Trustee Responsibility Free Speech

Sophia Damian
James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal

Excerpt: Duke College Republicans (DCR), founded in 1965, was an active organization on the Durham campus for 55 years before its sudden dissolution during the 2020 election season. After four years of dormancy, the group was revived on October 14, 2024, by junior Zander Pitrus. Amidst challenges posed by administrators and disgruntled student Democrats, Duke College Republicans seeks to facilitate civil discourse on campus by creating a community of like-minded and differently minded students, bringing in political speakers and pushing back against campus censorship.  

A week before the 2024 presidential election, the Martin Center spoke to Pitrus, now DCR president, to get his perspective on the organization and his experiences as a Republican on Duke’s campus.

Bret Stephens
Sapir

Excerpt: Torpor, turpitude, tendentiousness: Higher education has been charged with many sins over many years. Universities have survived these periodic controversies and crises of trust because the public appetite for what they offered far outstripped the distrust and resentments they also generated. And what they offered was a lot: intellectual excellence; professional credentialization; social mobility; the creation, advancement, and dissemination of advanced and specialized knowledge; independence from external and internal political pressures; idyllic communities.

But the broader argument for universities has become harder to make in recent years.

Andreas Bikfalvi MD PhD
Substack, Heterodox STEM

Excerpt: I define Ideology-Based Investigations (IBIs) as inquiries that are not grounded in a rigorous scientific theoretical framework, where hypotheses can be tested. Instead, they rely on philosophical or legal scholarship that presents a veneer of scientific credibility. When these investigations originate from the left, they are rooted in post-modern or critical theory scholarship. Conversely, when they come from the right, they are associated with a mythological interpretation of past and present history. The American philosopher Michael Huemer [1], has referred to these as “progressive myths” when propagated by the left, but we should also recognize the concept of “reactionary myths” for those promoted by the right.

Emma Camp
Reason Magazine

Excerpt: Last year, student-led protests over the Israel-Hamas war broke out at dozens of college campuses. With the new school year well underway, student demonstrations have begun again in earnest.

According to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), attempts to deplatform speakers were surging by this April. Of the 67 attempts it had recorded from January to mid-April, 73 percent involved controversy surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. So how did a year of raucous—and occasionally disruptive and destructive—protest affect student opinions on free speech?

Jessica Blake
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: Republicans are primed to ratchet up their efforts to hold colleges accountable after securing a majority in the House and Senate.

With President-elect Donald Trump in the White House, the table is set for the GOP to make significant progress on a higher ed wish list that includes granting federal aid to nontraditional programs, increasing taxes on wealthy colleges, cracking down on campus antisemitism and busting the current model for accreditation, experts say.

David Brooks
The Atlantic

Excerpt: Every coherent society has a social ideal—an image of what the superior person looks like. In America, from the late 19th century until sometime in the 1950s, the superior person was the Well-Bred Man. Such a man was born into one of the old WASP families that dominated the elite social circles on Fifth Avenue, in New York City; the Main Line, outside Philadelphia; Beacon Hill, in Boston. He was molded at a prep school like Groton or Choate, and came of age at Harvard, Yale, or Princeton. In those days, you didn’t have to be brilliant or hardworking to get into Harvard, but it really helped if you were “clubbable”—good-looking, athletic, graceful, casually elegant, Episcopalian, and white.

And then a small group of college administrators decided to blow it all up.