Trustee Responsibility Free Speech

Greg Lukianoff
The Dispatch 

Excerpt: It’s very hard for me not to be pessimistic about the state of free speech in higher education. As president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), I have first-hand knowledge of just how dire things have been and continue to be on campus. Or, it was until a few weeks ago.

Perhaps the most promising development this year has been the shattering of academia’s illusion of invulnerability. For too long, higher education has fancied itself untouchable and irreplaceable, but it’s beginning to recognize that neither of these assumptions are true.

Curtis Bunn
MSNBC

Excerpt: One by one, diversity, equity and inclusion programs at some of the country’s biggest companies fell apart in 2024, with signs that efforts to reverse DEI initiatives will only ramp up in 2025.

This year saw the rise in prominent figures like Elon Musk and Lululemon founder Chip Wilson, among others, who vocally pushed against DEI initiatives. Major companies, including Walmart, Lowe’s, Ford and Toyota, heeded the calls and dialed back their DEI programs, particularly after social media-driven campaigns by influencers like Robby Starbuck. 

Rachel A. Cohen
The Harvard Crimson

Excerpt: I graduated from Harvard Law School in 2022. If I was enrolling now, I would learn far less.

Earlier this month, HLS released data showing that this year’s matriculating class — the first since the fall of race-based affirmative action — includes a mere 19 Black students, down from 43 the year before. By enrolling such a homogenous class, Harvard Law is providing a comparatively paltry educational experience to its students.

Sophia Damian 
James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal 

Excerpt: In a recent Inside Higher Ed/Hanover Research survey, over 90 percent of college professors from public, private, two-year, and four-year universities said they strongly or somewhat agree that academic freedom in higher education is under threat. Moreover, 55 percent believe that academic freedom is under threat on their own campuses.

The survey further found that, due to this sense of declining academic freedom, many professors are self-censoring on topics such as Israel/Palestine, “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” and federal politics in general.

David Josef Volodzko
The Radicalist, Substack 

Excerpt: As a former educator, I believe education is the cornerstone of democracy, not merely because it equips citizens with the tools to thrive professionally, nor because it deepens our understanding of the human condition through exposure to the arts, but because it fosters the critical capacity to make informed decisions.

Yet how can teachers accomplish this critical task if they are too scared to share their actual viewpoints with the class, even within the areas of their expertise?

Jonathan Chait
The Atlantic

Excerpt: A decade ago, cultural norms in elite American institutions took a sharply illiberal turn. Professors would get disciplined, journalists fired, ordinary people harassed by social-media mobs, over some decontextualized phrase or weaponized misunderstanding. Every so often, I would write about these events or the debates that they set off.

But I haven’t written about this phenomenon in a long time, and I recently realized why: because it isn’t happening any more. Left-wing outrage mobs might still form here or there, but liberal America has built up enough antibodies that they no longer have much effect. My old articles now feel like dispatches from a distant era.