Global Epidemic of Speech Suppression

Dennis Klein led a two-year project devoted to exploring the suppression of peoples’ speech. The report that resulted this year, assembled from investigations by advocates from Cuba, Cyprus, Egypt and India, documented the ascendance and gravity of speech suppression worldwide and asserted that the amplification of peoples’ free and responsible expression of words and images inoculates a society that is otherwise divided against itself. The report, complementing the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, has been deposited with several United Nations entities and will be reviewed and ratified this fall at the Congress of Nations and States international convention.

This class will review the findings of this new report and will invite comments for reflection and debate.

Dennis B. Klein, Ph.D., is a professor of history and director of the Jewish Studies program and the master of arts program in Holocaust and Genocide Studies program at Kean University. He previously served as founding director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Braun Center for Holocaust Studies and its Hidden Child Foundation, as well as editor-in-chief of “ADL’s Dimensions: A Journal of Holocaust Studies.” He is the author or editor of seven books, including “Jewish Origins of the Psychoanalytic Movement,” “Hidden History of the Kovno Ghetto,” “The Genocidal Mind, Survivor Transitional Narratives” and “Societies Emerging from Conflict: The Aftermath of Atrocity.” Dennis is currently at work on a book about the origin of bystander incrimination in late 20th century America.