National Free Speech News & Commentary

Foundation for Individual Rights in Expression

Excerpt: After years of promising it would find a way to punish professor Amy Wax for her controversial views on race and gender, Penn delivered today — despite zero evidence Wax ever discriminated against her students.

Faculty nationwide may now pay a heavy price for Penn's willingness to undercut academic freedom for all to get at this one professor. After today, any university under pressure to censor a controversial faculty member need only follow Penn’s playbook.

Peter Berkowitz
RealClearPolitics

Excerpt: Like all rights-protecting democracies – and especially as a 21st-century great power with globe-spanning interests – the United States requires a host of highly-trained individuals to keep its government functioning, military operating, economy churning, and civil society thriving.

When true to its mission – transmitting knowledge, invigorating the moral imagination, cultivating independent thought, fostering toleration and civility – liberal education serves the public interest by making experts of all sorts more informed, thoughtful, and judicious. When it betrays its mission – indoctrinating, administering political litmus tests, encouraging a haughty self-regard among those who toe the party line, and mocking and punishing dissent – liberal education subverts the public interest.

Natalie Schwartz
Higher Ed Dive

Excerpt: The House passed a bill Thursday that would limit restrictions public colleges could place on campus protests and bar accreditation agencies from requiring institutions to comply with diversity, equity and inclusion standards.

Higher ed groups took aim at several provisions of the bill, which would require colleges to adopt new free speech policies to access Title IV federal financial aid. For instance, the bill would require public colleges to provide students with a written statement during orientation explaining their free speech rights. It would also limit the restrictions public colleges could place on protests in “generally accessible” areas on their campuses.

Laura Spitalniak
Higher Ed Dive

Excerpt: The University of California system, like many higher ed institutions, has struggled to balance free speech with campus safety as student protests over the Israel-Hamas war proliferated during the spring semester.

The system — home to about 296,000 students across 10 campuses — drew criticism over the violence that broke out during demonstrations and how administrators responded to protests. In the unfair labor practice charge, the associations accused the system of conducting “a relentless campaign” to stop faculty from teaching about the war “in a way that does not align with the University’s own position.″

FIRE

Excerpt: After Pennsylvania state Sen. Doug Mastriano sued Oklahoma historian James P. Gregory Jr. for criticizing his academic research, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression is stepping in to defend James’ First Amendment right to question powerful public officials.

James is a museum director and Ph.D. candidate who did nothing more than raise legitimate concerns about the quality of Mastriano’s academic scholarship, engaging in expression squarely protected by the First Amendment.

Eugene Volokh
Volokh Conspiracy, Reason Magazine

Excerpt: Next week, the entire en banc Fifth Circuit will be hearing Little v. Llano County, a case involving allegations of viewpoint-based book removals in a public library. As I've noted before, the Supreme Court has never resolved whether such removals are unconstitutional. Pico v. Bd. of Ed. (1982), which considered the matter as to public school libraries, split 4-4 on the subject, with the ninth Justice, Justice White, expressly declining to resolve the substantive question.

I'm not sure what the answer here should be. I tentatively think a public school is entitled to decide which viewpoints to promote through its own library: School authorities can decide that their library will be a place where they provide books they recommend as particularly interesting/useful/enlightening/etc., essentially as supplements to the school curriculum (over which the school has broad authority).