Supporting Students Free Expression

Peter Berkowitz
RealClearPolitics

Excerpt: Following Hamas’ bloodthirsty Oct. 7 assault on Israel’s southern border communities, woke leftists and jihad enthusiasts on campuses and beyond formed a perplexing alliance. The left advocates social justice; celebrates diversity, equity, and inclusion; and professes special concern for historically oppressed minorities. Meanwhile, Gaza’s Iran-backed jihadists torture and kill based on race, ethnicity, and sexual preference; loathe and wage war against Israelis, Jews, Americans, and the West; and, by all available means, seek to establish Islamist theocracy. What could unite two such seemingly mutually exclusive camps?

Adam Kredo
Free Beacon

Excerpt: Harvard University failed to implement a sweeping set of recommendations from its in-house Antisemitism Advisory Group (AAG) and turned a blind eye to numerous instances of campus harassment even after they were raised with the school's leadership, according to a congressional report.

Eliot A. Cohen
The Atlantic

Excerpt: The protest season at universities usually crescendos just before commencement: The weather is balmy and most term papers are done, but what student or professor would wish to stay around campus during summer break if they did not absolutely have to? This year, the protests have taken an uglier turn, as encampments have sprouted up. The demonstrators—most of them students, many not, often masked—are calling for divestment by their universities from companies based in or doing business with Israel. Some of the protesters see this goal as an interim step toward the destruction of the state of Israel.

Emma H. Haidar and Cam E. Kettles
Harvard Crimson

Excerpt: The Harvard Corporation rejected an effort by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences to confer degrees on 13 seniors facing disciplinary charges for participating in the pro-Palestine encampment, an unprecedented veto that opens a new front in the internal battles that have convulsed Harvard for the past year.

The Corporation, the University’s highest governing body, deliberated late into the night on Tuesday as it stared down an impossible decision: render Harvard College’s disciplinary processes toothless by approving the FAS-amended list or undercut the authority of the University’s largest faculty by declining to uphold their amendment.

John Engler and Jeffrey O. Nelson
Wall Street Journal
 
Excerpt: Justice Samuel Alito this month warned that freedom of speech on campuses and in many corridors of American society is imperiled.

Chaos is crippling America’s universities, which are now hubs of protest rather than learning. Anti-Israel encampments on some campuses have become beachheads for violence where reasoned debate and expression once flourished.

Leigh Revers
Heterodox STEM

Excerpt: Diversity, equity and inclusion: unless you have been hiding in some ideological ‘safe space’ expunged of today’s wokery —and let’s face it, where in Canada would that be?— these three ubiquitous terms will be instantly familiar to everyone who happens to work in an organization or institution in Canada, whether public or private.