National Free Speech News & Commentary

Alex Morey
Persuasion

Excerpt: “College administrator tries to silence faculty critics” is hardly a new scenario. But the censors usually aren’t quite so upfront about it.

There are many reasons why sanctioning faculty who speak out against the university is dangerous. Most obviously, it would gut their expressive rights to publicly criticize Harvard’s shortcomings or abuses, amounting to the kind of “professionalism” policy colleges routinely abuse to punish all manner of controversial student and faculty speech. An administrator need only deem speech unprofessional, and they’ve found a convenient loophole around their academic freedom and free speech policies.

Jeffrey Flier
The Atlantic

Excerpt: In a recent op-ed in The Harvard Crimson—“Faculty Speech Must Have Limits”—the university’s dean of social science, Lawrence Bobo, made an extraordinary set of claims that seriously threaten academic freedom, including the chilling idea that faculty members who dare to criticize the university should be punished.

Bobo is a senior administrator at Harvard, overseeing centers and departments including history, economics, sociology, and African and African American studies. When he writes about faculty free speech, those within and outside his division listen.

Maggie Hicks
Chronicle of Higher Education

Excerpt: Under a new Indiana law, public colleges are required to provide students a venue to complain if they think a professor isn’t protecting their right to “intellectual diversity.” In Utah, the Board of Higher Education will now conduct a biannual review of public institutions to ensure they’re complying with that state’s new law. And public colleges in Texas must submit an annual report to the state Legislature outlining how they’ve complied with bans on diversity, equity, and inclusion practices.

FIRE

Excerpt: A new poll finds that Americans disapprove of some of the methods employed by the recent pro-Palestinian campus protesters, with large majorities saying they oppose vandalism, oppose building occupations, and support punishing students who participated in encampments.

As part of an AmeriSpeak panel conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression asked Americans in May about their feelings on the series of high-profile protests on college campuses that made headlines across the country.

Jerry A. Coyne
Why Evolution is True

Excerpt: Just when you thought the turmoil at Harvard was over, its briquettes have ignited again, thanks to a big squirt of lighter fluid from Harvard’s Dean of Social Science, Larry Bobo.  Last week, Bobo posted a deeply misguided editorial in the Harvard Crimson, which you can see by clicking the title below. What he calls for is in-house censorship of Harvard faculty, and even sanctions applied to those who nevertheless adhere to First-Amendment-permitted free speech.

Julia Steinberg
Free Press, Substack

Excerpt: The Stanford Internet Observatory—a research center tasked with rooting out “misinformation” on social media—is shutting its doors. Chances are if you’ve heard of the SIO it was in a scathing piece from Michael Shellenberger or Matt Taibbi, who have accused the center of being a key node in the censorship-industrial complex.

In actuality, SIO hired a load of interns to scan social media for posts deemed to be mis- and disinformation.