National Free Speech News & Commentary

Ben Slivka
Minding the Campus

Excerpt: One year ago, I attended a pre-football game tailgate party on the Saturday of my 40th reunion weekend in Evanston, Illinois. Students at the party later complained about my words, and Northwestern University (NU) canceled me without speaking to me.

I escalated to the President, the General Counsel, the Chair, and the Vice-Chair of the Board of Trustees. Despite my more than 7,000 volunteer hours and over seven million dollars in donations—NU has not apologized, has not rescinded my cancellation, and (I presume) continues to trample the free speech and due process rights of other Wildcats.

Meghan Cox Gurdon
Wall Street Journal

Excerpt: We’re in a terrible spot, and everybody knows it. Americans on the right and left detest each other, excoriate each other and, with every flaring of rage, move further from any sense of pluralistic common cause. Citizens have lost confidence in officialdom. Fashionable ideologies that brook no good-faith dissent have surged into every corner of life. Make a minor demurral, even a joke, and you risk being subjected to the ghastly nullification rituals of what is called cancel culture.

It is this predicament, all of it, that Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott address in “The Canceling of the American Mind,” a lucid and comprehensive look at where we are and how we got here, and, less persuasively, what we can do to make things better.

Jonathan Turley
Jonathan Turley's Blog

Excerpt: We have been following the gradual elimination of common terms deemed offensive or microaggressive. The latest is the word “picnic.” After the University of Nevada Las Vegas law school’s Environmental Law Society announced a picnic, it was renamed “Lunch by the Lake” due to “diversity and inclusion” concerns.

The ELS was able to avoid a second correction with a “Lunch in the Field” since “field” has also been found to be offensive at other schools. According to a memo, the law group informed members that the word “picnic” has “historical and offensive connotations,” and apologized for “any harm or discomfort” caused by its use. That is consistent with the view of  the University of Michigan’s IT department in finding that “Picnic” was an offensive word.

Jonathan Turley
Jonathan Turley's Blog

Excerpt: A new poll conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the University of Chicago Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression shows that only a fifth of the public believe that conservatives can exercise free speech on campuses.

While faculty members often brush aside objections to the erosion of free speech, this poll is consistent with the view of students. What is striking is that such polling and objections have made little difference to administrators and academics who continue to maintain a hostile environment for conservative or libertarian views.

Ariana Figueroa
NC Newsline

Excerpt: One of Thomasina Brown’s favorite books is a memoir about a girl who deals with the grief of losing her father and struggles with her sexual identity. Brown, a 16-year-old student at Nixa High School in Nixa, Missouri, said in an interview that she felt a connection with the book, as she grieved the loss of her own father and came to terms with her own queer identity.

That book, “Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic,” is one of the more than 3,300 books that have been banned during the 2022-2023 school year, a 33% increase from the previous school year, according to a report by PEN America, a group that is dedicated to fighting book bans and advocates for the First Amendment.

Roger Ream
National Review

Excerpt: Once a place for the open exchange of ideas and honest debate, many U.S. college campuses no longer tolerate dissenting views expressed by students and professors.

This phenomenon, which has allowed dogma and ideology to supplant the search for truth, has taken root in college lecture halls, student governments, and campus newspapers. The trend has major implications for American life, as today’s students become tomorrow’s leaders. Its effects may be most clearly felt in a profession historically associated with reporting the facts and promoting diversity of opinion: American journalism. If unchecked, it will have both short- and long-term repercussions not just for future journalists but for the American experiment as a whole.