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Erin Shaw and Nicole Barbaro Simovski, Ph.D
Free the Inquiry, Heterodox Academy 

Excerpt: A new report from education consulting firm EAB documenting results from a survey of thousands of high school students and first-year college students shows a worrying trend for viewpoint diversity on college campuses: prospective college students are intentionally self-sorting into ideologically aligned universities.

The data reveal that 29% of prospective first-year college students reported removing a college from their “might apply” lists based on political reasons. More students dropped potential colleges for being “too conservative” or being in a Republican-controlled state than for being “too liberal.” The report also notes that higher-income students were more likely than others to remove colleges across all political reasons.

Jonah E. Bromwich
New York Times

Excerpt: Mahmoud Khalil, the first pro-Palestinian campus protester detained by the Trump administration, was released on bail Friday, bringing an end to his monthslong imprisonment.

Mr. Khalil, a Columbia University graduate and legal permanent U.S. resident, had been held for 104 days, watching as other students targeted by the administration won favorable rulings and were released on bail. He was denied the opportunity to be present when his wife gave birth to their son in April and he missed his graduation from Columbia.

Matthew W. Finkin
Chronicle of Higher Education

Excerpt: An article on threats to academic freedom on college campuses in last week’s New York Times Magazine touched on a running debate between the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). The former has long been the expositor of the meaning of academic freedom; the latter is active in litigating free-speech cases. The quarrel between the two organizations raises some hard questions about the AAUP’s current role.

Liam Knox
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: Almost three months after the arrest of Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil, international students in the U.S. still face unprecedented challenges and threats from the federal government. For many, this semester has been a roller coaster of existential fear, fleeting hope and, above all, uncertainty about their future. 

Subject: New FIRE Report Launches: Students Under Fire

FIRE just launched the Students Under Fire database and its first report. This new resource tracks efforts to punish students and student groups for protected speech—just as Scholars Under Fire has done for faculty. Alarmingly, on a per-year basis, student sanction attempts outpace even our previous datasets. I think this will be a powerful tool for alumni seeking to better understand and respond to the real threats facing students today.

Alice Dreger 
Free the Inquiry, Heterodox Academy 

Excerpt: Two questions – what counts as activism in academia and what (if anything) should be done about it – formed the core of our lively webinar last Wednesday as I spoke with the University of Wyoming’s Martha McCaughey and the University of Chicago’s Tom Ginsburg and took questions from Heterodox Academy members.

David Montgomery ‘83
Princeton Alumni Weekly

Excerpt: For the first time in memory, Princeton is inviting alumni, faculty, students, and allies to lend their voices to a broad campaign of political advocacy and public affirmation in response to the Trump administration’s unprecedented attacks on research funding and academic freedom in American higher education. “To my knowledge, this is a new kind of initiative for the University,” President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 told PAW in an early May interview about the campaign, which is called “Stand Up for Princeton and Higher Education.”

Lee C. Bollinger
The Atlantic

Excerpt: The nation’s leading universities are locked in an unprecedented battle with a president and an administration that have chosen to withhold billions of dollars in vital federal research funding in order to take control of institutions for which freedom of thought and expression are among their most essential values.

So, here is my thesis: American universities are rooted in the bedrock of human nature and the foundations of our constitutional democracy. They are every bit as vital to our society as the political branches of government or quasi-official institutions such as the press (often even referred to as the “fourth branch” of government). Universities, as institutions, are the embodiment of the basic rationale of the First Amendment, which affirms our nation’s commitment to a never-ending search for truth.

by Ed Yingling '70

Washington insiders believe it is very likely that a significant increase in the tax rate on university endowment income will be enacted this year. They cite the need for additional tax revenue to offset the Trump tax cut agenda and the antipathy of many Republicans to what has been happening on campuses for the last two years. They also focus on the fact that then-Senator JD Vance introduced a bill in the last Congress imposing a 35 percent tax on endowment income.

Academic Freedom Alliance 

Excerpt: It is a grave threat to the mission of American universities if international scholars and students fear removal from the United States based on little more than their expression of views disfavored by people holding public office. Academic freedom is a condition of the robust exchange of ideas that drives the pursuit of knowledge in colleges and universities, and everyone in an academic community must be equally protected in their academic freedom.

David French
New York Times

Excerpt: On Monday, Ed Martin, the interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, sent the dean of Georgetown University Law Center, a Catholic law school, a letter that said, “It has come to my attention reliably that Georgetown Law School continues to teach and promote D.E.I. This is unacceptable.”

Martin said that he’d begun an “inquiry” into the school and demanded to know whether it had eliminated all D.E.I. — which he does not define, but in right-wing circles tends to refer to any action at all designed to increase diversity or honor historically marginalized people — from the school and its curriculum. He also asked, “If D.E.I. is found in your courses or teaching in any way, will you move swiftly to remove it?”

Maggie Kelly
Inside UATX

Excerpt: Last week, UATX founding trustee Bari Weiss and Palantir CEO Alex Karp visited campus to discuss the failures of American education and the urgent need to build anew.

“Our educational institutions have really done us a disservice,” Karp said. “The primary disservice was somehow teaching people that it's better to believe in nothing than in something."

Elisabeth Stewart
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: A University-registered lobbyist opposed two New Jersey Senate Bills regarding legacy admissions and definitions of antisemitism and Islamophobia in the 2024 legislative session, according to lobbying records obtained by The Daily Princetonian. 

Amid the ongoing scrutiny of higher education from the federal government, both bills would have had profound implications for Princeton’s admissions policies, free speech on campus, and sources of funding.

Cathy Young
The Bulwark

Excerpt: OVER THE COURSE OF DONALD TRUMP’S re-election campaign, he cast himself as a warrior for free speech—so no surprise that among the first executive orders of his second term was one titled “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship.” 

The anti-censorship executive order could still have merit even if Trump is a hypocrite; we’ll get to that in a moment. But the idea that the second Trump administration will usher in a new golden age for free speech in America is as bizarre as the idea that Biden’s America was a dreary intellectual gulag where debate was muzzled and only officially approved speech was allowed.

Will Clark 
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: Right now, fear is taking hold over the threats universities will face from a hostile Trump administration. We’re advised to relinquish diversity as a framework, dismantle recently built DEI infrastructure or emphasize thinking with the enemy. Such postures take the shibboleths attributed to university liberalism and shrink their presence. They capitulate to a right-wing political movement intent on remaking the university in a regressive image. We need not look further than universities in Florida and Indiana to see our future.

But in the coming crisis, our work cannot just be defensive. Rather, our future lies in collective action.

Ryan Quinn
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: Texas A&M University said this week it’s no longer sending representatives to a conference aimed at recruiting prospective minority doctoral students after online accusations and threats—including from the governor. 

Ronen Shoval
Minding the Campus

Excerpt: American universities stand at a historic crossroads. After decades of strong progressive policies, progressivism has become the status quo. Universities have drifted so far to the left that they have lost all connection to their roots. When it’s easier to find a dissident in Iran than a Republican at Harvard University, it’s a clear sign that intellectual conformity has reached a point where it undermines the very justification of universities as centers of knowledge.

It was only a matter of time before a politician would demand that public funds—poured in staggering amounts into a system that promotes political indoctrination—be redirected toward restoring balance. That moment has arrived. Within weeks, a new administration will enter the White House, and universities’ futures could change.

Kathryn Palmer
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: The vast majority of faculty members—87 percent—say it’s difficult to have open and honest conversations about divisive political topics, including those related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, racial inequality and transgender rights, according to the 2024 faculty survey report “Silence in the Classroom,” published today by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.

The group surveyed 6,269 faculty across 55 colleges and universities—including a mix of public and private institutions—on the state of free speech and self-censorship on their campuses.

Yascha Mounk
Persuasion

Excerpt: Cass Sunstein is an American legal scholar and the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard University. Sunstein was the Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs under Barack Obama, and is considered to be the most widely cited legal scholar in the United States. Sunstein is the author, with Richard Thaler, of Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness, The World According to Star Wars, and Campus Free Speech: A Pocket Guide.

In this week's conversation, Yascha Mounk and Cass Sunstein discuss his “law of group polarization” and how it contributes to today’s factionalism; how echo chambers work (and why social media makes them worse); and whether meeting the challenge of misinformation requires new government regulations.

Opinion Department
Cornell Daily Sun

Excerpt: Maria Lima Valdez ‘25 protested her suspension for her private Instagram post saying “Zionists must die,” arguing “it was not a call to action.” What is Valdez referring to, if not inciting violence?

While the means to achieve the outcome are unspecified, it would be overly naive to assume Valdez is referring to a “magical” disappearance of people. The phrase explicitly advocates for the individuals’ death based solely on their ideological identity. It does not critique “Zionism,” the ideology itself, but rather its followers. By targeting people, the post reduces their humanity to their ideological affiliation. The rhetoric openly calls for their elimination and thus crosses from opinion to constituting dangerous incitement to the worst hatred.

Guest Contributors
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: This Thursday, Nov. 21, Tigers for Israel (TFI), B’Artzeinu, and Chabad of Princeton are hosting an event headlined by Islamophobic activist Mosab Hassan Yousef, an individual who uses his platform to spread incendiary rhetoric about Muslim people. As members of the Alliance of Jewish Progressives and allies, we wholeheartedly reject Yousef’s Islamophobia and condemn the decision to bring him to campus.

Minding the Campus
Richard Vedder

Excerpt: For decades, international testing data have shown that the United States, for all its leadership in technological innovation and economic success, has been, at best, so-so in teaching fundamental knowledge to young Americans. Moreover, the situation appears to have worsened, aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic, but it has not recovered to anemic pre-pandemic levels since. And, a recent RealClear Investigations report documents that our K-12 schools are enhancing mediocrity by worsening an already wrongheaded grade inflation by continuing to give students high grades even as their learning continues to decline. As one refreshing voice of sanity, Maryland education chief Carey Wright put it, “If you set the bar low, that’s all you are going to get. But if you set the bar high for students, and support teachers and leaders, it [higher student performance] is doable.”

Michael Poliakoff and Jack Miller
RealClear Education

Excerpt: Over the last 60 years, there has been unconscionable neglect of civics and American history at both the K-12 and university levels.

Surveys by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) show that fewer than 20% of colleges nationwide require an American history or government course for graduation. Unsurprisingly, this deficit has made its way into the training of teachers too. Future K-12 teachers are unlikely to learn the basic facts about our founding principles and our long history of working toward that more perfect Union our founders envisioned. Fortunately, more and more public universities are doing their part to reverse this trend.

George Leef
National Review

Excerpt: As events of the last year have shown so clearly, there is a lot of tension on American campuses (particularly at our “elite” institutions) between the value of freedom of speech and the dis-value of speech that’s loaded with hatred. On many campuses, antisemitism has been rampant, with vicious verbal attacks on Jews — even those who aren’t necessarily pro-Israel.

How should we resolve the tension? That’s the question University of Illinois professor Cary Nelson addresses in his book Hate Speech and Academic Freedom, which I review here for the Martin Center.

Olivia Reingold
The Free Press

Excerpt: When Houston Porter, a 28-year-old law student at Pace University, first walked into the college auditorium last month, he was surprised to see a packed house for the “Saving Women’s Sports” panel he was co-moderating.

But not long after, Porter’s world started “crumbling down”—with at least one professor shouting at panelists and another allegedly rushing the stage, followed by a Title IX investigation that accuses him of having “aggressively pointed” at a transgender student and misgendering her. Now Porter faces the possibility of suspension, expulsion, and even being barred from practicing law.

Ryan Quinn
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: Two free expression advocacy groups say they’ve sent letters to Pennsylvania public colleges and universities “urging them to protect students’ expressive rights leading up to election day,” according to a news release sent Friday.

The groups are the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania.

Eboo Patel
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: Bravo to the University of Chicago for its $100 million gift in support of free speech. The donation, which comes from an anonymous source, will strengthen the university’s Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression, allowing it to expand quintessential college programs like fellowships and conferences.

You can of course say that these efforts ultimately benefit truth seeking, and I do believe that involving people with a range of identities in philosophical discussions or laboratory experiments results in stronger ideas emerging. But there are other social goals being accomplished as well, including cooperation across difference and social mobility. Why not name a telos that captures all of this?

Raf Basas
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: However, even as Princeton has undertaken proactive efforts to improve equity among FLI students, its punitive aid-related policies contradict and complicate this history. As stated in Princeton’s financial aid terms, students who “repeat a semester for disciplinary reasons” are not “eligible for a Princeton University grant for the repeated portion of the term.”

Princeton has already indicated its willingness to arrest students for exercising their right to free speech. By withholding the financial aid of suspended students, Princeton disproportionately suppresses the free speech of low-income students.

Bill Hewitt ‘74
Princeton Alumni Weekly

Excerpt: The Board of Trustees’ recent decision regarding the John Witherspoon statue merits both praise and criticism. Their refusal to remove or alter the statue is commendable. Dedicated by predecessor trustees in 2001 to honor Witherspoon, the statue should remain unchanged, regardless of artistic considerations. Recent scholarship has provided a more favorable historical understanding of Witherspoon’s relationship with slavery than was available in 2001, further justifying this decision.

Regrettably, the Trustees erred in delegating the fate of the Witherspoon statue to the Campus Art Steering Committee. Any alteration of the statue would constitute a damnatio memoriae of Witherspoon. An ominous portent in the Committee on Naming report is the troubling conflation of judgments about Witherspoon’s historical relation to slavery with those about the statue’s artistic merit.

Jerry A. Coyne
Why Evolution is True

Excerpt: Steve Pinker has an op-ed in today’s Boston Globe (title below). It reflects his own ambivalent feelings—which many of us share—on the first anniversary of the October 7th massacre. As I argue below, the article’s title is a bit misleading (granted, he didn’t choose it), but he does defend Israel’s right to defend itself—though to an unknown extent.  This is the first piece by Steve that I think could have been tweaked a bit to improve it.

John O. McGinnis
Law and Liberty

Excerpt: The past year has exposed deep-rooted problems on American college campuses, revealing just how political pressure distorts academic ideals. After Hamas’s brutal massacre of civilians and Israel’s forceful response, waves of pro-Palestine protests erupted, soon transforming into encampments that in some cases menaced Jewish students.

As we seek to understand the correct application of these principles to campus life, we are fortunate that David Rabban has just written Academic Freedom: From Professional Norm to Free Speech. It is the most thoughtful legal discussion of academic freedom ever published.

Cass Sunstein
Volokh Conspiracy, Reason Magazine

Excerpt: Public colleges and universities are bound by the First Amendment. Their private counterparts are not (though a state might choose to apply the requirements of the First Amendment to them, as California has largely done). But if private universities choose to follow the First Amendment, they will make life a lot easier, and also a lot better, for faculty, administrators, and students alike.

One reason is that First Amendment principles make most cases easy. Still, there are plenty of hard cases. Many of the hardest arise when a college or university claims that restrictions are justified by its educational mission. In some cases, such restrictions really can be so justified. A university can direct a history professor to teach history, not physics, in a history class. That's a form of content discrimination, and it's okay.

Aaron Ross Powell
The Unpopullist, Substack

Excerpt: Today we’re diving into one of the most pressing issues of our time: free speech. Our host Aaron Ross Powell is joined by a special guest, Ken White—better known online as Popehat—a First Amendment expert, seasoned criminal defense attorney, civil litigator, and cohost of the Serious Trouble podcast.

Together, they’ll explore some of the most pressing questions in free speech discourse today: Have we become too quick to label some speech as offensive? Are we idealizing a past where free expression was supposedly more open? And, most importantly, how can we foster richer, more nuanced conversations in an increasingly polarized world?

Joseph M. Knippenberg
James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal

Excerpt: Earlier this summer, Harvard dean Lawrence Bobo wrote an essay for the Harvard Crimson that provoked a chorus of criticism, much of it justified. Reflecting on the post-October 7 turmoil on his campus, which had led, among other things, to the resignation of President Claudine Gay, Bobo argued that faculty should be disciplined for airing the university’s dirty laundry in public.

I would like to approach Bobo’s argument by focusing on the goal that he and his critics share: the institutional independence of the university as a knowledge-seeking enterprise.

Ryan Quinn
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: Post-tenure reviews aren’t a new phenomenon in higher education. The American Association of University Professors has had a stance on them going back to 1983, and in 1999 it released a report saying they should be for “faculty development” and not “undertaken for the purpose of dismissal.”

Now, the first round of post-tenure reviews has been completed. And the flagship University of Florida’s process produced a figure that has raised eyebrows among its faculty: About one-fifth of reviewed professors failed to pass muster or gave up defending their tenure.

Dissident Dialogues

Excerpt: Leading academics come together to discuss and debate whether Western universities can be saved from peril. With free speech on campus in jeopardy, and weekly Palestine protests following years of attacks on curriculum and the pulling down of statues. Can they be salvaged or do new universities need to be built?

Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Press Release

Excerpt: Human rights experts today expressed grave concern at the massive crackdown on pro-Palestinian student protests at various university campuses across the United States of America.

“The banning and attacks on student protests are a grave violation of the rights to peaceful assembly and freedom of expression guaranteed by international human rights law, and must stop immediately,” said the experts, who addressed their concerns to the US government in a previous communication.

Ryan Quinn
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: As the news broke about a gunman’s July 13 attempt to kill former president Donald Trump during a Pennsylvania rally, John James, an English instructor at Bellarmine University in Louisville, posted on Instagram above one of the latest headlines: “If you’re gonna shoot, man, don’t miss.”

That university said it received a bomb threat July 15 connected to anger over the post, though police eventually determined the threat wasn’t credible. Bellarmine fired James the next day, three days after the shooting, he said. “I wasn’t given an opportunity to clarify my statement, to apologize or anything,” he said.

Jess Deutsch
Princeton Alumni Weekly  

Excerpt: While 120 hostages remained captive and the death toll in Israel and Gaza continued to rise, President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 described the last year as the “most turbulent and difficult on college campuses in the U.S. since the late 1960s.” With world news weighing heavily this spring and campus protests broadcasted widely, I wondered about the impact of the war and protests on the mental health impact Princeton students and alumni.

At Princeton’s encampment, students seemed to talk within their own bubbles or make statements using a megaphone. Students, faculty, and staff often walked by, heads down. As the semester was ending, more than one student who had no involvement told me they couldn’t wait to leave campus, scared to say the wrong thing. I worried about the conversations that didn’t happen.

Graham Piro
FIRE

Excerpt: A University of Wisconsin-La Crosse faculty committee formally recommended last week that professor Joe Gow lose his tenured faculty role for the on-his-own-time activity of making pornographic videos with his wife and writing books about the experience. The recommendation, which undermines what tenure is meant to protect — including faculty members’ right to express themselves outside the classroom — clashes with the First Amendment and threatens the rights of all UW faculty.

UW already fired Gow from his role as chancellor in December after discovering he made the videos. Under continued pressure from lawmakers and donors who wanted Gow gone from his faculty role, too, the faculty hearing committee unanimously recommended Gow’s dismissal in a decision publicized late Friday.

Matthew Kuchem
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: As the U.S. presidential campaign takes a violent turn, colleges and universities need to prepare for major political upheaval and campus disruptions. Last academic year’s campus protests demonstrated that much of higher education is ill-equipped to handle certain political controversies.

But the fall will not just be a redux of the spring. When students return to campuses, the wild presidential campaign will be entering the final stretch, setting the stage for disruptions that will accelerate through the end of the semester and possibly beyond. The forecast is grim, and the conditions are ripe, not for a flare-up but for an inferno.

Jessie Appleby

FIRE

Were the Gaza solidarity encampments erected on college campuses this spring an effective, or even legitimate, form of protest? Is Israel committing genocide in Gaza? It depends on who you ask. But how, if at all, should faculty handle these questions in class?

The manner in which faculty tackle contested or controversial issues in college classrooms is a source of perennial debate. That debate over preferred pedagogy reignited last month when a nonprofit organization accused a public college in California of violating students’ First Amendment rights based on incidents in which two professors seemingly injected their personal views on hot-button political issues into assigned classwork.

Alex Morey
Persuasion

Excerpt: “College administrator tries to silence faculty critics” is hardly a new scenario. But the censors usually aren’t quite so upfront about it.

There are many reasons why sanctioning faculty who speak out against the university is dangerous. Most obviously, it would gut their expressive rights to publicly criticize Harvard’s shortcomings or abuses, amounting to the kind of “professionalism” policy colleges routinely abuse to punish all manner of controversial student and faculty speech. An administrator need only deem speech unprofessional, and they’ve found a convenient loophole around their academic freedom and free speech policies.

Ryan Quinn
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: In 2022, Florida’s Republican state legislators passed the Stop WOKE Act, championed and signed by GOP governor Ron DeSantis. The law would limit the way faculty members at public universities can teach about race and gender.

Attention-grabbing oral arguments a week ago before the U.S. Court of Appeals’ 11th Circuit conveyed what could happen if they lose. A heavy-hitting Washington lawyer, known for representing big-name Republicans and now defending the Florida law, made a series of arguments that academic freedom advocates have called “extreme.” If judges adopt these conclusions, they say, states could demolish the tradition of academic freedom in American higher education.

Ryan Quinn
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: Last month something happened that has little, if any, public precedent: A university fired a faculty member almost immediately not for out-of-classroom speech but for an optional course assignment. DePaul University dismissed adjunct Anne d’Aquino midway through her first quarter teaching Health 194: Human Pathogens and Defense.

DePaul spokespeople said students and others had expressed concern about the assignment and an accompanying email from d’Aquino that focused on Palestine and included the terms “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing.” The assignment asked students to, among other things, explain “the impact of genocide/ethnic cleansing on the health/biology of the people it impacts.”

Peter Berkowitz
RealClearPolitics

Excerpt: Following Hamas’ bloodthirsty Oct. 7 assault on Israel’s southern border communities, woke leftists and jihad enthusiasts on campuses and beyond formed a perplexing alliance. The left advocates social justice; celebrates diversity, equity, and inclusion; and professes special concern for historically oppressed minorities. Meanwhile, Gaza’s Iran-backed jihadists torture and kill based on race, ethnicity, and sexual preference; loathe and wage war against Israelis, Jews, Americans, and the West; and, by all available means, seek to establish Islamist theocracy. What could unite two such seemingly mutually exclusive camps?

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.

Michael Brendan Dougherty
National Review

Excerpt: Conservatives have sought to prevent the encampments from spreading by drawing strong distinctions between free-speech protections for the students and standards of manners, anti-harassment regulations, and the like. This may be what is legally required of state universities like the University of Florida, where Ben Sasse made those distinctions as clear as possible.

But it’s entirely inadequate for the role that Columbia and the other Ivy League colleges want to play in our republic. The standard is not just free speech, or more speech to counter bad speech, but truthful speech.