National Free Speech News & Commentary

Harvard Salient’s Editor Says Conservative Student Magazine Will Not Obey Suspension by Alumni Board

Samuel A. Church and Cam N. Srivastava, Crimson Staff Writers October 29, 2025 1 min read

Samuel A. Church and Cam N. Srivastava, Crimson Staff Writers
Harvard Crimson

Excerpt: Harvard Salient editor-in-chief Richard Y. Rodgers ’28 announced on Tuesday that the conservative student magazine would remain active despite a Sunday statement from its board of directors suspending its operations pending a conduct investigation.

Rodgers wrote in an email to the Salient’s mailing list that the board’s decision to temporarily halt its operations was “an unauthorized usurpation of power by a small number of individuals acting outside the bounds of their authority.”

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Universities Can’t Pursue Truth Without Viewpoint Diversity

John Tomasi and Jonathan Haidt October 29, 2025 1 min read

John Tomasi and Jonathan Haidt
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: As the president of Heterodox Academy (Tomasi) and as co-founder of the organization (Haidt), we are delighted that the issue of viewpoint diversity in higher education is now being so widely discussed. We just wish the most prominent antagonists on the right and on the left understood why viewpoint diversity is essential to the mission of a university—and thus how it can, and can’t, be brought about.

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GOP Senator Accuses AAUP President of Exacerbating ‘Organizational Antisemitism’

Emma Whitford October 28, 2025 1 min read

Emma Whitford
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: In a letter to American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten, Sen. Bill Cassidy, the Louisiana Republican who chairs the education committee, accused American Association of University Professors president and AFT vice president Todd Wolfson of promoting “organizational antisemitism” within the AAUP. 

Cassidy cited an August Inside Higher Ed interview with Wolfson in which the union leader stood against sending weapons to Israel, accused the Trump administration of weaponizing antisemitism for political gains and advocated for the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, a definition of antisemitism that does not include anti-Zionism.

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Top universities ramp up lobbying amid Trump higher education crackdown

Surina Venkat October 28, 2025 1 min read

Surina Venkat
The Hill

Excerpt: The nation’s top schools have ramped up their spending on lobbying the federal government this year amid President Trump’s crackdown on higher education, disclosures filed last week show.

Twenty-four top universities and one of the nation’s largest college systems have already spent around $24 million lobbying Washington this year, more than double what they spent during the same time period last year, according to federal disclosures.

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How targeting scholars for speech leaves lasting scars

Nate Honeycutt October 28, 2025 1 min read

Nate Honeycutt
Expression, FIRE

Excerpt: When a scholar is targeted for their expression, the story rarely ends when the headlines fade. The formal investigations wrap up and the social media outrage may die down, but for many, the experience marks a permanent shift in how they think, speak, and interact with others in public. Such cases have profound implications for academic freedom and the state of campus free speech in higher education.

According to FIRE’s Sanctioned Scholars report, nearly three-quarters of the scholars we asked said they would not change anything they said or did that led to being targeted. But many also said that, in other ways, they are now altering their speech.

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The Review: The AAUP's revised concept of academic freedom

Len Gutkin October 27, 2025 1 min read

Len Gutkin
Chronicle of Higher Education

Excerpt: Last week, I wrote about the most recent dust-up between the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), two organizations that understand their shared commitment to academic freedom in somewhat different ways. The inciting incident was a post on X in which the AAUP’s official account responded to charges of liberal bias in academe by insisting that “fascism generally doesn’t do great under peer review.” 

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