Democracy Part 30: Export Controls and the Control of Speech On University Campuses and By Faculty Abroad

 

Universities have become willing partners in systems of privatized law making with global implications.  Recently, universities have extended their complicity in these public-private regulatory complexes by extending a power to monitor and regulate a faculty's engagement with "foreign visitors" and more importantly with the people that a faculty member may see and engage with while that faculty member is abroad without the prior approval of the university.  This should concern not merely faculty but anyone interested in the privatization of rights regimes to enable the state to constrain behavior indirectly that they would be unable to effect directly without public accountability, and perhaps constitutional constraint. It is no longer possible to speak of states that respect free speech and engagement and those states which restrict these.  The situation has become more complicated and somewhat more murky.  That itself should be of concern. 

Read more HERE.