Institutional Governance & Accountability

Caitlin Flanagan
The Atlantic

Excerpt:  If you’ve taken a college tour lately, either as an applicant or as the parent of an applicant, you may have noticed that at some point—usually as you’re on the death march from the aquatic center to the natural-sciences complex—the tour guide will spin smartly on her heel, do the college-tour-guide thing of performatively walking backwards, and let you in on something very important. “What’s different about College X,” she’ll say confidently, “is that our professors don’t teach you what to think. They teach you how to think.”

Emma H. Haidar and Cam E. Kettles
The Harvard Crimson

Excerpt: Interim University President Alan M. Garber ’76 pledged to tackle “pernicious” antisemitism on Harvard’s campus, saying he is most concerned about self-censorship in the face of anti-Israel attacks in an interview Wednesday — his first since assuming office on Jan. 2.

Garber did not answer repeated questions about whether his administration would consider instituting a speech code for Harvard classrooms. But in a follow-up statement, Garber wrote that he did not support speech codes.

Randall L. Kennedy
The Harvard Crimson

Nearly forty years ago, then-University President Derek C. Bok wrote an open letter championing a libertarian ethos of free speech at Harvard that would satisfy even its most ardent defenders. His views, he noted, were “in keeping with the main lines of Constitutional thought. . . . Despite recognizing that Harvard is a private institution and thus outside the sweep of the First Amendment, Bok nevertheless maintained that Harvard should not “have less free speech than the surrounding society — or than a public university.” . . .  

The Harvard community, however, ought not be doctrinaire in its reliance on the First Amendment. Harvard should govern speech on campus according to a separate standard anchored solely by academic concerns . . . . For example, if Harvard were bound by the First Amendment, the University would be compelled to permit students to chant, in the middle of Harvard Yard, “no means yes, and yes means anal” or “send the Blacks back to Africa”or “exterminate the Jews!” — all phrases that, standing alone, are protected when uttered in a public space like Cambridge Common or the quad at the University of Massachusetts. . . . Ought Harvard be so permissive?

Heterodox Academy Podcast
John Tomasi & Steven Pinker

Excerpt: Are our higher education institutions still nurturing true
intellectual diversity? Our guest today is Steven Pinker, a cognitive
scientist at Harvard, and today, we'll be exploring the growing
concerns within higher ed that institutions are turning into echo
chambers, stifling dissent and censoring certain perspectives.

In this thought-provoking episode, we'll be discovering the challenges
to academic freedom in the era of cancel culture. We'll explore how
questioning a consensus can now come at a cost, impacting the pursuit
of truth within academic institutions. We'll also uncover the story of
the Council for Academic Freedom at Harvard, which was formed to
combat these challenges.

Martin Di Caro
Washington Times

Excerpt: The uproar over free expression and antisemitism on college campuses is evoking a controversy from the late 1970s that left a lasting mark on First Amendment case law and provided an enduring lesson on the importance of free speech in a democratic society.

In this episode, Nico Perrino of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) reflects on why Skokie matters at a time of increasing hostility to free expression across the American political spectrum. Mr. Perrino co-directed the documentary Mighty Ira about Ira Glasser, who led the ACLU for 23 years after the intense backlash over its role in the Skokie case.

Stephanie Saul
New York Times

Excerpt: Campus protests are not usually aimed at a single person. But last week at the University of Pennsylvania, professors staged a rally targeting Marc Rowan, the New York private-equity billionaire. A Penn alumnus and a major benefactor of the university, Mr. Rowan deployed his formidable resources in a relentless campaign against Penn’s president, M. Elizabeth Magill, leading to her resignation in December.

But it was what happened next that spurred the protest. Mr. Rowan sent a four-page email to university trustees titled “Moving Forward,” which many professors interpreted as a blueprint for a more conservative campus. Amy C. Offner, a history professor who led the protest, called the document a proposed “hostile takeover of the core academic functions of the university.”