National Free Speech News & Commentary

Melinda Manning
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: It’s incredibly gratifying when we can see those very changes that we once fought for—and never expected to be implemented. Almost 12 years ago, I was a college administrator who filed both Title IX and Clery Act complaints with the Department of Education against the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the university that was both my employer and my beloved alma mater.

Over the years, UNC repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, even after being placed under federal monitoring and having to pay a hefty fine. I seriously doubted that their systems for conducting Title IX investigations would ever improve in any meaningful ways. I am happy to say that I was wrong.

Johanna Alonso
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: When a group of students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology launched a pro-Palestine magazine in the spring of 2024, they hoped it would serve as a platform for “revolutionary thought on campus,” according to its first issue: “We believe that writing and art are among the most powerful tools for conducting a revolution.” Housing artwork, literature and essays related to Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza, the publication, titled Written Revolution, began as a totally independent magazine before becoming an official student organization this fall.

The publication has ceased nearly all distribution in response to administrators’ demands, according to students affiliated with the organization, and Iyengar is facing disciplinary action.

Lee Gutkin
Chronicle of Higher Education

Excerpt: If you’ve taught at a college or university in the last decade, you’ve almost certainly sat through some required diversity, equity, and inclusion programming. Perhaps you were on a search committee and had to meet regularly with a diversity consultant who promised to help root out your implicit biases. Or you were a graduate student asked to attend a workshop on “antiracist pedagogy.” Perhaps you were invited, or even compelled, to attend a session on “allyship training.”

All of this stuff has been controversial for a long time, felt by many to be a form of ideological indoctrination. But a new study sponsored by the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) and the Rutgers University Social Perception Lab suggests that, even on its own terms, it just doesn’t work.

Rich Lowry
National Review

Excerpt: DEI is a bad idea whose time came with a vengeance several years ago, but now its continued ascendancy is in doubt. Perhaps the most important event this year outside of the presidential election is the intellectual collapse of so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion, which is poisonous hokum that is finally being exposed as such.

DEI has been one of the most morally perverse and damaging fads in recent American history.

Minding the Campus
Richard Vedder

Excerpt: For decades, international testing data have shown that the United States, for all its leadership in technological innovation and economic success, has been, at best, so-so in teaching fundamental knowledge to young Americans. Moreover, the situation appears to have worsened, aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic, but it has not recovered to anemic pre-pandemic levels since. And, a recent RealClear Investigations report documents that our K-12 schools are enhancing mediocrity by worsening an already wrongheaded grade inflation by continuing to give students high grades even as their learning continues to decline. As one refreshing voice of sanity, Maryland education chief Carey Wright put it, “If you set the bar low, that’s all you are going to get. But if you set the bar high for students, and support teachers and leaders, it [higher student performance] is doable.”

William Deresiewicz
Chronicle of Higher Education

Excerpt: The politics of the academy have been defeated. Its ideas, its assumptions, its opinions and positions — as expressed in official statements, embodied in policies and practices, established in centers and offices, and espoused and taught by large and leading portions of the professoriate — have been rejected. This was already evident before November 5. It can now no longer be denied.