Supporting Students Free Expression

Lisa Tolin
PEN America

Excerpt: In her 30 years as a school librarian, Jill Blake fielded the occasional request from parents who didn’t want their child to read a book – Harry Potter, for example. Then in 2022, the floodgates opened, and challenges started rolling in.

A new law in Virginia, where she is a school librarian, required schools to list their “sexually explicit” instructional materials. Shakespeare made the list. The district received a dozen book challenges; she noticed that all of the challenged books were from a Moms for Liberty list.  “(The law) just makes teachers afraid in general. I have been called a porn peddler in an open meeting,” Blake told PEN America. “One person on Facebook has said I should be stoned to death.”

Charles Oliver
Reason Magazine

Excerpt: Officials at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville have agreed to pay $80,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by Maggie DeJong, a graduate art therapy student, claiming the university violated her First Amendment rights. The school ordered DeJong to have no contact, even "indirect communication," with three students who complained that statements she posted on social media or made in classroom and informal discussions defending conservative or Christian positions were "harassment" or "discrimination."

Yascha Mounk and Greg Lukianoff
The Good Fight Podcast, Persuasion

Excerpt: In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Greg Lukianoff discuss the state of free speech culture on America’s campuses and in society more broadly; FIRE’s progress litigating against coercive legislation in Florida and elsewhere; and the need to foster cultural habits that uphold individual expression.

Jessica Blake
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: A year and a half after Stephen Kershnar, a polarizing philosophy professor at SUNY Fredonia, was barred from the campus and relegated to teaching online courses, university officials are still intent on keeping him out.

The university’s lawyer argued last Friday during a federal district court hearing on a lawsuit filed by Kershnar against the State University of New York at Fredonia president and provost that Kershnar’s controversial past comments about pedophilia—which included his questioning whether “adult-child sex” is always wrong—make it impossible for him to return to campus without posing a risk to students and faculty and staff.

John Wilson
Academe Blog

Excerpt: On August 14, the Cornell Free Speech Alliance (CFSA) issued a report, “Lifting The Fog: Restoring Academic Freedom & Free Expression At Cornell University,” that made policy recommendations for how Cornell can improve its climate for free speech. Keith Whittington at Reason called the report “a valuable agenda for faculty across the country.” Carl Neuss, the chair of the Cornell Free Speech Alliance board, declared that the “recommendations themselves sort of read like mom and apple pie—it’s hard to not agree with them,”

While it’s a thoughtful approach that includes some good ideas, the report also includes an alarming number of calls to suppress free expression. Sadly, it’s not all mom and apple pie.

September-October 2023
Jonathan Shaw
Harvard Magazine

Excerpt: At Harvard, there are research areas that can’t be investigated, subjects that can’t be broached in public, and ideas that can’t be discussed in a classroom. So says a group of more than 120 Harvard faculty members, who have formed a Council on Academic Freedom to respond to perceived assaults on free inquiry and a climate of eroded trust that they say stifle dissent.