National Free Speech News & Commentary

Joshua T. Katz
AEI

Excerpt: Do we really need another opinion piece about the resignation of Claudine Gay? The Harvard train wreck has transfixed the nation since early October, and even as the punditry piles up, the gulf seems to be widening between those who excoriate Gay, the Harvard Corporation, and the university generally and those who praise Gay as a martyr and defend the practices of the institution she led.

Few people, however, have said nice things about the Harvard Corporation, and one lesson to learn from the New York Times exposé into this secretive body’s quick, behind-the-scenes shift from expressing confidence in Gay’s presidency to pushing her out is that the public pressure of punditry can work.

Walter M. Kimbrough
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: The past three months have been interesting for higher education. The Hamas attack; the protests on college campuses and elsewhere; the high-profile congressional hearing where three inexperienced presidents faced withering, partisan attacks; and now the resignation of two of three of those presidents.

While there has been plenty of commentary about the backlash against Gay, the ensuring plagiarism allegations and her resignation last week from the Harvard presidency, I have been wrestling with a broader idea. What was the context?

Jasmine N. Wynn
The Crimson

Excerpt: Over the past few months, Harvard has routinely made national headlines, often alongside one name: Bill A. Ackman ’88. The billionaire has captured the public imagination since Oct. 10, when he fired off the beginning of an inflammatory series of X posts criticizing Harvard’s handling of antisemitism.

Ackman’s posts, made undoubtedly in bad faith, fueled already virulent retaliation faced by pro-Palestinian student activists. These students, who faced doxxing and harassment, were largely Black and brown. Ackman has repeatedly abused his influence to intimidate those with significantly less power.

Ryan Quinn
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: The Modern Language Association’s Delegate Assembly passed an “emergency motion” Saturday defending college and university employees and students who are facing threats, harassment and violence for criticizing Israel’s violence against Palestinians.

The weekend-long MLA Annual Convention included multiple panels that discussed the war in Gaza. A Friday open hearing ahead of the Delegate Assembly featured heated debate on the motion that ultimately passed, along with a different one that would’ve broadly supported “academic freedom and free expression” without mentioning either Palestine or Israel.

Harry R. Lewis
Harvard Crimson

Excerpt: Unapologetic antisemitism — whether the incidents are few or numerous — is a college phenomenon because of what we teach, and how our teachings are exploited by malign actors.

When complex social and political histories are oversimplified in our teachings as Manichaean struggles — between oppressed people and their oppressors, the powerless and the powerful, the just and the wicked — a veneer of academic respectability is applied to the ugly old stereotype of Jews as evil but deviously successful people. While Harvard cannot stop the abuse of our teaching, we, the Harvard faculty, can recognize and work to mitigate these impacts.

Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott
Reason Magazine

Excerpt: Inbar is an eminent, influential, and highly cited researcher with a Ph.D. in social psychology from Cornell University. There is no question that he is qualified. Anyone worth their salt doing work on political polarization knows Inbar's name. Inbar also jumped through all the hoops UCLA put up for the job, including submitting a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) statement, which is currently all the rage in colleges and universities. He even shares the politics of the majority of the psychology department.

But on his podcast, Inbar had expressed relatively mild concerns over the ideological pressures that DEI statements impose and wondered aloud whether they do harm to diversity of thought. As a result of this petition—signed by only 66 students—UCLA did not hire Inbar. And he's not the only academic this has happened to. Far from it.