National Free Speech News & Commentary

The Editorial Board
Washington Post

Excerpt: As the United States reckoned with racial inequality during and after the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, many saw Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs as a way to address the issues in higher education. As part of the trend, many schools began requiring candidates for teaching positions to submit DEI statements. In these statements, potential hires explain how they would advance diversity, equity and inclusion in their teaching and research activities. One 2021 study found that about one-third of job postings at elite universities required them.

Katrina Lantos Swett
RealClearPolitics

Excerpt: I graduated from Yale University in 1974. As a first-generation American, the child of Holocaust survivors, and among the first women admitted to this incredible school, it is hard to adequately express how grateful I was for this opportunity. I have enjoyed returning to campus frequently over the years, including watching two of my own children graduate from Yale.

Zach Kessel
National Review

Excerpt: Harvard University leaders failed to implement an action plan from the school’s own task force aimed at combatting antisemitism on campus, according to a new report by a House education committee whose chairwoman said the task force was apparently “all for show.”

The Editors
National Review

Excerpt: It was a great racket while it lasted, but so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives have spent the last year in retreat — compelling the practitioners of discriminatory “social justice” to conduct a flailing rearguard action in a flight to more defensible terrain.

Michael Poliakoff
Forbes

Excerpt: In 1931, Winston Churchill mocked the prime minister, Ramsay MacDonald, as a “boneless wonder.” The last couple weeks on campus have already given us too many such specimens whose tergiversation and ethical compromise are yet more egregious.

Wise institutions have steadily, especially since October 7, recognized, albeit late, the wisdom of the University of Chicago’s 1967 Kalven Committee: Report on the University’s Role in Political and Social Action. Written amidst the desperate turmoil of the Vietnam war, it counsels “a heavy presumption against the university taking collective action or expressing opinions on the political and social issues of the day, or modifying its corporate activities to foster social or political values, however compelling and appealing they may be.”

Kyle Ingram and Korie Dean
Raleigh News & Observer

Excerpt: The UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees voted to divert millions of dollars spent on diversity, equity and inclusion programs into public safety instead, ahead of an expected policy change statewide to restrict DEI.

At a special meeting Monday morning, the board unanimously moved to reallocate the $2.3 million that the university spends on DEI programs toward police and other public safety measures as part of its annual budget approval process. The university’s operating budget totaled more than $4 billion in the previous fiscal year.