a smaller version of that in Canada, uh, speaking up about issues that are unpopular. Continues always to be a problem, I think. And we're seeing the latest manifestation of it in talking about what's happening in Gaza and Israel today, where there are huge prices being paid

if you're taking a pro-Palestinian position. Even if you're not taking an anti-Jewish position, you're taking anti-government of Israel position, that gets conflated. So it's always a difficult time, although the nature of the difficulty is very different in Canada than it is than the two of you experienced.

Let me stay with you, Jim, and just talk about also, again, the Canadian context. Article 18 speaks of the freedom of thought as being enshrined, quote, either alone, or in community. One of the few references to kind of a group dynamic, or group rights in the UDHR. What is the significance of group rights in this context? Well, group rights is a difficult thing to think about because insofar as there's an assertion, well, the group has a right, but individuals within the group don't. Who decides

what that group right is? And how do you avoid that be an authoritarian? Uh obligation put on every member of the group Uh, and in every you know, every community we have whether it be indigenous or black or south asian There's a lot a lot of diversity And so someone who claims they're speaking for the group and people cannot dissent from what? The spokesperson the claim spokesperson is saying is a problem. And yet there are times where a group does have a right to assert itself.

So it's a balance that has to be sorted out. It's not an easy balance to face. And we, you know, if you can think of lots of examples of within the indigenous community over protecting lands and the difference between a band council and hereditary chiefs. I mean, all these communities are really complex. And one of the forms I think racism takes

is talking about the aboriginal perspective or the black perspective as if they're monolithic, homogeneous groups, unlike the rest of us who are diverse, which is just not the case. groups, unlike the rest of us who are diverse, which is just not the case. Yeah. On ideas, you've been listening to Brave New Worlds and the fourth in a series of programs recorded at the Stratford Festival exploring the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, its meaning in our own time and its significance for the future.

You can hear ideas wherever you get your podcasts and on CBC Radio 1 in Canada, across North America, on U.S. Public Radio and Sirius XM, in Australia, on ABC Radio National and around the world at cbc.ca slash ideas. You can also hear us on the CBC News app. I'm Nala Ayed. It's not the dark you have to be afraid of. It's what's hiding within it. The Shaw Festival presents, Wait Until Dark.

In a New York apartment, a blind woman becomes the target of ruthless criminals. As night falls, she must use all her wits to survive. Don't miss this heart-stopping thriller, Wait Until Dark at the Shaw. For tickets go to Shawfest.com. Book Club on Monday. Gym on Tuesday. Ugh! Date night on Wednesday. Out on the town on Thursday! Woo! Quiet night in on Friday.

It's good to have a routine. And it's good for your eyes too. Because with regular comprehensive eye exams at Specsavers, you'll know just how healthy they are. Visit Specsavers.ca'll know just how healthy they are. Visit Specsavers.ca to book your next eye exam. Eye exams provided by independent optometrists. In today's panel discussion, we've been talking about Articles 18 and 19,

the rights to free thought and free expression. In our panel today, Syrian human rights activist and senior researcher at the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, Noora Al-Jazawi, Director of the Centre for Free Expression at Toronto Metropolitan University, James Turk, and South African Canadian novelist and playwright, Kahiso Lesejo Molopé. Kahiso, you described what happened in apartheid time South Africa, but having gone through the apartheid, sorry, dismantling of the apartheid, can you talk about what kind of culture around the rights of freedom of expression

that has developed as a result of shedding apartheid as the ruling system of South Africa? I think we very, very, very proudly as a country We very, very, very proudly as a country became involved in creating the Constitution. And I think that we are still within that period where the, you know, I'm one of them, where apartheid survivors know what happened. We moved from apartheid to the post-apartheid era. And I think we're one of the countries in the world that defend the right to freedom of expression very, very, very, very strongly because we still, it's within living memory. We know what happened

to us, to our parents, those of us who express themselves, our parents who are jailed, our parents who had to leave the country. So I think that it's, you know, it is a culture of protecting rights. It's one of the more exciting things about young democracy because we've been involved in building it. So we, you know, I think the average South African is a great defender of freedom of expression. So that brings us back to, I mean, unlike the rest of us, you know that example and you know the Canadian situation as well. And I wonder what you think we can learn from the South African example in a country where for all of us, the experience of being born as a country is beyond memory.

What lessons do you think that we might be able to draw from the South African example here? Yeah, and so that was part of the exciting thing about constructing the constitution is that we went all over the world to see what was being done right and then applied it to what we can, how we can move forward. So I think that we shouldn't think, in Canada, I think we shouldn't think that everything is set in stone. I think we always should say there's an opportunity to go around the world and see what is being done right and apply it to ourselves.

And one of the things that I think prevents North America from doing that is that North America has positioned itself as the leader, like, you, like leaders in human rights. But I think then that gets Canada stuck in this place where they feel they don't have anything to learn from the world. And like the United States, they feel like they're enforcing human rights

around the world. So I think if we at this moment see ourselves as continuing to reconstruct the charter. If we, I think it should come under scrutiny by all Canadians and I think we should be at a place where as Canadians feel that we have a stake in, we will feel like we have a stake in it if we contribute to the changes in it.

Noura, a similar question because you had certain preconceived notions about the rights to free expression and freedom of thought before coming to Canada. And now you've been here and you've been working in the field. Could you talk about the difference between your expectations and reality? Yeah, when the revolution started in 2011, I was one of these, I always call us crazy people who took the streets to defend our rights. The price was very, was very huge for many of people in my generation in particular. To me, it was what I expected happened, that I was arrested. Back then I was finishing my masters when I was released I found out that they attacked my apartment, they burned all all my books, my thesis and two manuscripts of short stories like my

studies, my academic studies and also my writing was all about political repression and debunking all of these new methods that writers and their authoritarianism were applying and my records from the university were erased. Moving to Canada in 2017, I was introduced to a very brilliant family, Professor Chandler Davis, who's one of the beautiful minds in mathematics and in activism. He was a very brave person. But you know, just observing and witnessing how over the last few years,

but in particular, the trend, like the critical moment of observing how the repression of the on the encampments and how the crackdown on students, academics, people are being threatened of being dismissed from their jobs. It's very traumatizing. People are being threatened of being dismissed from their jobs. It's very traumatizing. It hurts a lot to see this moment that's where I came, similar to many people seeking a safe environment that's globally well known. Like Canada is like a very critical defender of human rights overseas, whereas people in this country are being under repression just because they said something

and they thought differently, different than what people in power are willing everyone to say. And we'll get into that a bit more in a moment. But beyond that, Jim, could you speak to also what you see as the most vivid gap between the rights to free thought and free thought and free expression that we have on paper and how the world operates in reality? Well, it's hard to think of the best example because there are so many examples. Let me take an example that I spend a lot of time on. Right across Canada, public libraries and school libraries

are being told that books have to be removed, that speakers have to be canceled. The number of challenges to library materials has gone through the roof. If any of you want to see that, our center now has the one database in Canada of challenges that libraries are facing. So you can go to cfe.torontomu.ca and look at what challenges there are in your local

library or in libraries across Canada. So we're facing an unprecedented rise in the view that the solution in a democratic society to difference is by silencing those who don't agree with us. I'd say that's something, we've seen that in the United States, we talked about it, and we see it as coming from the right, but it's coming from the left as well. The Toronto Public Library has a campaign on now on intellectual freedom, and one of its posters I love, it says, I'm all for free speech, but.

And I think that everybody in our society believes in freedom of expression until they come across expression that they find loathsome or wrong or horrendous. And then suddenly it's okay to censor that. And it's that contradiction that I think is rampant in our society and undermines democracy in a fundamental way because democracy at its root,

it's not primarily about the rule of law, it is about that. But it's about an ongoing public discourse of what's legitimate and what's not legitimate in society, a discourse that never can be brought under, can be stopped by a majority. Otherwise you're moving to totalitarianism. So it's the tension around that and the rise of censorship

as a way of bringing about a better world in the censor's mind. And almost every censor thinks that what they're advocating is to bring about a better world. But in fact, it undermines the possibility of a genuine democracy, which is the only way to have a world in which all parties have a voice in what happens. Yeah, I mean, and I just to add to that, I think, and this is just a personal opinion,

because I'm a teacher, right? And I, you know, I come from a family of teachers. And I was always taught that education is supposed to make us uncomfortable. It's not with education. That's the whole point It's you know, and so I think that's what Complicates it for me is you know, yeah We we need I think it would be important for us to think about what we think education is and what it means Yeah, of course a lot of this, you know naturally plays out online and on the internet of course and on social media where

initially it was sold as a vehicle for free speech but has also become a vehicle for surveillance and for harassment and for hate speech not just for ordinary people but for activists and for politicians and journalists and obviously similar tensions as Jim pointed out play out offline. How do you grapple with those tensions? That these are fora that are both for free expression, but also are sources of oppression of free expression. Nora, can you speak to that?

I can give the example through the research that I'm involved in at the Citizen Lab, we are studying what we call digital transnational oppression. The first research we published two years ago was studying the situation of human rights defenders, like the exiled human rights defenders in Canada. We interviewed around 19 individuals who came to Canada from different countries and sadly they were harassed and intimidated online and offline by what they believe in their countries of origin. What's really stunning that in a country that claims to be the protector of rights and freedom

of expression, they didn't find ears in the government. They couldn't seek any protection, although many of these crimes happening to them were happening online, whereas similar to doxing, intimidation, disinformation, the use of spyware, when they try to find solutions or at least seek some protection, they couldn't find any ears in the government, whether from the politicians or law enforcement, they couldn't seek any remedies.

Some of them were told that it's not crime. Others were dismissed. Whereas others were prevented and somehow they were not allowed to seek remedies here in Canada and the justice system because the perpetrators are protected under the many, like the impunity of the state and state representatives. What's really hurting that some of these people also became victims of the Canadian law enforcement. One of the Russian activists, she's pro peace activist. She from Canada, she was publishing some pieces against the war on Ukraine. And when she applied for the Canadian citizenship, she was confronted by the immigration officers

that she's she didn't pass the criminality because she was charged in Russia. And she was subjected to this pro-Russian disinformation campaign on social media. But that campaign and that prosecution in an authoritarian country was echoed here in Canada by the law enforcement. And I believe, we all in the communities believe, that without the power of the media

and the great journalists who reported on her case, she would be somehow prevented from getting the Canadian citizenship, just because a dictator like Putin prosecuted her and decided that her work against the war and pro the peace work is a crime called disinformation in Russia. Wow, that's a very stark example. Yeah. Cariso, this has come up a couple of times now, so let's take it head on.

How people speak about the conflict in Gaza, who's allowed to say what and where, and has really become a flashpoint in Western society. Well, everywhere, but here in Canada as well. I wonder if you could talk about what you think this moment reveals to you about the state of free thought and free expression in Canada. What does it say in Canada and the West? What does it say?

Do you think about the status of those rights in the West? So the Gaza issue has really forced, is forcing us to look in the mirror. It's saying what, who did we mean when we said these things? Who did we mean when we said we believe in freedom of speech and freedom of expression? But I think as I was saying in the beginning, we always need to think about who we were thinking about at the beginning when we said that we believe in these rights. And I think it's showing us, this moment is showing us that we don't have the rights that we thought we had.

And that's a very, very scary thing. And people are getting harassed, and the thing that happened to me as well. So I think it's scary because we're, you know, just like the horrors that are happening, we've gone all our lives being taught that when something like this happens, we should fight against it.

But now we are fighting against it and finding out that that wasn't actually meant for these people, it was meant for somebody else. So I think we're feeling really scared. Not only the activists who are pro-Palestine, but I think all Canadians are feeling like we actually, we've been sold the story that we are human rights defenders and now we're finding out that that's not actually

what's happening and I think we're all, and I think we all should be very frightened no matter what we believe. No pressure, but can you, do you wanna just give a small version of what happened to you? You said what happened to me, what do you mean by that? Yeah, no, I'll be very quick. No, so recently I was invited as a novelist

to this gala in Ottawa, and this gala celebrates political writing. It's called the Shonisi Cohen Prize that the Writers' Trust gives out. So on that night and on these nights, the Writers' Trust raises hundreds of thousands of dollars. And so I went to the gala and I stood up on stage and I did three things.

I said, I just want us to remember that this is the number, this is the death toll in Gaza. I am combining the number of Israelis and Palestinians who have died. I'm not telling you how many Palestinians. So, cause I believe that we're all for people not dying. You know, we believe in the sanctity of life. And then the second thing I said was

talking about the famine in Gaza. And the third thing I said, which was the most important thing, was I would like to invite us to think about what our power means in the world as Canadians and how their power looks in our work, whatever work you do, and that there's gonna come a time

when the world will start to say, oh, this was horrible. This, you know, we'll start to apologize for what happened. And then we, because we are this, you know, superpower in the world, we are going to be asked what we did with the power that we had in this moment in time. How was the message received? I was heckled. I was called a Nazi. And I was told to go home and I was kicked out. I went to sit at my table to eat dinner after and I was thrown out. The thing that happened that I want to say to the audience is South Africans were stunned. They were like, it's Canada. You know, what do you mean?

So this is where I think we should all be afraid. Not just those of us who think we're pro Palestinian or pro Israel or whatever. It's I think we don't know. We don't know when we're gonna get thrown out. We don't know what's gonna happen to us if we speak honestly on our political views. So Jim, I come to you with the same question

is what do you think the way this debate is played out and to hear about this kind of thing happening on Parliament Hill, what does that say about this moment in Canadian, in the status of the freedom of expression and the right to freedom expression in Canada right now? I think it says two things. One is exercising your right to freedom of expression

is often perilous. And the more controversial issue is, the more perilous it is. And you have to understand that and not let that stop you or else we lose the right. But secondly, there's a long history to this in Canada. You know, if we have a notion as Canadians, though we've been a beacon of the defenders of human

rights and of the right to freedom of expression, unlike other places in the world. There's a long history to saying, well, it's not that simple. I point out Bob Thompson, who was a federal civil servant and then worked for an international agency on human rights around the world. and then worked for an international agency on human rights around the world. In 1973, he saw a cable that had come to him because of his former federal government job that was an expression from the senior diplomat in Chile

about how they were supporting the overthrow of Allende. And he released that, and he was fired and so on. Or Richard Colvin, who was one of the Canadian senior officials, foreign affairs officials in Afghanistan, who became aware that Canadian troops were capturing Afghanis and turning them over to the Afghan government for torture. And he blew the whistle on that

and paid a huge price for that. We have a conflicted history. There are times we can be very proud of our defense of human rights and of freedom of expression, but there are also times where that right has been exercised and people have paid huge prices for it. And I think we have to be aware of our conflicted history as opposed to being self-righteous about these things are okay in Canada.

And of course, let's just underline Gaza is just one example of a number of really divisive issues that divide our societies right now. We live in polarized times on so many basic things. Could you each speak to the importance of reimagining the right to freedom of expression to suit the times that we're in today? What would you do? I know it's a big question, but what's the course of action? What would you do to what's written down and how we think about it?

Noura, we'll start with you. I would say that I reviewed the constitutions of a good number of authoritarian countries. And yeah, my conclusion that the problem is not with the document. The problem, like we have a saying in Arabic that words are beautiful, but they are still words. They are only words. The problem is not with the words, it's not with the wording of these rights or the document itself. It's about us as humans.

Are we willing to defend these rights? Are we willing to protect these rights as absolute rights for everyone or are they the rights of certain groups? This is the big question that I believe from my personal experience and my own research that we should ask at this critical moment. How would you address the question? I agree with Miura. And I think, here's what I think. I think we need to think of ourselves as scholars,

scholars of our time, and continue our lives in that way. Because when we go, we leave something behind. Indigenous writer David David Heath Justice, said, we need to learn how to become good ancestors. And that's been very inspiring for me, right? Because what we're leaving behind is important. So I think that we need to constantly be studying what we're practicing, what we say we believe in,

and how that's implemented in our time. So I think that we don't then look at these documents like the Charter or the Declaration of Human Rights. We don't look at them as words that we believe in. We should actually not, you know, we should actually say, well, how much do we, we should constantly be reviewing what's written down. We should constantly, I would,

I think I would love it if every 10 years we went back to the table or every few years, but especially in these moments that are so critical, we're witnessing these events in the world. What are we doing? We don't then just say, well, we believe in this because we believe in this. It's kind of like when someone hurts you

and somebody says, well, that wasn't their intention. Well, intention is one thing, but how did they behave? So I think thinking of ourselves as constant scholars until the end of our days is going to become very important moving forward because these documents were, you know, they were constructed at a different time. What is it that we want to put forward is important. It's a great thought being lifelong scholars. I like that.

Jim? Well, I agree with my colleagues that the problem is not the words on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights They're absolutely fine and to be clear on Section 19 on freedom of expression I mean first of all I'm glad we refer to it in that document first to it as freedom of expression rather than freedom of speech as the Americans talk about because expression can take many forms Which is hardly something unimaginable to you

being here in Stratford. It can take the form of plays, of drama, of music. So it's freedom of expression we protect. But also the declaration is very clear. It's not only the freedom to express yourself, but it's the freedom to receive information. I mean, if you wanna just read that section of Article 19, if you could just read that again for people.

Article 19, everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression. This right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. So that second part is often not talked about. We hear freedom of expression is about our ability to express, but it is the right to read. I mean, that's where protection of libraries is so important.

That's where people can go to get information. And if somebody can censor it, say, well, I don't like such and such a book, therefore nobody else should be allowed to read it. We're interfering with this, right? Yeah, the second thing I would say is the problem is not the words, but our Failure to it act on those words It's so easy to avoid discussing difficult issues.

And we're in a particular, as you said earlier, Nala, a polarized period. It's not unknown in human history. When in fact, if we're going to solve any world problem or any domestic problem, it's going to be through discourse and sorting out. It's going to be through understanding the complexity of the nuance of it. And insofar as we try to reduce things to a polarized duality, we lose all that nuance, we lose all that complexity,

and we lose our ability to solve it. So I guess my advice, I mean, I don't object to, as an academic, I don't object to the encouragement of you to be scholars, but I also want to encourage you to actually put into practice what we all ostensibly believe in. And that is have the courage to speak out. When somebody says something you think it's not quite right, say, well, there's another

aspect of this here, to force more discussion rather than less. I think that's the only way we can make that right a reality and the only way we can allow that right to shape our effort to build a better world Is there a reimagining necessary of the limits on freedom of expression? May I answer that question? Yeah, I'm oh you're asking There is no such thing as unlimited free expression and people say well, he's a free expression absolutist There's no such thing. We have all sorts of limits on freedom of expression in Canada. We have criminal code limitations. We can't engage in violence.

I can't punch somebody in the face, say, well, I'm just expressing my disdain for your views. We can't threaten violence. We have hate speech laws, which are badly misunderstood because 95% of what people call hate speech is not actually what's illegal in Canada. So it's a term that's used very broadly, but sections 319.1 and 319.2 of the criminal code have a very specific definition of hate speech. It's a very high bar. So we have those kind of limits. We have limits in our human rights codes. We can't discriminate. We can't harass.

Three provinces have provisions against hate speech, Alberta, B.C., and Saskatchewan. Again, the bar is very high, and our courts uphold that. Highway Traffic Act. I can't, when I'm going back to Toronto, be going along the 401 at 180 klicks, and the cop pulls me over, and I say, well, I was just in Stratford, and we had a panel.

I thought I did really well, and I'm just expressing my joy at that panel. We have, you have municipal bylaws. You can't play your music at 140 decibels at two in the morning. So there's all sorts of limits on our freedom of expression. But the context, as our courts have made very clear,

is the limitation of expression is the exception rather than the rule and there's a very high bar that has to be gotten over before Expression can be limited in our democratic society and there's a wonderful I don't have time to quote it But there's a wonderful statement that Beverly McLaughlin when she was chief justice wrote in a case called our versus sharp Where where she says in a diverse heterogeneous society where people have different views, the best path forward is free expression.

You can argue against something, you can ignore it, but you can't suppress it. Very last question for each of you, and we literally have about 30 seconds for each of you, is you've all talked about, as you said very aptly, Jim, that the struggle over these rights is not easy, and achieving those rights is not easy. Could you each address just a general thought about what you think that struggle over those rights to free thought and free expression, what we can learn from them about what it means to achieve justice today? I had this conversation with, and I don't know if I'm answering the question, but I had this conversation with a group of people, all of them were American, and we were discussing

rights and justice. And I said, you know, during apartheid, we always said an injury to one is an injury to all. And I feel we, you know, we need to stick by that. And they said, during apartheid, we always said, an injury to one is an injury to all, and I feel we need to stick by that. And they said, yeah, but that would require empathy. Now, for me, I grew up in a system where we were taught centuries old of, I think everybody in the world has heard of Ubuntu, and there's no clear translation of it.

But the thing is, you go to school, you learn that humans are humans, no matter what, and you learn all the proverbs and all of that. And I think, I believe, you come out of that, and I think this is part of why South Africa has been able to move on in the way that we've been able to move on. I think the idea that we are all humans, no matter what, no matter what our race or whatever, is it's not just an idea. It's something that you're taught, it's something that you practice.

There are certain things I can't do to you as a Mutswana, because I consider you human no matter what you look like. So I think one thing that I think we could do is go back to practices that are centuries old and figure out how we can learn lessons from that. I mean, I don't think it's really about law as much as it's really about questioning how we move through the world as individuals. I think it's something that we should constantly be questioning and thinking about, and thinking of our place in it.

Because it can be as big as somebody getting kicked out of an event, or it can be as small as your local shop saying gay people are not allowed in here. So I think we just need to think of ourselves as all having a stake in in how this, you know, how this plays out, how the story of us plays out. Yeah, that's something I believe the average person and every citizen has very important role to play. authorities, especially security agencies, try to undermine certain rights under the justification of protecting the national security. And I believe here the role of every single citizen to step in, like, hey, we are not

going to give up our rights in favor of security. You have, this is your job, you have to figure it out, but our rights must be protected, and we are not going to give them up. Jim. Well, the best thing I think you can do to make Article 19, the right to freedom of expression a reality, is to exercise your right to do so, especially when it's difficult or uncomfortable,

and to speak out in defending others who are exercising their right. Unless we all do that, those words on paper are meaningless. Yeah. Cariso, Noura, and Jim, thank you for taking all our questions. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You've really made us think. You've really made us think. Thank you so much. On ideas, you've been listening to the rights to free thought and free expression.

It's the fourth part of our series, Brave New Worlds, recorded at the Stratford Festival in Ontario. I've been speaking with Noura Aljizawi, Cajiso Lisejo Molope and James Turk. Ideas at Stratford is produced by Philip Coulter and Pauline Holdsworth. Special thanks to Julie Miles, Gregory McLaughlin, Renata Hanson, Harper Charlton, James Hyatt, Mira Henderson, Kendallen Bishop, Madeline Grogan, and the entire Stratford Festival team. For ideas, our technical producer is Danielle Duval.

Our web producer is Lisa Ayuso. Senior producer, Nikola Lukcic. Greg Kelly is the executive producer of Ideas, and I'm Nala Ayed. And I'm so grateful to you. Thank you for coming. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Thank you. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.