March 14, New Delhi: While on a recent speaking engagement at the University of California, Berkeley, I visited the Free Speech Movement café, homage to the 1960s student protests that changed forever the boundaries of political speech on campuses in the US and elsewhere. It was oddly quiet, even though the US is in the midst of a high-decibel election campaign, with students engrossed with their cellphones and laptops. In contrast, the right to free speech was being debated in India fiercely in television studios, colleges, literary festivals, and Parliament. At the capital’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, students and teachers gathered in protest to talk about freedom of speech....
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