Supporting Students Free Expression

Jonathan Turley
Jonathan Turley’s Blog

Excerpt: In my new book, The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” I write about a global anti-free speech movement that is now sweeping over the United States. While not the first, it is in my view the most dangerous movement in our history due to an unprecedented alliance of government, corporate, academic, and media forces. That fear was amplified this week with polling showing that years of attacking free speech as harmful has begun to change the views of citizens.

Katherine Knott and Johanna Alonso
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: The Biden administration’s new Title IX regulations, which strengthen protections for LGBTQ+ students and change how colleges respond to reports of sexual harassment, take effect today nationwide. Kind of.

So far, federal judges have issued six injunctions temporarily blocking the Education Department from enforcing the new Title IX rule in 26 states and hundreds of colleges in other states in response to lawsuits challenging the protections for LGBTQ+—and especially transgender—students. The first injunction was handed down June 14 and the most recent one issued July 31. The drip, drip, drip of court orders over the last seven weeks is part of what’s become an incredibly contentious fight over Title IX that’s left college officials fearful, frustrated and unsure about what comes next.

Dissident Dialogues

Excerpt: Leading academics come together to discuss and debate whether Western universities can be saved from peril. With free speech on campus in jeopardy, and weekly Palestine protests following years of attacks on curriculum and the pulling down of statues. Can they be salvaged or do new universities need to be built?

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.

Mark Bauerlein
City Journal

Excerpt: Conservatives who have witnessed higher-education reforms fail to stop the spread of political correctness have good reason to be dismayed. There is, however, a promising tactic available to them right now, at least in some states, that requires little manpower and no extra cost. All it takes is a determined governor plus a few individuals experienced in academic politics and practice. Consider Florida.

What happened next provided a lesson for the Right: a few conservatives and a strong governor can enact genuine reform—if they exploit the proper power center.

Sam Kahn
Persuasion

Excerpt: The Court has ruled, the results are in, and what we are left with is… the worst of all possible worlds.

In Moody v. NetChoice/NetChoice v. Paxton, the Court espoused a doctrine in which social media companies are viewed as curators or compilers of online material, with the feed constituting a “distinctive expressive offering”—even when those curatorial choices are in fact made by algorithms or AI tools. That philosophy gives the social media companies carte blanche to moderate—or censor—as they wish. Meanwhile, in the highly consequential case Murthy v. Missouri, the Court found that plaintiffs lacked standing to sue the government even when the government had copiously interfered in tech companies’ moderation practices.