Supporting Students Free Expression

E. Matteo Diaz
Harvard Crimson

Excerpt: Who is to blame for our campus’s failing speech culture? Some fault institutional DEI initiatives and the advocates who champion them. According to critics, by drawing sharp distinctions between the oppressed and the oppressor and policing who is entitled to speak on matters of identity, DEI allows identity politics to impede discourse.

These characterizations are extreme and generalized, but they are not entirely wrong. As a transgender person, I’ve seen these dynamics play out within my own community and the dialogue that surrounds it.

Kathryn Palmer
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: Six months after the Israel-Hamas war set off a new wave of campus activism in the United States, students are still protesting in full force. And at some institutions administrators are responding to student demonstrators—especially supporters of Palestinians—with increasingly harsh discipline.

In some ways, the actions of the students and the college administrators resemble campus climates during the Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam War and the apartheid era in South Africa, among other eras of social upheaval. What has changed, however, is the pressure politicians and donors now exert on college leaders to support a particular viewpoint.

Samuel J. Abrams
RealClear Education

Excerpt: Over the past few years, I have spent a considerable amount of time on college and university campuses of all sorts- from small liberal arts colleges to huge state schools – trying to understand the politics of Gen Z students.

I have met countless open-minded, curious, and pluralistic students, but I have also encountered “liberal” students who refuse to engage or listen to ideas that run counter to their own. These liberal students often hold the misguided and dangerous perspective that particular traits or identity characteristics immediately disqualify a person’s ideas, experiences, and views from being discussed and debated.

Joe Killian
NC Newsline

Excerpt: The dismantling of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts at UNC-Chapel Hill could begin in earnest as soon as this month, say two members of the university’s board of trustees. Trustees will likely meet this month in a yet-to-be-scheduled special meeting, finalizing the campus budget before forwarding it to the UNC System Board of Governors for final approval.

“I think the best way for the board to move forward is to advocate for the removal of all DEI funding from the UNC-Chapel Hill budget,” Trustee Dave Boliek, chair of the board’s Budget, Finance and Infrastructure committee, told NC Newsline. “I’m going to advocate that that be the case.”

Dialogue Vanderbilt, Vanderbilt University

Excerpt: From our beginning, we’ve believed in the power of bringing together people of differing viewpoints for a common purpose. A long-standing commitment to free expression is fundamental to who we are.

At Vanderbilt, we have a long tradition of free expression. At a moment when free expression on college campuses and in American civic life is at risk, we are proud to affirm our commitment to this core principle.

Josh Blackman
The Volokh Conspiracy, Reason Magazine

[Editor’s note: The original image was pulled from Berkeley Law Students for Justice in Palestine’s Instagram and replaced with one that does not feature bloody utensils]

Excerpt: Back in October, UC Berkeley Dean Erwin Chemerinsky wrote that "Nothing has prepared me for the antisemitism I see on college campuses now." At the time, I praised Erwin's bold remarks, though I feared things would only get worse. And they have.

Last week, Berkeley Law Students for Justice in Palestine depicted Dean Chemerinsky in a cartoon with blood-soaked utensils. This image appeals to the ancient blood libel that has pervaded anti-semitic propaganda for millennia. That students thought this image was appropriate is shocking. Failure to use the appropriate pronouns is immediately grounds for cancellation. But invoking the trope that Jews eat children is just another meme.