Elaine Pearson on free speech at UNSW and Hiroshima 75th anniversary

Defending the right to offend China on campus

This year, Human Rights Watch Australia Director Elaine Pearson was interviewed by the media department at the University of New South Wales about the human rights implications of Hong Kong's new national security law.

Her comments on Hong Kong new national security legislation upset some students. They claimed the article caused offence to China and demanded the university remove the article.

The university temporarily removed the article, but after a public outcry, the article was re-posted with caveats.

So how did we get to the point where one of Australia's leading universities agrees to political censorship in favour of another nation state? What should universities do to make sure this does not happen again?

Elaine Pearson, Human Rights Watch Australia Director and adjunct law lecturer at the University of New South Wales.

Hiroshima 75th anniversary

in August 1945, the US Airforce dropped the Little Boy uranium fission bomb on central Hiroshima, making it the first city ever to be destroyed by a nuclear bomb. Days later, Nagasaki became the second.

When the bomb exploded, around 30% percent of Hiroshima's population were killed instantly. Many more died in the months and years to come.

The bombs brought an end to World War Two, but the world was horrified at the human cost.

Toshihiro Higuchi, Assistant Professor, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University; author of Political Fallout: Nuclear Weapons Testing and the Making of a Global Environmental Crisis.

Michael Gordin,  Rosengarten Professor of Modern and Contemporary History, Princeton University;  co-editor of The Age of Hiroshima