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Ilya Somin
Volokh Conspiracy, Reason Magazine
Excerpt: The Trump administration has been detaining and trying to deport immigrant and foreign students for their First-Amendment protected speech. That includes even speech that does not actually support terrorism, as in the case of a Tufts graduate student detained for an anti-Israel op ed that, however flawed, does not endorse Hamas terrorism, or indeed even mention it. Such detention and deportation is an assault on freedom of speech, and violates the First Amendment, which has no exception for immigration restrictions.
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There is an important lawsuit being litigated in the Southern District of New York over the limits of free speech and academic freedom for faculty at the United States Military Academy at West Point. Professor Tim Bakken, West Point’s longest-serving civilian law professor, is challenging new Trump Administration regulations that allegedly constitute unconstitutional prior restraints on academic publications and limit academic freedom and free speech.
The Report, and the follow-up disciplinary reports now being issued, raise uncomfortable questions for professors and for university leaders alike. Are there limits to professors’ freedom to conduct research and teach courses however they think best? Do university leaders dare intervene if scholarship becomes excessively politicized?
The Education Department is asking university leaders to publicly commit to a series of institutional changes, many of which are in line with the Trump administration’s higher education agenda, by the end of the year.
