As the debate over free expression online grows ever louder, Oxford University has launched an innovative interactive forum in 13 languages called freespeechdebate.com . We’re proud to support the initiative with both funds and technology, including Google Translate . Timothy Garton Ash - a professor and journalist who has analyzed social movements from the rise of the Solidarity free trade union to the tumult of the Arab Spring - is leading the exciting project. At the event’s launch last week in Oxford, Garton Ash interviewed Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales . Just the day before, Wikipedia had gone black in protest of two proposed U.S. laws threatening Internet freedom, helping force the U.S. Congress to pull back from a vote on the bills. “On a normal day 25 million people see Wikipedia; yesterday, 162 million saw it and I heard that we even crashed the House of Representatives phone system,” an ebullient Wales said. “Congress saw that there is a passionate community out there ready to defend the Internet.” Oxford University’s Divinity School library , an appropriate setting where poet John Milton‘s censored writing were saved from being burned almost half a millennium ago. “From yesterday's Wikipedia protest to the role of social media in the Arab Spring, every day brings a free speech controversy to the headlines, Garton Ash said. “Our project aims to contribute structure, depth and detail to this global debate, as well as openness to the views of netizens from different cultures and perspectives.”Shirin Ebadi said that criticism of Islam should be permitted in Iran, while arguing that insults to the religion should be prohibited. Arundhati Roy , the award-winning Indian novelist, spoke about the limits to free speech in India, including government censorship through the media and "goon squads.”here . The debate will be digitally archived by Oxford’s Bodleian Libraries and become an online educational resource. Posted by William Echikson, Head of Free Expression, Europe, Middle East and Africa
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