Trustee Responsibility Free Speech

Tom Ginsburg
Persuasion

Excerpt: Campus free speech issues were already front and center in the national debate when the October 7th massacre in southern Israel unleashed a flood of new challenges. University leaders have become so accustomed to speaking out on issues of the day that there was no question that they had to speak out once again, but attempts to issue statements addressing the crisis only confused matters further.

This is a moment to reflect on what can and should be said at a moment like this, and on the underappreciated virtue of institutional silence. University leaders should treat it as an opportunity to reset the ship before the next crisis arises.

Eugene Volokh
Volokh Conspiracy, Reason Magazine

Excerpt: Newsweek (Matthew Impelli) reported today on this incident, which involved "a graduate student" instructor "at UC Berkeley's Department of Ethnic Studies." (The story may have been first broken by Israelly Cool [David Lange].) Fortunately, UC Berkeley promptly rejected this; when I e-mailed the media relations office, I was informed that:

“As soon as the administration was made aware of the assignment it moved quickly to ensure that it would be changed. The situation has been remedied, the assignment has been changed and there are now a number of options for extra credit, not just one.”

Hoover Institution

Excerpt: The relationship between faculty and students in the pursuit of truth is vital to American society, but restrictions on language, anonymous bias reporting, and required diversity statements undermine higher learning. Eager to protect students from discomfort, university bureaucracies have prioritized ideological conformity and self-censorship over critical thinking and the pursuit of truth. Academic inquiry and the pursuit of truth may be uncomfortable, but it is necessary to preserve what makes our higher learning institutions great.

Click here for link to full video

Nuria Martinez-Keel
NC Newsline

Excerpt: With the movie release of “Killers of the Flower Moon” only days away, questions still persist about Oklahoma schools’ ability to teach the historical events depicted in the film. The source of the uncertainty is House Bill 1775, a 2021 state law regulating classroom discussions on race and gender.

Tribal leaders have called on the state Legislature to repeal the law, citing widespread confusion and fear among educators who worry teaching unvarnished American and Indigenous history could put them at risk. Educators could lose their teaching license and schools face an accreditation penalty if found in violation of HB 1775.

By Danielle Shapiro and Yonah Berenson
Wall Street Journal

Excerpt: As college campuses erupted in support of Hamas’s atrocities, many administrators responded equivocally. Often they took refuge in the principles of free speech and institutional neutrality, saying universities have no business taking positions on controversial issues. That would have been convincing if they had adhered to those principles before this month, but many didn’t. Officials often took strong positions on far less significant and more debatable issues. This politicization set the stage for the morally and intellectually bankrupt protests that have caused administrators such embarrassment.

Glenn Loury
Substack

Excerpt: Last month, I had the honor of delivering the keynote address at the MIT Free Speech Alliance’s first conference. I received my doctorate in economics from MIT back in the 1970s. At the time, it was probably the best economics department on the planet. An atmosphere of unfettered inquiry was key to MIT economics’ success in those days, just as it is key to the survival and thriving of any ambitious intellectual enterprise. There were no questions you couldn’t ask, and the legitimacy of your answers to those questions depended solely on their ability to withstand the scrutiny of your teachers and peers.

That is as it should be. But as we’ve seen, the spirit of free inquiry is now too often hampered by the censorious impulses of campus culture warriors in the student body, faculty, and administration.