Trustee Responsibility Free Speech

Ben Sasse
The National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (originally printed in The Atlantic).

Excerpt: In the spring of 1994, the top executives of the seven largest tobacco companies testified under oath before Congress that nicotine is not addictive. Nearly 30 years later, Americans remember their laughable claims, their callous indifference, their lawyerly inability to speak plainly, and the general sense that they did not regard themselves as part of a shared American community. Those pampered executives, behaving with such Olympian detachment, put the pejorative big in Big Tobacco.

Last week, something similar happened. Thirty years from now, Americans will likely recall a witness table of presidents—representing not top corporations in one single sector, but the nation’s most powerful educational institutions—refusing to speak plainly, defiantly rejecting any sense that they are part of a “we,” and exhibiting smug moralistic certainty even as they embraced bizarrely immoral positions about anti-Semitism and genocide.

Jessica Wills
Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression

Excerpt: Faculty members at the University of Pennsylvania are concerned that free expression and viewpoint diversity may disappear completely from their university.  After a tense congressional hearing in which then-President Liz Magill said the university would not punish many forms of constitutionally protected speech — including anti-Semitic speech — Magill backtracked the next day via a video apology in which she signaled her willingness to abandon constitutional standards for free speech. Shortly afterward, she resigned.

In the wake of this shakeup, the future of free speech at Penn is far from certain. Others, however, would like to see the school revive its commitment to free speech. In that spirit, some faculty members drafted a “New Constitution for the University of Pennsylvania,” a vision for the university which calls Penn to recommit itself to intellectual diversity, institutional neutrality, and open discourse.

Vimal Patel
New York Times

Excerpt: The toppling of the University of Pennsylvania’s president, Elizabeth Magill — four days after her testimony before Congress on whether to punish students if they called for genocide — was a victory for those who believe that pro-Palestinian protesters have gone too far in their speech.

For many longtime observers of the campus speech wars, however, this moment is a dire one for freedom of expression.

Heather Mac Donald
City Journal

Excerpt: The pro-Hamas uprising that broke out across American universities after October 7 roused once-somnolent alumni and donors. That awakening has now produced a new university charter, called a “Vision for a New Future of the University of Pennsylvania,” drafted by Penn professors. The charter’s authors, along with Penn’s rebel donors, hope to make agreement with the new constitution a requirement for Penn’s new president.

Penn 2.0 overcomes in one stroke a weakness bedeviling a central strategy of campus reform. Those seeking to create new universities face the challenge that no new institution can offer the prize that a legacy university confers: status and bragging rights. It is prestige that drives the ever-more frenzied torrent of college applications, rather than any promise of knowledge. The beauty of the Penn 2.0 plan is that it re-founds Penn on a new footing, while maintaining Penn’s prestige-granting power.

Niall Ferguson
The Free Press

Excerpt: Anyone who has a naive belief in the power of higher education to instill ethical values has not studied the history of German universities in the Third Reich. A university degree, far from inoculating Germans against Nazism, made them more likely to embrace it.

Emma Camp
Reason Magazine

Excerpt: Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, college campuses around the country have been embroiled in intense anti-Israel protests. Elite college campuses have seen particularly aggressive demonstrations that have frequently included outright support for Hamas.

While First Amendment advocates have expressed hope that these recent controversies would show just how easily abused anti "hate speech" rules on college campuses are, many administrators seem to be taking the opposite position, advocating for more censorship, not less.