Institutional Governance & Accountability

David Brooks
New York Times

Excerpt: Over the past five weeks, Jewish students on America’s campuses have found themselves confronted with those who celebrate a terrorist operation that featured the mass murder and reportedly the rape of fellow Jews. They see images of people tearing down posters of kidnapped Jewish children.

Universities are supposed to be centers of inquiry and curiosity — places where people are tolerant of difference and learn about other points of view. Instead, too many have become brutalizing ideological war zones, so today the most hostile place to be an American Jew is not at some formerly restricted country club but on a college campus.

Ryan Quinn
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: A professor is suing the Mayo Clinic medical school after a department chair threatened to fire him following a CNN interview in which he criticized the National Institutes of Health for not backing a COVID-19 treatment and a New York Times interview in which he said testosterone improves athletic performance.

Dr. Michael J. Joyner, an anesthesiology professor, filed the lawsuit Monday in a Minnesota state court in Olmsted County against the Mayo Clinic, Mayo’s College of Medicine and Science, Dr. Gianrico Farrugia and Dr. Carlos B. Mantilla.

Academic Freedom Alliance

Excerpt: Since the attack on civilians in Israel on October 7, 2023, American college campuses have been the scene of political rallies, protests, and political statements coming from differing perspectives. The Academic Freedom Alliance takes no position on the politics of the Middle East or attempts to adjudicate competing claims. The AFA does, however, have a substantial interest in how the discussion of those events is conducted and regulated on American college campuses. Universities are now under extraordinary
pressure to police the speech and beliefs of members of the campus community. It is
essential that universities resist the pressure to do so.

Freddie DeBoer
Substack

Excerpt: There was an essay version of this, but honestly I don’t think any essay writing is necessary - the systematic silencing of Palestinian and Palestine-supporting voices is happening, no one is even pretending that it’s not happening, and it’s a direct threat to the basic principles of free expression that are supposed to apply to everyone and every topic, no matter what.

Ruby Cramer
Washington Post

Excerpt: It was her last Monday morning in the library, and when Tania Galiñanes walked into her office and saw another box, she told herself that this would be the last one.

Inside were books. She didn’t know how many, or what they were, only that she would need to review each one by hand for age-appropriate material and sexual content as defined by Florida law, just as she’d been doing for months now with the 11,600 books on the shelves outside her door at Tohopekaliga High School. Last box, and then after this week, she would no longer be a librarian at all.

Jonathan Sumption
Unherd

Excerpt: Freedom of expression is probably the most widely acknowledged human right in the world. Lip service is paid to it even in totalitarian states. Freedom of expression is not worth much in Russia or North Korea, but their constitutions guarantee it in very similar terms as the United Nations. And yet, it is today under greater threat than any other human right. This is happening even, perhaps especially, in liberal democracies. How are we to explain this paradox?