National Free Speech News & Commentary

Leon Sachs
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: We should think about campus speech debates the way my hometown political cartoonist, Joel Pett, suggested we think about climate change. Some years ago, Pett published a political cartoon satirizing climate change denial: a speaker onstage at a climate summit is explaining the many benefits of greener environmental policies. In the crowd, a defiant climate skeptic stands up and exclaims, “What if it’s a big hoax and we create a better world for nothing?”

If we replace meteorology with the university, this cartoon captures today’s debates about campus speech climates. It also suggests a better way to think about them.

Bruce Gilley
Law & Liberty

Excerpt: It sounds like a miracle. A small community college with a politically divided student body achieves the impossible: an agreement on the need for civil discourse among different political viewpoints. Free speech becomes a campus-wide value, and a growing number of students participate in contentious debates with no hurt feelings or ex-post investigations.

But for all the fuss about Linn-Benton, the true story of this campus along the Calapooia River in central Oregon is a stark reminder of deep-seated censorship in American higher education. It also shows the inadequacy of superficial fixes often put forward by Heterodox Academy or the new faculty-led Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard.

Josh Moody
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: A New College of Florida professor who was denied tenure by the Board of Trustees has filed a lawsuit—along with the United Faculty of Florida—against the board and the Florida Board of Governors, which oversees higher education in the state. The lawsuit challenges the constitutionality of a recent state law that limits arbitration, News Service of Florida reported.

Viera-Vargas, a professor of Caribbean/Latin American Studies and Music, appealed the tenure denial, but his appeal was reportedly shot down; Corcoran cited a state law passed earlier this year—SB 266—that limits arbitration of faculty grievances.

Margaret Peppiatt
College Fix

Excerpt: The University of Houston-Downtown is facing a lawsuit that claims a former dean discriminated against a black, gay staff member.

The lawsuit alleges that Carlos Gooden, the university’s executive director of graduate business programs, faced discrimination on the basis of race and sexual orientation from the former dean of the business school who hired him, Charles Gengler. A longtime friend of Gengler’s, however, argues the lawsuit is filled with unsubstantiated fabrications, and Gengler’s attorney has called the complaint a “sham.”

Heterodox Academy

Excerpt: University orientation programs are foundational to the new student experience on campus. These programs cover helpful logistics of campus life and operations and, importantly, they also set the stage for the student experience, intellectual values, and social life. But how should orientation programs be structured to ensure that HxA values of open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and constructive disagreement are instilled at the outset?

During this discussion, our panel of experts will discuss what student orientations need to cover, what they cover out of choice, and what they should cover.

Ashlynn Warta
James G. Martin Center for Academic Freedom

Excerpt: In July of 2020, UNC-Chapel Hill’s chancellor sent an email to the university’s leadership cabinets requesting responses to three questions regarding “structural racism.” Through public records requests, the Martin Center obtained a copy of the many responses submitted over the following days by Chapel Hill’s academic and administrative units.

Our previous article on this subject introduced the chancellor’s DEI questionnaire and examined some of the more extreme proposals supplied by respondents. Below, we look in greater detail at the “solutions” proposed by Chapel Hill’s various divisions and schools.