National Free Speech News & Commentary

Michael Powell
New York Times

Excerpt: Yoel Inbar, a noted psychology professor at the University of Toronto, figured he might be teaching this fall at U.C.L.A. Last year, the university’s psychology department offered his female partner a faculty appointment. Now the department was interested in recruiting him as a so-called partner hire, a common practice in academia. The university asked him to fill out the requisite papers, including a statement that affirmed his belief and work in diversity, equity and inclusion. He flew out and met with, among others, a faculty diversity committee and a group of graduate students.
 
But a few days later, the department chair emailed and told him that more than 50 graduate students had signed a letter strongly denouncing his candidacy. Why? In part, because on his podcast years earlier, he had opposed diversity statements — like the one he had just written.

George R. La Noue
National Association of Scholars

Excerpt: One of the most powerful influences in higher education today is the concept of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Managed by an ever-growing bureaucracy and promoting a seductive, though ambiguous, message to this generation of students, DEI continues to grow on campuses. It is estimated that almost one-fifth of all academic positions now require DEI statements to be submitted. In the 2021 UC Berkeley hiring season, 679 out of 893 candidates for life sciences positions were rejected for failing initial DEI metrics and did not have their academic credentials evaluated.

Who could object to these concepts? Seeing a billboard declaring, “Diversity is our strength” doesn’t really hurt anyone, does it? DEI advocates argue that no good person could support monocultures, inequality or exclusion, so the movement is just promoting “common good” ethics.

William Melhado
Texas Tribune
 
Excerpt: The political climate in Texas is the leading contributor to professors' desire to leave the state, a new survey of more than 1,900 Texas faculty members found. More than a quarter of those professors said they planned to look for positions elsewhere in the country this year as a result of political interference and widespread dissatisfaction with the state of higher education in Texas.

Of the professors surveyed, 57% cited the state’s political climate as their top reason for wanting to leave Texas. The second and third most cited reasons for a desire to leave were anxieties about salary and concerns over academic freedom, respectively.

Graham Hillard
James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal
 
Excerpt: On the evening of July 17, 2020, one of two things happened on a blocked thoroughfare in Charlottesville, Virginia. Either Morgan Bettinger, a rising senior at UVA, uttered a threatening and contemptible remark to Black Lives Matter protestors who were barring her way home. Or the young woman made an anodyne comment that was immediately—and perhaps intentionally—misunderstood.

A new lawsuit filed by Bettinger asks a jury to find that the University of Virginia, in responding to the incident, violated her rights.

Emma Camp
Reason Magazine
 
Excerpt: According to a new survey, only one-third of college students say it's never acceptable to shout down a controversial campus speaker. And one-quarter think using violence can be acceptable in at least some circumstances to stop someone from speaking on campus.

The highest-ranked schools consistently had "green" speech code ratings—a measure FIRE uses to indicate that a school's official policies do not trample student and faculty First Amendment rights—and administrations that consistently defended controversial speech. However, many of these same schools seem to have student bodies that aren't quite so tolerant.

Rick Sobey
Boston Herald
 
Excerpt: Just as the school year kicks off and students return to campus, Harvard University has been ranked as the worst college for free speech in the country. Harvard ranked last out of 248 colleges in a survey of more than 55,000 students across the U.S., receiving the only “Abysmal” rating in the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and College Pulse free speech rankings.

“Each year, the climate on college campuses grows more inhospitable to free speech,” said FIRE Director of Polling and Analytics Sean Stevens.