Katharine Gelber, Ph.D.
k.gelber@uq.edu.au
Full Professor
The University of Queensland
Year of PhD: 2000
Phone: +61 7 33652910
Address: School of Political Science and International Studies, University of Queensland
City: St Lucia, Queensland - 4072
Country: Australia
About Me:
I am the Head of the School of Political Science and International Studies, University of Queensland, Australia, and a Professor of Politics and Public Policy. I am a former Australian Research Council Future Fellow (2012-2015) and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia.
Research Interests
Human Rights
Australia And Pacific Island Politics
Judicial Politics
Freedom Of Speech
Free Speech
Hate Speech
Speech Regulation
Comparative Public Policy
Political Theory
Countries of Interest
Australia
United States
United Kingdom
My Research:
Katharine Gelber is Head of School and Professor of Politics and Public Policy at the University of Queensland, and a former Australian Research Council Future Fellow (2012-2015). Her expertise is in freedom of speech and speech regulation, with research projects into the operation of hate speech laws, and the effects of counter-terrorism policies on freedom of speech. She is currently working on a joint project with Facebook on hate speech in the Asia Pacific. She has recently jointly edited, with Susan Brison, Free Speech in the Digital Age (OUP, NY, 2019) and published Free Speech After 9/11 (Oxford Uni Press, 2016). She has undertaken, with Luke McNamara, a project assessing the impact of hate speech laws on public discourse in Australia. In 2014 they were awarded the Mayer journal article prize by the Australian Political Studies Association for the best article in the Australian Journal of Political Science, an article on the Australian hate speech case known as the ‘Bolt case’. In 2011 she published Speech Matters: How to Get Free Speech Right (University of Queensland Press) which was a finalist in the Australian Human Rights Awards 2011 (Literature Non-Fiction category). In 2011 she was awarded the PEN Keneally award for contributions to freedom of expression. She has recently published articles in journals including Law and Society Review, Political Studies, Contemporary Political Theory, Melbourne University Law Review, Review of International Studies, and the Australian Journal of Human Rights. She is a past President of the Australian Political Studies Association, and was Chair of the Local Organising Committee for the 2018 World Congress of the International Political Science Association, Brisbane.
Publications:
Journal Articles:
In this paper I develop a systemic discrimination approach to defining a narrowly construed category of ‘hate speech’, as speech that harms to a sufficient degree to warrant government regulation. This is important due to the lack of definitional clarity, and the extraordinarily wide usage, of the term. This article extends current literature on how hate speech can harm by identifying under what circumstances speakers have the capacity to harm, and under what circumstances targets are vulnerable to harm. It also shows how the capacity to harm can be mobile and involve the construction of new targets. Finally, it bridges the gap between conceptual understandings of hate speech and policy designed to regulate it.
In the UK and Australia, the use of the term ‘hate preachers’ to describe jihadist extremist speakers has become common. In this article, I argue this term is confused, and that the contemporary cause of this confusion lies in new incitement to religious and racial hatred provisions enacted in 2006 and 2010, respectively. To date, scholarly analysis of these provisions has suggested that their primary purpose is to protect vulnerable communities. Analysing the context and justifying discourse of key policymakers during debates, I argue by contrast that their primary purpose is as a counter-terrorism measure, and that both the public debate and the provisions themselves evince and entrench an enduring epistemic confusion.
Books Written:
This collection of thirteen new essays is the first to examine, from a range of disciplinary perspectives, how the new technologies and global reach of the Internet are changing the theory and practice of free speech. The rapid expansion of online communication, as well as the changing roles of government and private organizations in monitoring and regulating the digital world, give rise to new questions, including: How do philosophical defenses of the right to freedom of expression, developed in the age of the town square and the printing press, apply in the digital age? Should search engines be covered by free speech principles? How should international conflicts over online speech regulations be resolved? Is there a right to be forgotten that is at odds with the right to free speech? How has the Internet facilitated new speech-based harms such as cyber-stalking, twitter-trolling, and revenge porn, and how should these harms be addressed? The contributors to this groundbreaking volume include philosophers, legal theorists, political scientists, communications scholars, public policy makers, and activists.
Following shootings in Paris and Copenhagen in early 2015, the connection between free speech and terrorism is more visible than ever. Responses to these events rightly called for solidarity in the face of terror, and cartoonists depicted pencils as the appropriate alternative to guns, speech as the best alternative to violence, freedom of expression as a necessary alternative to terror. Western governments reiterated their public commitment to freedom of speech. But in reality these same governments have a strong, but relatively underappreciated, hostility to freedom of expression as manifest in counter terrorism policy. Since the terrorist attacks of 2001, Western governments have made a distinct and calculated move towards the prevention of terrorist crimes that has reached far into the freedom of speech. Examining the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia, I show significant changes in the appropriate parameters of freedom of speech in the counter terrorism context since 9/11, achieved both in policy change and in the justifications for that change. In all three countries much speech has been criminalized in ways that were considered anachronistic, or inappropriate, in comparable policy areas prior to 9/11. We are now living a new normal for freedom of speech, within which restrictions on speech that once would have been considered aberrant, overreaching and impermissible are now considered ordinary, necessary and justified as long as they occur in the counter terrorism context. This change is persistent, and it has far reaching implications for the future of this foundational freedom