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Jonathan Marks
The UnPopulist

Excerpt: No organization defends free speech on American college campuses more effectively than the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). It fights not only in the court of public opinion but also in real courts.

Challenging serious free speech abrogations on campuses is a worthy goal. But overstating the extent of repression on campus, as FIRE’s CEO and president Greg Lukianoff does in a recent article in the Atlantic, undermines that cause.

Pippa Norris
Harvard Crimson

Excerpt: The animus for much of the recent debate roiling Harvard is the claim that the liberal tilt of the academy has accelerated in recent years. This process is believed to have excluded heterodox voices and thereby restricted academic freedom of expression on college campuses.

Is there solid evidence that viewpoint diversity has indeed worsened over time in academia, as widely assumed? A 2023 survey I helped conduct with The World of Political Science monitored the economic and social ideological values of political scientists, as well as their attitudes towards academic freedom of expression and perceptions of cancel culture. Focusing upon a subset of respondents living and working in western universities and colleges, cohort analysis by decade of birth is a technique which can provide proxy insights into trends over time.

Susan Svrluga
Washington Post

Excerpt:  Students returned to Harvard’s campus last month after a turbulent and polarized start to the academic year, one punctuated by protests, a disastrous congressional hearing and the resignation of the university’s first Black president. The school has been sharply divided over the Israel-Gaza war; diversity, equity and inclusion efforts; and the limits of free expression. It has been attacked by politicians, wealthy alumni and its own students, a rare sign of vulnerability for one of the country’s most powerful and influential academic institutions.

Hank Reichman
Academe Blog

Excerpt: Today the New York Times published an article recounting the continuing struggle at Barnard College, the women’s college of Columbia University in New York, over the academic freedom and free speech rights of faculty and students.  

While perhaps more draconian than some, the Barnard measures are, unfortunately, just one example of a broad assault on academic freedom and campus free speech focused at the moment on pro-Palestinian expression that some may construe as antisemitic (but not all Jewish scholars do; see, for example, here).  That assault, however, will have an impact on more than expression concerning the current Mideast morass.  Well before October 7, many university administrations sought to curb faculty and student expression that they fear may alienate important external players: trustees, alumni, donors, or politicians.

Greg Lukianoff
The Eternally Radical Idea

Excerpt: ACLU National Legal Director David Cole has a review of my and Rikki Schlott’s book, “The Canceling of the American Mind,” coming out in the February 8 edition of the New York Review of Books. Overall I thought it was quite positive, but Cole made some arguments — which we actually hear quite often — that I think need addressing.

I always welcome good-faith pushback — especially when it gives me an opportunity to go into more depth on why Rikki and I are so concerned about the current situation in higher education. All that said, here are some quotes from Cole’s review that I’d like to respond to.

Vanderbilt University News

Excerpt: Jonathan Rauch, a distinguished Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at The Brookings Institution, will visit Vanderbilt as an Open Dialogue Visiting Fellow for a discussion on Jan. 22. The event, “Why Free Speech Is the Only Safe Space for Minorities,” promises a thought-provoking exploration of the crucial role free speech plays in safeguarding the interests of minorities and fostering inclusivity and understanding within society.

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?

Jessica Wills
Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression

Excerpt: Faculty members at the University of Pennsylvania are concerned that free expression and viewpoint diversity may disappear completely from their university.  After a tense congressional hearing in which then-President Liz Magill said the university would not punish many forms of constitutionally protected speech — including anti-Semitic speech — Magill backtracked the next day via a video apology in which she signaled her willingness to abandon constitutional standards for free speech. Shortly afterward, she resigned.

In the wake of this shakeup, the future of free speech at Penn is far from certain. Others, however, would like to see the school revive its commitment to free speech. In that spirit, some faculty members drafted a “New Constitution for the University of Pennsylvania,” a vision for the university which calls Penn to recommit itself to intellectual diversity, institutional neutrality, and open discourse.

David From
The Atlantic

Excerpt: Yesterday, the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and MIT were caught in a trap in front of a House committee. Each was asked whether calling for the genocide of Jews violated rules at their university. Each president refused to answer directly, insisting that everything depends on context.

So here’s the context: On university campuses and in many other places, anti-Semitic speech regularly crosses the line into threats, intimidation, and outright violence against Jews. University rules and local laws are intentionally violated because everybody knows that the rules and laws are selectively enforced.

Kathryn Palmer
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: A documentary about two young Jewish Americans who question their loyalty to Israel after traveling to the country and the West Bank has become a flash point in the academic freedom debates consuming some college campuses amid the Israel-Hamas war.

The award-winning film, Israelism, debuted at a film festival earlier this year and more than 60 screenings of it were planned—many on college campuses—across the country this fall and winter. Most of the screenings so far have happened without incident, but at Hunter College in New York and the University of Pennsylvania, the documentary has been the source of controversy over the past month.

Bret Stephens
New York Times

Excerpt: There used to be a sign (which, for all I know, is still there) somewhere in the C.I.A.’s headquarters that read, “Every day is Sept. 12.” It was placed there to remind the agency’s staffers that what they felt right after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 — the sense of outrage and purpose, of favoring initiative over caution, of taking nothing for granted — had to be the mind-set with which they arrived to work every day.

By Danielle Shapiro and Yonah Berenson
Wall Street Journal

Excerpt: As college campuses erupted in support of Hamas’s atrocities, many administrators responded equivocally. Often they took refuge in the principles of free speech and institutional neutrality, saying universities have no business taking positions on controversial issues. That would have been convincing if they had adhered to those principles before this month, but many didn’t. Officials often took strong positions on far less significant and more debatable issues. This politicization set the stage for the morally and intellectually bankrupt protests that have caused administrators such embarrassment.

Lauren Noble
National Review

Excerpt: Even at Yale, it is not every day that a faculty member expresses “solidarity” — and apparent glee — over the murder, rape, and kidnapping of civilians. So it did not go unnoticed when, as Israel was reeling from the deadliest terror attack in its history, associate professor Zareena Grewal proclaimed on X that “Palestinians have every right to resist through armed struggle” against a “genocidal settler state.” She also circulated a video of the onslaught captioned, “It’s been such an extraordinary day!”

Over 50,000 people subsequently signed a petition calling on Yale to fire Grewal for her support of terrorism. The university responded quickly, declining to discipline Grewal based on its commitment to freedom of speech. Anyone who has followed headlines about Yale over the past decade may be understandably surprised to learn that the university has such principles.

Ryan Quinn
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: Two associates of the right-wing organization Turning Point USA followed a queer Arizona State University instructor on campus Wednesday afternoon, with one demanding he answer questions about “How long you’ve been attracted to minors” and “How long you’ve fantasized about minors having sex with adults” while the other filmed the encounter.

The confrontation eventually turned physical, ending with the educator, David Boyles, posting a photo of himself with blood on one side of his face.

Nathan Goetting
Discourse

Excerpt: The current academic free speech crisis stems from two causes. The first is that free speech principles are unnatural and counterintuitive. This has always been the case and, given human nature, always will be. The second, addressed in the next article in this series, is that now young people are exhorting—demanding, even—that older generations use a heavy censorial hand to promote social and political goals. This is unprecedented in our history and, without immediate and significant action, may prove ruinous to the mission of higher education.

Eli Meyerhoff and Isaac Kamola
Academe Blog

Excerpt: Today, attacks on academic freedom originate from state houses, governors’ offices, partisan political organizations, think tanks, and online trolls. This multi-pronged attack on academic freedom requires a mass political—rather than a merely individual, institutional, or procedural—response.

We question whether the language of academic freedom provides the strongest framework for a successful mass defense against this political onslaught. We suggest that an alternative, complementary principle, “freedom to learn,” offers a more widely resonant rallying cry.

Stanford Alumni for Free Speech and Critical Thinking Newsletter

Excerpt: One of our readers forwarded to us Cornell President Martha E. Pollack’s letter last week welcoming students and faculty back to campus. The letter focuses on the issues of freedom of expression and critical thinking in ways we would hope Stanford’s new leadership can similarly express and then implement this coming academic year. The text of the entire letter is posted at our website.

All indications are that this coming academic year will see a robust discussion nationwide, both on and off campus, about the importance of free speech and academic freedom at our U.S. colleges and universities and, if any restrictions are to be imposed, who gets to decide and why?

Debra Satz and Dan Edelstein
New York Times

Excerpt: Free speech is once again a flashpoint on college campuses. This year has seen at least 20 instances in which students or faculty members attempted to rescind invitations or to silence speakers. In March, law school students at our own institution made national news when they shouted down a conservative federal judge, Kyle Duncan. And by signing legislation that undermines academic freedom in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis is carrying out what is effectively a broad assault against higher education.

We believe that this intolerance of ideas is not just a consequence of an increasingly polarized society. We think it also results from the failure of higher education to provide students with the kind of shared intellectual framework that we call “civic education.”

Denise Valenti
Princeton Office of Communications

Excerpt: Anthony Romero was once a Princeton undergraduate struggling with how to confront hurtful speech he experienced on campus. Today, as executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, he zealously defends Americans’ right to use that same kind of speech.

Romero traced his journey during an Orientation event on Tuesday for first-year students where he joined President Christopher L. Eisgruber to explore the importance of academic freedom and free expression on campus. The event marked the second consecutive year Eisgruber has led an Orientation session on the topic.

Eric Rasmusen, Indiana University professor

Excerpt: Suppose a university has an online form where anyone can report something a student says in private conversation and the report goes into a special surveillance software database that the university bought from the Maxient company for that purpose. A Bias Response Team receives notice of the report, and sees that it is political speech protected by the First Amendment. The Team leaves the report in the student’s file, and asks the student to come to a voluntary meeting. Virginia Tech’s policy in a case like this was to: Invite them to engage in a voluntary conversation. . . . If a student fails to respond to this message, or declines to meet with our office, no further action is taken and the student faces no consequences of any kind.

Would such a bias response apparatus chill speech at the university? Speech First and three circuits say yes; Virginia Tech (Sands) and two circuits say no. Surveillance software is part of that, since they are what bias response teams rely upon, including the BIRT’s at Virginia Tech. Speech First’s cert petition [for Supreme Court review] says, “Precisely because speech codes are often struck down, universities have looked for subtler, more sophisticated ways to chill ‘offensive’ speech.”

Alex Morey
Persuasion

Excerpt: Joy Alonzo wants to stop fentanyl overdose deaths. As a professor at the Texas A&M College of Pharmacy and co-chair of the school’s Opioid Task Force, she advocates for her views inside and outside of class.

Doing so in one of her classes earlier this semester almost cost Alonzo her job.

Jill Filipovic
The Atlantic

Excerpt: In 2008, when I was a writer for the blog Feministe, commenters began requesting warnings at the top of posts discussing distressing topics, most commonly sexual assault. Violence is, unfortunately and inevitably, central to feminist writing. Rape, domestic violence, racist violence, misogyny—these events indelibly shape women’s lives, whether we experience them directly or adjust our behavior in fear of them.

We thought we were making the world just a little bit better. It didn’t occur to me until much later that we might have been part of the problem.

Oliver Milman
The Guardian

Excerpt: Videos that compare climate activists to Nazis, portray solar and wind energy as environmentally ruinous and claim that current global heating is part of natural long-term cycles will be made available to young schoolchildren in Florida, after the state approved their use in its public school curriculum.

George Packer
The Atlantic

Excerpt: In June 1953, at the height of the McCarthy era, while congressional investigators and private groups were hunting down “subversive” or merely “objectionable” books and authors in the name of national security, the American Library Association and the Association Book Publishers Council issued a manifesto called “The Freedom to Read.”

This past June, the library and publishers’ associations reissued “The Freedom to Read” on its 70th anniversary. Scores of publishers, libraries, literary groups, civil-liberty organizations, and authors signed on to endorse its principles. And yet many of those institutional signatories—including the “Big Five” publishing conglomerates—often violate its propositions, perhaps not even aware that they’re doing so.

Mitch Daniels
Washington Post

Excerpt: Surveys of those entering college almost invariably report that the No. 1 reason given for enrolling is to increase their earning potential — in other words, to become prepared for success in the world of work. Though that is clearly happening for many, the coddling culture that has grown up at too many schools might actually be setting some young people back instead of readying them to launch the careers to which they aspire.

Emma Camp
Reason Magazine

Excerpt: In the summer of 2020, Morgan Bettinger was a rising senior at the University of Virginia when a fellow student publicly accused her of telling a group of Black Lives Matter protesters that they would make "good speed bumps."

But a second investigation, this time from the school's civil rights office, ultimately cleared Bettinger of wrongdoing and concluded that there was insufficient evidence that Bettinger ever said that protesters would make "good speed bumps." Now Bettinger has filed a lawsuit, arguing that her speech was not a threat and was facially protected by the First Amendment—and therefore, the University of Virginia, as a public institution, had no grounds to punish her.

James Huffman
Quillette

Excerpt: Efforts to censure campus speech have occurred in almost every American state. The problem is not new. Advocates of academic censorship would do well to review the arguments of our predecessors. A little book published 74 years ago, in 1949, by Harvard University Press provides an opportunity to do just that. While the book focuses on American history, its insights are of worldwide relevance.

Jonathan Turley
Jonathan Turley’s Blog

Excerpt: I have previously written columns about the rising generation of censors in our country. After years of being told that free speech is harmful and dangerous, many young people are virtual speech phobics — demanding that opposing views be silenced as “triggering” or even forms of violence. Now a Pew poll shows just how much ground we have lost, including the emergence of the Democratic Party as a virulent anti-free speech party.

The result is reflected in the poll which shows that “Just over half of Americans (55%) support the U.S. government taking steps to restrict false information online, even if it limits people from freely publishing or accessing information.”

Ryan Stowers
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: Over the past several years, state lawmakers have debated a growing number of policies related to academic freedom and free expression on university campuses.

In the urgency to address such severe challenges, it is tempting to seek out the most expedient solution. And few solutions could be more expedient than the top-down coercive power of legislation. That’s not how truth-seeking works.

Piper Hutchinson
Louisiana Illuminator

Excerpt: A national free speech organization has sent a letter to LSU President William F. Tate that demands the university undo its termination of a graduate assistant who left a vulgar voicemail for a state senator.

In a letter sent Friday, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a national First Amendment advocacy organization known for its support of conservatives on college campuses, argued LSU had violated the constitutional rights of Marcus Venable, a grad assistant in LSU’s sociology department. He left a phone message for Sen. Mike Fesi, R-Houma, after Fesi gave a speech Tuesday in support of a ban on gender-affirming healthcare for transgender youth.

Susan King
Chronicle of Higher Education

Excerpt: It’s happened again. Another accomplished Black woman recruited for a leadership role at a public university was offered tenure and then deceived, dissed, and dismissed.

Kathleen McElroy is reportedly returning to her tenured position at the University of Texas at Austin because Texas A&M University at College Station, her alma mater, backtracked on her appointment to lead its journalism program. Just a month ago, Texas A&M celebrated McElroy at a public signing ceremony. Then the university changed its offer.

Greg Sargent
Washington Post

Excerpt: In recent weeks, plaintiffs who are suing to invalidate Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s “Stop Woke Act” have been confronting its defenders with a seemingly loaded question: Would the law, which restricts school discussion of race, prohibit a public university professor from endorsing affirmative action in a classroom setting?

Surprisingly, lawyers defending the DeSantis administration just answered this question with a qualified “yes.” Which exposes a core truth about his anti-woke directives: They really do constitute efforts at state censorship, not just of concepts he likes to call “woke indoctrination” but also of viewpoints that are contested yet remain squarely within mainstream academic discourse.

Alex Morey, Graham Piro and Talia Barnes
Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression

Note: This is another perspective on ‘Porter v. Board of Trustees of North Carolina State University.

Excerpt: The role of a faculty member at a college or university goes well beyond teaching and scholarship. As a function of “shared governance,” faculty play a critical role in leading an institution’s educational programming and initiatives. But yesterday’s ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit leaves faculty vulnerable to discipline for criticism of their institutions outside of class if it involves academic initiatives impacting the institution beyond the faculty member’s personal field of research.

By The Editorial Board
Wall Street Journal

Excerpt: Big news on big tech and free speech. A federal judge ruled Tuesday that government officials can’t coerce social-media platforms to do what the Constitution forbids the government from doing.

Missouri and Louisiana, joined by scientists and conservatives whose posts were censored, sued to protect their First Amendment rights. The issue in Missouri v. Biden isn’t whether social-media platforms are government actors, but whether government officials can be held responsible for their censorship. Judge Terry Doughty ruled they can and his 155-page opinion describes disturbing coordination between the government and tech firms to suppress unpopular views, especially on Covid-19.

By Peter Berkowitz
RealClear Politics

Excerpt: In the United States and Britain, ill-informed and poorly reasoned opinions about transgenderism, climate change, COVID-19, Islamic extremism, working-class political inclinations and voting patterns, race, sex, hate speech, and identity politics dominate progressive elites’ thinking and drive their policymaking. This alone would pose no special challenge to freedom and democracy.

By Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism

Excerpt: Professor Zack De Piero began working at Pennsylvania State University in August of 2018 in the English department at the Abington campus. Almost immediately upon the outset of his employment, Professor De Piero noticed a race-essentialism focus, which he feared would be harmful to his students, a majority of which were from minority backgrounds and ethnicities.

On June 15th Professor De Piero filed suit against Penn State in federal court alleging violations of his civil rights under federal and Pennsylvania law. Professor De Piero is represented by FAIR Network Attorneys Michael Allen and Samantha Harris of Allen Harris Law.

By Monica Potts
Five Thirty Eight

Excerpt: The GOP’s education culture wars have a new target: college professors.

By Lex Fridman Podcast
YouTube

Excerpt: Lex Fridman, an AI Researcher at MIT and podcaster, interviewed Harvey Silverglate. The video is linked below.

By Angel Eduardo
Persuasion, Substack

Excerpt: If only out of pure self-interest, we shouldn’t just be willing to hear the arguments of those with whom we disagree, we should be eager to. Without letting them speak, you can’t know where they stand, and, to paraphrase John Stuart Mill’s famous quote from On Liberty: If you don't know the other side's argument, you really don't know much of your own, either.

By Piper Hutchinson
Louisiana Illuminator

Excerpt: The president of the Louisiana Community and Technical College System did not mince words Wednesday while testifying on a resolution that requested all public schools in the state — K-12 and colleges — submit reports on programs and activities related to diversity, equity and inclusion, critical race theory and social emotional learning.

by Joshua Katz

The university claims it fired me for a long-past offense -- for which I was already punished -- but the truth should worry everyone.

Click link for full article