National Free Speech News & Commentary

James Huffman
National Association of Scholars

Excerpt: Academics from across the political spectrum have appropriately objected to some recently proposed laws as threats to academic freedom and thereby to higher education’s historic mission—the discovery and dissemination of knowledge. The principle of academic freedom has long stood as the guarantor of the free and open inquiry requisite to the academic pursuit of truth and is widely understood to allow for no exceptions.

But adherence to the principle does not preclude all limits on faculty conduct. Academic freedom does not require colleges and universities to tolerate bad teaching or incompetence. Nor should it protect professorial conduct that undermines open inquiry and pursuit of truth.

Paul Levy

Excerpt: (Editor’s note): Paul Levy, former Chair of the Board of Overseers and founder of the Levy Scholars Program at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, recently sent this
letter by email to Elizabeth Magill, newly appointed President of the University of
Pennsylvania. In 2018 he resigned as Trustee Emeritus and Law School Overseer
over the treatment of law professor Amy Wax.

Hannah Natanson
Washington Post

Excerpt: The American Library Association is facing a partisan firefight unlike anything in its almost 150-year history. The once-uncontroversial organization, which says it is the world’s largest and oldest library association and which provides funding, training and tools to most of the country’s 123,000 libraries, has become entangled in the education culture wars — the raging debates over what and how to teach about race, sex and gender — culminating in Tuesday’s Senatorial name-check.

Eugene Volokh
Volokh Conspiracy, Reason Magazine

Excerpt: As readers of the blog may know, Hamline University declined to renew Erica López Prater's instructor contract because she displayed Islamic Art containing images of Mohammed in her World Art class, and some students objected. López Prater sued, and on Friday Judge Katherine M. Menendez (D. Minn.) allowed her religious discrimination claim to go forward (López Prater v. Trustees of the Hamline Univ. of Minn.)

Adam Serwer
The Atlantic

Excerpt: Four years ago, The New York Times Magazine’s 1619 Project, a series of essays aiming to place “the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans at the very center of our national narrative,” sparked heated debate.

Some criticisms of the essays were substantive, others less so. The backlash, however, has endured long after the initial arguments died down. Following the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, Republican-controlled states enacted a set of education gag laws censoring historical instruction around race. A few such laws specifically banned the teaching of materials associated with the 1619 Project.

Frederick M. Hess
Forbes

Excerpt: It’s been a long few years when it comes to free inquiry on campus, with tales of silenced speakers and stymied discourse having become all too familiar. Amidst plunging trust in higher education, it’s safe to say that all this has had real costs. Last week, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) and College Pulse jointly issued their annual report on the state of free speech in higher education. They surveyed more than 55,000 students across 248 colleges.

The numbers are troubling but not as hopeless as more hysterical accounts suggest.