{{short description|American journalist and scholar of speech}} {{Use mdy dates|date=June 2020}} [[File:Susan Benesch on Access Now.jpg|right|thumb|Benesch moderates a discussion for Access Now in 2014]] '''Susan Benesch''' (born 1964) is an American journalist and scholar of speech who is known for founding the '''Dangerous Speech Project'''. Benesch is a free speech advocate, recommending the use of counterspeech rather than censorship to delegitimize harmful speech. __NOTOC__
==Early life and education== Benesch was born in 1964 in New York. She is of Czech ancestry on her father's side, and her family was described as "upper-middle class".<ref name="Hess">{{cite book |last1=Hess |first1=Stephen |title=International News and Foreign Correspondents |date=1996 |publisher=Brookings Institution Press |isbn=978-0-8157-3630-1 |page=15 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JGDPysfVHsgC&q=Susan+Benesch+1964&pg=PA15 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Rechcigl Jr |first1=Miloslav |title=Notable American Women with Czechoslovak Roots: A Bibliography, Bio-Bibliographies, Historiography and Genealogy |date=2019 |publisher=AuthorHouse |isbn=978-1-7283-2139-4 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=95iyDwAAQBAJ&q=Susan+Benesch&pg=PT155 |language=en}}</ref> Benesch described herself as descending from "immigrants, refugees and people who were killed because other people had been taught to hate them".<ref name=wapo>{{cite news |last1=Itkowitz |first1=Colby |title=This professor devotes her life to countering dangerous speech. She can't ignore Donald Trump's. |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/inspired-life/wp/2016/10/24/this-professor-devotes-her-life-to-countering-dangerous-speech-she-cant-ignore-donald-trumps/ |accessdate=May 13, 2020 |newspaper=Washington Post| url-access=subscription |date=October 25, 2016 |language=en}}</ref>
After graduating from Columbia University,<ref>{{Cite web |title=Columbia College Today |url=https://www.college.columbia.edu/cct_archive/jul02/jul02_bookshelf.html |access-date=2022-06-11 |website=www.college.columbia.edu}}</ref> she worked in journalism, including as staff writer for the ''Miami Herald'' in Haiti and ''St. Petersburg Times''{{'}} correspondent in Latin America. She is fluent in Spanish.<ref name="Hess" /><ref>{{cite web |title=Staff and Board |url=https://dangerousspeech.org/staff/ |website=Dangerous Speech Project |accessdate=May 13, 2020 |language=en |date=November 1, 2016}}</ref> Benesch earned a JD at Yale in 2001 and an LL.M. from Georgetown University Law Center in 2008.<ref name=au/><ref name=ushmm/>
==Career== Benesch worked for the NGOs Amnesty International and Human Rights First, and is currently the faculty associate of Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.<ref name=au>{{cite web |title=Adjunct Associate Professor |url=https://www.american.edu/sis/faculty/benesch.cfm |website=American University |accessdate=May 13, 2020 |language=en}}</ref><ref name=ushmm>{{cite web |title=Susan Benesch |url=https://www.ushmm.org/genocide-prevention/simon-skjodt-center/fellows/susan-benesch |website=United States Holocaust Memorial Museum |accessdate=May 15, 2020}}</ref> She is also an adjunct professor at American University.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Adjunct Associate Professor |url=https://www.american.edu/sis/faculty/benesch.cfm |access-date=2022-06-11 |website=American University |language=en}}</ref>
She founded the Dangerous Speech Project in 2010 with a grant from the MacArthur Foundation.<ref name="wapo" /><ref name=wwd>{{cite web | title=What We Do | website=Dangerous Speech Project | date=14 April 2017 | url=https://dangerousspeech.org/what-we-do/ | access-date=24 December 2021}}</ref>
==Views== In regulating "dangerous speech", Benesch seeks to minimize the harm to freedom of speech, and advocates the use of counterspeech over censorship. Counterspeech means responding to hate speech with empathy and challenging the hate narratives, rather than responding with more hate speech directed in the opposite direction. According to Benesch, counterspeech is more likely to result in deradicalization and peaceful resolution of conflict.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Kohn |first1=Sally |title=The Opposite of Hate: A Field Guide to Repairing Our Humanity |date=2018 |publisher=Algonquin Books |isbn=978-1-61620-728-1 |pages=44–49 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=q0NRDwAAQBAJ&q=Susan+Benesch+&pg=PA244 |language=en}}</ref> Counterspeech, which seeks to delegitimize rather than stifle harmful speech, can often incorporate humor.<ref name=wapo/> In contrast, she believes that censorship is ineffective at stopping hate narratives. For example, a South African politician was convicted for hate speech for singing the Shoot the Boer song, but his supporters sang the song shortly after the conviction.<ref>{{cite news |title=Susan Benesch: 'El discurso del odio puede cambiar las normas sociales' |url=https://www.elcomercio.com/actualidad/susan-benesch-discurso-odio-redessociales.html |accessdate=May 13, 2020 |work=El Comercio |language=Spanish}}</ref> Benesch is a critic of United States president Donald Trump, saying that he operates in a gray area of "dangerous speech" such as when he suggested that supporters should use the Second Amendment on Hillary Clinton. She describes Trump as "undermining the extent to which his supporters trust the essential institutions and practices of U.S. democracy", which she finds "deeply irresponsible".<ref name=wapo/>
==Benesch test== In a 2008 article, "Vile Crime or Inalienable Right: Defining Incitement to Genocide", she proposed a "Reasonably Probable Consequences test" for criminalizing incitement to genocide:<ref name="Gordon" /> #The message must be understood by the audience as a direct call to violence against the targeted group. #Speaker must have influence over their audience #The target group must have already suffered "recent" violence #Contrasting or opposing ideas must not be available (indicating that the marketplace of ideas has broken down) #Audience conditioning: the targets must be dehumanized or accused of plotting genocide against the actual perpetrators #Audience must have heard previous similar messages.
Although he found the article "thought-provoking", Gregory Gordon criticized it as he favors a broader approach to criminalizing what he terms "atrocity speech", and because he believed that her criteria do not incorporate the precedent of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. In response to Gordon's criticism she revised her test in "The Ghost of Causation in International Speech Crime Cases".<ref name=Gordon>{{cite book |last1=Gordon |first1=Gregory S. |title=Atrocity Speech Law: Foundation, Fragmentation, Fruition |date=2017 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-061270-2 |language=en|pages=274–277}}</ref>
==Works== *{{cite journal |last1=Benesch |first1=Susan |title=Vile Crime or Inalienable Right: Defining Incitement to Genocide |journal=Virginia Journal of International Law |date=2008 |volume=48 |issue=3 |ssrn=1121926 |url=https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1121926 |language=en}} *{{cite book |last1=Benesch |first1=Susan |editor1-last=Dojcinovic |editor1-first=Predrag |title=Propaganda, War Crimes Trials and International Law: From Speakers' Corner to War Crimes |date=2013 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-136-58840-2 |chapter-url=https://dangerousspeech.org/the-ghost-of-causation-in-international-speech-crime-cases/ |language=en |chapter=The Ghost of Causation in International Speech Crime Cases}}
==References== {{reflist}}
==Further reading== *{{cite news |last1=Seetharaman |first1=Deepa |title=Jack Dorsey's Push to Clean Up Twitter Stalls, Researchers Say |url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/jack-dorseys-push-to-clean-up-twitter-stalls-researchers-say-11584264600 |work=Wall Street Journal| url-access=subscription |date=March 15, 2020}} *{{cite news |last1=Itkowitz |first1=Colby |title=An expert on 'dangerous speech' explains how Trump's rhetoric and the recent spate of violence are and aren't linked |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/10/29/professor-who-defined-dangerous-speech-how-trumps-rhetoric-pittsburgh-are-linked/ |newspaper=Washington Post| url-access=subscription |date=November 19, 2018 |language=en}}
==External links== *[https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Susan_Benesch2 ResearchGate profile]
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Benesch, Susan}} Category:Living people Category:Harvard University faculty Category:Yale Law School alumni Category:Georgetown University Law Center alumni Category:American people of Czech descent Category:1964 births Category:20th-century American women journalists Category:20th-century American journalists Category:Miami Herald people Category:Tampa Bay Times Category:Journalists from New York City Category:Academics from New York City Category:American free speech activists Category:20th-century American academics Category:20th-century American women academics Category:Columbia College, Columbia University alumni Category:American University faculty Category:American women founders Category:American founders Category:American women human rights activists