National Free Speech News & Commentary

Supreme Court rules against race-conscious admissions at Harvard and UNC-Chapel Hill

June 29, 2023 1 min read

By Jeremy Bauer-Wolf
Higher Ed Dive

Excerpt: The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday ruled against race-based admissions practices at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, shattering decades of legal precedent and upending the recruitment and enrollment landscape for years to come.

In fact, most colleges don’t rely on race as an admissions factor, as they accept a majority or all of their applicants. Thus, only a small swath of selective higher ed institutions will likely need to remold their admissions policies. But no matter what, when enrollment offices have accounted for race, it was not supposed to be the sole admissions criterion, which court precedent already established as illegal.
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Commentary: The Right’s Campus Culture War Machine

June 28, 2023 1 min read

By Claire Potter
The New Republic

 

Excerpt: Wherever you get your news, whether it is Twitter or The New York Times, you might reasonably imagine that higher education is awash in political conflict. You might see with dismay that progressive students are intolerant, hysterical, and fragile; or, depending on your sources, that right-wing students platform the vilest, most bigoted media personalities in the name of free speech.

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This Professor Criticized Diversity Statements. Did It Cost Him a Job Offer?

June 28, 2023 1 min read

By Megan Zahneis
Chronicle of Higher Education

 

Excerpt: A psychologist spoke out this week about what critics see as a job offer gone awry over an ideological spat about diversity statements.

Yoel Inbar, an associate professor at the University of Toronto, was up for a job at the University of California at Los Angeles. But the psychology department there decided not to proceed after more than 60 graduate students in the department signed an open letter urging the university not to hire him. At issue, the students wrote, were Inbar’s comments on his podcast expressing skepticism about the use of diversity statements in hiring, as well as about other efforts intended to make the academy more inclusive.

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‘Preaching’ in Biology Class?

June 28, 2023 1 min read

By Ryan Quinn
Inside Higher Ed

 

Excerpt: An adjunct professor who is also an associate pastor says a Texas community college fired him after it claimed to have received complaints of “religious preaching, discriminatory comments about homosexuals and transgender individuals, anti-abortion rhetoric and misogynistic banter.”

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What makes a social studies textbook "woke" in Ron DeSantis' Florida

June 26, 2023 1 min read

Judd Legum
Popular Information

Excerpt: According to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R), textbook publishers are attempting to indoctrinate Florida students by incorporating "woke" concepts into social studies textbooks — in violation of state laws prohibiting certain kinds of instruction on race and gender.

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Firing of Georgia Teacher for Reading a Book that Promotes Inclusivity is “Shocking” and “Harmful,” Says PEN America

June 23, 2023 1 min read

PEN America Press Release

Excerpt: A Georgia elementary school teacher has been fired after allegedly violating the state’s educational gag order. Passed in 2022, Georgia’s HB 1084 prohibits teachers from “espousing”  certain “divisive concepts” related to race and sex. Katie Rinderle says she read her fifth grade students “My Shadow Is Purple,” by bestselling author-illustrator Scott Stuart, a 2022 book that promotes inclusivity, after purchasing it at the school book fair and having her students vote on what they wanted to read.

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