National Free Speech News & Commentary

Peter Berkowitz
RealClear Politics

Excerpt: In “Why Americans Love to Hate Harvard,” published in Harvard Magazine’s March-April 2024 issue, Derek Bok weighs in on the state of higher education at Harvard and other elite colleges and universities and proposes a few reforms.

Bok’s essay suggests that hostility to America’s top universities arises in significant measure from sources external to higher education. While acknowledging that Harvard and many others have created faculties and curricula that are overwhelmingly progressive, his assessment greatly understates the accumulating damage to liberal education deriving from deliberate faculty and administration judgments, decisions, policies, and actions.

Samuel J. Abrams
RealClear Education

Excerpt: Over the past few years, I have spent a considerable amount of time on college and university campuses of all sorts- from small liberal arts colleges to huge state schools – trying to understand the politics of Gen Z students.

I have met countless open-minded, curious, and pluralistic students, but I have also encountered “liberal” students who refuse to engage or listen to ideas that run counter to their own. These liberal students often hold the misguided and dangerous perspective that particular traits or identity characteristics immediately disqualify a person’s ideas, experiences, and views from being discussed and debated.

Joe Killian
NC Newsline

Excerpt: The dismantling of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts at UNC-Chapel Hill could begin in earnest as soon as this month, say two members of the university’s board of trustees. Trustees will likely meet this month in a yet-to-be-scheduled special meeting, finalizing the campus budget before forwarding it to the UNC System Board of Governors for final approval.

“I think the best way for the board to move forward is to advocate for the removal of all DEI funding from the UNC-Chapel Hill budget,” Trustee Dave Boliek, chair of the board’s Budget, Finance and Infrastructure committee, told NC Newsline. “I’m going to advocate that that be the case.”

Dialogue Vanderbilt, Vanderbilt University

Excerpt: From our beginning, we’ve believed in the power of bringing together people of differing viewpoints for a common purpose. A long-standing commitment to free expression is fundamental to who we are.

At Vanderbilt, we have a long tradition of free expression. At a moment when free expression on college campuses and in American civic life is at risk, we are proud to affirm our commitment to this core principle.

Josh Blackman
The Volokh Conspiracy, Reason Magazine

[Editor’s note: The original image was pulled from Berkeley Law Students for Justice in Palestine’s Instagram and replaced with one that does not feature bloody utensils]

Excerpt: Back in October, UC Berkeley Dean Erwin Chemerinsky wrote that "Nothing has prepared me for the antisemitism I see on college campuses now." At the time, I praised Erwin's bold remarks, though I feared things would only get worse. And they have.

Last week, Berkeley Law Students for Justice in Palestine depicted Dean Chemerinsky in a cartoon with blood-soaked utensils. This image appeals to the ancient blood libel that has pervaded anti-semitic propaganda for millennia. That students thought this image was appropriate is shocking. Failure to use the appropriate pronouns is immediately grounds for cancellation. But invoking the trope that Jews eat children is just another meme.

Greg Lukianoff
The Eternally Radical Idea, Substack

Excerpt: About a decade ago, I had a weird idea. At the time, I had for 13 years defended free speech and academic freedom in higher education at FIRE — then the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, now and Expression — but something began to change around 2014. There was a sudden surge in attempts to deplatform speakers, and students were arriving on campus requesting things I’d never heard of, like “trigger warnings,” “safe spaces,” and the policing of “microaggressions.”

I was developing a theory about what happened, but I wanted to talk it through with someone knowledgeable. That’s when I asked Jonathan Haidt out to lunch to discuss it. Jon is a world-renowned social psychologist and professor at New York University. We met at an Indian restaurant near his campus, and I started to lay out my thoughts. What followed was the beginning of a working relationship and friendship that continues to this day.