The Hancock Symposium

The Hancock Symposium is a nationally recognized academic event, in which renowned speakers engage in thought-provoking lectures, panel discussions and presentations on one particular area of global interest. Students and faculty members have the chance to participate in these activities, creating a campus-wide learning environment around the symposium, and expanding the horizons of these discussions beyond the speakers, reaching the diverse student body, faculty and staff, and the local community. The 2015 Hancock Symposium had as a theme “Security vs. Liberty: Balancing the Scales of Freedom,” which focused on the actions taken after 9/11, and the inquiry of liberty being jeopardized in the name of security.
In this paper I will analyze

and compare the presentations of Dr. Laura Donohue, about national security and law in the United States, and Dr. Farhat Haq, about the effect of the recent “the Pakistan 9/11.” Both of these presentations went through a deep historical background, a legalist approach, and most important a critical analysis of the actions that triggered the state of surveillance and repression in the US and Pakistan respectively. In this paper I will analyze, compare, and contextualize the content of each one of the presentations. In order to do that, I will start with a brief review of each one of the presentation. Secondly I will relate each one of the presentation by addressing the description of the events, the critics to the actions taken, the claims made, and the evidence that each one of the presenters gave. With this, I will draw some similarities and differences, engaging in an “implicit debate” between both lecturers. Finally I will state my conclusions and impressions of the presentations.
The first presentation was “National Security Law: Recalling the 4th Amendment” by Dr. Laura Donohue, a professor of Law at Georgetown University, and director of the Georgetown’s Center on National Security. Dr. Donohue areas of expertise include counter terrorism and national security law in the US and UK, and constitutional law. Her presentation focused on the programs implemented by the US government that executed massive surveillance operations among people inside and outside the US, and how they violated the Fourth Amendment. She widely used historical references that condemned government surveillance activities. Among those references were the British general warrants and its effects in colonial U.S.A., the American founding documents, and previous U.S. laws that were subject to a different interpretation to allow surveillance operation to take place. After that, Dr. Donohue claimed that the government took advantage of the lack of “physical entry” in order to spy the cyber-activities of its citizens, in order to present it as a legal action. They also justified this with the “third party doctrine”, where they recollected vast amounts of information from “third party” telecommunication companies.
On an international perspective, considering that the US has the largest hubs for cyber-communication in the world, the government used them to undertake massive operations of espionage to foreign nationals whose conversations used US providers. To conclude, Dr. Donohue said that the fact that we are no longer restricted to physical and geographical boundaries, creates a legal vacuum that needs to be address to protect individual rights. Lastly, she quoted Churchill saying that “it is our liberties that determine who we are” and that “security is gained through freedom”, two statements that seem to disagree with the actions taken by the US and UK government. People’s perception of this lecture was divided, some of which (included myself) who really appreciated the historical background given, and the following legal introduction to the programs undertaken by the U.S. government. Others found it to be very legalistic and hard to understand, and found the historical part of the lecture relatively non-related to the current events.
The second presentation was “A View from Pakistan: Why Do They Hate Us?” by Dr.

Farhat Haq. Dr. Haq is a professor of Political Sciences at Monmouth College, she has focused her career on issues of ethnic politics, gender and politics, Islam and Human Rights, and militarism and motherhood. On her lecture at the symposium she presented how the Pakistani military has been “glorified” after the massacre at a school, and the consequences that this glorification and “implicit coup” had on the Pakistani society. She began by referencing George W. Bush, when he question in public “why do they hate us?”, but the ambiguity of the question did not clarify if that “they” meant extremists or the whole Muslim world. Then she expressed that many Muslims in fact embrace the political freedoms as well as the Westerns do, including many people in Pakistan. However, in the case of Pakistan there was one turning event that pushed the desire for security above everything, and challenged the already weak democratic institutions of the

country.
The Peshawar school shooting, the “Pakistan 9/11”, in which more than 145 people (including 132 children) were killed, was that turning point. After that moment, security became the most important thing in Pakistan’s society, and people were willing to give up their liberties to ensure that security. As a consequence, the military gained a lot of power, and were provided with military courts, which gave them the capacity to bring “justice” on terrorists. In addition, the capital punishment was re-established for those who were found guilty of terror-related activities. Dr. Haq expressed her concerns (as well as the concern of many human rights advocacy groups) for these measures. Among the factors she mentioned were the lack of a proper legal system to prosecute and ensure the culpability of the people, the high levels of corruption of the army and judicial system, the indiscriminate nature of the anti-terrorist operations, and the possibility of targeting specific ethnicities or political groups. As part of the conclusion, she considered that these military actions were highly counter-productive, and might be fueling the Islamist extremists by creating more grievances on the Pakistani society, and encouraging more people to join these groups. The general consensus that I have observed of this lecture was that the content of the presentation was very interesting and revealing, however, the communication skills of the presenter lowered considerably the qualities of the presentation.
Both lectures were really interesting and gave a critical and analytical point of view, using events, facts, and social perceptions to support their arguments. However, there was a slightly different approach to those events between Dr. Donohue and Dr. Haq. Donohue explicitly rejected the state of surveillance taken in place by the US government, saying that “when you are subject to surveillance you change your behavior”, which might have an effect on people’s freedom to express their thoughts. Haq on the other side, expressed empathy with the people from Pakistan when they “glorified” the military (but not with the military itself). Nonetheless, she condemned the massive violations of human rights and democratic principles, and never support the military actions that were taking place.
On both cases, they regretted their countries taking back laws that had previously been removed.

In the case of Donohue, she considered that the general warrants that affected the American and English society during the 18th century, were back in the form of mass collection programs, which evolved from the physical bursting of property that characterized the warrants, to a cybernetic violation of privacy. For Dr. Haq, the returning law was more evident and in a shorter amount of time. During the Lunch that fortunately I had with her, she expressed how she saw this move as going “backwards” on the democratic process, and the multiple counter-effects that this law would have in Pakistan. I see that both authors would agree that any set of actions taken by a government that affects its democratic institutions, should not be considered as an adequate option to solve short-term problems, as they would be harming the stability and values of the same country in the

long-run.
The interesting fact about both cases of study, was that terrorist’s attacks were the triggers of the actions taken by both governments. Even though the magnitude and reactions were different, the societies of both countries were affected so hard, that they led to a massive change on the way security and liberty were perceived, leading the governments to prioritize the former over the latter, creating a democratic dilemma. But after analyzing these two lectures and their cases of study, I concluded that while U.S. public opinion was more concerned about liberty, Pakistan public opinion seemed more concerned of their security. This made me think and re-analyze Winston Churchill’s quote, are we achieving security through freedom, or freedom through security?