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Today, PEN America launched a new initiative alongside more than a hundred former higher education presidents and system heads to defend higher education against a barrage of state legislation and policies that seek to restrict campus free expression and college and university autonomy.
The new effort, “Champions of Higher Education,” counts among its ranks 118 former college and university presidents and chancellors committed to rallying public support against political and legislative attempts to silence discussion of core issues, politicize curricula, and exacerbate campus divisions. The number of former higher education leaders involved grows larger each day. PEN America brought together this initiative in collaboration with Campus Compact.
Catherine Rampell
Washington Post
Excerpt: Amid all the noise, an eerie hush is spreading across America. Companies, scientific researchers and Trump critics are clamming up as the MAGA movement ushers in a new era of government censorship.
On Day 1, President Donald Trump signed an executive order titled “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship.” This might have sounded like banal lip service, reaffirming commitment to the First Amendment. In reality, it was the start of an Orwellian effort to root out wrongthink from government ranks and the private sector.
Foundation for Individual Rights in Expression
Excerpt: The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights announced today it agrees with a federal court ruling that appropriately found the Biden-era Title IX rules to unconstitutionally restrict student First Amendment rights.
Those rules, effective in August 2024, infringed on constitutionally protected speech related to sex and gender. They also rolled back crucial due process rights for those accused of sexual misconduct on campus, increasing the likelihood that colleges would arrive at unreliable conclusions during those proceedings.
Cathy Young
The Bulwark
Excerpt: OVER THE COURSE OF DONALD TRUMP’S re-election campaign, he cast himself as a warrior for free speech—so no surprise that among the first executive orders of his second term was one titled “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship.”
The anti-censorship executive order could still have merit even if Trump is a hypocrite; we’ll get to that in a moment. But the idea that the second Trump administration will usher in a new golden age for free speech in America is as bizarre as the idea that Biden’s America was a dreary intellectual gulag where debate was muzzled and only officially approved speech was allowed.
