Supporting Students Free Expression

Benjamin Mazer
The Atlantic

Excerpt: “People will die if doctors misdiagnose patients.” This is true as far as it goes. But the recent news that prompted Elon Musk to share this observation on X was not precisely about medical errors. It was about what he might call the “woke mind virus.” A story by Aaron Sibarium in The Washington Free Beacon had revealed complaints that UCLA’s medical school was admitting applicants partly based on race—a practice that has long been outlawed in California public schools. And this process wasn’t just discriminatory, the story argued; it was potentially disastrous for the public.

Nadine Strossen
Persuasion

Excerpt: The current Supreme Court term includes a cluster of cases that could well shape the future of online free speech. These cases invite the Court to determine the power of both government officials and social media platforms concerning “content moderation” policies, which in turn define platform users’ speech rights.

Given the unparalleled importance of these platforms for all manner of communication—personal, professional, and political—meaningful free speech rights depend on the platforms’ policies. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the Court’s rulings over the next weeks may well determine the shape of speech online for years to come.

Jerry Coyne
Why Evolution is True

Excerpt: In light of the Supreme Court’s ruling against race-based college admissions (which involved Harvard), and the likely illegality of hiring faculty based on race, colleges are beginning to ratchet back on DEI-based admissions and hiring. (Although nobody’s yet taken a college to court for requiring DEI statements, I’m betting that such statements would be banned for constituting compelled speech.)

Now that MIT banned DEI statements for faculty job applications, the other great school in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard, has just followed suit. According to the two articles below, Harvard has banned diversity statements.

Nicquel Terry Ellis
CNN

Excerpt: When the police killings of Black people, including George Floyd set off racial unrest across the country in 2020, Marie Vergamini decided she wanted to do her part to help address systemic racism. So, Vergamini, a doctoral student and adjunct instructor at Virginia Commonwealth University, joined a committee of faculty and students who were creating a racial literacy curriculum. The committee planned to make the racial literacy curriculum part of general education requirements for incoming students.

But the decisions to drop the course requirements at VCU and postpone them at George Mason have faced backlash from faculty and students who say the material is meant to prepare students for the real world by offering a better understanding of the nation’s history of racism and discrimination.

Jerry Coyne
Why Evolution Is True

Excerpt: The problem with the Harvard policy lies not in its specifics above, but how it appears to be interpreted by the creators/op-ed writers, who seem to misunderstand the principle of institutional neutrality, try to diss our Kalven Report (perhaps to say, “Hey, Harvard has its own report, and a better one”), and then suggest that Harvard’s policy can in some cases be applied in a non-neutral way. In other words, what we get is a decent policy whose authors (at least two of them) have described for the public as a dog’s breakfast. This does not bode well for any future “institutional neutrality” of Harvard.

Emma H. Haidar and Cam E. Kettles
Harvard Crimson

Excerpt: After months of grappling with a campus fractured by a polarizing debate over the Israel-Hamas war, Harvard announced on Tuesday that the University and its leadership will refrain from taking official positions on controversial public policy issues.

The University’s new stance followed a report produced from a faculty-led “Institutional Voice” working group, which advised leadership to not “issue official statements about public matters that do not directly affect the university’s core function.” Interim Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 wrote in an email that he accepted the working group’s recommendations, which were also endorsed by the Harvard Corporation, the University’s highest governing body.