Panel Discussion on Charlie Hebdo Cartoons
On Jan. 7, 2015, two gunmen – brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi – entered the Charlie Hebdo offices in the Rue Nicolas-Appert section of Paris and began to open fire on the magazine’s editorial staff and cartoonists, as well as administrators and security personnel working in the building. The brothers had specific targets in mind, including editor Stephane Charbonnier. In all, the Kouachi brothers killed 12 people – eight journalists, two police officers, a caretaker, and a visitor to the office. During the siege, the brothers claimed to have “avenged the Prophet Muhammad.”
The brothers, along with two additional accomplices who executed a coordinated attack the day after the siege on Charlie Hebdo, sought retaliation for the magazine’s blatant flouting of the Islamic ban on visual depictions of the Prophet Mohammed, imagery that had recently toed the line of Islamaphobia in a nation which has both a troubling history of discrimination against its large Muslim population and a freedom of the press statute that expressly prohibits hate speech.
“Free Speech or Hate Speech: Discussing the Charlie Hebdo Cartoons” is an opportunity for the Niagara University community to come together to debate issues related to this event, including what constitutes hate speech and whom (after a tragedy as serious as this) becomes vilified and sanctified in journalistic narratives.
Was Charlie Hebdo promoting hate speech against Muslims? And can we both condemn this speech and at the same time mourn its creators? Is our propensity to mourn these victims connected with a form of racism itself? Is this tragedy so widely publicized because the victims – as a widely trending Twitter hashtag #jesuischarlie suggested – seemed to be more similar to us than typical victims of Islamic extremism in the Middle East, Africa, and other non-Western societies?
Please join us on Wednesday, Feb. 11, at 1:25 p.m. in the Gallagher Center’s Multi-Purpose Room, where a panel of students moderated by Drs. Carrie Teresa and Joseph Sirianni of the Communication Studies Department will discuss and debate these issues. This panel discussion is presented as part of NU’s 2014-2015 Media Awareness Series.