National Free Speech News & Commentary

Katherine Knott

Inside Higher Ed

A federal district judge on Tuesday blocked the Biden administration from enforcing its new regulations for Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 in Alaska, Kansas, Utah and Wyoming.

Judge John Broomes of the District of Kansas wrote in a 47-page opinion that the Education Department lacked the authority to expand prohibited sex-based discrimination under Title IX to include discrimination based on gender identity and that the new regulations could chill speech “through vague and overbroad language.” The protections for LGBTQ+ students are at the heart of the Kansas lawsuit and other legal challenges.

Lauren A. Wright

The Atlantic

Right-wing commentators relish painting elite college students as ignorant, weak, and unprepared to meet the real world. Students have bolstered this perception by struggling to articulate positions on issues for which they profess deep concern.

But this grim picture leaves out an important distinction: Conservative students, rather than being coddled, face significant intellectual and social challenges in college. These challenges impart educational advantages by forcing conservatives to defend their points of view. Liberal students, surrounded by like-minded peers and mentors, have less opportunity to grow in this way.

Jay Bhattacharya & Wesley J. Smith

RealClearPolitics

The New England Journal of Medicine recently published an advocacy article that attacks academic freedom and urges stifling contentious campus debates. Specifically, Evan Mullen, Eric J. Topol, and Abraham Verghese urge universities to “speak out publicly” and issue official institutional opinions about public controversies involving its professors “when it concludes that a faculty member’s opinion could cause public harm.”

John Evangelakos, Jason H.P. Kravitt, and William Schmalzl
Boston Globe

Excerpt: The recent Harvard Crimson op-ed by professor and dean of social science Lawrence D. Bobo calling for sanctions against faculty members who criticize Harvard University leadership with the intent to arouse the intervention of “external actors” into university business was stunning.
 
The piece sparked another controversy, and backlash, that Harvard may deserve but doesn’t need, given the parade of headlines that have left its formerly stellar reputation in shreds. It was also an insult to alumni, like us, who care about the school, don’t see ourselves as “external actors,” and have a legitimate stake in the debate about how to get Harvard back on track.

Eliot A. Cohen
The Atlantic

Excerpt: After 42 years of academic life—not counting five years spent getting a Ph.D.—I am hanging it up. A while back, I concluded that the conversation that I would most dread overhearing would be an alumna saying to a current student, “I know, I know, but you should have seen the old man in his prime.” I believe I dodged that one.

Johanna Alonso
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: Starting today, Utah joins the growing list of states that have implemented a ban on diversity, equity and inclusion programs and practices at colleges and universities.

According to guidance on implementing the new law released by the Utah System of Higher Education, public colleges and universities are required to eliminate any offices, programs or practices that are “discriminatory,” a term that is extensively defined and includes anything that excludes individuals due to their identities. The guidance does not advise colleges to close their cultural centers—spaces on campus dedicated to supporting minority students with specialized resources and opportunities to socialize. But many institutions are shuttering their cultural centers anyway.