Rules & Policies

Jennifer Kabbany
College Fix

Excerpt: A Bakersfield College professor who was investigated and disciplined after he questioned the use of grant money to fund social justice initiatives at his school has agreed to a $2.4 million settlement to resolve his lawsuit.

Matthew Garrett, formerly a tenured history professor at the California community college, will receive $2,245,480 divided into monthly payments for the next 20 years as well as an immediate one-time payment of $154,520 as “compensation for back wages and medical benefits since [his] dismissal,” according to the July 10 settlement agreement.

Rexton Laird
FIRE

Excerpt: Ahead of what could be another tumultuous year for free expression on college campuses, forthcoming FIRE/College Pulse survey data shows just a fraction of undergrads have a solid understanding of their own campus’s protest policies.

Conducted near the end of the Israeli-Palestinian campus protests, between May 17 and June 25, 2024, the survey sampled 3,803 undergraduates at 30 four-year colleges and universities in the U.S. Asked how aware they are of their college’s written speech policies on campus protest, almost half of students surveyed said they are either “not aware at all” (19%) or “not very aware” (29%). Only 19% of students — less than a fifth — responded they are “extremely” (6%) or “very”(13%) aware of the relevant policies.

Chris Linder

Inside Higher Ed

I was a victim advocate on a college campus for seven years. Since 2011, I have worked as a faculty member whose research, teaching and activism focuses on addressing sexual violence among college students. And for the past five years, I’ve led the development of a center for violence prevention on a campus where three women were murdered by domestic or dating partners in one year, followed by an additional alleged domestic violence homicide four years later.

Few things make me more ashamed or angry than the way the federal government attempts to intervene in sexual misconduct on college campuses. Politicians use survivors and transgender students as pawns in a political power struggle.

Tim Carpenter

Kansas Reflector

Gov. Laura Kelly and top legislative leaders voted Tuesday to allocate $35.7 million to public higher education after the Kansas Board of Regents certified campus administrators complied with a state law forbidding employment and admissions decisions to be based on diversity, equity and inclusion policies.

The 2024 Legislature made distribution of the university operating grants contingent on affirming DEI no longer dictated faculty or staff hiring nor influenced whether a student was admitted.

Greg Lukianoff

The Eternally Radical Idea

While I certainly know critics of Israel who are not at all motivated by anti-Semitism, I have run into a lot more outright anti-Semitism over the past 10 years — and particularly in the last six months — than I ever thought I'd see in my lifetime. Anti-Semitism is vile, and I believe it is absolutely a growing problem today.

Given my point of view on this, it might be surprising to people that FIRE and I oppose the Antisemitism Awareness Act. To those who understand how a viewpoint-neutral defense of the First Amendment works in practice, however, this should come as no surprise at all.

Katherine Knott

Inside Higher Ed

A federal district judge on Tuesday blocked the Biden administration from enforcing its new regulations for Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 in Alaska, Kansas, Utah and Wyoming.

Judge John Broomes of the District of Kansas wrote in a 47-page opinion that the Education Department lacked the authority to expand prohibited sex-based discrimination under Title IX to include discrimination based on gender identity and that the new regulations could chill speech “through vague and overbroad language.” The protections for LGBTQ+ students are at the heart of the Kansas lawsuit and other legal challenges.