What Can I Say? Free Speech v. Racist Speech in the United States and Europe

Students in this course will be introduced to the politics and law surrounding issues of racist speech in the United States and Europe. We will look at the development of speech doctrines in the post-World War Two era, drawing on well known case studies from American constitutional history, as well as European examples such as the Danish Cartoon Controversy and Holocaust denial cases. Through comparison across countries, we will debate the appropriate limits on racist speech in different contexts. (Comparative Politics