Tag: evidence

  • In Quran burning conviction, UK judge uses violence against defendant as evidence of his guilt

    In Quran burning conviction, UK judge uses violence against defendant as evidence of his guilt

    Last year, FIRE launched the Free Speech Dispatch, a regular series covering new and continuing censorship trends and challenges around the world. Our goal is to help readers better understand the global context of free expression. Want to make sure you don’t miss an update? Sign up for our newsletter.

    Return of blasphemy prosecutions feared in the UK 

    On June 2, four months after West London resident Moussa Kadri attacked Kurdish-Armenian asylum seeker Hamit Coskun for burning a Quran, Westminster Magistrates’ Court found Coskun guilty of a religiously aggravated public order offence and fined him £240 ($323). 

    Coskun ignited a new round of debate over blasphemy in the UK after burning a Quran outside London’s Turkish consulate and yelling “Fuck Islam” and “Islam is a religion of terrorism,” which he has since repeatedly claimed was a protest against “the Islamist government of Erdoğan,” Turkey’s president. In response, Kadri attacked him with a knife, knocked him to the ground, and kicked him while he was down.

    But there’s a particularly disturbing element to this case. Namely, the judge’s justification for the conviction. The “disorderly” nature of Coskun’s protest, the judge said, “is no better illustrated than by the fact that it led to serious public disorder involving him being assaulted by two different people.” 

    That’s right, a man’s violent attack on another was cited as evidence of the victim’s guilt.

    The UK was not alone in making blasphemy news in recent weeks. In Bangladesh, a 23-year-old was arrested under the country’s Cyber Security Act for “insulting” the Prophet Muhammad on Facebook. An Iranian court upheld a death sentence on blasphemy charges for the musician Tataloo. And Sweden may be facing yet another Quran burning controversy, but appears to be allowing it to proceed — for now.

    Political speech in the crosshairs around the world

    • Mayor Gilles Platret of French city Chalon-sur-Saone banned display of Palestine’s flag in the city this month as well as “all pro-Palestine demonstrations.”
    • Hungary delayed a vote on a bill that would allow punishment including bans on organizations judged to “threaten the sovereignty of Hungary by using foreign funding to influence public life.”
    • Istanbul prosecutors — continuing Turkey’s crusade against imprisoned Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, a rival of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan — banned use of Imamoglu’s image and audio recordings.
    • Israeli Education Minister Yoav Kisch threatened to revoke funding to universities where students have held Nakba rallies. “Academia is not a platform for incitement under the guise of freedom of expression,” he wrote.
    • Kneecap member Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh has been charged with a terrorism offense by the UK Metropolitan Police for displaying a flag supporting Hezbollah at a concert in London last year.
    • The lese-majeste case against American academic Paul Chambers, accused of insulting Thailand’s monarchy, has officially been dropped. Chambers will return to the U.S.
    • Malaysian police are investigating a queer sexual health workshop for “causing disharmony, disunity, or feelings of enmity, hatred or ill-will, or prejudicing the maintenance of harmony or unity, on grounds of religion.”
    • Georgian Dream, the ruling party of Georgia, says it’s taking action against “the filthiest phrases and insults” made against its party members from a so-called “externally funded hate speech campaign.”
    • Ashoka University professor Ali Khan Mahmudabad was arrested for social media posts about India’s tensions with Pakistan, including one about “those who are mindlessly advocating for war.”

    Eight year sentence for Brazilian comedian 

    A São Paulo state criminal court sentenced comedian Leo Lins to a whopping eight years and three months in prison for “practicing” or “inciting” racism and religious prejudice as well as for his comments about disabilities. The charges stemmed from a viral 2022 set in which Lins mocked “Black and Indigenous people, obese people, elderly people, gay people, Jews, northeastern Brazilians, evangelicals, disabled people and those with HIV.”

    “When there is a confrontation between the fundamental precept of liberty of expression and the principles of human dignity and judicial equality, the latter should win out,” the judge said of Lins’ sentencing. Lins intends to appeal.

    Free press under attack from Saudi Arabia to El Salvador to Samoa 

    • On June 14, Saudi Arabia executed journalist Turki Al-Jasser on treason and terrorism charges. Al-Jasser’s supporters claim the charges were in retaliation for the journalist’s criticism of Saudi royals. The Committee to Protect Journalists says the international community’s failure to act after Jamal Khashoggi’s murder “emboldened de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to continue his persecution of the press.”

      Jamal Khashoggi’s fiancé Hatice Cengiz looks at his photo as Nihad Awad of CAIR speaks about the murder during a demonstration at the Saudi Embassy, Washington DC, October 2021
    • Staff of an investigative news outlet in El Salvador, El Faro, fled the country in expectation of criminal charges after reporting that President Nayib Bukele’s party “paid gangs a quarter of a million dollars during his 2014 mayoral race for their help getting him votes in communities they controlled.”
    • An Argentinian investigative journalist is accusing the country’s intelligence services of approving a plan that would “allow agents to gather intelligence on journalists, economists, academics and other critics of President Javier Milei and his government.” The government denied the allegation “but acknowledged the existence of the document.”
    • A Kenyan author was arrested after President William Ruto’s daughter accused him of impersonation for writing a book about her without her permission.
    • Samoan journalist Lagi Keresoma was charged under a criminal defamation law over her article about a former police officer’s legal challenges. Press freedom advocates are pushing for the repeal of the criminal defamation statute, rightfully warning of its limits on journalists’ rights.
    • London BBC staff are raising the alarm over the Iranian government’s efforts to intimidate them within the UK, citing a “sharp and deeply troubling escalation” in Iran’s years-long campaign against them. Metropolitan Police said at least 20 people in London have been the target of violence and threats by Iran in recent years.

    The latest news in tech: Porn, bans, and Telegram

    • Six of Brazil’s 11 Supreme Court justices voted in favor of holding tech companies responsible for “illegal” third party content posted to their platforms but specifics on the enforcement and other details are still forthcoming. “We must, as a court, move in the direction of freedom with responsibility and regulated freedom, which is the only true freedom,” one judge said.
    • President Emmanuel Macron has committed to banning social media for children under 15, citing a recent murder in the country. “Platforms have the ability to verify age. Let’s do it,” he said.
    • And Pornhub warned it will no longer be available in France over recent age verification legislation.
    • Porn is a focus of government action in Tanzania, too. Information minister Jerry Silaa announced a block on the platform X over the presence of porn on the site, material he said is contrary to Tanzania’s “laws, culture, customs, and traditions.”
    • Vietnam ordered a block on Telegram, citing “anti-state” material available on the app and legal authority prohibiting “taking advantage of telecommunications activities to oppose the state.”
    • Transparency reports show that in the early months of 2025, Telegram handed law enforcement data on 22,777 users, a major jump from previous disclosures. 

    China’s censorship looks to the past — and abroad

    Unsurprisingly, the 36th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre brought another wave of censorship in Hong Kong, which in previous years was home to mass demonstrations commemorating the date. But now even silent protests are criminalized, and self-censorship has soared. Police made some arrests, including “a man holding an electric candle, a man standing silently in the rain, and two women, including a girl holding flowers and dressed in a school uniform.” 

    Censorship of the Tiananmen anniversary is widespread online, too. Media outlet ABC obtained authorities’ 230-page Tiananmen censorship guide “used by frontline content censors to train artificial intelligence tools to moderate vast amounts of content.” A similar memo warned, “Delete first. Review later.”

    A candlelight vigil outside the Chinese consulate general in Los Angeles to mark the 36th anniversary of the crackdown on the pro-democracy protests in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, June 2025

    A candlelight vigil outside the Chinese consulate general in Los Angeles to mark the 36th anniversary of the crackdown on the pro-democracy protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, June 2025

    Amidst the censorship surrounding June 4, other national security-related threats emerged in Hong Kong. Joshua Wong, a pro-democracy activist already serving a nearly five-year prison sentence, was hit with new charges — while beyond bars. This month, he was charged with “conspiring to collude with foreign forces” for allegedly encouraging other nations to impose sanctions on Hong Kong in 2020. And the city’s police are warning residents that they too may face national security charges if they download “secessionist” mobile game Reversed Front: Bonfire, which allows users to play as targeted groups rising against the Chinese Communist Party. Even just recommending the game could qualify as “incitement to secession.”

    Censorship of disfavored political speech isn’t just a problem within China and Hong Kong — critics of the Chinese government face repression on a global scale. At Book World Prague, a Czech book fair, Chinese officials unsuccessfully pressured organizers to remove the Taiwanese flag from a publisher’s booth as well as censor a catalog that mentioned involvement by Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture. And here in the United States, two men, one from China and the other from the UK, are accused of stalking a U.S.-based man in an effort to prevent him from protesting Xi Jinping’s 2023 visit to California.

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  • HHS Condemns Gender-Affirming Care in Report That Finds ‘Sparse’ Evidence of Harm – The 74

    HHS Condemns Gender-Affirming Care in Report That Finds ‘Sparse’ Evidence of Harm – The 74


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    This story was originally reported by Orion Rummler of The 19th. Meet Orion and read more of his reporting on gender, politics and policy.

    On Thursday, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) published a 400-page analysis of research on gender-affirming care for transgender youth, as directed by President Donald Trump. The agency used the release of the report to declare that available science does not support providing gender-affirming care to trans youth. LGBTQ+ advocacy groups worry the report will be used to further restrict gender-affirming care and to change medical guidelines in ways that harm trans youth.

    The president mandated the report in an executive order condemning the medical treatment — without evidence — as a form of mutilation, amid a broader push by the administration to exclude trans people from public life. Trump’s order asked the health agency to review the “best practices for promoting the health of children who assert gender dysphoria,” while pressuring youth clinics to halt treatment or lose federal funding.

    Now, the HHS has produced that report. The agency combed through research on the outcomes of puberty blockers, hormone replacement therapy, social transition, psychotherapy, and the rare cases of surgeries on adolescents and young adults diagnosed with gender dysphoria. 

    Gender dysphoria, the reason that most trans people undergo gender-affirming care, is a strong and persistent distress felt when one’s body is out of sync with their gender identity. Without treatment, gender dysphoria can lead to severe negative impacts in day-to-day life. 

    The agency states in its executive summary of the report that the document is not meant to provide clinical practice guidelines or issue legislative or policy recommendations. However, the report does imply that health care providers should refuse to offer gender-affirming care to adolescents and young adults on the basis that such care comes with the potential for risk — despite little evidence for that risk actually being found in the report. 

    “The evidence for benefit of pediatric medical transition is very uncertain, while the evidence for harm is less uncertain,” the executive summary states. “When medical interventions pose unnecessary, disproportionate risks of harm, healthcare providers should refuse to offer them even when they are preferred, requested, or demanded by patients.”

    In its research review, the HHS determined that evidence measuring the effects of gender-affirming care on psychological outcomes, quality of life, regret and long-term health is of “very low” quality. This conclusion ignores decades of research, as well as a recent survey of more than 90,000 transgender people in the United States that found an overwhelming majority report more life satisfaction after having transitioned. Access to gender-affirming care has been linked to lower odds of suicidality and depression in trans youth, while gender-affirming surgeries have been found to lower psychological distress for adults.

    Even when analyzing research that the administration deemed low-bias, the HHS found “sparse” to no evidence of harm from gender-affirming care. What’s more, the report frequently found evidence demonstrating the benefits of gender-affirming care — though it ultimately downplays those findings as not significant. 

    Available research on puberty blockers found high satisfaction ratings and low rates of regret. A systematic review of hormone replacement therapy described improved gender dysphoria and body satisfaction. Another found that hormone treatment leads to improved mental health. Two before-and-after studies reported reduced treatment needs or lower levels of suicidality and self-harm after hormone treatment. When measuring safety outcomes of hormone treatment, side effects did not have a major impact on treatment and complications were limited. 

    Despite these findings, the Department of Health and Human Services advertised the report in a Thursday news release as one that “highlights a growing body of evidence pointing to significant risks” of gender-affirming care. At the White House briefing room Thursday, deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller touted the new report and attributed the idea of being transgender as part of a “cancerous communist woke culture” that is “destroying this country.” 

    There are side effects to many of the medications that transgender people — and cisgender people — take to receive gender-affirming care, as is the case with most medical treatments. These side effects, like the risk of decreased bone density when taking puberty blockers, are closely monitored and treated by doctors and communicated to patients.

    LGBTQ+ advocacy organizations denounced the report as a political attack on transgender youth. Multiple groups said that the report’s endorsement of psychotherapy as a “noninvasive alternative” to puberty blockers and hormone treatment amounts to an endorsement of conversion therapy — a practice wherein mental health professionals try to change a youth’s sexual orientation or gender identity.

    “It is already clear that this report is a willful distortion of the evidence intended to stoke fear about a field of safe and effective medicine that has existed for decades, in order to justify dangerous practices which amount to conversion therapy,” said Sinead Murano Kinney, health policy analyst at Advocates for Trans Equality. 

    The Human Rights Campaign, the country’s largest LGBTQ+ rights organization, accused the HHS of producing a report that is attempting to lay the groundwork to replace medical care for trans and nonbinary people with conversion therapy. 

    “Trans people are who we are. We’re born this way. And we deserve to live our best lives and have a fair shot and equal opportunity at living a good life,” said Jay Brown, chief of staff at the Human Rights Campaign. “This report … lays the groundwork to push parents and doctors aside and allow politicians to subject our kids to the debunked practice of conversion therapy.” 

    No authors or contributors are named in the report or in its executive summary. The agency says these names are being initially withheld to “maintain the integrity of this process,” and states that chapters of the document were subject to peer review.


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  • The buzz around teaching facts to boost reading is bigger than the evidence for it

    The buzz around teaching facts to boost reading is bigger than the evidence for it

    Over the past decade, a majority of states have passed new “science of reading” laws or implemented policies that emphasize phonics in classrooms. Yet the 2024 results of an important national test, released last month, showed that the reading scores of elementary and middle schoolers continued their long downward slide, hitting new lows.

    The emphasis on phonics in many schools is still relatively new and may need more time to yield results. But a growing chorus of education advocates has been arguing that phonics isn’t enough. They say that being able to decode the letters and read words is critically important, but students also need to make sense of the words. 

    Some educators are calling for schools to adopt a curriculum that emphasizes content along with phonics. More schools around the country, from Baltimore to Michigan to Colorado, are adopting these content-filled lessons to teach geography, astronomy and even art history. The theory, which has been documented in a small number of laboratory experiments, is that the more students already know about a topic, the better they can understand a passage about it. For example, a passage on farming might make more sense if you know something about how plants grow. The brain gets overwhelmed by too many new concepts and unfamiliar words. We’ve all been there. 

    A ‘Knowledge Revival’

    A 2025 book by 10 education researchers in Europe and Australia, “Developing Curriculum for Deep Thinking: The Knowledge Revival,” makes the case that students cannot learn the skills of comprehension and critical thinking unless they know a lot of stuff first. These ideas have revived interest in E.D. Hirsch’s Core Knowledge curriculum, which gained popularity in the late 1980s. Hirsch, a professor emeritus of education and humanities at the University of Virginia, argues that democracy benefits when the citizenry shares a body of knowledge and history, which he calls cultural literacy. Now it’s a cognitive science argument that a core curriculum is also good for our brains and facilitates learning. 

    Related: Our free weekly newsletter alerts you to what research says about schools and classrooms.

    The idea of forcing children to learn a specific set of facts and topics is controversial. It runs counter to newer trends of “culturally relevant pedagogy,” or “culturally responsive teaching,” in which critics contend that students’ identities should be reflected in what they learn. Others say learning facts is unimportant in the age of Google where we can instantly look anything up, and that the focus should be on teaching skills. Content skeptics also point out that there’s never been a study to show that increasing knowledge of the world boosts reading scores.

    It would be nearly impossible for an individual teacher to create the kind of content-packed curriculum that this pro-knowledge branch of education researchers has in mind. Lessons need to be coordinated across grades, from kindergarten onward. It’s not just a random collection of encyclopedia entries or interesting units on, say, Greek myths or the planets in our solar system. The science and social studies topics should be sequenced so that the ideas build upon each other, and paired with vocabulary that will be useful in the future. 

    The big question is whether the theory that more knowledge improves reading comprehension applies to real schools where children are reading below grade level. Does a content-packed curriculum translate into higher reading achievement years later?

    Putting knowledge to the test

    Researchers have been testing content-packed lessons in schools to see how much they boost reading comprehension. A 2023 study of the Core Knowledge curriculum, which was not peer reviewed, received a lot of buzz. The students who attended nine schools that adopted the curriculum were stronger readers. But it was impossible to tell whether the Core Knowledge curriculum itself made the difference or if the boost to reading scores could be attributed to the fact that all nine schools were highly regarded charter schools and were doing something else that made a difference. Perhaps they had hired great teachers and trained them well, for example. Also, the students at these charter schools were largely from middle and upper middle class families. What we really want to know is whether knowledge building at school helps the poorest children, who are less likely to be exposed to the world through travel, live performances, and other experiences that money can buy.

    Another content-heavy curriculum developed by Harvard education professor James Kim produced a modest boost to reading scores in a randomized controlled trial, according to a paper published in 2024. Reading instruction was untouched, but the students received special science and social studies lessons that were intended to boost young children’s knowledge and vocabulary. Unfortunately, the pandemic hit in the middle of the experiment and many of the lessons had to be scrapped. 

    Related: Slightly higher reading scores when students delve into social studies, study finds

    Still, for the 1,000 students who had received some of the special lessons in first and second grades, their reading and math scores on the North Carolina state tests were higher not only in third grade, but also in fourth grade, more than a year after the knowledge-building experiment ended. Most of the students were Black and Hispanic. Forty percent were from poor families.

    The latest study

    The Core Knowledge curriculum was put to the test in another study by a team of eight researchers in two unidentified cities in the mid-Atlantic and the South, where the majority of children were Black and from low income families. More than 20 schools had been randomly assigned to give kindergarteners some lessons from the Core Knowledge curriculum. The schools continued with their usual phonics instruction, but “read aloud” time, when a teacher ordinarily reads a picture book to students, had been replaced with units on plants, farming and Native Americans, for example. More than 500 kindergarteners looked at pictures on a large screen, while a teacher discussed the topics and taught new vocabulary. Additional activities reinforced the lessons. 

    According to a paper published in the February 2025 issue of the Journal of Education Psychology, the 565 children who received the Core Knowledge lessons did better on tests of the topics and words that were taught, compared with 626 children who had learned reading as usual and weren’t exposed to these topics. But they did no better in tests of general language, vocabulary development or listening comprehension. Reading itself was not evaluated. Unfortunately, the pandemic also interfered in the middle of this experiment and cut short the analysis of the students through first and second grades.  

    Related: Inside the latest reading study that’s getting a lot of buzz

    Lead researcher Sonia Cabell, an associate professor at Florida State University, says she is looking at longer term achievement data from these students, who are now in middle school. But she said she isn’t seeing a clear “signal” that the students who had this Core Knowledge instruction for a few months in kindergarten are doing any better. 

    Glimmers of hope

    Cabell did see glimmers of hope. Students in the control group schools, who didn’t receive Core Knowledge instruction, also learned about plants. But the Core Knowledge students had much more to say when researchers asked them the question: “Tell me everything you know about plants.” The results of a test of general science knowledge came just shy of statistical significance, which would have demonstrated that the Core Knowledge students were able to transfer the specific knowledge they had learned in the lessons to a broader understanding of science. 

    “There are pieces of this that are promising and encouraging,” said Cabell, who says that it’s complicated to study the combination of conventional reading instruction, such as phonics and vocabulary, with content knowledge. “We need to better understand what the active ingredient is. Is it the knowledge?” 

    All the latest Core Knowledge study proves is that students are more likely to do well on a test of something they have been taught. Some observers errantly interpreted that as evidence that a knowledge rich curriculum is beneficial. 

    Related: Learning science might help kids read better

    “If your great new curriculum reads articles about penguins to the kids and your old stupid curriculum reads articles about walruses to them, one of these is going to look more successful when the kids are evaluated with a penguin test,” explained Tim Shanahan, a literacy expert and a professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chicago who was not involved in this research.

    Widening achievement gaps

    And distressingly, students who arrived at kindergarten with stronger language skills absorbed a lot more from these content-rich lessons than lower achieving students. Instead of helping low achieving kids catch up, achievement gaps widened.

    People with more knowledge tend to be better readers. That’s not proof that increasing knowledge improves reading. It could be that higher achieving kids like learning about the world and enjoy reading. And if you stuff a child with more knowledge, it’s possible that his reading skills may not improve.

    The long view

    Shanahan speculates that if knowledge building does improve reading comprehension, it would take many, many years for it to manifest. 

    “If these efforts aren’t allowed to elbow sound reading instruction aside, they cannot hurt and, in the long run, they might even help,” he wrote in a 2021 blog post.

    Researchers are still in the early stages of designing and testing the content students need to boost literacy skills. We are all waiting for answers.

    Contact staff writer Jill Barshay at 212-678-3595 or barshay@hechingerreport.org.

    This story about Core Knowledge was written by Jill Barshay and produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Proof Points and other Hechinger newsletters.

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