National Free Speech News & Commentary

Mark Moyar
Chronicle of Higher Education

Excerpt: Last year I visited Harvard at the invitation of two organizations in whose services I had labored as a student 30 years earlier: the Republican Club and the undergraduate conservative magazine The Harvard Salient. The Salient had recently adopted a policy of publishing articles under pseudonyms because of fears that naming the authors would result in damage to their grades, social lives, and careers.

In fact, no mobs materialized to bar my path. No leftists showed up to jeer my remarks on the finer points of history and politics. My hosts explained that the opposing side never showed up to hear conservative speakers. Prior interactions had led the young rightists to conclude that their left-leaning counterparts were so certain of their rectitude that they had no interest in contrary viewpoints.

Dissident Dialogues

Excerpt: Leading academics come together to discuss and debate whether Western universities can be saved from peril. With free speech on campus in jeopardy, and weekly Palestine protests following years of attacks on curriculum and the pulling down of statues. Can they be salvaged or do new universities need to be built?

Jennifer Kabbany
College Fix

Excerpt: A Bakersfield College professor who was investigated and disciplined after he questioned the use of grant money to fund social justice initiatives at his school has agreed to a $2.4 million settlement to resolve his lawsuit.

Matthew Garrett, formerly a tenured history professor at the California community college, will receive $2,245,480 divided into monthly payments for the next 20 years as well as an immediate one-time payment of $154,520 as “compensation for back wages and medical benefits since [his] dismissal,” according to the July 10 settlement agreement.

Rexton Laird
FIRE

Excerpt: Ahead of what could be another tumultuous year for free expression on college campuses, forthcoming FIRE/College Pulse survey data shows just a fraction of undergrads have a solid understanding of their own campus’s protest policies.

Conducted near the end of the Israeli-Palestinian campus protests, between May 17 and June 25, 2024, the survey sampled 3,803 undergraduates at 30 four-year colleges and universities in the U.S. Asked how aware they are of their college’s written speech policies on campus protest, almost half of students surveyed said they are either “not aware at all” (19%) or “not very aware” (29%). Only 19% of students — less than a fifth — responded they are “extremely” (6%) or “very”(13%) aware of the relevant policies.

Mark Bauerlein
City Journal

Excerpt: Conservatives who have witnessed higher-education reforms fail to stop the spread of political correctness have good reason to be dismayed. There is, however, a promising tactic available to them right now, at least in some states, that requires little manpower and no extra cost. All it takes is a determined governor plus a few individuals experienced in academic politics and practice. Consider Florida.

What happened next provided a lesson for the Right: a few conservatives and a strong governor can enact genuine reform—if they exploit the proper power center.

Sam Kahn
Persuasion

Excerpt: The Court has ruled, the results are in, and what we are left with is… the worst of all possible worlds.

In Moody v. NetChoice/NetChoice v. Paxton, the Court espoused a doctrine in which social media companies are viewed as curators or compilers of online material, with the feed constituting a “distinctive expressive offering”—even when those curatorial choices are in fact made by algorithms or AI tools. That philosophy gives the social media companies carte blanche to moderate—or censor—as they wish. Meanwhile, in the highly consequential case Murthy v. Missouri, the Court found that plaintiffs lacked standing to sue the government even when the government had copiously interfered in tech companies’ moderation practices.