U of Michigan Says DEI Official Fired Over ‘Behavior’ at Protest, Conference

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.

Johanna Alonso
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: After an unprecedented spring of pro-Palestinian protests on campuses across the United States, the fall semester has been comparatively quiet. The total number of protest actions declined by more than 64 percent, from 3,220 to 1,151, according to data from the Crowd Counting Consortium, a project by Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and the University of Connecticut that collects data on protests.

Sofia Lopez
FIRE

Excerpt: What is the state of free speech on college campuses? More students now support shouting down speakers. Several institutions faced external pressure from government entities to punish constitutionally protected speech. And the number of “red light” institutions — those with policies that significantly restrict free speech — rose for the second year in a row, reversing a 15-year trend of decreasing percentages of red light schools, according to FIRE research.

These are just a few of the concerns shared by FIRE’s Lead Counsel for Government Affairs Tyler Coward, who joined lawmakers, alumni groups, students, and stakeholders last week in a discussion on the importance of improving freedom of expression on campus.