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By Stuart Taylor, Jr. and Edward Yingling, The Wall Street Journal
Readers of these pages are well aware that free speech, academic freedom and viewpoint diversity are in big trouble at U.S. universities. But many of those worried over the state of campuses are almost resigned to the idea that the forces of illiberal intolerance have won. The fight is far from over. On Oct. 18, five alumni groups are announcing the creation of an organization to stand up for open inquiry: the Alumni Free Speech Alliance.
AFSA’s founders are groups of graduates of Cornell University, Davidson College, Princeton University (our alma mater), the University of Virginia, and Washington and Lee University. Our allied organizations are the Cornell Free Speech Alliance, Davidsonians for Freedom of Thought and Discourse, Princetonians for Free Speech, the Jefferson Council (composed of UVA alumni) and the Generals Redoubt (W&L alumni).
AFSA’s member groups are nonpartisan and will protect the rights of faculty and students across the ideological spectrum. Our goal is to ally with scores of as-yet-unformed alumni groups around the country. Why alumni? Because with rare exceptions, everyone else may feel too exposed to attacks to take a stand against campus culture.
Josh Moody
Inside Higher Ed
Excerpt: With the Trump administration taking special aim at higher education, conservative policymakers and college leaders are embracing the opportunity to force a cultural reset across academe.
At a forum Tuesday morning called “Reclaiming the Culture of American Higher Education,” the architects of Project 2025, an official from the U.S. Department of Education and four college presidents cast the sector as ripe for reform. The event offered insights into how conservative thinkers operating the levers of power at the Education Department view the current state of higher education and the need for change.
Douglas Belkin and Meridith McGraw
Wall Street Journal
Excerpt: The Trump administration has frozen more than $1 billion in federal funding for Cornell and $790 million for Northwestern, according to a Trump administration official.
The federal government is investigating both schools for alleged civil-rights violations, as part of a rapidly expanding crackdown on elite research universities across the U.S. The latest funding at issue relates to grants and contracts with the departments of agriculture, defense, education and health and human services.
Ross Marchand
FIRE
Excerpt: Great news: UConn School of Medicine administrators are going scalpels down on the school’s attempt to forcibly transplant politics and ideology into its incoming student body.
In 2022, UConn finalized its own version of the Hippocratic Oath, which includes a promise to “actively support policies that promote social justice and specifically work to dismantle policies that perpetuate inequities, exclusion, discrimination and racism.” Most recently, UConn required the incoming class of 2028 to pledge allegiance not simply to patient care, but to support diversity, equity, and inclusion.