Supporting Students Free Expression

Adam Liptak
New York Times

Excerpt: The Supreme Court handed the Biden administration a major practical victory on Wednesday, rejecting a Republican challenge that sought to prevent the government from contacting social media platforms to combat what it said was misinformation.

The court ruled that the states and users who had challenged those interactions had not suffered the sort of direct injury that gave them standing to sue.

Heather Mac Donald
City Journal

Excerpt: Yale University has announced its next president: Maurie McInnis, the current president of the State University of New York at Stony Brook and an art historian specializing in slavery and Southern culture. McInnis concluded her introductory video with an exhortation: “Most importantly, I will encourage us to ask ourselves what change we wish to see in the world and how we might best accomplish that. I can’t wait to begin!”

Uh-oh. McInnis may be eager for Yale to change the world, but the rest of us should be wary of the prospect.

Alex Morey
Persuasion

Excerpt: “College administrator tries to silence faculty critics” is hardly a new scenario. But the censors usually aren’t quite so upfront about it.

There are many reasons why sanctioning faculty who speak out against the university is dangerous. Most obviously, it would gut their expressive rights to publicly criticize Harvard’s shortcomings or abuses, amounting to the kind of “professionalism” policy colleges routinely abuse to punish all manner of controversial student and faculty speech. An administrator need only deem speech unprofessional, and they’ve found a convenient loophole around their academic freedom and free speech policies.

Maggie Hicks
Chronicle of Higher Education

Excerpt: Under a new Indiana law, public colleges are required to provide students a venue to complain if they think a professor isn’t protecting their right to “intellectual diversity.” In Utah, the Board of Higher Education will now conduct a biannual review of public institutions to ensure they’re complying with that state’s new law. And public colleges in Texas must submit an annual report to the state Legislature outlining how they’ve complied with bans on diversity, equity, and inclusion practices.

Julia Steinberg
Free Press, Substack

Excerpt: The Stanford Internet Observatory—a research center tasked with rooting out “misinformation” on social media—is shutting its doors. Chances are if you’ve heard of the SIO it was in a scathing piece from Michael Shellenberger or Matt Taibbi, who have accused the center of being a key node in the censorship-industrial complex.

In actuality, SIO hired a load of interns to scan social media for posts deemed to be mis- and disinformation.

Katherine Knott
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: The Biden administration’s new rule overhauling Title IX, the federal gender-equity law, is on hold in Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia after a federal judge issued an order temporarily blocking the regulations from taking effect in those states Aug. 1.

Chief Judge Danny Reeves of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky, found that the final regulations, which clarify that Title IX prohibits discrimination based on sexual and gender identity, are inconsistent with the underlying Title IX statute, Congress’s intentions in passing the law, and the way it’s been regulated.