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Commentary: Progressives failed a lesson in free speech

April 19, 2024

Anais Mobarak
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: Last spring, my Arabic language instructor instituted a policy that non-Muslim students refrain from eating or drinking in class during Ramadan. When I objected to this rule, she told me that the problem with Americans is that we “care too much about our rights.” As such, I was very surprised to see her name appear on an open letter demanding that the administration “defend academic freedom, freedom of speech, and the right to peaceful assembly” in the context of advocacy for “Palestinian liberation.”

Unfortunately, the recent controversy surrounding Charter Club has demonstrated that progressive voices on campus have failed to recognize the value of free speech beyond its usefulness as a political instrument. Thus, as a community, we must work to foster an ideologically-free understanding of free speech.

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Liberal Students Are Struggling with Anxiety

April 12, 2024

Samuel J. Abrams
RealClear Education

Excerpt: Over the past few years, I have spent a considerable amount of time on college and university campuses of all sorts- from small liberal arts colleges to huge state schools – trying to understand the politics of Gen Z students.

I have met countless open-minded, curious, and pluralistic students, but I have also encountered “liberal” students who refuse to engage or listen to ideas that run counter to their own. These liberal students often hold the misguided and dangerous perspective that particular traits or identity characteristics immediately disqualify a person’s ideas, experiences, and views from being discussed and debated.

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Commentary: Derek Bok’s Flawed Diagnosis of Harvard’s Ailments

April 14, 2024

Peter Berkowitz
RealClear Politics

Excerpt: In “Why Americans Love to Hate Harvard,” published in Harvard Magazine’s March-April 2024 issue, Derek Bok weighs in on the state of higher education at Harvard and other elite colleges and universities and proposes a few reforms.

Bok’s essay suggests that hostility to America’s top universities arises in significant measure from sources external to higher education. While acknowledging that Harvard and many others have created faculties and curricula that are overwhelmingly progressive, his assessment greatly understates the accumulating damage to liberal education deriving from deliberate faculty and administration judgments, decisions, policies, and actions.

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Commentary: America, Jews, and the Ivy League

April 16, 2024

Tal Fortgang
Commentary

Excerpt: Once upon a time, not even a decade ago, the most important place in the world to me was a nondescript building on Washington Road in Princeton, New Jersey. Sitting in the shadow of Princeton University’s vaunted eating clubs, the Center for Jewish Life hosted daily prayer services, kosher meals, and most of the memorable conversations that made Princeton so formative for me.

It was Cornell’s Center for Jewish Living that was in the news this past October after an undergraduate threatened to “shoot up” the building, “stab” and “slit the throat” of any Jews he saw there, rape any Jewish women he encountered, behead any Jewish babies, and “shoot all you pig jews.” His threat put a fine point on the major dilemma American Jews must now confront. Are the Ivies our Promised Land or, in the post–October 7 era, a place where we might be gathering for annihilation?

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Campus censorship set for a record-breaking 2024

April 05, 2024

Greg Lukianoff
UnHerd

Excerpt: Last week, Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin tried to give a talk about democracy at the University of Maryland. I say “tried”, because he never got to actually do it. Moments after Raskin began his remarks, pro-Palestine protesters started heckling him, shouting accusations that he was “complicit in genocide” and preventing him from proceeding with his speech.

2023 was the worst year ever for campus deplatforming attempts — and 2024 is already on track to blow it out of the water. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) has already recorded 45 deplatforming attempts as of 15 March, a pace of around 200 for the year, but I suspect that it will be even higher as shout-downs have become such a popular tactic among activists.

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Commentary: Is This the End of Academic Freedom?

April 06, 2024

Paula Chakravartty and Vasuki Nesiah
New York Times

Excerpt: At New York University, the spring semester began with a poetry reading. Students and faculty gathered in the atrium of Bobst Library. At that time, about twenty-six thousand Palestinians had already been killed in Israel’s horrific war on Gaza; the reading was a collective act of bearing witness.

Soon after those lines were recited, the university administration shut the reading down. Afterward, we learned that students and faculty members were called into disciplinary meetings for participating in this apparently “disruptive” act; written warnings were issued.

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‘The Line’: Questions of Comedy, Speech, and Accountability

April 08, 2024

Abigail Chachkes and Thor N. Reimann
Harvard Crimson

Excerpt: Concerns about campus speech are taking Harvard by storm. Given the “worst score ever,” by college free speech watchdog FIRE, Harvard’s administration has put together initiative after initiative to bolster open dialogue on campus.

While most of the dialogue around free speech on college campuses focuses on classroom culture and student groups in more overtly political protest spaces, the comedy scene has flown under the radar — despite the fact that comedy is often a means of self-expression amid times of social and political unrest.

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Commentary: Mandatory DEI Statements Are Ideological Pledges of Allegiance

April 03, 2024

Randall Kennedy
Chronicle of Higher Education

Excerpt: On a posting for a position as an assistant professor in international and comparative education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, applicants are required to submit a CV, a cover letter, a research statement, three letters of reference, three or more writing samples, and a statement of teaching philosophy that includes a description of their “orientation toward diversity, equity, and inclusion practices.”

At Harvard and elsewhere, hiring for academic jobs increasingly requires these so-called diversity statements, which Harvard’s Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning describes as being “about your commitment to furthering EDIB within the context of institutions of higher education.” By requiring academics to profess — and flaunt — faith in DEI, the proliferation of diversity statements poses a profound challenge to academic freedom.

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The State That’s Trying to Rein in DEI Without Becoming Florida

March 31, 2024

Conor Friedersdorf
The Atlantic

Excerpt: Roughly a decade after the movement for diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, began to spread in American higher education, a political backlash is here. The Chronicle of Higher Education has tallied 80 bills since 2023 that aim to restrict DEI in some way, by banning DEI offices, mandatory diversity training, faculty diversity statements, and more. Eight have already become law, including in Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee, North Dakota, and Utah. The worst of these laws violate academic independence and free speech by attempting to forbid certain ideas in the classroom.

Utah’s Equal Opportunities Initiatives, or H.B. 261, which was signed into law in January, is more promising. It attempts to end the excessive and at times coercive focus on identity in higher education while also trying to protect academic freedom with carve-outs for research and course teaching.

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Black Scholars Face Anonymous Accusations in Anti-DEI Crusade

April 01, 2024

Ryan Quinn
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: This year began with a seismic event in higher education: Claudine Gay resigned as Harvard University’s first Black president after Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute and leading crusader against diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, publicized plagiarism allegations against her.

Her resignation was followed by high-profile allegations against a former Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who’s married to one of Gay’s most prominent critics, which fueled concerns over a coming “plagiarism war” with the right and left lobbing accusations at scholars on the other team. The war, so far, looks like a one-sided affair. Rufo and conservative media outlets have published multiple accusations of plagiarism and research misconduct, several of which appear serious and have made splashes in major mainstream media outlets.

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The War at Stanford

March 26, 2024

Theo Baker
The Atlantic

Excerpt: Israel is 7,500 miles away from Stanford’s campus, where I am a sophomore. But the Hamas invasion and the Israeli counterinvasion have fractured my university, a place typically less focused on geopolitics than on venture-capital funding for the latest dorm-based tech start-up. Few students would call for Biden’s head—I think—but many of the same young people who say they want peace in Gaza don’t seem to realize that they are in fact advocating for violence.

The extremism and anti-Semitism at Ivy League universities on the East Coast have attracted so much media and congressional attention that two Ivy presidents have lost their jobs. But few people seem to have noticed the culture war that has taken over our California campus.

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College Presidents Are Oblivious to Their Campus Climate

March 18, 2024

Samuel J. Abrams
Minding the Campus

Excerpt: The past five months have shown the world just how toxic speech is on college campuses. The climate for open inquiry and dialogue is under attack nationwide, and students are scared to speak, question, and express themselves freely. Using disparaging rhetoric, even violence, to prevent speech is now commonplace on campus, and thus, many students are turning inward, and genuine liberal learning is being interrupted. Yet, most college presidents believe their campuses are perfect examples of viewpoint diversity.

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Virginia Officials Scrutinize Two Universities’ DEI Course Syllabi

March 14, 2024

Ryan Quinn
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: Republican politicians have targeted diversity, equity and inclusion in state after state. They’ve passed laws to limit, defund or outright ban related programs. They’ve demanded information on universities’ DEI expenses and their numbers of DEI positions.

Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, a Republican who won office in 2021 after campaigning against the alleged teaching of critical race theory in K-12 schools, is diving into the details. His education secretary’s office has requested to review syllabi from upcoming diversity-themed courses at two public universities: George Mason, which has been planning a broad “Just Societies” mandate, and Virginia Commonwealth University, which has been planning a new “Racial Literacy” requirement. The universities say they have complied with the unusual requests.

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Colleges Got Comfortable Talking About Privilege. Now It’s Being Scrutinized.

March 12, 2024

Erin Gretzinger
Chronicle of Higher Education

Excerpt: The newsletter seemed innocuous. In January, the chief diversity officer at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine kicked off her “Monthly Diversity Digest” with a list of nearby events for Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Then Sherita Hill Golden outlined a “diversity word of the month”: privilege. “Privilege is a set of unearned benefits given to people who are in a specific social group,” Golden wrote. “Privilege operates on personal, interpersonal, cultural and institutional levels, and it provides advantages and favors to members of dominant groups at the expense of members of other groups.” Administrators and faculty members have been parroting similar definitions for years. This time, however, it struck a nerve online.

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Commentary: The Skeptics Were Wrong

March 12, 2024

Greg Lukianoff and Sean Stevens
The Eternally Radical Idea, Substack

Excerpt: Last week, we shared the alarming data coming out of FIRE’s new Campus Deplatforming Database to show just how bad the effects of violent protests and heckler’s vetoes on campus free speech really are. This week, we’ll address the skepticism about the “campus free speech crisis” dating back to 2018.

The crux of the “new dynamic” hypothesis is this: Do we have data supporting the claim that a significant portion of college students have become more hostile toward free speech than previous generations? According to FIRE’s new Campus Deplatforming Database (last updated Feb. 29, 2024), the answer is yes.

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Columbia University Sued For Suspending Two Pro-Palestinian Student Groups Last Fall

March 12, 2024

Mary Whitfill Roeloffs
Forbes

Excerpt: The New York Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit in Manhattan on behalf of a pair of pro-Palestinian student groups that were suspended last fall after their protests pushing for a cease-fire in Gaza allegedly violated university policy—as tension over the Israel-Hamas war spills onto campuses and causes some donors to withdraw support of legacy schools.

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Pro-Palestinian faculty sue to stop Penn from giving wide swath of files to Congress

March 13, 2024

Maryclaire Dale
Associated Press

Excerpt: Pro-Palestinian faculty at the University of Pennsylvania have sued the Ivy League school to stop it from sending sensitive internal material to a congressional committee investigating antisemitism on campus — a probe they call “a new form of McCarthyism.”

Professor Huda Fakhreddine and other members of Penn Faculty for Justice in Palestine fear the school is poised to send files, emails, student records and other material to Congress, putting both their safety and academic freedom at risk.

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Commentary: Civil Discourse on Campus Is Put to the Test

March 07, 2024

Pamela Paul
New York Times

Excerpt: The same week that a U.C. Berkeley protest ended in violence, with doors broken, people allegedly injured, a guest lecture organized by Jewish students canceled and attendees evacuated by the police through an underground passageway, a group of academics gathered across the bay at Stanford to discuss restoring inclusive civil discourse on campus. The underlying question: In today’s heated political environment, is that even possible?

Over the course of two packed days of moderated and free discussion, we would try to test it out.

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Columbia Has Changed Its Protest Policy—Again

March 07, 2024

Joanna Alonso
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: As protests raged on college campuses after the start of the Israel-Hamas war in October, Columbia University set out to codify clear-cut guidelines for on-campus demonstrations. But the announcement of the Student Group Event Policy and Procedure plan drew swift backlash for being overly restrictive; among other things, it required “special events”—including any gathering expected to draw “high attendance/capacity”—to be registered two weeks in advance.

Four months later, the university has released new guidelines, called the Interim University Policy for Safe Demonstrations. It was born in part out of concerns that the previous iteration had been established too “hastily,” said Dr. Jeanine D’Armiento, chair of Columbia’s University Senate executive committee and an associate professor of medicine in anesthesiology.

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Communist group disrupts Timothy Snyder’s lecture, forces evacuation

March 04, 2024

Ben Raab
Yale News

Excerpt: Timothy Snyder evacuated his “Hitler, Stalin, and Us” lecture on Thursday afternoon after a Communist activist group entered the classroom and would not leave.

Around 10 demonstrators affiliated with the Revolutionary Communist Party showed up at the classroom in William Harkness Hall five minutes after the start of class and began shouting at Snyder while holding up signs and recording students. “It seemed like they just wanted to shout Professor Snyder down, not engage in any sort of discussion,” William Wang ’26, a student in the class, told the News. “After a few minutes of shouting it was clear they weren’t gonna go away. Eventually, we just left and went to another classroom.”

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UVA Leadership Squelches Debate About University’s Antisemitism Problem

March 03, 2024

James A. Bacon
Bacon's Rebellion

Excerpt: During the University of Virginia Board of Visitors meeting Thursday, Provost Ian Baucom briefed board members on what the administration was doing to defuse tensions in the UVA community between Jews and the vocal pro-Palestinian faction over the Israel-Gaza war.

But when board members began addressing the hostile environment for Jewish students at UVA, there was no sign that the Provost, President Jim Ryan, or Rector Robert Hardie were interested in “listening” to anyone who disagreed with them, much less in “engaging” with them on the most contentious issue to afflict the University in recent years.

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Commentary: If Berkeley Wants to Protect Free Speech It Will Expel Its Rioters

February 28, 2024

Greg Lukianoff and Angel Eduardo
The Free Press, Substack

Excerpt: On our most elite college campuses—most recently, the University of California, Berkeley—the plan seems to be to unfound it. Earlier this week, a student group called Bears for Palestine published on Instagram its intention of “combatting lies” by shutting down an event featuring Israeli Defense Forces reservist and lawyer Ran Bar-Yoshafat.

The mob got their way. The event was canceled. Bar-Yoshafat, along with the students who had attended the event, were escorted out the back of the theater. Any students who took part in the violence should be expelled—assault is a crime and most certainly violates the school’s code of conduct. As for the students who organized the shutdown but did not participate in the violence, they should be punished.

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Israeli Speaker Canceled, Event Evacuated at UC Berkeley

February 29, 2024

Johanna Alonso
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: Students attending a talk by an Israeli lawyer were forced to evacuate the University of California, Berkeley’s Zellerbach Playhouse Monday night after protesters descended on the venue, breaking two windows and a door.  

Several attendees have reported to campus police that they were physically assaulted and called antisemitic slurs by the protesters, according to Berkeley spokesman Dan Mogulof.

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Editorial: Free speech is under attack on campuses and it’s not by the “woke left”

February 24, 2024

Editorial Board
Case Western Reserve Observer

Excerpt: When it comes to the First Amendment, many people tend to forget that it was not meant to protect you from public scrutiny—it is meant to protect you from tyrannical governments. And currently, the United States’ government is acting less and less concerned about adhering to this amendment’s core tenets.

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Georgia Senate considers controls on school libraries and criminal charges for librarians

February 20, 2024

Jeff Amy
Washington Post

Excerpt: A proposal that would require school libraries to notify parents of every book their child checks out was advanced by Georgia senators Tuesday, while a proposal to subject school librarians to criminal charges for distributing material containing obscenity waits in the wings.

The measures are part of a broad and continuing push by Republicans in many states to root out what they see as inappropriate material from schools and libraries, saying books and electronic materials are corrupting children.

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Indiana Bill Threatens Faculty Members Who Don’t Provide ‘Intellectual Diversity’

February 21, 2024

Ryan Quinn
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: In an echo of last year, state lawmakers in different parts of the country are pushing bills that would diminish tenure protections and target diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

Indiana’s Republican-dominated state Senate wants to do both at once. Earlier this month it passed a bill that takes aim at both tenure and DEI in public colleges and universities, tying them together with language that shifts focus from racial or other notions of diversity toward what it calls “intellectual diversity.” Senate Bill 202, now being debated in the majority-Republican state House of Representatives, defines that term as “multiple, divergent, and varied scholarly perspectives on an extensive range of public policy issues.”

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Harvard condemns ‘flagrantly antisemitic’ cartoon posted by student groups

February 21, 2024

Annabelle Tilsit
Washington Post

Excerpt: Harvard University is again embroiled in a controversy over antisemitism on campus, after student groups and a faculty group shared an antisemitic cartoon.

In a statement late Tuesday, Harvard interim president Alan M. Garber condemned the cartoon, calling it “flagrantly antisemitic,” after it was shared on social media by two student groups — the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee and the African American Resistance Organization — and reposted by Harvard Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine.

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House Republicans Hit Harvard With Subpoena in Antisemitism Investigation

February 16, 2024

Amanda Yen
Daily Beast

Excerpt: The House committee investigating alleged antisemitism at elite universities will subpoena Harvard University for documents relating to its handling of campus speech.

The Republican-led House Committee on Education and the Workforce announced its decision—which marks the first time a university has been served with a subpoena in the panel’s history—Friday morning in statement. It said subpoenas were necessary because Harvard failed to hand over “priority documents” to the committee, instead providing many that were already public.

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Whether you call it institutional ‘neutrality’ or ‘restraint,’ the Kalven Report is the best way forward

February 13, 2024

Angel Eduardo
Foundation for Individual Rights in Expression

Excerpt: Last week, FIRE, along with the Academic Freedom Alliance and Heterodox Academy, released an open letter urging universities to adopt the principle of institutional neutrality articulated by the University of Chicago’s 1967 Report on the University’s Role in Political and Social Action, also known as the “Kalven Report.”

The Kalven Report posits the best way to guard against establishing party lines on campus — and deterring those who disagree from speaking out — is for schools to remain “the home and sponsor of critics,” rather than the critics themselves. This requires committing to “an extraordinary environment of freedom of inquiry and maintain[ing] an independence from political fashions, passions, and pressures.”

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Commentary: Columbia Law Student Senate Censors To Prevent Censorship

February 06, 2024

Ken White
Popehat Report

Excerpt:  University students are not the greatest threat to American liberty. That sounds obvious, but you might not know if you listened to popular discourse about universities. Universities, we’re told, are hotbeds of ruthless woke kulturkampf, indoctrinating students into far-left ideology and giving them an unslakable thirst for censorship that will be unleashed on America upon their graduation.

I dissent for several reasons. First, and most importantly, the greatest threat to American freedom of speech comes from our elected leaders. Second, a substantial part of the tumult about university students is right-wing kayfabe. The hostility towards students is often hostility against a set of values most popular with students — views about ethnic diversity, gender, and sexuality.

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An Open Letter to College and University Trustees and Regents: It’s Time to Adopt Institutional Neutrality

February 07, 2024

Academic Freedom Alliance, Heterodox Academy, FIRE

Excerpt: We stand together in sending this entreaty to college and university trustees and regents across the country during this time of growing national concern about the fate and security of free thought on campuses.

It is time for those entrusted with ultimate oversight authority for your institutions to restore truth-seeking as the primary mission of higher education by adopting a policy of institutional neutrality on social and political issues that do not concern core academic matters or institutional operations.

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Commentary: Who gets to pick what we study?

February 08, 2024

Abigail Rabieh
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: National attention on higher education feels like it’s constantly increasing, with the spotlight shining especially brightly upon elite institutions. It should come as no surprise that after years of casting themselves as the makers of future world leaders, Ivy League schools succeeded in convincing America that they are, indeed, important.

When the education of the next generation of presidents, billionaires, and business leaders is on the line, it’s reasonable to expect that the current ruling class would want a say. While this interference can manifest through democratic processes — from campaign threats about taxing endowments to federal investigations over student life — it’s private influence that seems to be sparking the most concern inside universities themselves. Donations to universities take place out of the public eye, with the decisions of a few affecting the lives of a large community. But should this form of behind-the-doors influence be a cause for concern?

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Looking Back on a Decade of Cancel Culture

January 23, 2024

Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott
Quillette

Excerpt: If the first great age of political correctness can be described as having played out between 1985 and 1995, its successor began around 2014, when a self-confident, pro-censorship ethos began emerging among college students. They banded together with professors and administrators in a free-speech-skeptical coalition—and the second great age of political correctness was born.

This second wave came with its own set of warnings from public intellectuals. But, unlike during the 1980s and 1990s, most of the whistleblowers this time around were political liberals.

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Administrators — not just DEI administrators — are the biggest threat to free speech on campus

January 19, 2024

Greg Lukianoff
The Eternally Radical Idea, Substack

Excerpt: I appeared on “Rising” with Robby Soave and Briahna Joy Gray on Wednesday, and I have some thoughts I want to share with you all coming off of that discussion.

However, the big question that came up during our discussion was whether the presence of DEI administrators is a threat to free speech on campus — and, well … yes, it is. But it’s not only DEI administrators. If my more than two decades doing this work has taught me anything, it’s that administrators in general are threats to free speech on campus.

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Amid National Backlash, Colleges Brace for Fresh Wave of Anti-DEI Legislation

January 16, 2024

J. Brian Charles
Chronicle of Higher Education

Excerpt: At least 14 states this year will consider legislation that could dismantle the ways college administrators attempt to correct historical and structural gender and racial disparities and make campus climates more inclusive, according to a Chronicle of Higher Education analysis.

The Chronicle has identified at least 19 bills that will be considered in the coming months that seek to ban the employment and funding of diversity, equity, and inclusion offices; the use of pledges by faculty and staff to commit to creating a more inclusive environment on campus, commonly known as diversity statements; mandatory diversity training; and identity-based preferences for hiring and admissions.

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Commentary: The American Bar Association’s Coming Free-Speech Intervention

January 17, 2024

Mark Pulliam
James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal

Excerpt:  To its credit, the American Bar Association, responsible for accrediting the nation’s law schools for purposes of eligibility for federal student loans and graduates’ bar admission, is considering a proposal (sponsored by the ABA’s Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar) that would require law schools to adopt policies protecting the free-speech rights of faculty, staff, and students. It would also prohibit disruptive conduct interfering with free expression (such as the “heckler’s veto”) and provide for due process for those accused of violating the policy.

The ABA’s accreditation rules carry great weight, because law schools that do not comply face the loss of their accreditation—in effect, capital punishment. Law schools cannot ignore the ABA when accreditation is at stake, and the ABA knows it.

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As a new generation rises, tension between free speech and inclusivity on college campuses simmers

January 13, 2024

Collin Binkley
Associated Press

Excerpt: Generations of Americans have held firm to a version of free speech that makes room for even the vilest of views. It’s girded by a belief that the good ideas rise above the bad, that no one should be punished for voicing an idea — except in rare cases where the idea could lead directly to illegal action.

Today, that idea faces competition more forceful and vehement than it has seen for a century. On college campuses, a newer version of free speech is emerging as young generations redraw the line where expression crosses into harm.

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We Know Diversity Statements Are Political Litmus Tests

January 04, 2024

Komi Frey
Chronicle of Higher Education

Excerpt: From 2016 to 2022, most University of California campuses participated in an experimental program, funded by the state Legislature, to use diversity, equity, and inclusion statements as the first cut in faculty-applicant pools. According to UC’s guidelines, the purpose of diversity statements is for applicants to explain what they have done and plan to do to serve underrepresented-minority people on campus — specifically, African Americans, American Indians, and Hispanics/Latinos.

By making political values the sole criterion at the initial hiring stage, UC-faculty searches strayed from the American Association of University Professors’ bedrock 1915 “Declaration of Principles,” which states that scholars have a duty to remain neutral and not act in the interests of any particular segment of the population.

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Anti-Israel and Pro-Palestinian Graffiti Marks Campus

December 29, 2023

Julie Bonette
Princeton Alumni Weekly

Excerpt: Princeton University public safety has increased patrols on campus after inflammatory anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian graffiti was painted at three spots in late December, according to a Princeton Police Department (PPD) incident report, the University, and a Department of Public Safety (DPS) log. No suspect has been detained.

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George Mason, UNC Under U.S. Investigation for Alleged Bias

December 26, 2023

Doug Lederman
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: The U.S. Education Department has added George Mason University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to the list of colleges and universities it is investigating for alleged discrimination based on shared ancestry.

In updating the list, the department does not say what possible violations it is investigating under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which requires federally funded institutions to protect students from discrimination based on race, color or national origin.

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Is saying ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ protected speech under the First Amendment?

December 19, 2023

Jordan Howell
Foundation for Individual Rights in Expression

Excerpt: Since the October 7 Hamas terror attacks in Israel and the subsequent invasion of Gaza, college campuses across the United States have experienced almost daily protests and demonstrations by students and faculty of all political stripes. Some are raising their voices in support of Israelis; others, in support of Palestinians.

That being said, FIRE has been troubled to see some college leaders react to protected speech and peaceful protests with calls to prohibit speech they view as inflammatory or even to ban student groups because of their viewpoints. The use of one phrase in particular — “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” — is so hotly contested that some have called for banning its utterance entirely.

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If Colleges Ban "Advocacy of Genocide," What Would That Mean for Speech Supporting Israeli Actions in Gaza?

December 16, 2023

Eugene Volokh
Volokh Conspiracy, Reason Magazine

Excerpt: I've argued before that, if universities ban "advocacy of genocide," that "could easily be used against pro-Israel speakers," such as those who support Israel's counterattack on Hamas in Gaza. Here's supporting evidence, from the Harvard/Harris poll conducted last week:

It appears that a substantial majority of college-age registered voters, and indeed likely of 18-to-34-year-olds, characterize Israel's actions in Gaza as "genocide." And though the majority among the public at large don't do that, it's easy to imagine many university administrations and faculties who would be more on the anti-Israel side than is the country as a whole—especially when they are supported in their anti-Israel positions by student sentiment.

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Princeton Conference Celebrates UDHR’s 75th Birthday

December 17, 2023

Peter Berkowitz
RealClear Politics

Excerpt: Amid political turmoil abroad and widespread intellectual confusion at home, renewing appreciation of human rights and their proper place in democratic self-government and responsible foreign policy is for the United States a vital act of democratic self-government and responsible foreign policy.

In the face of these daunting headwinds – and almost exactly 75 years to the day after the United States joined 47 other nations at the United Nations to adopt the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (none voted against the UDHR, eight abstained, two did not vote) – a two-day conference held last week at Princeton University gathered approximately 40 religious leaders and scholars from around the world to reaffirm the power of human rights to unite peoples and nations.

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Commentary: Donors, Alumni Helped Take Down an Ivy League President. Is This a Moment or a Movement?

December 17, 2023

Douglas Belkin
Wall Street Journal

Excerpt: The recent resignation of University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill was a rarity in higher education—outside forces had stormed up the ivory tower and dethroned a leader. It was an uprising years in the making.

 [Princetonians for Free Speech co-founder Edward Yingling anticipates that over time prospective students will vote with their feet, especially if some employers stop hiring from certain universities because they don’t believe students are exposed to a range of views and are free to engage in open debate…. "The elite schools…will become known as schools of indoctrination and not true universities," said Yingling. "A Harvard degree will no longer be a ticket to success, it will be a scarlet letter."

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The Fall of Penn’s President Brings Campus Free Speech to a Crossroads

December 14, 2023

Vimal Patel
New York Times

Excerpt: The toppling of the University of Pennsylvania’s president, Elizabeth Magill — four days after her testimony before Congress on whether to punish students if they called for genocide — was a victory for those who believe that pro-Palestinian protesters have gone too far in their speech.

For many longtime observers of the campus speech wars, however, this moment is a dire one for freedom of expression.

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Eisgruber issues statement in response to congressional hearings on antisemitism

December 12, 2023

Sandeep Mangat and Isabel Connolly
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: After dramatic hearings in the U.S. House of Representatives about antisemitic speech on college campuses which have led one university president to resign, University President Christopher Eisgruber released a statement. In the statement, Eisgruber condemned antisemitic speech on campus, highlighted Princeton’s robust free speech protections, and stressed the responsibility of the institution to push back on hateful speech.

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Commentary: Princeton punished me for fighting to fix DEI and antisemitism on campus

December 13, 2023

Zachary Dulberg
New York Post

Excerpt: If the words “diversity, equity, and inclusion” mean anything, it’s that hatred is unacceptable no matter what form it takes. Yet the past two months have made clear to me that institutional DEI tolerates — and thereby encourages — the particularly awful hatred of antisemitism.

What else could explain what’s happening at Princeton University?

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Penn president’s resignation stirs debate about limits of free speech

December 10, 2023

Hannah Natanson and Susan Svrluga
Washington Post

Excerpt: The resignation of the University of Pennsylvania’s president following her testimony over how to handle calls for the genocide of Jews has highlighted the tightrope school leaders are walking as students protest the war in Gaza — and fueled instant debate over how far colleges can go to restrict speech.

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