Institutional Governance & Accountability

Heterodox Academy

Excerpt: University orientation programs are foundational to the new student experience on campus. These programs cover helpful logistics of campus life and operations and, importantly, they also set the stage for the student experience, intellectual values, and social life. But how should orientation programs be structured to ensure that HxA values of open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and constructive disagreement are instilled at the outset?

During this discussion, our panel of experts will discuss what student orientations need to cover, what they cover out of choice, and what they should cover.

George Packer
The Atlantic

Excerpt: In June 1953, at the height of the McCarthy era, while congressional investigators and private groups were hunting down “subversive” or merely “objectionable” books and authors in the name of national security, the American Library Association and the Association Book Publishers Council issued a manifesto called “The Freedom to Read.”

This past June, the library and publishers’ associations reissued “The Freedom to Read” on its 70th anniversary. Scores of publishers, libraries, literary groups, civil-liberty organizations, and authors signed on to endorse its principles. And yet many of those institutional signatories—including the “Big Five” publishing conglomerates—often violate its propositions, perhaps not even aware that they’re doing so.

The Editorial Board
Wall Street Journal

Excerpt: The diversity, equity and inclusion bureaucracy has injected progressive politics into many corners of the private economy, but its role in medicine is especially pernicious. Now a lawsuit is challenging whether California can force doctors who teach continuing medical education courses to also teach racial politics.

Ryan Quinn
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: State governments often pick willing researchers to testify in lawsuits, buttressing their arguments. Outside of litigation, governments also often share data with professors, helping the scholars conduct research and the governments solve problems.

But what happens when researchers who work with a government, outside the courtroom, also testify in a case against that government? In California, the state Department of Education tried to stop one’s testimony and prevent another’s.

Emma Camp
Reason Magazine

Excerpt: In the summer of 2020, Morgan Bettinger was a rising senior at the University of Virginia when a fellow student publicly accused her of telling a group of Black Lives Matter protesters that they would make "good speed bumps."

But a second investigation, this time from the school's civil rights office, ultimately cleared Bettinger of wrongdoing and concluded that there was insufficient evidence that Bettinger ever said that protesters would make "good speed bumps." Now Bettinger has filed a lawsuit, arguing that her speech was not a threat and was facially protected by the First Amendment—and therefore, the University of Virginia, as a public institution, had no grounds to punish her.

Washington Examiner Editorial
Washington Examiner

Excerpt: The more documents that Big Tech companies are forced to cough up through litigation and oversight, the clearer it becomes that there was in fact a coordinated campaign between social media platforms and the government to suppress speech that is inconvenient for those in power.

This censorship runs counter to our nation’s founding principles. Congress and litigants should keep up the pressure on social media companies to reveal what they did, and safeguards need to be put in place to make sure this never happens again.