National Free Speech News & Commentary

Courtney Tanner
Salt Lake Tribune

University of Utah faculty vented their frustrations Monday over the state’s rollback of diversity efforts across public education — with one professor saying it’s “planting the flag of hatred” and another suggesting the school’s president should have done more to fight the legislation.

Ken White
Popehat Report

Excerpt:  University students are not the greatest threat to American liberty. That sounds obvious, but you might not know if you listened to popular discourse about universities. Universities, we’re told, are hotbeds of ruthless woke kulturkampf, indoctrinating students into far-left ideology and giving them an unslakable thirst for censorship that will be unleashed on America upon their graduation.

I dissent for several reasons. First, and most importantly, the greatest threat to American freedom of speech comes from our elected leaders. Second, a substantial part of the tumult about university students is right-wing kayfabe. The hostility towards students is often hostility against a set of values most popular with students — views about ethnic diversity, gender, and sexuality.

Jerry Coyne
Why Evolution Is True

Excerpt: At many colleges, submitting SAT test scores for admissions has been eliminated or made optional—often during the pandemic—under the assumption that giving scores would disadvantage racial minorities, who don’t test as well as do white or Asian applicants. This was a way to achieve diversity—a way to enact “holistic admissions.”  Even though SAT scores were good predictors not only of college achievement, and of later-life success, measures of potential achievement were considered less important than indices of diversity.

Now the highly-rated Dartmouth College in New Hampshire has done a similar study, found the same correlative predication as did the UC system, and has reinstated the requirement for SATs, something it made optional during the pandemic.

Anti-Israel protesters at Yale University (@NYSSofficial, X/Twitter)
Aaron Sibarium

Excerpt: Yale Law School's chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, the
group that celebrated the murder of 1,200 Israelis on Oct. 7 and
praised the architects of the attack as "martyrs," is calling on the
school to cancel an event with a soldier in the Israel Defense Forces,
arguing that his presence on campus will make students unsafe.

"We implore the administration to take seriously the implications of
this militarization of campus," Yale Law Students for Justice in
Palestine wrote in a Feb. 1 Instagram post. "The platforming of an IDF
combatant recently returned from Israel's atrocities in Gaza makes
many of us—especially Palestinian Arab, Muslim, Black, and brown
students—feel physically and psychologically unsafe and unwelcome in
our own school."

The demand to cancel the event, which is scheduled for Monday evening,
comes weeks after the same group called on Yale to "protect free
speech." It's part of a larger campaign to vilify the Jewish state and
keep IDF soldiers off the law school's campus, where some students
responded to the Oct. 7 attacks by defending Hamas and mocking Jewish
students who condemned the violence.

Susan Svrluga
Washington Post

Excerpt:  Students returned to Harvard’s campus last month after a turbulent and polarized start to the academic year, one punctuated by protests, a disastrous congressional hearing and the resignation of the university’s first Black president. The school has been sharply divided over the Israel-Gaza war; diversity, equity and inclusion efforts; and the limits of free expression. It has been attacked by politicians, wealthy alumni and its own students, a rare sign of vulnerability for one of the country’s most powerful and influential academic institutions.

Joe Killian
NC Newsline

Excerpt: The climate for free speech and expression on North Carolina’s college campuses is good and improving, according to a new report from the nonprofit Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). The group, whose work is frequently cited by campus trustees and members of the UNC System Board of Governors, gave 14 of the system’s 16 university campuses its highest “green light” rating in its new report.