National Free Speech News & Commentary

Katherine Knott and Jessica Blake
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: Columbia University President Minouche Shafik carefully and repeatedly condemned antisemitism over the course of a nearly four-hour appearance before Congress on Wednesday. She denounced the speech and actions of some pro-Palestinian professors and student protesters. She made clear under questioning that she considers the oft-changed slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” to be antisemitic, though she noted that other people don’t hear it as such.

But judging from the responses she received from Republicans on the House education committee, none of that might be enough to keep Shafik or Columbia—or its faculty members—from further Congressional scrutiny.

Letter Reposted by Stanford Alumni for Free Speech and Critical Thinking

Excerpt: A copy of a letter sent by Stanford President Richard Saller and Provost Jenny Martinez to students who have been admitted as freshmen for this coming fall has now been made available publicly.

We believe this is a very powerful statement about free speech, critical thinking and what should be expected in an academic community, not just at Stanford but nationwide. We urge readers to take a look and even consider forwarding it to other interested parties.

Sean Stevens
Foundation for Individual Rights in Expression

Excerpt: Today, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression released “The Judge Duncan Shoutdown: What Stanford Students Think.” This retrospective survey report combines data from a FIRE and College Pulse survey conducted last year after the shoutdown of U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit Judge Kyle Duncan at Stanford University with an analysis of FIRE’s College Free Speech Rankings survey data, which was administered before — and extended through the time of — the shoutdown.

E. Matteo Diaz
Harvard Crimson

Excerpt: Who is to blame for our campus’s failing speech culture? Some fault institutional DEI initiatives and the advocates who champion them. According to critics, by drawing sharp distinctions between the oppressed and the oppressor and policing who is entitled to speak on matters of identity, DEI allows identity politics to impede discourse.

These characterizations are extreme and generalized, but they are not entirely wrong. As a transgender person, I’ve seen these dynamics play out within my own community and the dialogue that surrounds it.

Kathryn Palmer
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: Six months after the Israel-Hamas war set off a new wave of campus activism in the United States, students are still protesting in full force. And at some institutions administrators are responding to student demonstrators—especially supporters of Palestinians—with increasingly harsh discipline.

In some ways, the actions of the students and the college administrators resemble campus climates during the Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam War and the apartheid era in South Africa, among other eras of social upheaval. What has changed, however, is the pressure politicians and donors now exert on college leaders to support a particular viewpoint.

Michelle N. Amponsah and Joyce E. Kim
Harvard Crimson

Excerpt: Harvard filed a motion in federal court on Friday to dismiss a lawsuit filed by six Jewish students that alleged the University failed to address “severe and pervasive” antisemitism on campus.

The University’s 38-page memorandum in support of its motion to dismiss outlined the “tangible steps” Harvard’s administration has taken to investigate and tackle antisemitism on its campus, including the presidential task force on combating antisemitism that interim Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 established in January.