At Stanford Law School, the Dean Takes a Stand for Free Speech. Will It Work?

April 08, 2023 1 min read

Stanford Law School was under extraordinary pressure. For nearly two weeks, there had been mounting anger over the treatment of a conservative federal judge, whose talk had been disrupted by student hecklers. A video of the fiasco went viral. An apology to the judge from university officials had not helped quell the anger. Finally, on March 22, the dean, Jenny S. Martinez, released a lawyerly 10-page memo that rebuked the activists.

The question for Stanford and other institutions is whether the memo can ease tensions in this fraught and seemingly intractable political climate. In an era of high-pitched politics, living up to lofty free-speech principles can get messy on the ground.

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Cornell Cut Classes by a Pro-Palestinian Professor After an Israeli Student’s Discrimination Complaint

September 29, 2025 1 min read

Gabe Levin
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Excerpt: Dr. Eric Cheyfitz, a professor of American studies at Cornell, said the university has canceled the two classes he was set to teach this semester. It comes as the provost is recommending that he be suspended for two semesters without pay on the grounds that he violated federal antidiscrimination laws, The Nation has learned.

Cheyfitz’s lawyer, Luna Droubi, said it’s the latest turn in months of investigations—carried out by different university bodies—into whether Cheyfitz, 84, told a graduate student last semester to drop a class he was teaching about Gaza because the student is Israeli. Cheyfitz, who is Jewish and whose daughter and grandchildren live in Israel, denies the allegation.

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Ms. Swierc (pronounced swirtz) discovered that the barrage stemmed from something she had posted on Facebook the day before: “If you think Charlie Kirk was a wonderful person, we can’t be friends.” Her Facebook settings were private, but one of her followers must have taken a screen shot and sent it on without her knowledge.

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September 24, 2025 1 min read

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Excerpt: Out of all the faculty The Crimson recently surveyed, only one percent described their political beliefs as very conservative. Think about that: someone is three times more likely to get into Harvard than to encounter a conservative faculty member here. 

Much can be — and has been — said in favor of viewpoint diversity in higher education. Yet those decrying the relative lack of conservative faculty overlooks a basic point: The structure of universities themselves lends itself to a professoriate whose politics do not perfectly map on to that of the public writ large. That’s not necessarily a bad thing.

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