Trustee Responsibility Free Speech

Johanna Alonso
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: Last February, reporters on the Ashland University student newspaper set out to cover a town hall on campus. Seven months later, their adviser was dismissed and the administration began seeking increased oversight of the paper, The Collegian. How did the relationship between the student journalists and Ashland administrators fall apart so fast?

Coleman Hughes
The Free Press

Excerpt: Like any young writer, I am well aware that an invitation to speak at TED can be a career-changing opportunity. So you can imagine how thrilled I was when I was invited to appear at this year’s annual conference. What I could not have imagined from an organization whose tagline is “ideas worth spreading” is that it would attempt to suppress my own.

According to its website, TED’s mission is to “discover and spread ideas that spark imagination, embrace possibility, and catalyze impact.” They claim to be “devoted to curiosity, reason, wonder, and the pursuit of knowledge—without an agenda.” My experience suggests otherwise, with TED falling far short of those ambitions and instead displaying all the hallmarks of an institution captured by the new progressive orthodoxy.

Heterodox Academy Panel Discussion, Wednesday, September 27, 4pm ET

Excerpt: Many colleges and universities are taking, or re-stating, official positions and principles on issues of open inquiry and free expression on campus – sometimes in response to external pressure, or through influence from varying campus groups.

What does this trend tell us, if anything, about the direction of higher education? Are official statements just cheap lip service? Or is this a moment for faculty to organize on campus to create positive change – and if so, what might that look like?

Quin Hillyer
Washington Examiner

Excerpt: A new survey sponsored by Yale University’s Buckley Institute shows again that disturbing majorities of college students have no appreciation for liberty and, worse, that they can’t even think logically.

This year, for the first time in the nine years of the survey, a plurality agrees it’s OK to shout down a speaker (with another 10% not willing to rule it out). For the first time ever, an outright majority, 51% to 38%, favors “speech codes” to regulate expression on campus.

Audie Cornish
The Assignment With Audie Cornish Podcast

Excerpt: Between student protests, controversial speakers, and debates over “safe spaces,” complaints about free speech on campus are louder than ever. How do school leaders respond to these gripes? And how do they balance freedom of expression – and the idea that speech can be violence?

We have two college presidents from the front lines of this debate: Roslyn Clark Artis of Benedict College and Michael Roth of Wesleyan University. Both schools are part of the so-called “Campus Call for Free Expression.”

Mark Berkson
Chronicle of Higher Education

Excerpt: It has been almost one year since the classroom incident, and despite the damage to the university’s image, there has been no internal inquiry. Not a single administrator has issued an apology or taken responsibility. Instead, Hamline’s administration — after having had a long period to reflect on the media response, the AAUP report, and the statements of outraged faculty — organized “Academic Freedom and Cultural Perspectives: Challenges for Higher Ed Today and Tomorrow.”