National Free Speech News & Commentary

Greg Lukianoff
The Dispatch

Excerpt: Our institutions of higher education should protect their activists, but they should also prioritize recruiting scholars. The ideal student should think more like a field anthropologist, someone who is trying to figure out where the other side is coming from, rather than a strident warrior in a battle of good versus evil. That open, curious, intellectually humble, and receptive mindset is the foundation of actual learning, and is critical to fostering an educational environment that lives up to its intended purpose.

Chance Layton
National Association of Scholars

Excerpt: Today, many Americans are heading to the polls to vote for our next President and administration. We Americans will also decide which party will control both houses of Congress. There have been several successes over the last few years, thanks primarily to the actions of courts and state legislatures. Much more is to be done to reform higher education so that it better serves Americans. The National Association of Scholars has spent considerable time thinking about the various reforms we’d like to see.

Brad Polumbo
Washington Examiner

Excerpt: Voters are fortunate to have seen a decisive presidential winner early Wednesday morning. But, tragically, there was always going to be one clear loser of the November presidential contest: the First Amendment.

Why? Well, in Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, both mainstream political parties ran candidates who, in different ways, have made their contempt for free speech clear over the years.

Ryan Quinn
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: Two free expression advocacy groups say they’ve sent letters to Pennsylvania public colleges and universities “urging them to protect students’ expressive rights leading up to election day,” according to a news release sent Friday.

The groups are the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania.

Michael Poliakoff and Jack Miller
RealClear Education

Excerpt: Over the last 60 years, there has been unconscionable neglect of civics and American history at both the K-12 and university levels.

Surveys by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) show that fewer than 20% of colleges nationwide require an American history or government course for graduation. Unsurprisingly, this deficit has made its way into the training of teachers too. Future K-12 teachers are unlikely to learn the basic facts about our founding principles and our long history of working toward that more perfect Union our founders envisioned. Fortunately, more and more public universities are doing their part to reverse this trend.

Olivia Reingold
The Free Press

Excerpt: When Houston Porter, a 28-year-old law student at Pace University, first walked into the college auditorium last month, he was surprised to see a packed house for the “Saving Women’s Sports” panel he was co-moderating.

But not long after, Porter’s world started “crumbling down”—with at least one professor shouting at panelists and another allegedly rushing the stage, followed by a Title IX investigation that accuses him of having “aggressively pointed” at a transgender student and misgendering her. Now Porter faces the possibility of suspension, expulsion, and even being barred from practicing law.