National Free Speech News & Commentary

Disinformation Experts Hate Trump's Free Speech Executive Order

January 23, 2025 1 min read

Robby Soave
Reason Magazine

Excerpt: Newly inaugurated President Donald Trump signed a bevy of executive orders earlier this week, including one that seeks to end the federal government's pressure campaign on social media companies.

The "Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship" executive order reaffirms the free speech rights of social media users and prohibits government agents from engaging in unconstitutional censorship.

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Trump Takes Aim at DEI in Higher Ed

January 23, 2025 1 min read

Jessica Blake
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: One of President Donald Trump’s latest executive orders aims to end “illegal” diversity, equity and inclusion policies and could upend programs that support underrepresented groups on college campuses.

Whether the order, signed late Tuesday night, will be effective is not clear, some experts cautioned Wednesday. Others celebrated it as the end of DEI in America.

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Penn Professor’s Fight for Free Speech Heads to Federal Court

January 23, 2025 1 min read

Aaron Sibarium 
Washington Free Beacon 

Excerpt: Amy Wax, the tenured law professor who was sanctioned for her controversial remarks about racial issues, sued the University of Pennsylvania on Thursday for breach of contract and race discrimination, putting a dispute over tenure and academic freedom that has dragged on for almost three years into the hands of a federal court. The complaint comes after Wax was suspended for a year at half-pay and stripped of her named chair, penalties the lawsuit says are "illegal multiple times over."

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Commentary: Toward a Democratic Academic Freedom

January 22, 2025 1 min read

Will Clark 
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: Right now, fear is taking hold over the threats universities will face from a hostile Trump administration. We’re advised to relinquish diversity as a framework, dismantle recently built DEI infrastructure or emphasize thinking with the enemy. Such postures take the shibboleths attributed to university liberalism and shrink their presence. They capitulate to a right-wing political movement intent on remaking the university in a regressive image. We need not look further than universities in Florida and Indiana to see our future.

But in the coming crisis, our work cannot just be defensive. Rather, our future lies in collective action.

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Bias reporting systems were a nightmare on campus – and now they’re everywhere

January 22, 2025 1 min read

Greg Lukianoff
The Eternally Radical Idea

Excerpt: As regular ERI readers and followers of FIRE will know, I’ve been defending free speech on campus since 2001 — nearly all of FIRE’s 25-year history. In 2022, FIRE expanded its mission, going from being the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. This was in no small part because we grew more and more concerned that the free speech crises we were dealing with on campus could and would spill over to other areas of our country.

I am speaking about bias reporting systems, sometimes called bias response teams, which are essentially snitch hotlines where people can report others for “offensive” or “hateful” speech. The act of doing this to your fellow Americans over protected speech would be bad enough, but these systems go further. They often consist not only of administrators, but also law enforcement. 

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Trump Issues Major New Executive Order Impacting Higher Education

January 22, 2025 1 min read

Jonathan Turley 
Jonathan Turley’s Blog

Excerpt: Last night, I discussed a new executive order signed by President Donald Trump that included an extension of his earlier move against “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) policies to the area of higher education. The order makes direct reference to the decision of the United States Supreme Court in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, 600 U.S. 181 (2023) banning the use of race in college admissions and instructs the Departments of Education and Justice to investigate any circumvention of the prohibition by colleges and universities. 

The order effectively carries out the mandate declared by Chief Justice John Roberts: “Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.” Since the EO has not been officially posted on the government website, I have included the full language below.

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