National Free Speech News & Commentary

Minding the Campus
Richard Vedder

Excerpt: For decades, international testing data have shown that the United States, for all its leadership in technological innovation and economic success, has been, at best, so-so in teaching fundamental knowledge to young Americans. Moreover, the situation appears to have worsened, aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic, but it has not recovered to anemic pre-pandemic levels since. And, a recent RealClear Investigations report documents that our K-12 schools are enhancing mediocrity by worsening an already wrongheaded grade inflation by continuing to give students high grades even as their learning continues to decline. As one refreshing voice of sanity, Maryland education chief Carey Wright put it, “If you set the bar low, that’s all you are going to get. But if you set the bar high for students, and support teachers and leaders, it [higher student performance] is doable.”

The Eternally Radical Idea
Greg Lukianoff

Excerpt: One of the great disappointments of my professional life has been watching the decline of the American Association of University Professors, formerly the gold standard for defense of academic freedom on campus. Of course, there have always been and still are good, principled AAUP members and chapters out there. But since the beginning of my career back in 2001, the national AAUP have gone from being principled (if slow and plodding) defenders of academic freedom to increasingly partisan critics of freedom of speech and the First Amendment — taking institutional positions that directly threaten academic freedom.

And then a small group of college administrators decided to blow it all up.

Why Evolution is True
Jerry Coyne

Excerpt: A reader called my attention to a new quarterly online magazine called Sapir. It’s edited by the NYT writer Bret Stephens, it’s free, and it has a number of intriguing articles (check out this interview with Daniel Diermeier, our former provost and now chancellor of Vanderbilt University). It also offers a free one-year hard-copy subscription here.

The magazine appears to deal largely but not exclusively with matters Jewish (Stephens’s background). Among the secular pieces is a fine new article by Stephens himself that you can access by clicking on the title below. It’s about the demise of liberalism in American universities, including a defense of what Stephens considers true liberalism and a list of obstacles to university reform. It’s short and well worth reading.

Joan W. Scott
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: The vice president of campus advocacy of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, Alex Morey, has recently launched an unprecedented attack on the American Association of University Professors. She was quoted in Inside Higher Ed on Nov. 8 effectively offering an obituary for the organization in response to AAUP president Todd Wolfson’s expression of “disappointment” at the election of Donald Trump: “Faculty who’ve long relied on the AAUP for its principled academic freedom advice should look elsewhere,” Morey said.

Sophia Damian
James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal

Excerpt: Duke College Republicans (DCR), founded in 1965, was an active organization on the Durham campus for 55 years before its sudden dissolution during the 2020 election season. After four years of dormancy, the group was revived on October 14, 2024, by junior Zander Pitrus. Amidst challenges posed by administrators and disgruntled student Democrats, Duke College Republicans seeks to facilitate civil discourse on campus by creating a community of like-minded and differently minded students, bringing in political speakers and pushing back against campus censorship.  

A week before the 2024 presidential election, the Martin Center spoke to Pitrus, now DCR president, to get his perspective on the organization and his experiences as a Republican on Duke’s campus.

Bret Stephens
Sapir

Excerpt: Torpor, turpitude, tendentiousness: Higher education has been charged with many sins over many years. Universities have survived these periodic controversies and crises of trust because the public appetite for what they offered far outstripped the distrust and resentments they also generated. And what they offered was a lot: intellectual excellence; professional credentialization; social mobility; the creation, advancement, and dissemination of advanced and specialized knowledge; independence from external and internal political pressures; idyllic communities.

But the broader argument for universities has become harder to make in recent years.