Trustee Responsibility Free Speech

Steven Pinker
Boston Globe

Excerpt: For almost four centuries, Harvard University, my employer, has amassed a reputation as one of the country’s most eminent universities. But it has spent the past year divesting itself of tranches of this endowment.

In the wake of this debacle, the natural defense mechanism of a modern university is to expand the category of forbidden speech to include antisemitism (and as night follows day, Islamophobia). Bad idea. For universities to have a leg to stand on when they try to stand on principle, they must embark on a long-term plan to undo the damage they have inflicted on themselves. This requires five commitments.

Academe Blog

Excerpt: In recent months, trustees, donors, lobbying organizations, and members of Congress have repeatedly misrepresented the words and deeds of Penn faculty and students who have expressed concern for Palestinian civilians and criticized the war in Gaza, going so far as to suggest that faculty who have publicly condemned Hamas were Hamas supporters and that groups protesting genocide were calling for genocide.

These distortions and attacks on our colleagues have not addressed the scourge of antisemitism—a real and grave problem. Instead, they have threatened the ability of faculty and students to research, teach, study, and publicly discuss the history, politics, and cultures of Israel and Palestine. These attacks strike at the heart of the mission of an educational institution: to foster open, critical, and rigorous research and teaching that can produce knowledge for the public good in a democratic society.

Hannah Natanson and Susan Svrluga
Washington Post

Excerpt: The resignation of the University of Pennsylvania’s president following her testimony over how to handle calls for the genocide of Jews has highlighted the tightrope school leaders are walking as students protest the war in Gaza — and fueled instant debate over how far colleges can go to restrict speech.

Danielle Allen
Washington Post

Excerpt: Last week Congress put squarely on the table the question of whether the health of our democracy requires renovation of our colleges and universities. I believe the answer to that question is “Yes.”

Important and clarifying as that moment was, the opening statement of Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) gave the hearing a broader frame. Foxx questioned the health of universities generally and called attention to “a grave danger inherent in assenting to the race-based ideology of the radical left,” arguing that we are at “an inflection point” requiring a reshaping of “the future for all of academia.” The chairwoman’s theme was not antisemitism alone but whether the diversity, equity and inclusion efforts of college campuses have been a wrong turn for America’s intellectual culture.

Naomi Schaefer Riley
Commentary

Excerpt: In the wake of the October 7 massacre in Israel, University of Pennsylvania president Liz Magill declined to comment because, she said, she didn’t think it was the role of college administrators to express an official view on controversial political issues. And she noted that “as a university, we also fiercely support the free exchange of ideas as central to our educational mission.”

Thanks to some vocal donors who are closing their wallets and some employers who want nothing to do with these students once they graduate, those administrators who have spent the past decade making life uncomfortable or worse for those with views that do not conform to the latest campus fashion are getting a taste of their own medicine. This is not the resolution that Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott favor. In their new book, The Canceling of the American Mind, they worry that “for some on the right, a false sense has arisen that the way out of Cancel Culture is More Cancel Culture.”

Kathryn Palmer
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: A documentary about two young Jewish Americans who question their loyalty to Israel after traveling to the country and the West Bank has become a flash point in the academic freedom debates consuming some college campuses amid the Israel-Hamas war.

The award-winning film, Israelism, debuted at a film festival earlier this year and more than 60 screenings of it were planned—many on college campuses—across the country this fall and winter. Most of the screenings so far have happened without incident, but at Hunter College in New York and the University of Pennsylvania, the documentary has been the source of controversy over the past month.