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The last two years have seen a dramatic increase in the scrutiny of free speech and academic freedom on university campuses, largely in response to the protests that followed the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel and the Israeli invasion of Gaza. There has been important progress during this period that bolsters awareness of the importance of free speech and academic freedom principles.
However, progress on these core values will mean little if there is not a major effort to address a pressing long-term and deeply embedded problem – the almost total lack of viewpoint diversity among faculty at many universities.
At the Sunday Undergraduate Student Government (USG) senate meeting, University administrators spoke about the purpose of campus free expression facilitators, while student groups presented new mental health and menstrual product initiatives.
Associate Dean of Undergraduate Students Garrett Meggs spoke about the University’s free expression facilitators. Meggs explained that the University’s purpose behind the facilitators is to allow students to engage in civil and respectful dialogue on campus. Free expression facilitators are assigned to campus events in order to ensure that speakers and audiences are protecting expression and following the University’s time, place, and manner restrictions.
Last Wednesday, I sat in Green Hall having an “ordinary” but peculiar experience: listening to my professor read aloud from her private set of lecture notes, while the class sat and stared at a bare-bones slideshow of historical quotes. Around me, dozens of my classmates were dutifully typing out summaries of every slide.
But, as my professor narrated her questions about the origins of the peculiar ideas of sovereignty, my attention was more focused on the origins of the peculiar idea of the lecture.
