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Nadine Strossen
Persuasion

Excerpt: The current Supreme Court term includes a cluster of cases that could well shape the future of online free speech. These cases invite the Court to determine the power of both government officials and social media platforms concerning “content moderation” policies, which in turn define platform users’ speech rights.

Given the unparalleled importance of these platforms for all manner of communication—personal, professional, and political—meaningful free speech rights depend on the platforms’ policies. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the Court’s rulings over the next weeks may well determine the shape of speech online for years to come.

Megan McArdle
Washington Post

Excerpt: After a decade of ever-escalating commitments to diversity, equity and inclusion, elite campuses are reversing course. It's amazing to watch such an abrupt volte-face. What’s even more amazing is how far things went beforehand and how long the correction took to arrive.

Such double-think regimes are vulnerable to what economist Timur Kuran calls a “preference cascade in reverse”: As people realize their neighbors share their skepticism, they start voicing their true opinions, an effect that dominoes until the whole regime collapses.

Emma H. Haidar and Cam E. Kettles
Harvard Crimson

Excerpt: After months of grappling with a campus fractured by a polarizing debate over the Israel-Hamas war, Harvard announced on Tuesday that the University and its leadership will refrain from taking official positions on controversial public policy issues.

The University’s new stance followed a report produced from a faculty-led “Institutional Voice” working group, which advised leadership to not “issue official statements about public matters that do not directly affect the university’s core function.” Interim Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 wrote in an email that he accepted the working group’s recommendations, which were also endorsed by the Harvard Corporation, the University’s highest governing body.

Abigail Shrier
The Free Press

Excerpt: A police officer who pulls over speeding black motorists—and only black motorists—isn’t protecting “law and order.” He’s engaging in invidious discrimination. So too the university administrators who suddenly discover they are free speech absolutists only when student protesters call for the death of their Jewish classmates.

Conor Friedersdorf
The Atlantic

Excerpt: This month, Professor Randall L. Kennedy, an eminent scholar of race and civil rights, published an op-ed in The Harvard Crimson denouncing the use of diversity, equity, and inclusion statements in academic hiring. “I am a scholar on the left committed to struggles for social justice,” he wrote. “The realities surrounding mandatory DEI statements, however, make me wince.” But a “contrasting perspective” on diversity statements that the Crimson published argued that “furor over diversity statements in hiring is a red herring.”

But people who see the flaws of the status quo should not be seduced by the illusion that tweaking how DEI statements are solicited or scored is a solution. In fact, interviewing Hall, the ostensible reformer in the Harvard Crimson debate, left me more convinced that abolishing DEI statements is the best way forward.

The Editorial Board
Cornell Daily Sun

Excerpt: College students are losing sight of why democracy matters. At Cornell, where censorship is becoming the norm, it’s no wonder why. When people get robbed of opportunities to participate peacefully in what the late civil rights leader John Lewis called “good trouble, necessary trouble,” that disillusionment quickly alchemizes into rage and disdain.

That’s what makes the University’s Interim Expressive Activity Policy so backward, depraved and ultimately dangerous — it fans those flames of resentment. On Jan. 24, the administration unilaterally implemented a set of draconian guidelines to redefine what acceptable protest on campus looks like.

Eugene Volokh
The Volokh Conspiracy, Reason

Excerpt: This question has been in the news recently, in light of the recent House Committee hearings on "Holding Campus Leaders Accountable and Confronting Antisemitism." A few thoughts on my part:

[1.] There's no "advocacy of genocide" exception to the First Amendment, or to the contractual promises of student free speech that many private universities rightly implement.

[2.] Indeed, as I've argued before, it is important that students be free to debate what is proper to do in war, and what wars are just. War involves mass killing, in some wars by the millions. I think some such killing is atrocity and some is just. But different people draw the lines differently, and that is a matter that is quite rightly up for debate.

Dan McLaughlin
National Review

Excerpt: One case that isn’t quite ready to be considered Tuesday, but could intrigue the justices, is Speech First, Inc. v. Sands (No. 23-156), which challenges campus speech codes. The case comes from a divided panel decision of the Fourth Circuit, which rejected challenges to two Virginia Tech campus speech policies.

Virginia Tech has backed off the policy since the suit was filed. FIRE also notes that “time and time again, [it] has seen universities revise unconstitutional policies, only to bring them back when there is employee or state government turnover.” Given the widespread use of such policies and the open circuit split on their legality, it would seem a fit time for the Court to get involved.

Joe Killian
NC Newsline

Excerpt: The UNC System has issued directives to its 17 campuses on how to comply with the U.S. Supreme Court’s June decision on the role of race in admissions. Over five pages, it lays out specific policies for universities and warns against actions and policies not explicitly prohibited by the Supreme Court decision, due to “the high cost of litigation” for those who might sue.

As NC Newsline has reported, legal scholars and critics of the decision have warned threats of lawsuits by conservative activists may intimidate universities into going beyond what is required by the ruling. The UNC System’s directives appear to substantiate those fears.

Lori Rozsa
Washington Post

Excerpt: The Florida State Board of Education approved new rules Wednesday for how Black history will be taught in public schools that critics are decrying as a “step backward.”

The updated standards say students should learn that enslaved people “developed skills” that “could be applied for their personal benefit,” and that in teaching about mob violence against Black residents instructors should note “acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans.”

By Jeremy Bauer-Wolf
Higher Ed Dive

Excerpt: The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday ruled against race-based admissions practices at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, shattering decades of legal precedent and upending the recruitment and enrollment landscape for years to come.

In fact, most colleges don’t rely on race as an admissions factor, as they accept a majority or all of their applicants. Thus, only a small swath of selective higher ed institutions will likely need to remold their admissions policies. But no matter what, when enrollment offices have accounted for race, it was not supposed to be the sole admissions criterion, which court precedent already established as illegal.

Dhruv T. Patel, Avani B. Rai, and Saketh Sundar, Crimson Staff Writers
Harvard Crimson 

Excerpt: A federal judge ruled that the Trump administration violated the Constitution when it froze more than $2.6 billion in research funding to Harvard, striking down the freeze in its entirety and delivering the University a major legal victory.

The decision from United States District Judge Allison D. Burroughs hands Harvard a summary judgment win on core constitutional grounds, finding that the administration’s freeze orders were retaliation for protected speech. She also found that the government failed to comply with Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which requires agencies to give notice, investigation, and an opportunity to respond before terminating federal financial assistance over civil rights violations.

Cam N. Srivastava
Harvard Crimson

Excerpt: Harvard College Dean David J. Deming told students that the College can no longer host programming targeted at specific races or identity groups during a presentation to Peer Advising Fellows last week — telling attendees he assumed they already understood why the change was necessary.

Samuel A. Church and Cam N. Srivastava 
Harvard Crimson 

Excerpt: Harvard College will close its offices for minority students, LGBTQ students, and women and fold their staff and programs into a new center within the Office of Culture and Community, according to a Wednesday message from College Dean David J. Deming.

In place of the three centers, the College will establish the “Harvard Foundation” within the recently-formed OCC, under the College’s Dean of Students Office. Current staff from the Harvard College Women’s Center, Office for BGLTQ Student Life, and Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations will be reassigned to the Foundation. Roughly 50 employees worked at the three offices, including more than 15 student interns, according to archived versions of their websites.

Jessica Blake
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: One of President Donald Trump’s latest executive orders aims to end “illegal” diversity, equity and inclusion policies and could upend programs that support underrepresented groups on college campuses.

Whether the order, signed late Tuesday night, will be effective is not clear, some experts cautioned Wednesday. Others celebrated it as the end of DEI in America.

Hans Bader
Minding the Campus

Excerpt: If a university is ordered by the government to investigate each instance of speech that is bigoted to determine if it cumulatively contributed to a “hostile environment” for some minority group, it will have a powerful incentive to adopt a “zero tolerance” policy for offensive speech, to avoid the time and expense of constant investigations, and avoid potential liability for a “hostile environment.” That’s true even if the speech is political or religious, such as advocating the elimination of Israel or Palestinian self-rule or questioning Jewish, Arab, or Middle Eastern practices.

Yet, that burdensome duty to censor is more or less what the Biden administration told universities to do in recent Title VI and Title IX investigations, such as in a press release about an investigation of Drexel University for anti-Semitism, and an accompanying letter resolving the Title VI investigation.

Dear ACTA friend,

Since its founding, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) has advocated for strengthening civic education at America’s colleges and universities. Our democratic republic depends on an educated citizenry—the rising generation must have a robust understanding of our nation’s history and system of government.

Our country is facing a civic knowledge crisis, and with it, a crisis of civic order. ACTA’s recent survey, Losing America’s Memory 2.0, has brought to light some startling findings about the state of civic literacy among college students. Most students are unable to identify the speaker of the House of Representatives, term lengths for members of Congress, or the branch of government with the power to declare war.

The Editorial Board
Wall Street Journal

Excerpt: Harvard has some slow learners, especially in the dean’s office. Lawrence Bobo, the dean of social science, kicked up a storm this week when he wrote in the Harvard Crimson that faculty members who criticize Harvard or its policies should be subject to university punishment.

David Chmielewski
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: In November 2023, I wrote a letter to the editor on the importance of remembering the radical side of Princeton’s activist history and the politics of how we remember campus activism. As I wrote that letter, I could never have imagined the incredible things that current Princeton student activists would achieve just six months later with the Princeton Gaza Solidarity Encampment, also known as the Popular University for Gaza.

One of our moral imperatives now is to make the memory of the encampment useful, to understand what it represented and will represent for future generations of student activists.

The Editors
National Review

Excerpt: Last week, the University of Florida peremptorily announced that it had ended its ill-fated experiment with DEI. “The University of Florida,” the college’s missive confirmed, has “closed the Office of the Chief Diversity Officer, eliminated DEI positions and administrative appointments, and halted DEI-focused contracts with outside vendors.”

As a practical matter, one would not wish the men and women of Tallahassee to micromanage every last feature of academic life in Gainesville, but, evidently, that is not what is happening in this case. Instead, the state’s authorities are establishing minimum guidelines for how taxpayers’ money can be spent, and they are doing so in a manner that upholds the most precious of America’s ideals.

Press release
Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression

Today, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression filed a lawsuit on behalf of six California community college professors to halt new, systemwide regulations forcing professors to espouse and teach politicized conceptions of “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” Each of the professors teach at one of three Fresno-area community colleges within the State Center Community College District. Under the new regulations, all of the more-than-54,000 professors who teach in the California Community Colleges system must incorporate “anti-racist” viewpoints into classroom teaching.

The regulations explicitly require professors to pledge allegiance to contested ideological viewpoints. Professors must “acknowledge” that “cultural and social identities are diverse, fluid, and intersectional,” and they must develop “knowledge of the intersectionality of social identities and the multiple axes of oppression that people from different racial, ethnic, and other minoritized groups face.” Faculty performance and tenure will be evaluated based on professors’ commitment to and promotion of the government’s viewpoints.

By Sarah Lehr
Wisconsin Public Radio

Excerpt: The University of Wisconsin will no longer require diversity, equity and inclusion statements from job applicants, UW System President Jay Rothman announced Thursday.

Patrick McDonald '26
Campus Reform

Excerpt: Princeton University is offering a new course titled “Gender, Reproduction, and Genocide” that compares the Israel–Hamas conflict to the Holocaust. 

The class is instructed by Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, a self-identified “noted Palestinian feminist” who has publicly denied that Hamas killed babies or raped women during the Oct. 7 massacre, according to The Washington Free Beacon.

Josh Moody
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: House Republicans have accused George Mason University president Gregory Washington of lying to Congress about diversity practices at his institution, ratcheting up pressure on the president to step down.

Washington has denied breaking the law through efforts to diversify GMU’s faculty and staff, telling Congress that the university did not practice illegal discrimination under his leadership.

Eric Kelderman
Chronicle of Higher Education

Excerpt: With federal funding as its leverage, the Trump administration has mounted a sustained campaign to give the federal government greater oversight of higher education. By a wide margin, the public rejects that effort — including the White House’s most recent foray, its proposed “compact” for higher education.

Surina Venkat
The Hill

Excerpt: The nation’s top schools have ramped up their spending on lobbying the federal government this year amid President Trump’s crackdown on higher education, disclosures filed last week show.

Twenty-four top universities and one of the nation’s largest college systems have already spent around $24 million lobbying Washington this year, more than double what they spent during the same time period last year, according to federal disclosures.

Jessica Blake
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: All the pieces of House Republicans’ plan to cut trillions in federal spending are now public, and if the package becomes law, colleges and universities could face crippling repercussions, higher education experts say.

“It is a full-out assault on the ability of students—especially low-income students—to access and afford higher education,” said Jon Fansmith, senior vice president for government relations and national engagement at the American Council on Education. “It will have a dramatically negative impact, not just on higher ed, but on the whole population.”

Maya Stahl
Chronicle of Higher Education

Excerpt: The Trump administration is demanding that Harvard University eliminate all diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, reform admissions and hiring practices, and crack down on student discipline “to remain a responsible recipient of federal taxpayer dollars.”

Luke Grippo 
Daily Princetonian 

Excerpt: Political scientist and activist Norman Finkelstein GS ’87 returned to campus on Tuesday to discuss the war in Gaza with history professor Max Weiss. Throughout the talk, Finkelstein addressed the United States’ history with the Middle East from the early 2000s, the United Nations’ complicated history with the Israel-Palestine conflict, and the war in Gaza.

Why Evolution is True
Jerry Coyne 

Excerpt: The time has come that many have feared but many will celebrate: DEI (“diversity, equity, and inclusion”) is effectively gone from campuses by federal order.

Since virtually every institution of higher learning depends on some federal funding, this gives colleges the choices of abandoning DEI or abandoning federal money. You know which they’ll prefer. The former, of course, but they’ll try to have both, sometimes by duplicitous practices.

FIRE

Excerpt: The Supreme Court sidestepped deciding whether government pressure on social media platforms violates the First Amendment. But just a few weeks ago, it unanimously reaffirmed a core First Amendment principle: The government can’t censor by private coercion any more than it can by public legislation.

Despite reams of evidence documenting government pressure, the court held today these plaintiffs lacked standing to sue. FIRE is concerned about what this means for future First Amendment plaintiffs. But the majority opinion notes courts have the power to stop government attempts to pressure social media platforms when proven. That’s important.

Vimal Patel
New York Times

Excerpt: The toppling of the University of Pennsylvania’s president, Elizabeth Magill — four days after her testimony before Congress on whether to punish students if they called for genocide — was a victory for those who believe that pro-Palestinian protesters have gone too far in their speech.

For many longtime observers of the campus speech wars, however, this moment is a dire one for freedom of expression.

Hannah Natanson and Susan Svrluga
Washington Post

Excerpt: The resignation of the University of Pennsylvania’s president following her testimony over how to handle calls for the genocide of Jews has highlighted the tightrope school leaders are walking as students protest the war in Gaza — and fueled instant debate over how far colleges can go to restrict speech.

Vitus Larrieu
Daily Princetonian 

Excerpt: The University is investigating the disruption of a speaker event on Monday with former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 wrote to The Daily Princetonian on Tuesday. Eisgruber also said that he had personally apologized to Bennett and said he was “appalled at reports of antisemitic language” outside the event.

Eisgruber’s statement followed a letter written by Danielle Shapiro ’25 and Maximillian Meyer ’27, the respective presidents of pro-Israel student groups B’Artzeinu Princeton and Princeton Tigers for Israel. The letter accused protesters of antisemitism, asking Eisgruber to implement a campus-wide mask ban and dissolve Princeton’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). The letter also called on Eisgruber to issue a public apology to Bennett and initiate disciplinary action against the protesters.

Hope Perry ‘24
Princeton Alumni Weekly

Excerpt: A judge for the United States District Court for Massachusetts issued a temporary restraining order, pausing the Department of Energy’s proposed grant cuts to universities across the country, including Princeton.’’ 

The American Association of Universities — a group that includes Princeton, MIT, and Harvard — filed a suit against the Department of Energy April 15. The temporary restraining order today means that the Department cannot modify or cut funding pending a hearing.

April 15, 2025

John McWhorter, Cornel West & Robert George – Truth, Faith, and Reason in an Age of Division on The Glenn Show

Watch here

Francesca Block
The Free Press

Excerpt: Shilo Brooks is on a mission to teach Ivy League students how to read.

If the trend in academic life for the past few decades has been to skim hundreds of pages per day and then pick apart the past, Brooks wants to do something old-school that feels radical: he wants his students to absorb no more than fifty pages a week and see the big picture. And he’s doing it by bucking another trend: he’s embracing great men (and women).

Keith E. Whittington
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: Imagine, if you will, that a relatively small, but passionate and loud — complete with drums, chants, and megaphones — group of Princeton students thought that SPIA should be renamed the Donald J. Trump School of Public and International Affairs and launch new initiatives focused on American greatness. After pressing their demands for many months to no effect, they decide that more direct action would be needed to bring attention to their cause. They march through the hallways of Robertson Hall, take an office, yell out of windows, and drop “Make America Great Again” flags through them, and announce that they will occupy the office until their demands are met.

Darius Gross
Princeton Tory

Excerpt: On Friday, November 3, the Council of the Princeton University Community (CPUC) Committee on Naming held a symposium entitled “Monuments, Memory, and the John Witherspoon Statue.” According to a poster advertising the event, it was held to “explore memorialization, monuments in American art history, and the university campus as a space and a community” in relation to the ongoing debate surrounding a campus statue of John Witherspoon, the University’s sixth president and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. The statue has lately been the subject of controversy, given Witherspoon’s participation in slavery. During the event, many of the invited speakers raised the possibility of removing or replacing the Witherspoon statue, which currently stands in Firestone Plaza.

Victoria Davies and Lia Opperman
Daily Princetonian

Amid the ongoing conflict in Israel and Palestine, political speech has been in the spotlight on campus. University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 spoke with “Bloomberg Markets: The Close” on Oct. 10 about protecting free speech on campus in light of the war. He referenced an orientation module that first-years complete about respecting free speech and engaging in civil dialogue.