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Angel Eduardo
FIRE
Excerpt: If you’re a believer in free speech, the past two weeks have been one of the longest years of your life. In fact, this might have been the worst fortnight for free expression in recent memory.
The difference between words and violence – and the civilizational importance of free speech – couldn’t have been more stark in that moment. No matter how hurtful, hateful or wrong, there is no comparing words to a bullet. To preserve that distinction, we must have the highest possible tolerance for even the ugliest speech. But that notion has landed on largely deaf ears, because what followed was a cacophony of cancellations.
J. D. Tuccille
Reason Magazine
Excerpt: The First Amendment is alive and well, which is a reassuring note about the basic legal protections for free speech. Unfortunately, it's not enough. The world is full of countries with written protections for liberty that are frequently honored in the breach because people and politicians don't really believe in them (cough, Canada, cough). The true foundation for free speech in the U.S. has always been a culture that supports unfettered expression, of which the First Amendment is just an extension.
But less than two weeks after Charlie Kirk was murdered because an assassin apparently didn't like what he had to say, it's obvious that free speech culture is besieged.
Kathryn Palmer
Inside Higher Ed
Excerpt: The Trump administration has made another move that historians say is an attempt to sanitize American history, but one the administration argued is necessary to ensure students have respect for the country.
Last week, Education Secretary Linda McMahon outlined a new plan for how her department would promote “patriotic education” by adding it to the list of priorities that can drive decisions for discretionary grants, including those that support programs at colleges and universities.
Academic Freedom Alliance statement on the assassination of Charlie Kirk
The Academic Freedom Alliance (AFA) is a coalition of faculty from across the country and across the ideological spectrum who are dedicated
to upholding the principles of academic freedom and free speech for faculty at colleges and universities throughout the US.
Located in Princeton, the AFA was founded by Keith Whittington, former Princeton professor of Politics now a professor at Yale Law School; Robert P. George, a professor of jurisprudence at Princeton; public intellectual and former Princeton professor Cornel West; Jeannie Suk Gersen, a professor of law at Harvard Law School; and Nadine Strossen, the former national President of the American Civil Liberties Union and professor emerita at New York Law School. Since its founding in 2021 the AFA has grown its membership to over 900 faculty from across the country.
Ryan Quinn
Inside Higher Ed
Excerpt: Top Republican politicians have fueled the ongoing national repression of higher ed employees and others who have allegedly made offensive statements about last week’s shooting death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. But Texas governor Greg Abbott has taken the campaign to another level: going after individual students.
Abbott, who has more than 1.4 million followers on X, used that social media website to call for Texas State University to expel a student who appeared to mime Kirk’s shooting at a vigil for Kirk. Shortly after, university president Kelly Damphousse announced that a student in a “disturbing” video “is no longer a student at TXST.”
David Sims
The Atlantic
Excerpt: There have already been signs that President Donald Trump’s administration is intent on punishing perceived critics in the media, no matter what complaints about free speech might arise, but the chain of events that shut down Jimmy Kimmel Live feels particularly direct. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Brendan Carr, the Trump-appointed chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, said on Benny Johnson’s podcast yesterday.
“These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.” Within hours, Nexstar, a company that operates 32 of ABC’s 200 local affiliates, said it would not broadcast Kimmel’s show for the “foreseeable future.” Quickly after that, ABC announced its decision.
