Speaking Freely: David Kaye

<

div class=”field field–name-body field–type-text-with-summary field–label-hidden”>

<

div class=”field__items”>

<

div class=”field__item even”>

David Kaye is a clinical professor of law at the University of California, Irvine, the co-director of the university’s Fair Elections and Free Speech Center, and the independent board chair of the Global Network Initiative. He also served as the UN Special Rapporteur on Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression from 2014-2020. It is in that capacity that I had the good fortune of meeting and working with him; he is someone that I consider both a role model and a friend and I enjoy any chance we have to discuss the global landscape for expression.

York: What does free expression mean to you?

Oh gosh, that is such a big opening question. I guess I’ve thought of freedom of expression in a bunch of different ways. One is as a kind of essential tool for human development. It’s the way that we express who we are. It’s the way that we learn. It’s our access to information, but it’s also what we share with others. And that’s a part of being human. I mean, to me, expression is that one quality, you know, animals also communicate with one another, but they don’t communicate in a way that humans do. That is both communicating thoughts and ideas, but also developing one’s own person and personality. So one part of it is just about being human. And the other part, for me, that has made me so committed to freedom of expression is the part that’s related to democratic life. We can’t have good government, we can’t have the essential kinds of communication that leads to better ideas and so forth, if we’re not able to communicate. When we’re censored, we’re denying ourselves the ability to solve problems. So, to me, freedom of expression means both the personal, but also the community and the democratic.

York: I love that. Well, okay, then I’m really curious to hear about an early experience that you had that shaped these views.

I actually, as a kid, my parents were somewhat observant Jewish. Not totally, we were what I considered suburban observant. Meaning we’d go to the synagogue and then I’d go play baseball or we’d go to the mall. It wasn’t any kind of deeply religious thing, but the community was really important to my

[…]
Content was cut in order to protect the source.Please visit the source for the rest of the article.