Trustee Responsibility Free Speech

Nicholas Confessore
New York Times Magazine

Excerpt: Leaders of the University of Michigan, one of America’s most prestigious public universities, like to say that their commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion is inseparable from the pursuit of academic excellence. Most students must take at least one class addressing “racial and ethnic intolerance and resulting inequality.” Doctoral students in educational studies must take an “equity lab” and a racial-justice seminar. Computer-science students are quizzed on microaggressions.

When Michigan inaugurated what it now calls D.E.I. 1.0, it intentionally placed itself in the vanguard of a revolution then reshaping American higher education. Around the country, college administrators were rapidly expanding D.E.I., convinced that such programs would help attract and retain a more diverse array of students and faculty.

Robert Shibley
FIRE

Excerpt: This week, the American Association of University Professors gave its blessing to mandatory “diversity statements” in hiring — as long as the faculty votes for them first. FIRE has long argued that such statements can too easily function as ideological litmus tests and has repeatedly warned against them.

The AAUP’s new statement on “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Criteria for Faculty Evaluation” marks yet another departure from the organization’s roots as a stalwart protector of faculty members’ right to dissent from the orthodoxies of the day, whatever those might be.

Eboo Patel
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: Bravo to the University of Chicago for its $100 million gift in support of free speech. The donation, which comes from an anonymous source, will strengthen the university’s Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression, allowing it to expand quintessential college programs like fellowships and conferences.

You can of course say that these efforts ultimately benefit truth seeking, and I do believe that involving people with a range of identities in philosophical discussions or laboratory experiments results in stronger ideas emerging. But there are other social goals being accomplished as well, including cooperation across difference and social mobility. Why not name a telos that captures all of this?

Zach Montague
New York Times

Excerpt: With a new academic year well underway, more than 60 colleges and universities are still under federal investigation over antisemitic and Islamophobic incidents during the campus protests that swept the United States after the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel, according to the Department of Education.

Johanna Alonso
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: With Monday marking the first anniversary of Hamas’s deadly attack on Israeli civilians and the beginning of the war in Gaza, numerous colleges are aiming to commemorate and honor the lives lost in the Middle East over the past year while also preparing for a new wave of protests.

Cathy Young
The Bulwark

Excerpt: THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA’S DECISION last week to punish tenured law professor Amy Wax with a one-year suspension and other sanctions for what her defenders call controversial opinions—and her detractors call racist hate speech—has been widely criticized as an egregious assault on intellectual freedom.

What ultimately emerges from an attempt to dig through the murky and complicated facts is an all-too-familiar story: that of a once-acclaimed conservative scholar on the path from heterodoxy to crackpottery and from outspoken to deliberately offensive. It is also one of those cases in which supporters of academic freedom must defend the right to express odious views without sugarcoating their odiousness.