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Michael Hurley
FIRE
Iowa is considering a slate of bills that would limit speech in college classrooms and threaten academic freedom. These measures would mandate reviews of classroom content for DEI or critical race theory, remove topics like “multiculturalism” from teacher training programs, and enshrine a viewpoint-discriminatory definition of “antisemitism” into university policy.
These proposals test longstanding constitutional limits on government interference with academic freedom and classroom discussion, so let’s take a look at each one in turn.
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Violating the First Amendment will cost you. Universities and other public institutions are learning this lesson the hard way as the dust settles on a series of lawsuits brought by university faculty and staff who were punished for their comments about Charlie Kirk’s murder last September.
If Johns Hopkins University wanted to signal its seriousness about creating an alternative to the left-leaning orthodoxy that permeates higher education, it couldn’t have done better than the recent hire of economist Peter Arcidiacono.
House Republicans have now formally backed President Donald Trump in fulfilling his campaign promise to dismantle the Department of Education, voting Wednesday to advance 10 bills that would codify the White House’s efforts to disperse numerous education programs and offices to other federal agencies.
