National Free Speech News & Commentary

Ryan Dailey
Herald-Tribune

Excerpt: Amid a pause in Florida Atlantic University’s search for a new president, leaders of a First Amendment group and a national higher-education association are pointing to a controversial new law shielding presidential candidates’ identities as harmful to public trust and academic freedom.

Susan King
Chronicle of Higher Education

Excerpt: It’s happened again. Another accomplished Black woman recruited for a leadership role at a public university was offered tenure and then deceived, dissed, and dismissed.

Kathleen McElroy is reportedly returning to her tenured position at the University of Texas at Austin because Texas A&M University at College Station, her alma mater, backtracked on her appointment to lead its journalism program. Just a month ago, Texas A&M celebrated McElroy at a public signing ceremony. Then the university changed its offer.

Douglas Soule and Ana Goñi-Lessan
Tallahassee Democrat

Excerpt: To be or not to be on the shelf? That’s the question school districts across Florida are asking themselves as they figure out how to apply a new book challenge law. In Leon County, a media specialist says even The Bard William Shakespeare could be at risk.

HB 1069 took effect on July 1. Malloy says she and other media specialists around the state are interpreting this to mean that districts could be breaking the law if they do not pull media that contains the state’s definition of “sexual conduct.” That media includes many books needed to take the College Board’s Advanced Placement Literature exam and dual enrollment classes.

David Bernstein
The Volokh Conspiracy, Reason Magazine

Excerpt: Dear Friends,

We, the undersigned Jewish scholars and academics, are concerned about the current ideological environment in the US and elsewhere and the increasingly censorious culture in many institutions of higher learning. Although we are acutely aware of the illiberalism and threats to academic freedom emanating from the political right, and in no way downplay these dangers, in this letter we focus our attention on, and express our deep concern about, a dangerously intolerant ideology on the political left that has taken hold in academia.

María Luisa Paúl
Washington Post

Excerpt: A teacher was fired Wednesday by the Waukesha, Wis., school board after she publicly criticized school administrators’ decision to prohibit her first-grade class from singing a song about rainbows earlier this year.

PEN America

Excerpt: The end of June marks the conclusion of most state legislative sessions. One new educational gag order and one higher education autonomy restriction became law in June, with others in Ohio and Texas going down narrowly to defeat.

After reviewing these new laws, we examine an aspect of higher education governance that has increasingly been targeted in legislative censorship efforts and seems likely to figure centrally in next year’s legislative sessions: college and university accreditation.