Trustee Responsibility Free Speech

Peter Berkowitz
RealClearPolitics

Excerpt: Following Hamas’ bloodthirsty Oct. 7 assault on Israel’s southern border communities, woke leftists and jihad enthusiasts on campuses and beyond formed a perplexing alliance. The left advocates social justice; celebrates diversity, equity, and inclusion; and professes special concern for historically oppressed minorities. Meanwhile, Gaza’s Iran-backed jihadists torture and kill based on race, ethnicity, and sexual preference; loathe and wage war against Israelis, Jews, Americans, and the West; and, by all available means, seek to establish Islamist theocracy. What could unite two such seemingly mutually exclusive camps?

Jennifer Kabbany
The College Fix

Excerpt: The UNC System Board of Governors on Thursday voted to repeal a five-year-old policy mandating diversity, equity and inclusion offices on each of its 17 campuses, paving the way for diversity jobs to by cut systemwide.

Jerry Coyne
Why Evolution is True

Excerpt: A reader sent me the tweet below (I don’t spend much time on Twitter), but it intrigued me not so much because University of North Carolina (UNC) system spends millions on DEI (that’s not unusual), but because it reports that its DEI policy may be eliminated across all UNC schools this week.  Note that there are 686 DEI positions in the system, with salaries adding up to over $70 million ($91 million if you include benefits).

Eliot A. Cohen
The Atlantic

Excerpt: The protest season at universities usually crescendos just before commencement: The weather is balmy and most term papers are done, but what student or professor would wish to stay around campus during summer break if they did not absolutely have to? This year, the protests have taken an uglier turn, as encampments have sprouted up. The demonstrators—most of them students, many not, often masked—are calling for divestment by their universities from companies based in or doing business with Israel. Some of the protesters see this goal as an interim step toward the destruction of the state of Israel.

John Engler and Jeffrey O. Nelson
Wall Street Journal
 
Excerpt: Justice Samuel Alito this month warned that freedom of speech on campuses and in many corridors of American society is imperiled.

Chaos is crippling America’s universities, which are now hubs of protest rather than learning. Anti-Israel encampments on some campuses have become beachheads for violence where reasoned debate and expression once flourished.

Leigh Revers
Heterodox STEM

Excerpt: Diversity, equity and inclusion: unless you have been hiding in some ideological ‘safe space’ expunged of today’s wokery —and let’s face it, where in Canada would that be?— these three ubiquitous terms will be instantly familiar to everyone who happens to work in an organization or institution in Canada, whether public or private.