Trustee Responsibility Free Speech

John K. Wilson
Academe Blog

Excerpt: Last week, the Catholic University of America (CUA) fired psychology professor Melissa Goldberg one week after she invited doula Rachel Carbonneau to address her class, Psychology 379: Lifespan Development. Doulas coach women during the birthing process, and Carbonneau discussed helping “birthing persons” deal with having abortions and assisting transgender men. One student called the discussion “really upsetting” and turned over a recording to the right-wing website The Daily Signal, which ran a Jan. 26 story with the headline: “SHOCKING: Catholic University Brought in ‘Abortion Doula’ Who Coaches ‘Pregnant Men’ Through Giving Birth.”

CUA immediately declared it was “appalled” by Carbonneau and banned her from speaking on campus, and then over one weekend, CUA completed their investigation and dismissed Goldberg.

UNC Alumni Free Speech Alliance

Excerpt: Join UNC AFSA, the Student Free Speech Alliance, Heterodox Heels and the UNC Program for Public Discourse for an enlightening evening with renowned social psychologist and professor Jonathan Haidt. Dr. Haidt will discuss dynamics that are reshaping university campuses, explore America's dwindling trust in higher education, and offer suggestions as to what academic institutions must do to regain society’s confidence.

Courtney Tanner
Salt Lake Tribune

University of Utah faculty vented their frustrations Monday over the state’s rollback of diversity efforts across public education — with one professor saying it’s “planting the flag of hatred” and another suggesting the school’s president should have done more to fight the legislation.

Jerry Coyne
Why Evolution Is True

Excerpt: At many colleges, submitting SAT test scores for admissions has been eliminated or made optional—often during the pandemic—under the assumption that giving scores would disadvantage racial minorities, who don’t test as well as do white or Asian applicants. This was a way to achieve diversity—a way to enact “holistic admissions.”  Even though SAT scores were good predictors not only of college achievement, and of later-life success, measures of potential achievement were considered less important than indices of diversity.

Now the highly-rated Dartmouth College in New Hampshire has done a similar study, found the same correlative predication as did the UC system, and has reinstated the requirement for SATs, something it made optional during the pandemic.

Joe Killian
NC Newsline

Excerpt: The climate for free speech and expression on North Carolina’s college campuses is good and improving, according to a new report from the nonprofit Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). The group, whose work is frequently cited by campus trustees and members of the UNC System Board of Governors, gave 14 of the system’s 16 university campuses its highest “green light” rating in its new report.

Caitlin Flanagan
The Atlantic

Excerpt:  If you’ve taken a college tour lately, either as an applicant or as the parent of an applicant, you may have noticed that at some point—usually as you’re on the death march from the aquatic center to the natural-sciences complex—the tour guide will spin smartly on her heel, do the college-tour-guide thing of performatively walking backwards, and let you in on something very important. “What’s different about College X,” she’ll say confidently, “is that our professors don’t teach you what to think. They teach you how to think.”