National Free Speech News & Commentary

John O. McGinnis
Law & Liberty

Excerpt: The resignation of Claudine Gay provides a window into many pathologies of elite universities—antisemitism on campus, the prioritization of DEI over merit, and plagiarism among academics. But it also reflects their poor governance.

Governance at elite universities is insular, unaccountable, and marred by conflicts of interest that prevent it from being focused on the historic mission of the university, encapsulated on Harvard’s coat of arms: seeking truth. Many nonprofits face similar structural difficulties that create a gap between the performance of their leadership and the fulfillment of their mission, but elite universities face added difficulties.

Hank Reichman
Academe Blog

Excerpt: Today the New York Times published an article recounting the continuing struggle at Barnard College, the women’s college of Columbia University in New York, over the academic freedom and free speech rights of faculty and students.  

While perhaps more draconian than some, the Barnard measures are, unfortunately, just one example of a broad assault on academic freedom and campus free speech focused at the moment on pro-Palestinian expression that some may construe as antisemitic (but not all Jewish scholars do; see, for example, here).  That assault, however, will have an impact on more than expression concerning the current Mideast morass.  Well before October 7, many university administrations sought to curb faculty and student expression that they fear may alienate important external players: trustees, alumni, donors, or politicians.

Sharon Otterman
New York Times

Excerpt: Three weeks after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, the Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Barnard College in New York posted a statement on its departmental website in support of the Palestinian people. Below the statement, the professors posted links to academic work supporting their view that the struggle of Palestinians against “settler colonial war, occupation and apartheid” was also a feminist issue. Two days later, they found that section of the webpage had been removed, without warning, by Barnard administrators.

What happened next has sparked a crisis over academic freedom and free expression at Barnard at a time when the Israel-Hamas conflict has led to tense protests on American college campuses and heated discussions about what constitutes acceptable speech.

Greg Lukianoff
The Eternally Radical Idea

Excerpt: ACLU National Legal Director David Cole has a review of my and Rikki Schlott’s book, “The Canceling of the American Mind,” coming out in the February 8 edition of the New York Review of Books. Overall I thought it was quite positive, but Cole made some arguments — which we actually hear quite often — that I think need addressing.

I always welcome good-faith pushback — especially when it gives me an opportunity to go into more depth on why Rikki and I are so concerned about the current situation in higher education. All that said, here are some quotes from Cole’s review that I’d like to respond to.

Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott
Quillette

Excerpt: If the first great age of political correctness can be described as having played out between 1985 and 1995, its successor began around 2014, when a self-confident, pro-censorship ethos began emerging among college students. They banded together with professors and administrators in a free-speech-skeptical coalition—and the second great age of political correctness was born.

This second wave came with its own set of warnings from public intellectuals. But, unlike during the 1980s and 1990s, most of the whistleblowers this time around were political liberals.

Anemona Hartocollis
New York Times

Excerpt: A Harvard task force on antisemitism has gotten off to a rocky start, with complaints that the professor chosen to help lead the panel had signed a letter that was critical of Israel, describing it as “under a regime of apartheid.”

The choice for co-chair of the task force, Derek J. Penslar, a professor of Jewish history at Harvard, was met with opposition from Lawrence H. Summers, a former Harvard president, and Bill Ackman, a hedge fund manager whose relentless criticism of Dr. Gay helped bring about her downfall.