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Honors: Legal and philosophical perspectives on free speech and protest in France

Dialogue

Lyon, France Summer I, 2025

Courses

This course addresses some of the ethical and political issues surrounding dissent and resistance, through a survey of classic and contemporary texts. The course is organized around the following interrelated units: 1) political legitimacy, political obligation, and anarchism (questions include: What justifies political authority? Do citizens have a moral duty to obey the law?); 2) civil disobedience, nonviolence, and revolution (What form should dissent and opposition take? What works?); 3) the ethics of defensive action, as applied to community self-defense, political rioting, and environmental direct action. Students relate philosophical debates to historical and contemporary cases of resistance, centering on France (the French Revolution; the Paris Commune; anti-Nazi resistance; ACT UP Paris; the Yellow Vests; Black Lives Matter and MeToo in France; and the 2022-2023 anti-pension reform movement).

The course offers a comparative study of the law regulating freedom of speech between the US and France/Europe. It tackles the different substantive rationales offered in defense of each regulatory system (democracy, autonomy) and the different forms of judicial reasoning deployed to apply the laws in question. Topics covered include, among others: freedom of the press; political dissent; defamation (including in MeToo context); blasphemy and religious offense (in context of liberal neutrality and “laïcité”); hate speech (including Holocaust denial); freedom of artistic expression (censorship, street art and vandalism); and online speech (lying, trolling).

This program is open to non-Honors students!

This Dialogue explores the legal and philosophical frameworks that regulate free speech and protest in France, with an eye to comparing them with the United States context. France has a vibrant culture and history of protest and resistance, from the French Revolution to today’s general strikes. It also has strict hate speech laws and a much less permissive free speech culture than the US. The Dialogue combines an Honors Seminar (HONR 3309) exploring the central legal issues surrounding free speech with a social and political philosophy course (PHIL 2303) focused on the ethics of protest, with both courses converging under the broad umbrella of dissent. The Dialogue is set in Paris and Lyon, where students will familiarize themselves with distinct aspects of France’s rich history of protest and meet different local actors, including lawyers, solicitors, jurists, historians, philosophers, and activists.

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Global Experience Office

Dialogue of Civilizations: Honors: Legal and philosophical perspectives on free speech and protest in France

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