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Jessie Appleby
FIRE
Were the Gaza solidarity encampments erected on college campuses this spring an effective, or even legitimate, form of protest? Is Israel committing genocide in Gaza? It depends on who you ask. But how, if at all, should faculty handle these questions in class?
The manner in which faculty tackle contested or controversial issues in college classrooms is a source of perennial debate. That debate over preferred pedagogy reignited last month when a nonprofit organization accused a public college in California of violating students’ First Amendment rights based on incidents in which two professors seemingly injected their personal views on hot-button political issues into assigned classwork.
Cary Nelson and Joe Lockard
Quillette
Excerpt: On 10 January 2025, Katherine Franke announced her departure from the Columbia University Law School. After she issued a public statement, she had it republished on the Academe blog of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP).
Two of Franke’s law-school colleagues had filed a complaint after Franke gave an interview to Democracy Now on 25 January 2024, in which she claimed that IDF veterans enrolled at Columbia had a history of harassing other students but that the university was not taking this harassment seriously. The complaint stated that Franke had “harassed members of the Columbia community based on their national origin.” An independent law-firm investigation found that she had violated university anti-discrimination policy.
Greg Lukianoff
Foundation for Individual Rights in Expression
Excerpt: Dear President Trump,
My name is Greg Lukianoff, and I am the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a nonpartisan nonprofit organization that defends the rights of all Americans to free speech and free thought.
Last year was the worst year on record for free speech on college campuses. We’re still facing a deluge of campus censorship cases related to October 7 and its aftermath. More attempts were made to deplatform speakers on campus than any year since FIRE began tracking in 1998. And professors are censoring themselves more now than at the height of the McCarthy era.
Jack Fowler
National Review
Excerpt: For reputation-tattered Cornell University, 2024 was a bad year — the pain self-inflicted. As the school prepares for late-February elections of alumni members to the Board of Trustees, one wonders: Will 2025 deliver another (self-infliction encore!) Ivy League black eye?
Some concerned graduates are refusing complacency while the university board relentlessly rubber-stamps the administration’s ideological obsessions, tarnishing the once-prestigious brand. They have grabbed an opportunity -- the formal, annual election of two new alumni trustees -- to put two fresh-thinking, independent, and unendorsed (more on that below) candidates on the ballot.
