Donald Trump isn’t known for being nice on social media. If fact, his unapologetic take-no-prisoners approach to attacking anyone and everyone online is now arguably legendary.

Still, despite having ample likes and retweets, there’s an outspoken hive of opponents who loathe Trump’s online presence. In an effort to end Trump’s tweeting once and for all, one man is taking aim at his account.

Erick Sanchez, of Washington D.C., started a Change.org petition calling for Twitter to delete the presumptive presidential nominee’s page on the grounds that is hate speech and therefore should be banned in accordance with Twitter’s general policies.

In the petition, Sanchez cites Twitter’s policies listed under “hateful conduct,” which read:

You may not promote violence against or directly attack or threaten other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or disease. We also do not allow accounts whose primary purpose is inciting harm towards others on the basis of these categories.

Based on said policy, Sanchez reasons that it is Twitter’s responsibility to delete Trump’s account.

Mr. Trump, in under (and over) 140 characters, has exhibited conduct that runs contrary to these rules, and the signers of this petition humbly ask for Twitter’s consideration in the deletion of his account. This is not a matter of stifling his first amendment rights, unlike how he has impeded on the first amendment by revoking the access of media outlets to his events.

In the past Twitter has labeled itself a champion of free speech, however, in 2015 the social network adjusted its policies in order to snuff out abusive and hateful speech. Now Twitter no longer promises uncensored service for its users.

The petition, which as of Monday had over 230 supporters, needs roughly 270 more cosigners to reach its goal.

This isn’t Sanchez’s first petition against Trump. He previously launched a campaign urging restaurateur and chef José Andrés, who is of Spanish decent, to “dump Trump” following the candidate’s insensitive remarks against Mexican immigrants. At the time, Andrés was set to join the billionaire in a luxury hotel venture in Washington D.C. Less than a week later, the celebrity chef pulled out of the development.

It’s hard to imagine that this petition will have the same outcome–barring a major politician from social media is unprecedented. Even so, Twitter should take policing its own policies seriously, especially when it comes to spreading hate speech online.

Alexis Evans

Alexis Evans is an Assistant Editor at Law Street and a Buckeye State native. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism and a minor in Business from Ohio University. Contact Alexis at aevans@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Petition Demands Twitter Delete Trump’s Account for Hate Speech appeared first on Law Street.

Donald Trump may have received a bizarre endorsement from Sarah Palin earlier this week, but now he’s receiving a lot of “anti-endorsements” as well. A number of prominent American voices, including celebrities, academics, and activists have joined together to help defeat Trump as he attempts to win the Republican Party’s 2016 presidential nomination.

The list of people who have signed on to the “Stop Hate Dump Trump” campaign is rapidly growing–it currently includes Harry Belafonte, Cornel West, Danny Glover, Jane Fonda, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky, Kerry Washington, Reza Aslan, Eve Ensler, Connie Britton, Gloria Steinem, Cynthia Nixon, Rosie O’Donnell, Dylan McDermott, and many others.

The petition to “Stop Hate Dump Trump” reads:

We believe Trump is a grave threat to democracy, freedom, human rights, equality, and the welfare of our country and all our people.

We have witnessed Trump inciting hatred against Muslims, immigrants, women, the disabled. We have seen him evidencing dangerous tendencies that threaten the bedrock of democracy: unleashing a lynch mob mentality against protestors, calling for the expulsion of Muslims from the country, bullying, and fear-mongering.

History has shown us what happens when people refuse to stand against hate-filled leaders.

We pledge ourselves to speak out in every way possible against the politics of hate and exclusion he represents.

The star-studded cohort that is backing the petition collectively has a pretty large microphone, and the campaign has generated plenty of buzz since it launched yesterday. In addition to criticizing Trump’s consistently racist, xenophobic, and sexist statements, the movement also appears to be critical of the media’s willingness to cover Trump’s latest outrageous remark without real criticism. Liza Donnelley, a cartoonist for the New Yorker, has also lent her talented pen to the movement, and has created some Dump Trump-inspired cartoons for the movement–her work criticizes both Trump, and also that cyclical media coverage.

Trump scares me. I drew some #cartoons, signed this petition. See here: https://t.co/DvNCUcPy6m #stophatedumptrump pic.twitter.com/U6VckyT7Jm

— lizadonnelly (@lizadonnelly) January 21, 2016

Trump scares me. I drew some #cartoons, signed this petition. See here: https://t.co/DvNCUcPy6m#stophatedumptrumppic.twitter.com/7H2xR27EOx — lizadonnelly (@lizadonnelly) January 21, 2016

Trump scares me. I drew some #cartoons, signed this petition. See here: https://t.co/DvNCUcPy6m #stophatedumptrump pic.twitter.com/mdEy50za8S — lizadonnelly (@lizadonnelly) January 21, 2016

The celebrities, activists, and others lending their names and voices to the Stop Hate Dump Trump movement collectively have a pretty large microphone–it’s admirable that they’re using it for a worthy cause. As we get closer and closer to the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary, we’ll have to see if they’re able to make any dent in Trump’s poll numbers.

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post #StopHateDumpTrump: Celebrities Team Up to Defeat Trump appeared first on Law Street.

One of my favorite parts of my job here at Law Street is that I get to work with incredibly intelligent individuals with whom I occasionally disagree. Blogger Allison Dawson is one of those people. Today, she wrote a piece entitled “Columbia Law Students Can Postpone Exams in Light of Grand Jury Decisions.” It’s a great take–but I think there are a couple important points missing.

For some context, here’s the background: in light of the incredibly controversial and nation-sweeping announcements that grand juries in Missouri and New York failed to indict the cops who killed Michael Brown and Eric Garner, respectively, Columbia University Law School made an announcement. It regarded the reactions that some of the students may be having to those verdicts, and offered counseling, opportunities to talk to professors regarding the indictment, and this:

The law school has a policy and set of procedures for students who experience trauma during exam period. In accordance with these procedures and policy, students who feel that their performance on examinations will be sufficiently impaired due to the effects of these recent events may petition Dean Alice Rigas to have an examination rescheduled.

There’s a crucial part there that I want to make sure we’re all very cognizant of, and that’s that a Columbia Law student can’t just walk into Dean Rigas’ office and say “hey, I’m feeling weird about these indictments, can I take those exams later?”

The Academic Procedures outlined by Columbia make it pretty clear that petitioning to not take an exam isn’t really an easy practice. It certainly seems that a petition is by no means a guarantee to skip an exam, and that Columbia takes petitions pretty seriously. Columbia’s policy states:

Some petitions can be decided on within two to seven business days; others may require a meeting of the Rules Committee or the faculty and will take longer. It is advisable to make your petition as early as possible and not to assume the results of a petition.

A follow-up letter makes it seem like they really would only allow someone to postpone an exam under rather dire circumstances. The Vice Dean for Curriculum, Avery Katz wrote:

Accordingly, students who wish to request a rescheduled exam, or other similar accommodation, should either write to the office of Registration Services with an individual explanation of the basis of the request, or speak in person with an academic counselor in the Office of Student Services.  Unless time pressure is severe, meeting with an academic counselor is the preferred alternative, in case our student services staff can offer support or other resources that may be helpful.

I truly hope that if anyone uses this to try to get out of taking an exam, that Columbia would catch it with its policies. To anyone trying that, here’s a message to you: you’re a shitty person, and you are making it harder for those who actually do need to postpone an exam. Honestly, I highly doubt that many people will end up asking to postpone their exams because of these grand juries, or that Columbia will honor those requests.

All that being said, the fact that Columbia Law is recognizing that the grand jury announcements could have been triggering for a student is excellent. I agree with Allison that our future lawyers need to be able to accept and learn from the outcomes of our legal system, but I think that’s oversimplifying what those failures to indict really mean. The grand jury decisions were symptoms of significantly larger issues in our justice system, like racial inequality, police brutality, and a culture of violence. The protests that have continued all around the nation show that these conversations didn’t stop when those grand juries made their decisions.

No one gets to dictate what could cause someone to have emotional or mental difficulties and need help. Columbia Law has policies in place that allow students to make their case if they are suffering from anything that would impede performance on exams. The letter that went out yesterday just clarified that. There will of course always be people who try to take advantage of the policy, and I truly hope Columbia Law is able to identify those people. But the fact that Columbia is taking such a progressive view on mental health and triggers is truly refreshing. It’s the thought that counts, and for Columbia Law, this truly was a good thought.

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Columbia Law Takes Progressive Stance on Mental Health appeared first on Law Street.

The Iranian government executed a woman on Saturday for murdering a man who she said attempted to sexually assault her. After several delays of her execution and despite condemnation from human rights organizations, the Iranian government went forward with hanging Reyhaneh Jabbari.

Jabbari, 26, admitted in 2009 to killing 47-year-old Dr. Morteza Abdolali Sarbandi in self-defense, claiming that he tried to rape her. Sarbandi was killed in 2007, when Jabbari met with him on the pretense that she, an interior designer, would evaluate his office for a renovation, the New York Times reported.

Under Iranian law, Jabbari technically should have been in the clear for killing Sarbandi. As a Slate article explains, the Iranian death penalty doesn’t have to apply in a murder case if the murder was in retaliation to another crime punishable by death, such as rape. Jabbari maintained that she killed Sarbandi after he attempted to rape her. However, the judges are given very broad discretion in interpreting the facts of the case – so broad, in this case, that Jabbari was found guilty.

Beyond the fact that Jabbari’s is technically innocent even if she killed Sarbandi, that shouldn’t even matter considering the circumstances of her admission. Jabbari admitted to the murder “under duress possibly amounting to torture,” U.N. human rights investigator Ahmed Shaheed said in a press release, adding that acts of sexual violence should always be fought, no matter what. Shaheed said that if Jabbari was telling the truth, she was attacked by the Iranian justice system in addition to her assault:

If her allegations are true, Ms. Jabbari may have been doubly victimized; first by her attacker, and then by the judicial system, which is supposed to protect victims of intended and actual sexual and physical assault.

An online petition in March bore more than 240,000 signatures urging Iran not to execute Jabbari. The government then delayed the execution from April until this month. As the new date approached, supporters of Jabbari took to Facebook and Twitter to get attention to stop the execution. The day before the execution,  Amnesty International wrote that Jabbari’s side story wasn’t fairly judged. “Her claims do not appear to have ever been properly investigated,” Amnesty wrote in a blog post.

Iran has one of the highest execution rates in the world. According to an August United Nations report, the country executed at least 852 people, including at least eight who were under the age of 18 at the time of their crimes, during the period from June 2013 to June 2014. The report says Iranians can face the death penalty for “adultery, recidivist alcohol use, drug possession and trafficking” plus “enmity against God,” which is viewed by the Iranian government as when “a person brandishes or points a weapon at members of the public to kill, frighten and coerce them.”

All this might leave some wondering how hard it is not to get executed in Iran. In the larger scheme of things – for the Iranian justice system, that is – Jabbari is just another number.

—

Zaid Shoorbajee (@ZBajee)

Featured Image courtesy of [The Pondering Moose via Flickr]

Zaid Shoorbajee

Zaid Shoorbajee is a an undergraduate student at The George Washington University majoring in journalism and economics. He is from the Washington, D.C. area and likes reading and writing about international affairs, politics, business and technology (especially when they intersect). Contact Zaid at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Reyhaneh Jabbari: Another Victim of Iran’s Harsh Death Penalty appeared first on Law Street.

A recent leak of a seventy-page pdf document has caused quite a stir at the American University Campus in Washington DC. This document presents a series of emails and text messages exchanged by the brothers of the Epsilon Iota fraternity, containing explicit racist, sexist, and homophobic content. A Tumblr page (The Fratergate AU) has been created with the intent of displaying a censored version of the the leaked document.

According to the Fratergate AU, “EI is an unrecognized fraternity at American University in Washington, D.C. The group lost their charter after an alleged date rape scandal in 2001, but continue to operate on our campus”– thus some feel more than simply shock at the situation. The creators of this Tumblr page claim to be pursuing some level of disciplinary action against Epsilon Iota, and this pursuit is picking up steam.

AU students have started a virtual petition tiltled, “I Will Not Be Silent” on change.org, with a host of demands they would like to see from the University administration. Chief among their immediate demands is the expulsion of the Epsilon Iota members involved, on the grounds of, “condoning sexual violence, assault, battery, slander and all other actions relevant to physical, sexual, emotional and all other forms of abuse.”

In this article, I have zero ambition to condone the actions of these students. However, it is worth addressing what I see as four major problems with calling for their expulsion on the grounds of a sexual transgression. (It is worth noting that there may be other violations, such as the continued underground operation of a disbanded fraternity chapter, that allow for expulsion, but I will only be addressing the sexual grounds.)

1. There is no admission of guilt within the documents present on the Fratergate AU Tumblr.

I have read through all of the emails and texts that the Fratergate page has published, and I have yet to find any instance where the EI students admit to committing any crimes. There is only one circumstance where there may be an instance of admission, but it is unclear as to how seriously we can evaluate the text. One student wrote the following, “she was not beaten. she assaulted us repeatedly alongside with calling the entire brotherhood a rape gang and worthless piece of shit after what she eventually got slapped back very softly, slipped and fell in the bushes (she was perfectly fine by the way).” This is the closest case in the document to any claim of wrongdoing. The DCist reports this as an ‘alleged slapping’ when they summarize the document contents as follows, “in censored emails[…] Epsilon Iota discuss the alleged slapping of a woman, routinely describe women as ‘bitches’, seek drugs, use racial slurs, and strategize about how to make women feel comfortable at their parties, despite an alleged sexual assault.”

2. These emails do not conform to the definition of sexual assault in the AU handbook

Many are claiming that the EI students who authored these emails have engaged in a sexual transgression, specifically sexual assault. However, the nature of the conversation and context of these comments make it difficult to define it as such. The American University Handbook says that, “what constitutes sexual harassment […] may be described generally as: unwelcome sexual advances; requests for sexual favors; and other oral, written, or physical conduct of a sexual nature.” Unfortunately, the definition provided is very opaque, and states that, “the determination of what constitutes sexual harassment will vary with particular circumstances.” It is hard to say exactly how these originally ‘private’ exchanged emails that were not directed towards a victim will fit the schools weak definition of sexual harassment.

3. There is nothing about Petitions in the AU Handbook

While I personally applaud the creation of a petition to show support for student opposition to the horrific nature of the leaked documents, it may have little to no impact on how the AU administration handles the situation. The AU University Codes, Policies, and Guidelines has a specific section titled Sexual Assault Reporting Procedures for Students, which outlines how to report and process cases of alleged sexual violence, assault, and harassment. Unfortunately for the 1600 plus students who have already signed, there is no mention of a petition as part of the processing procedure.

4. AU has policies that protect Freedom of Speech

In the section of the AU handbook titled, Freedom of Expression Guidelines, it is clearly stated that every AU student has the right to freedom of speech and expression as defined by the law. Simply, each individual has the right to make their own disclosure in anyway they please. Freedom of speech does have its limits, but only if what is said or written qualifies as legal obscenity. Unfortunately, it is not clear that the EI emails and texts qualify due to the fact that these messages were private and not intended for the public. Historically, in cases like Miller v. California, we have seen legal obscenity most often applied in circumstances where an obscene text or speech is being sold to the public.

[The Fratergate AU]

—

Bo Donoghue

Featured image courtesy of [Jake Waage via Flickr]

Bo Donoghue

Bo Donoghue is a student at The George Washington University. Contact Bo at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post 4 Reasons Why Secret AU Frat Might Avoid Trouble appeared first on Law Street.