National Free Speech News & Commentary

Emma Camp
Reason Magazine

Excerpt: Last week, officials ordered several public universities in Florida to examine courses for "antisemitism or anti-Israeli bias," reported The Chronicle.

The directive, issued on Friday, ordered the leaders of 12 public universities in the State University System of Florida to provide the system's board of governors with a list of "related instructional materials" for any course whose description or syllabus contains the keywords Israel, Israeli, Palestine, Palestinian, Middle East, Zionism, Zionist, Judaism, Jewish, and Jews.

John Warner
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: There are a number of recent stories about political acts that are direct attacks on how higher ed institutions operate that have me worried because they lack contemporary precedent.

Consider the gap between a board dedicated to overseeing the health and well-being of the institution and one specifically dedicated to “controlling” the institution, apparently on behalf of the state’s chief executive. Oversight and control are two very different things.

Yascha Mounk
Yascha Mounk Substack

Excerpt: Plenty of arguments against free speech lack any credible pretense of sophistication. They simply jump from the undoubted fact that many people say dumb or disgusting things on the internet to the understandable, if wrong-headed, wish that anybody who says such things should be made to shut up. But those who argue for restrictions on free speech with an ounce of sophistication have increasingly begun to invoke an idea by a philosopher whose work they otherwise studiously ignore: Karl Popper and his “paradox of tolerance.”

Robert Barba
Wall Street Journal

Excerpt: Three Columbia University deans, who were placed on indefinite leave last month over insensitive text messages they sent during a panel about Jewish life on campus, are resigning, a university spokeswoman said Thursday.

Ryan Quinn
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: Post-tenure reviews aren’t a new phenomenon in higher education. The American Association of University Professors has had a stance on them going back to 1983, and in 1999 it released a report saying they should be for “faculty development” and not “undertaken for the purpose of dismissal.”

Now, the first round of post-tenure reviews has been completed. And the flagship University of Florida’s process produced a figure that has raised eyebrows among its faculty: About one-fifth of reviewed professors failed to pass muster or gave up defending their tenure.

Greg Lukianoff
The Eternally Radical Idea, Substack

Excerpt: I recently appeared on “Plain English with Derek Thompson” to discuss “The Coddling of the American Mind” and how what Tim Urban calls “social justice fundamentalism,” otherwise called “wokeness,” affects mental health. Readers will recall my May 21 ERI post with my FIRE colleague Andrea Lan where we delved into the data on this.

As I mentioned on X recently, the reactions to the episode have ranged from thoughtful and interesting to the unsurprising assertions of, “My side is happy because we're better people. Your side is miserable because you're terrible people,” and, “My side is miserable because we actually see the world accurately. Your side is happy because you're selfish monsters.”