Kalven Report Institutional Neutrality

Dear ACTA friend,

Since its founding, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) has advocated for strengthening civic education at America’s colleges and universities. Our democratic republic depends on an educated citizenry—the rising generation must have a robust understanding of our nation’s history and system of government.

Our country is facing a civic knowledge crisis, and with it, a crisis of civic order. ACTA’s recent survey, Losing America’s Memory 2.0, has brought to light some startling findings about the state of civic literacy among college students. Most students are unable to identify the speaker of the House of Representatives, term lengths for members of Congress, or the branch of government with the power to declare war.

FIRE

Excerpt: The Senate is gearing up to vote on the Kids Online Safety Act as early as tomorrow. FIRE urges opposition to both the Senate (S. 1409) and House (H.R. 7891) versions of the bill because they treat Americans’ speech not as a fundamental right and an indispensable ingredient of human progress, but as a hazardous product.

This opens the door to insidious government regulation of speech of both minors and adults, which the bill enables by empowering the Federal Trade Commission to define how social media platforms can operate.

Ryan Quinn
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: In the summer of 2022, Florida newspapers reported on the strange appearance of $3 million in one-time funds from Florida’s GOP-controlled state Legislature for something called the Hamilton Center for Classical and Civics Education at the University of Florida. The university said it hadn’t asked for this new entity.

Two years later, this center—backed by Florida governor Ron DeSantis and now embraced by university officials—is rapidly expanding to become a UF college. But the center has remained beset with controversy, from its murky origins to university investigations of its alleged faculty opponents to a summer Faculty Senate approval of its degrees that left some professors feeling “railroaded.”

Jerry Coyne
Why Evolution is True

Excerpt: After several years of effort, graduate students getting paid for research or teaching at the University of Chicago joined a labor union.  Because they couldn’t form a union de novo but had to join an existing one, they became dues-paying members of the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America, Local 11o3.

But joining the union came with an unexpected downside: unions can take political and ideological positions, and as a member of one (qualified students are required to join and pay union dues), you implicitly sign on to those positions.  And you may not want to do that.  In the case at hand, the Union has taken pro-Palestinian positions, and some students, especially Jewish ones, don’t want to sign on to these positions. So a group called “Graduate Students for Academic Freedom” has sued the union, alleging that the union makes them engage in implicit endorsement of the union’s positions.

Eric Kelderman
Chronicle of Higher Education

Excerpt: Ben Sasse’s appointment as president of the University of Florida in late 2022 was hailed by his supporters as an opportunity to remake a flagship institution. Less than two years later, he is stepping down before having time to meaningfully influence the university’s direction.

Sasse announced his resignation late on Thursday with a social-media post on X (formerly Twitter) explaining that he needed to spend more time helping his wife, Melissa, deal with the ongoing effects of an aneurysm she suffered in 2007.

Ryan Quinn
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: After months of delaying a planned vote on the issue, the University of California’s Board of Regents voted 13 to 1 Thursday to prohibit academic departments and other academic units from posting political statements on their website homepages.

The ban comes after some UC departments posted statements supporting Palestinians. Josiah Beharry, the student member on the board, was the only no vote.