Trustee Responsibility Free Speech

Will Bardenwerper
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Excerpt: The article was so bizarre I thought it might be an April Fool’s hoax, given the April 1 byline. The author of “We must not let eating clubs be ideological safe spaces” in The Daily Princetonian had invited a prominent Princeton professor to join him as a guest for lunch at his “eating club” (essentially a private club serving as hybrid dining hall and fraternity/sorority for Princeton juniors and seniors). He later learned that a “group of membership” felt “caught off guard” when they saw the professor, and they were deeply upset by his presence.

If our future leaders are coddled to the point that they cannot share a dining room with an accomplished professor with whom they disagree, where does that leave us as a country? What good comes from four years spent reinforcing the ideas one arrived on campus with?

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.

Peter Berkowitz
RealClear Politics

Excerpt: In “Why Americans Love to Hate Harvard,” published in Harvard Magazine’s March-April 2024 issue, Derek Bok weighs in on the state of higher education at Harvard and other elite colleges and universities and proposes a few reforms.

Bok’s essay suggests that hostility to America’s top universities arises in significant measure from sources external to higher education. While acknowledging that Harvard and many others have created faculties and curricula that are overwhelmingly progressive, his assessment greatly understates the accumulating damage to liberal education deriving from deliberate faculty and administration judgments, decisions, policies, and actions.

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.

Greg Lukianoff
The Eternally Radical Idea, Substack

Excerpt: About a decade ago, I had a weird idea. At the time, I had for 13 years defended free speech and academic freedom in higher education at FIRE — then the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, now and Expression — but something began to change around 2014. There was a sudden surge in attempts to deplatform speakers, and students were arriving on campus requesting things I’d never heard of, like “trigger warnings,” “safe spaces,” and the policing of “microaggressions.”

I was developing a theory about what happened, but I wanted to talk it through with someone knowledgeable. That’s when I asked Jonathan Haidt out to lunch to discuss it. Jon is a world-renowned social psychologist and professor at New York University. We met at an Indian restaurant near his campus, and I started to lay out my thoughts. What followed was the beginning of a working relationship and friendship that continues to this day.