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Jessie Appleby
FIRE
The University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) School of Law is in the midst of a free-speech emergency. When a major American law school teaches its students that the right way to respond to political opponents is to silence them, something has gone wrong. And when it then attempts to protect those disruptive students from public criticism by threatening other students’ speech, it’s a crisis.
That’s just what happened at UCLA this past month.
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The faculty, administrators, and trustees who establish graduation criteria at America’s most prominent colleges and universities have made a clear set of judgments about what every educated citizen should know. Their choices suggest that familiarity with diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is more essential than an understanding of economics, American history, and the Constitution.
Berkeley has long been viewed as one of the most viewpoint-intolerant universities in the United States. Conservatives and those with opposing views are rarely invited and often face protests or cancellations. Some of us have long accused the Berkeley administrators and faculty of fostering this culture of intolerance. That culture was again on full display in the cancellation of an event with Jeffrey Dean, Chief Scientist at Google, in Jarvis Auditorium on Friday, May 1.
Roughly twenty masked protesters entered the event with the intention of preventing others from hearing from Dean and discussing these issues. Soon after the event began, they reportedly disrupted it with megaphones and yelling.
At the University of Michigan’s 2026 commencement exercises, history professor Derek Peterson stood before graduating seniors and their families and, as chair of the Faculty Senate, used his five minutes at the commencement microphone to praise pro-Palestinian campus activists for opening “our hearts to the injustice and inhumanity of Israel’s war in Gaza.”
I have no interest in adjudicating Peterson’s views on the war, his critics’ views, the regents’ threats, or the president’s clumsy attempt to thread the needle. The deeper problem sits one level up and it is this very simple idea: It is the recurring, almost compulsive instinct among faculty to treat every microphone, every syllabus, and every graduation stage as a venue for personal political witness and the bewildered surprise when the rest of the world responds.
