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The Indian government’s decision to ban the BBC documentary on the December 16, 2012 gang rape in Delhi, India’s Daughter , was “a mistake that must be corrected,” says one of the world’s foremost free speech experts.

“I think that is a mistake. Under international norms, Article 19 of the Universal Human Rights declaration [is very clear] that such speech, or films, should be protected. So I think it is a mistake… I hope it would be corrected,” said Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger, who is an author and First Amendment lawyer in the United States.

In an exclusive interview to The Hindu during a visit to Delhi, Mr. Bollinger said “conventional analysis” of free speech laws do not permit a government to prohibit speech on the basis that it makes its “society look bad.”

“It is not sufficient for a government to say this is dangerous because it might make people uncomfortable or hurt their feelings… People should be able to discuss public issues…and come to a judgement about what society’s response should be,” he added.

Mr. Bollinger has been caught in several controversies over free speech in the U.S. himself, where once he invited former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad to address Columbia University.

The invitation was opposed by various student bodies, in a similar way that groups forced Wharton Business School to cancel an invitation to Prime Minister Narendra Modi (then the Chief Minister of Gujarat) in 2013 over allegations related to the Gujarat riots in 2002.

Calling the decision to rescind such invitations under public pressure a “travesty,” Mr. Bollinger said: “It is inconsistent with principles of free speech and academic excellence to cancel a speaker because someone objects to what he or she is going to say.”

Full text of the interview with Mr. Bollinger :

How does India rank in the world when it comes to free speech?

I think it ranks very high… it is a democracy and it has enshrined in its constitution the Right to Free Speech. I welcome the recent Supreme Court decision (on Section 66A of the IT Act) that upholds the right to free speech against attempts to regulate it online. Under international norms, in both the US and India, I think that was really a wonderful decision. Every society, even the most progressive ones, faces challenges to free speech and there are questions on the limits, sensitivities to religion, blasphemy, incitement to terrorism, etc. But on the whole, I think of Indian society as very committed to the freedom of speech

You mentioned the judgment on Section 66A. In this particular case, schoolgirls had been arrested by the government for simply ‘liking’ a Facebook comment or posting a comment there. Do you really think our society is as free, given that it is the courts and not the government that is enforcing free speech?

That is a good question. In the U.S., of course, it’s been only one century since cases on freedom of speech were taken up by the Supreme Court. Even though the first amendment is enshrined in our constitution since the 18th century, the jurisprudence we rely on is only 50-100 years old and it has gone back and forth. So, sometimes when society has been intolerant, the court has failed to uphold free speech and sometimes it has taken a strong stand. You always have a contest between legislatures and parliaments responding to people’s wish to be intolerant or to stop a certain kind of speech, and I think one of the great roles of an independent judiciary is to be the last standard for great principles of freedom of speech and press. So it doesn’t trouble me that India should be facing this kind of legislative and government efforts to restrict free speech and courts standing up for it. That’s always going to be the case, and we just have to ensure that institutions are strong to deal with that.

Are you saying courts mirror the tolerance levels in society?

In the US, the first few cases on free speech were in 1919, where the Supreme Court actually upheld the conviction of the speakers. Later, they delivered more liberal judgements. But in the 1950s and the McCarthy era, they caved in to public sentiment against free speech. It wasn’t till the 1960s that the courts really began to take a strong stand on these issues, so I think the tension is inevitable.

The international spotlight has been on the ban on the BBC documentary India’s Daughter . What are your thoughts on the case, given the ban was upheld in the courts?

I think that is a mistake. Under international norms, Article 19 of the Universal Human Rights Declaration [they are all very clear] that such speech, or films should be protected speech. So I think it is a mistake… I hope it will be corrected. One thing we realise is that it is extremely dangerous to ban speech, even speech that is hurtful to people, because those laws can be used so variously. You have to be extremely protective of speech. Incitement, defamation, obscenity can be prohibited, but speech on public issues is different. This is the heart of why we are committed to a democracy.

The government has made several points in its defence: that allowing the film would give sexist views, bordering on hate speech, a platform; that the film put India in a bad light, etc… how would you counter that?

Under conventional analysis, it is not permissible for a government to say this speech makes our society look bad. It is not sufficient for a government to say this is dangerous because it might make people uncomfortable or hurt their feelings. That is the rationale that is extremely threatening to the idea that people should be able to discuss public issues, sort out what’s good and what’s bad, and come to a judgement about what society’s response should be.

So what is the way forward? In a country like India where unbridled free speech is not an option, given the religious divides, the differences, given the fact that hate speech does trigger responses…

This is a very hard problem. In 1952, the Supreme Court allowed the state of Illinois to ban speech that was racist. But in later years, speech by Neo-Nazis, the Klu Klux Klan, very, very offensive speech, has been protected. Even though people from different groups feel highly threatened by it, we want the people to deal with these ideas themselves through speech. We don’t want the government to try and control what we can and cannot say. In a society that is fragile, where there is a major risk of eruption of violence, if it is well established that this is its history, I think there should be greater latitude for policies prohibiting such speech. In the global world, it is hard to see the need… Is it really a threat of religious violence as a result of certain speech or is it a pretext to allow things that the government should not be allowed to get into? That’s one of the great issues of our times.

What about the idea that you are giving a platform to speech that could incite violence?

When you have Neo Nazis or religious blasphemy for example… we know these are bad ideas. The marketplace of ideas doesn’t need to know them, so why do we allow them? Secondly, people are affected by it, minorities, women feel threatened by it. Since we don’t allow libel and fighting words, why not restrict this too? But the fact is you can respond through speech and say these are bad ideas. Every time we allow the government to do something with a seemingly good motive, it can easily be applied to other situations where it isn’t good. Suddenly, the government will intervene for perfectly reasonable speech as well. People are naturally intolerant, I believe. We insist that everyone should think like us. But democracies are like a wilderness, you need to deal with all kinds of ideas and find a balance to your views.

Columbia University was accused last year of shutting down protests against campus rapes, a name and shame campaign that had people writing names of suspected rapists on the walls. Is there a contradiction there?

No. We’ve done a lot to make sure women on our campus are protected, but equally we do not reveal the identities of people who have been assaulted and nor will we talk about individual cases. We have not penalised people for naming alleged rapists.

When you decided to invite Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Columbia University, many people objected but you went ahead. In India there is an interest in such cases, since Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech at Wharton was cancelled some years ago under similar circumstances. Where do you draw the line?

Free speech cannot survive as a principle if an argument can be made successfully that when you give a platform to someone to express what you call bad ideas, it means advancing the ideas, or approving of them. That is unacceptable. Every time someone wants to ban some speech, they will use that argument. Giving a platform is not bad. I defended bringing President Ahmedinejad, it had academic value, and he was the leader of a country. He didn’t go unchallenged; I challenged him at the talk. In the case of Wharton, I am distressed in the U.S. by the number of people who have been invited to speak and then had it withdrawn because of objections over the content of their ideas. I think that is a travesty; that should not happen at great academic institutions. It is inconsistent with the principles of free speech and academic excellence to cancel a speaker because someone objects to what he or she is going to say.

When it comes to protection of media freedoms, there is an argument today that speed is getting in the way of media accuracy, and that needs to be checked. Would you agree? I ask because you revamped the Columbia School of Journalism curriculum drastically to include theory and ethics.

There is no doubt that the sense of the public wanting to know “right now” makes it hard to get reflective, thoughtful journalism. The economic model of journalism is also a problem and I am distressed that just when we need more global reporting, we are getting less of it. So I do think there is a problem with the future of journalism, and that’s why universities need to work on training them better to be more reflective, understand issues more. For many years, there wasn’t a full embracing of journalism in academic communities. Many journalism schools are weak academically; they are vocational, and that must be changed. I have also found in the journalistic community, that there is “anti-intellectualism”. I have got a lot of criticism from journalists saying something like, “the less you know, the better a journalist you can be”. I thought that was crazy, as if knowledge somehow gets in the way of understanding things. That’s what I tried to change.

Marchers in New York marked International Women’s Day on Wednesday afternoon by chanting “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Donald Trump has got to go” while walking between two of the real estate mogul’s signature properties. Some hoisted posters featuring coat hangers, a strong symbol for many women in the battle over abortion rights.

Meanwhile, the most powerful millennial woman in the Trump inner circle tweeted her version of support. “Today, we celebrate women and are reminded of our collective voice and the powerful impact we have on our societies and economies,” Ivanka Trump wrote.

Related: Ivanka helped ‘set the tone’ for Trump’s speech

Her record on the most crucial of women’s rights, though, is one of artful dodging. The landing page of Ivanka’s eponymous website celebrated the day with the words “Be Bold for Change,” written in pink, beige and red. The website gives no clue about what this “change” might be, but throughout his presidential campaign, Donald Trump made it pretty clear that one thing he intended for women would be a rollback to the days when access to legal and safe abortions was rare or nonexistent. That would herald other, more fundamental and devastating changes in the lives of women who can’t choose when or if to have children, because they would face extreme difficulties in pursuing educations and careers.

Trump was all for abortion in his libertine days (back when he proclaimed that unprotected sex and the risk of sexually transmitted diseases were his Vietnam). He began proclaiming himself anti-abortion only in recent years, and because of his flip-flop on the subject, many hoped he might flop back to an abortion rights position once in office.

Since his election, though, he’s packed his Cabinet with evangelical Christians, picked a known extreme conservative for the Supreme Court vacancy and looked on benignly as Republicans in Congress ginned up attacks on women’s reproductive rights, starting with their long-cherished goal to defund Planned Parenthood, a leading provider of low-cost contraception and health care, in addition to abortions. These anti-abortion politicians—who represent a minority in the U.S. but a majority in Congress—want to cut the $400 million in Medicaid money that goes to Planned Parenthood, which would leave around 400,000 women lacking access not just to abortions but also to actual health care, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

It is an open question whether Ivanka is anti-abortion like her father. During her days as an elegant Manhattan billionaire’s daughter-about-town, she and her husband, Jared Kushner, donated money to a group known to back abortion rights, Democrats in New York, and socialized with progressives. But there is no record that she openly supported Planned Parenthood or even the right of women to choose safe and legal abortions across America.

Growing up a privileged young woman and attending the best private and boarding schools in the country, Ivanka would have had access to the best medical care and expert sex education. She is also known to be conservative and abstemious in her lifestyle, and friends say she actually might regard legal abortion as either unnecessary or as a matter of importance only to people who behave irresponsibly.

It’s also possible Ivanka is anti-abortion for religious reasons. Before marrying Kushner, she converted to his family’s Orthodox Judaism, and she keeps a kosher home and adheres to other rules of that faith. Orthodox Jews are divided over abortion, but many believe it is wrong and sanctioned only when a mother’s life is threatened. If a mother’s life is at stake, Jewish law requires that her life be saved first, before the fetus. That is the opposite of the Catholic approach, which says a fetus must be born in order to be officially brought into the faith.

During the campaign, Ivanka dodged a straight yes-or-no question on abortion . In February last year, in response to Boston radio host Margery Eagan’s question, she replied, “I don’t talk about my politics,” adding, “I don’t feel like it’s my role, and not the candidate’s. I’m the daughter…. I don’t think my politics are relevant to the discussion.”

Ivanka then pivoted to suggest that her father has always “advocated for” gender equality in his businesses. “My whole life I was surrounded by incredible female role models at the Trump Organization, women doing jobs that in the late ’80s and early ’90s women were just not doing.”

Last fall, at a women’s summit in California , Ivanka said she saw her “core” role as “advocating for women.” She noted, “I don’t express my views on policy, with one exception as it relates to child care and advocating for women, because I never thought I’d have this platform. But it was incredibly important for me to participate in that conversation and very core to my personal and professional mission over the last decade, so I stepped into the fray on that front.”

Ivanka is due to publish a book on working women later this spring, and the book’s publicity platform, the #WomenWhoWork portion of her website, currently proclaims, “Of Ivanka’s many roles, she considers ‘mom’ to be her most important and challenging. ‘Raising a daughter, I hope that she grows up to feel empowered to do anything that her brothers can do and to relentlessly pursue her dreams,’ she says. ‘I hope that my sons grow up to be in touch with the sides of their personality that have previously been considered more feminine—that they’re great husbands like their father and they’re great siblings and they’re sensitive and loving and caring, in addition to being driven and passionate and ambitious. That’s what I wish for my children along with health and happiness.'”

Two days ago, Ivanka reportedly was behind an offer made to Planned Parenthood: Donald Trump said he wouldn’t support cutting off funding and might even give the organization more money if it would simply stop providing abortions. Planned Parenthood’s president, Cecile Richards, declined. The New York Times credited Ivanka with pushing her father toward that appearance of conciliation with Planned Parenthood.

“There is an opportunity for organizations to continue the important work they do in support of women’s health while not providing abortion services,” the president said. But Richards responded, “We will always stand for women’s ability to make decisions about their health and lives without interference from politicians in Washington, D.C.”

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) told reporters she thought that Trump extended the offer only so he could say he had done so and that he would follow up Planned Parenthood’s refusal with an accusation that the organization was not being reasonable.

The Times also reported that Ivanka had “urged her father to tread carefully on the Planned Parenthood issue during the Republican primary contest.” If that was the case, her father certainly did not heed her advice.

Outside the Trump International Hotel on Wednesday afternoon, two high school juniors, Leyla Ulusoy and Munis Koc—both wearing red hijabs—held up a sign that read, “My Body My Choice My Country My Voice.” The two friends said they thought Ivanka was out of touch on the subject of abortion.

“I feel like she lives such a luxurious, rich life that she doesn’t know what other women are going through,” said Ulusoy, 17. “She can decide to give birth, but it should be a choice for women who have been raped, or incest victims, or who have no money, or whose husbands or boyfriends don’t want children.”

Israel is to call for yet another national election, its fifth since 2019, as Naftali Bennett’s coalition government has ended abruptly. Israel’s Foreign Minister, Yair Lapid, has succeeded him as the caretaker Prime Minister and Israel is to go to the polls in either October or November 2022. In April, Mr. Bennett had planned to travel to India to celebrate 30 years of diplomatic relations between the two countries. His visit was cancelled at the last minute due to the rise in terror attacks in Israel and the crisis of a failing coalition.

Domestic polarisation

In the scene of a rapidly changing domestic politics, Naftali Bennett and his right-wing members were constantly targeted by Opposition leaders such as Benjamin Netanyahu for having an alliance with an Arab party and giving work permits to the Palestinians from Gaza. The coalition whip, Idit Silam, left the government in April and said this government has not been Jewish enough or loyal to the right-wing constituencies. Accommodation of ideological differences was rejected; ideological compromise was seen as weakening the state of Israel. Mr Bennett could not create unity in diversity and offered to step down.

Mr. Bennett gave his ‘exit statement’ to The New York Times columnist, Bret Stephens (“Naftali Bennett’s Exit Interview”) who reported their telephone conversation; the first thing Mr Bennett said in the interview was: “In a world where domestic polarization is becoming almost the single biggest challenge, the experiment succeeded (the fact that his government was in power for one year and showed that there is an alternative to hardline leaders such as Netanyahu)”. His experiment was putting together a diverse coalition of eight odd parties together with his friend and partner, Yair Lapid. They were called ‘agents of change’.

This coalition spelt exceptional change in domestic Israeli politics as it had Ministers and the parliamentary unity of the right, centre, left. For the first time, there was an Arab party as well. A year ago, while making his first speech in Parliament, Mr. Bennett said, “I am proud of the ability to sit together with people with very different views than mine.” He invited all his ideological opponents to join the government with the realisation that Israeli society and politics have become too divided, toxic, and violently radical. He worried for national unity and knew Israel is threatened from within — divisions across the right and the left, religious and secular and Mirahim (oriental Jews) and Ashkanazim (European Jews) have caused political instability for too long. The forecast for the next national election is also worrisome as no political party, including Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud, is likely to get a majority of its own according to the pollsters.

Spoiler leader

Mr. Netanyahu was one of the factors behind the formation of the coalition; he has also helped in its failure. Otherwise, ideologically divided parties were compelled to come together by the logic of ‘anyone but Netanyahu’ and give Mr. Bennett a historic opportunity. Mr. Netanyahu, as the Opposition leader, ensured this would not last for long. Despite him being indicted for corruption charges and a trial he did not leave any stone unturned in Parliament to oppose the government. It was nothing less than an audacious decision on his part to oppose the bill extending Israeli laws in the West Bank last week that brought down the Bennett government. Mr. Netanyahu said to Ms. Silam who defected, “Idit, you’re proof that what guides you is the concern for the Jewish identity of Israel, the concern for the land of Israel, and I welcome you back home to the national camp. I call on all those elected by the national camp to join Idit and come home. You will be welcomed with complete respect and with open arms.”

Mr. Netanyahu, the orator of rhetoric in Israeli politics, has been sharp in his attacks on this government for having an Arab party (labelled as the ‘terror supporters’) and left parties (labelled as anti-national because of their support for the peace process and two-state solution with the Palestinians). In short, Mr. Bennett lost the battle of narratives even when he meant sincere tikkun (the Hebrew word for repair) of Israel’s internal divisions with moderation and compromises.

It is the right-wing politicians, of Mr. Bennett’s own party, who felt they have been making too many compromises and now need to revive their radical positions to uphold macho-nationalist, ultra-religious constituencies where a compromise of core principles is not rewarded. Whether this is true or merely an assumption will be known after the fresh elections. For now, Israeli domestic politics is becoming too polarised. Mr. Bennett still thinks that the new government that will come will have to build consensus and agree to compromise because no one is going to get a majority (61 out of 120 seats) in Parliament.

The road ahead

Henry Kissinger once said that Israel does not have a foreign policy but domestic politics. Israel is a house that is constantly in chaos; domestic issues overpower leaders so much that Israel fails to have long-drawn pro-active foreign policy. As a small state, Israel is inward-looking and parochial.

The Times of Israel has reported that “Bennett said he should have focused more on managing his own party and domestic politics while he was prime minister, and less on making progress with international leaders including Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky and the United Arab Emirates’ Mohamed bin Zayed”.

Mr. Bennett has attempted to mediate between Russia and Ukraine when the conflict between them started. Israel has also signed a Free Trade Agreement with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) which is a historical development considering the amount of regional isolation Israel has had to endure. There is a new chapter opening in Israel-Turkey relations. There is a buzz with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan as well. Next month, the United States President, Joe Biden, is making his first trip to Israel and there is a scheduled joint summit level meeting of the Middle East Quad (now called I2U2, or India, Israel, the U.S. and the UAE). So, not only is a celebration of 30 years of India-Israel relations awaiting a stable Israeli government but there are also other very significant geo-political changes.

Khinvraj Jangid is Associate Professor and Director of the Center for Israel Studies, Jindal School of International Affairs at the O.P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat. He is currently Adjunct Professor at the Ben-Gurion Research Institute for the Study of Israel and Zionism, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel