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Twyla Colburn and Vitus Larrieu
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: After 25 years at Princeton, Keith Whittington, the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Politics, announced that he is leaving Princeton to teach at Yale Law School at the end of this academic year.

Whittington describes himself as a “right of center” academic, a core value he upholds as important for bringing diversity to academic spaces. In an interview with The Daily Princetonian, Whittington says that a lack of conservative voices in academic spaces creates “stereotypes of what those views look like” which leads to increased political polarization. His move to Yale Law comes as the school has faced criticism from conservatives for fostering “cancel culture,” prompting Circuit Judges James Ho and Elizabeth Branch to boycott hiring clerks who graduate from Yale Law.

Evan Mandery
Politico

Excerpt: [Greg] Lukianoff’s philosophy — civil libertarianism — is arguably the very core of the American project. And yet it now faces intense threats from the left and the right, which Lukianoff chronicles in a new book on cancel culture. The book also offers some prescriptions, a new approach to politics and culture that could help bridge our poisonous divide, if given the chance.

Lukianoff doesn’t have all the answers, but as he recounted his own struggles with severe depression, it’s clear that his approach is a healing one. Whether Americans are willing to listen — and whether civil libertarianism can survive — is far less certain.

By Danielle Shapiro and Yonah Berenson
Wall Street Journal

Excerpt: As college campuses erupted in support of Hamas’s atrocities, many administrators responded equivocally. Often they took refuge in the principles of free speech and institutional neutrality, saying universities have no business taking positions on controversial issues. That would have been convincing if they had adhered to those principles before this month, but many didn’t. Officials often took strong positions on far less significant and more debatable issues. This politicization set the stage for the morally and intellectually bankrupt protests that have caused administrators such embarrassment.

Lauren Noble
National Review

Excerpt: Even at Yale, it is not every day that a faculty member expresses “solidarity” — and apparent glee — over the murder, rape, and kidnapping of civilians. So it did not go unnoticed when, as Israel was reeling from the deadliest terror attack in its history, associate professor Zareena Grewal proclaimed on X that “Palestinians have every right to resist through armed struggle” against a “genocidal settler state.” She also circulated a video of the onslaught captioned, “It’s been such an extraordinary day!”

Over 50,000 people subsequently signed a petition calling on Yale to fire Grewal for her support of terrorism. The university responded quickly, declining to discipline Grewal based on its commitment to freedom of speech. Anyone who has followed headlines about Yale over the past decade may be understandably surprised to learn that the university has such principles.

Yascha Mounk
Persuasion

Excerpt: On October 7th, the world witnessed the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust. Many people, of all faiths and convictions, have recognized the enormity of these crimes. Numerous world leaders denounced the terrorist attacks in clear language. Private citizens shared their grief on social media. Millions mourned. But despite the outpouring of support, there has also been a large contingent of people and organizations who stayed uncharacteristically silent—or went so far as to celebrate the carnage.

Some of the most famous universities in the world—including Princeton, Yale and Stanford—only released statements after they came under intense pressure on social media.

Nathan Goetting
Discourse

Excerpt: The current academic free speech crisis stems from two causes. The first is that free speech principles are unnatural and counterintuitive. This has always been the case and, given human nature, always will be. The second, addressed in the next article in this series, is that now young people are exhorting—demanding, even—that older generations use a heavy censorial hand to promote social and political goals. This is unprecedented in our history and, without immediate and significant action, may prove ruinous to the mission of higher education.

Conor Friedersdorf
The Atlantic

Excerpt: Attacks on faculty rights are frequent in academia, where professors’ words are now policed by illiberal administrators, state legislators, and students. I’ve reported on related controversies in American higher education for more than 20 years. But I’ve never seen a policy that threatens academic freedom or First Amendment rights on a greater scale than what is now unfolding in this country’s largest system of higher education: California’s community colleges.

Frustratingly––even tragically––the same system is implementing new DEI rules, mandated by state bureaucrats, that trample on free speech while coercing faculty members on how to teach their subjects, which scholarly conclusions to reach, and even what political positions to advocate. Some faculty members say they feel like they must choose between their job and their conscience.

The University of Minnesota-Twin Cities AAUP Chapter
Academe Blog

Excerpt: The University of Minnesota-Twin Cities chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) deplores Hamline University leadership’s continued misrepresentation of its 2022 violation of the principle of academic freedom.  

Unfortunately, Hamline administrators have failed to learn from their mishandling of this case; rather than recommit to the principle of academic freedom, they have affirmed their disregard for it.

Maggie Hicks
Chronicle of Higher Education

Excerpt: On Tuesday afternoon a bright-red graphic popped up on a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill student group’s Instagram page. The post, by the campus’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, advertised a “Day of Resistance” protest on Thursday. Behind bold, capital lettering, a group of cartoon protesters held up peace signs and posters. A silhouette of a paraglider flew above.

Similar images appeared on several other organizations’ pages throughout the day next to statements reflecting the same sentiment — that deadly attacks by the Hamas militant group in Israel over the weekend had been justified and a direct result of the Israeli government’s oppression of people in occupied Palestinian territory. Those statements have been met with fierce criticism on social media calling on colleges to denounce the groups.

Eli Meyerhoff and Isaac Kamola
Academe Blog

Excerpt: Today, attacks on academic freedom originate from state houses, governors’ offices, partisan political organizations, think tanks, and online trolls. This multi-pronged attack on academic freedom requires a mass political—rather than a merely individual, institutional, or procedural—response.

We question whether the language of academic freedom provides the strongest framework for a successful mass defense against this political onslaught. We suggest that an alternative, complementary principle, “freedom to learn,” offers a more widely resonant rallying cry.

Jonathan Turley
Jonathan Turley’s Blog

Excerpt: Universities and colleges across the country have become embroiled in a debate over free speech in the aftermath of the massacre of Israelis by Hamas terrorists this week. Various student groups have expressed support for Hamas or their cause while condemning Israel. Black Lives Matter (BLM) chapters have even shown the image below of one of the terrorists who paraglided into Israel where hundreds of civilians were murdered, including babies.

Harvard has been a particular flashpoint over strident statements of condemnation of Israel immediately after the attack. The support has led to at least one firm rescinding an offer to a pro-Palestinian NYU law student as well as calls for universities to cut off support for student groups condemning Israel.

Bryan Paul
Washington Examiner

Excerpt: When thinking of college alumni, one generally imagines boosters donning their alma mater’s signature colors and cheering proudly for their team at homecoming games, or a multimillionaire being courted at campus events and donating substantial sums to fund an institution’s new building, sports complex, or scholarship program.

University of Chicago News

Excerpt: At a time when many state governments are enacting or considering restrictions on what can be taught at public universities, a new survey developed by AP-NORC and the University of Chicago shows that large majorities of Americans oppose such restrictions and support many essential aspects of academic freedom in universities.

Ryan Quinn
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: At the American Anthropological Association’s major annual meeting next month, five women from four countries were set to discuss gender and sex—and to criticize other academics’ views on these topics.

They titled this serious session something cheeky, with a Salt-N-Pepa song reference: “Let’s Talk About Sex, Baby: Why biological sex remains a necessary analytic category in anthropology.” The association’s executive board has now canceled the panel, releasing a statement Thursday titled “No Place For Transphobia in Anthropology.” Ramona Perez, the association’s president, explained that after the preliminary program was published online Aug. 1, showing the panelists’ names, anthropologists from multiple fields raised concern.

Kristen Shahverdian, Samantha LaFrance
PEN America

Excerpt: Earlier this month, when disability activist Alice Wong submitted her remarks for a virtual talk at Boston University’s School of Public Health, the school made an unusual request: to change what she planned to say.

Because she cannot speak, Wong requires questions in advance of public appearances. This allows her to type answers ahead of time to more efficiently use a text-to-speech app. Days before the scheduled talk, a school official wrote to Wong, asking that she change “F U Dr. Fauci” to “I disagree with Dr. Fauci” and to remove the names of the other officials. In doing so, the school inadvertently transformed a simple accessibility request into an opportunity to muffle the activist’s speech.

Matthew Wilson and Alba Bajri
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: To the Editor:

On Sept. 17, The Daily Princetonian published an article by Aidan Gouley ’27 entitled “Princetonians must invest in the marketplace of ideas.” The author calls on students to “situat[e] free expression in a liberal context,” claiming that “the debate on free expression at Princeton has been co-opted by campus conservatives” while slandering principled and nonpartisan free speech advocacy as “toxic and polarizing.”

Gouley’s allegation that conservative students have “co-opted” the free speech debate is an oft-regurgitated and thoroughly debunked trope. Articles leveling the same meritless argument have a lengthy history of appearing in the pages of this publication — and have been amply refuted. Gouley calls on students “to create an environment of learning for all in the natural exchange of individual ideas and experiences that both includes and simultaneously transcends the political.” But absentminded complaining about the co-option of the free speech issue by conservative students — the so-called “ideologues” making “overbroad claims about the ideological slant of the University” — does not help “bridge the political divide,” nor does it promote the free exchange of ideas.

Gouley’s assertion that “Princeton hardly feels like an institution where free speech is directly under attack” betrays a painful lack of awareness of the real problems facing our University.

Foundation for Individual Rights in Expression Email to subscribers

Excerpt: Despite Harvard’s reputation for excellent scholarship, the university has consistently failed to meet standards in one area: free speech.

According to FIRE’s 2024 College Free Speech Rankings, Harvard University ranked dead last at 248 out of 248 institutions. Students reported their discomfort expressing ideas, lack of confidence in the administration’s support for speech, and acceptance of students shouting down speakers.

Christopher Eisgruber
Office of the President, Princeton University

Excerpt: Given the importance of academic freedom to what we do, I wanted to begin the year by reaffirming this University’s steadfast support for it.  I say this now because it has unfortunately become common for university faculty members here and elsewhere to become the target of viral social media storms focused on controversial materials that they assign or teach.  That has sometimes extended to demands that the University should ban or condemn a book, cancel a course, or discipline a professor.

We of course will not do that.  Academic freedom protects your right to decide what to teach and how to teach it.  That right, like the right to free speech on campus, is very broad indeed, and we will protect it.

Emma Camp
Reason Magazine
 
Excerpt: According to a new survey, only one-third of college students say it's never acceptable to shout down a controversial campus speaker. And one-quarter think using violence can be acceptable in at least some circumstances to stop someone from speaking on campus.

The highest-ranked schools consistently had "green" speech code ratings—a measure FIRE uses to indicate that a school's official policies do not trample student and faculty First Amendment rights—and administrations that consistently defended controversial speech. However, many of these same schools seem to have student bodies that aren't quite so tolerant.

Stanford Alumni for Free Speech and Critical Thinking Newsletter

Excerpt: One of our readers forwarded to us Cornell President Martha E. Pollack’s letter last week welcoming students and faculty back to campus. The letter focuses on the issues of freedom of expression and critical thinking in ways we would hope Stanford’s new leadership can similarly express and then implement this coming academic year. The text of the entire letter is posted at our website.

All indications are that this coming academic year will see a robust discussion nationwide, both on and off campus, about the importance of free speech and academic freedom at our U.S. colleges and universities and, if any restrictions are to be imposed, who gets to decide and why?

Debra Satz and Dan Edelstein
New York Times

Excerpt: Free speech is once again a flashpoint on college campuses. This year has seen at least 20 instances in which students or faculty members attempted to rescind invitations or to silence speakers. In March, law school students at our own institution made national news when they shouted down a conservative federal judge, Kyle Duncan. And by signing legislation that undermines academic freedom in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis is carrying out what is effectively a broad assault against higher education.

We believe that this intolerance of ideas is not just a consequence of an increasingly polarized society. We think it also results from the failure of higher education to provide students with the kind of shared intellectual framework that we call “civic education.”

Eric Kelderman
Chronicle of Higher Education

Excerpt: Americans today believe in the value of a college credential, but they aren’t convinced higher education is fulfilling its promise to society.

That ambivalence toward colleges — general support with some real caveats — infused responses to a national poll by The Chronicle to gauge public perceptions of higher education. The goal was to probe attitudes about the value of a degree and, beyond educating individual students, institutions’ broader activities and goals. This is the first of several stories that will explore the poll’s findings and the issues they raise.

Lori Lowenthal Marcus
Jewish Journal

Excerpt: “Wokeness” and cancel culture operate in reverse when it comes to the Jews. For all other minorities, the Woke Police eagerly sniff out barely perceptible (or non-existent) “harm” caused by a teacher’s stray phrase in a classroom, an actor’s comments, an author’s opinion, or a physician’s approval of biological facts.

But then there are statements about Jews. For these, even the most outrageous and wildly unfounded assertions about Jews and/or the Jewish State are not only permitted to be uttered but also tweeted and retweeted, expounded upon and, most significantly, taught as truth in classrooms.

Denise Valenti
Princeton Office of Communications

Excerpt: Anthony Romero was once a Princeton undergraduate struggling with how to confront hurtful speech he experienced on campus. Today, as executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, he zealously defends Americans’ right to use that same kind of speech.

Romero traced his journey during an Orientation event on Tuesday for first-year students where he joined President Christopher L. Eisgruber to explore the importance of academic freedom and free expression on campus. The event marked the second consecutive year Eisgruber has led an Orientation session on the topic.

Bill Hewitt ‘74
Tiger Roars, Substack

Excerpt: As I have noted elsewhere, the [Princeton & Slavery] Project is the “Flying Dutchman of Princeton” – a ghost ship that haunts Princeton with profound misinformation that defames Witherspoon and misleads the debate over the University’s statue honoring him.  

In her 2019 Thrive presentation, Prof. Sandweiss observed, “Now a project like ours requires scrupulous attention to accuracy.  As I told my students again and again, one mistake can make people doubt everything we’re doing.”  Why the Project erred so badly with its Witherspoon essay and why it has refused even to acknowledge – much less correct – its numerous mistakes therein are important questions for which the Princeton community deserves answers.

Eric Rasmusen, Indiana University professor

Excerpt: Suppose a university has an online form where anyone can report something a student says in private conversation and the report goes into a special surveillance software database that the university bought from the Maxient company for that purpose. A Bias Response Team receives notice of the report, and sees that it is political speech protected by the First Amendment. The Team leaves the report in the student’s file, and asks the student to come to a voluntary meeting. Virginia Tech’s policy in a case like this was to: Invite them to engage in a voluntary conversation. . . . If a student fails to respond to this message, or declines to meet with our office, no further action is taken and the student faces no consequences of any kind.

Would such a bias response apparatus chill speech at the university? Speech First and three circuits say yes; Virginia Tech (Sands) and two circuits say no. Surveillance software is part of that, since they are what bias response teams rely upon, including the BIRT’s at Virginia Tech. Speech First’s cert petition [for Supreme Court review] says, “Precisely because speech codes are often struck down, universities have looked for subtler, more sophisticated ways to chill ‘offensive’ speech.”

Press Release
Cornell Free Speech Alliance

Today, the Cornell Free Speech Alliance, a nonprofit and nonpartisan coalition of Cornell alumni, faculty, and students, sent a report featuring 20 policy recommendations to Cornell University leaders intended to restore open inquiry and academic freedom on campus. The recommendations are the culmination of nearly two years of research and dialogue that began in response to an increasingly degraded free speech environment at the University. The transmittal of the recommendations coincides with the beginning of Cornell’s free expression themed 2023-2024 academic year, which many consider to be an empty and insincere attempt by university leaders to deflect pressure over free speech concerns.

Alex Morey
Persuasion

Excerpt: Joy Alonzo wants to stop fentanyl overdose deaths. As a professor at the Texas A&M College of Pharmacy and co-chair of the school’s Opioid Task Force, she advocates for her views inside and outside of class.

Doing so in one of her classes earlier this semester almost cost Alonzo her job.

Jill Filipovic
The Atlantic

Excerpt: In 2008, when I was a writer for the blog Feministe, commenters began requesting warnings at the top of posts discussing distressing topics, most commonly sexual assault. Violence is, unfortunately and inevitably, central to feminist writing. Rape, domestic violence, racist violence, misogyny—these events indelibly shape women’s lives, whether we experience them directly or adjust our behavior in fear of them.

We thought we were making the world just a little bit better. It didn’t occur to me until much later that we might have been part of the problem.

Oliver Milman
The Guardian

Excerpt: Videos that compare climate activists to Nazis, portray solar and wind energy as environmentally ruinous and claim that current global heating is part of natural long-term cycles will be made available to young schoolchildren in Florida, after the state approved their use in its public school curriculum.

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.

George Packer
The Atlantic

Excerpt: In June 1953, at the height of the McCarthy era, while congressional investigators and private groups were hunting down “subversive” or merely “objectionable” books and authors in the name of national security, the American Library Association and the Association Book Publishers Council issued a manifesto called “The Freedom to Read.”

This past June, the library and publishers’ associations reissued “The Freedom to Read” on its 70th anniversary. Scores of publishers, libraries, literary groups, civil-liberty organizations, and authors signed on to endorse its principles. And yet many of those institutional signatories—including the “Big Five” publishing conglomerates—often violate its propositions, perhaps not even aware that they’re doing so.

Mitch Daniels
Washington Post

Excerpt: Surveys of those entering college almost invariably report that the No. 1 reason given for enrolling is to increase their earning potential — in other words, to become prepared for success in the world of work. Though that is clearly happening for many, the coddling culture that has grown up at too many schools might actually be setting some young people back instead of readying them to launch the careers to which they aspire.

Benjamin Rothove
College Fix

Excerpt: The University of Michigan announced a new initiative to “enhance inclusion and equity across the biomedical and health sciences community,” which includes hiring 30 new professors. With a $15.8 million investment from the National Institutes of Health and a $63.7 million investment from the University of Michigan, the Michigan Program for Advancing Cultural Transformation will “bolster U-M’s diverse academic environment by hiring tenure-track faculty with a demonstrated commitment to equity and inclusion.”

University of Michigan spokesman Rick Fitzgerald declined to answer a College Fix inquiry about how the program would respect academic freedom and if it was only open to racial minorities.

Emma Camp
Reason Magazine

Excerpt: In the summer of 2020, Morgan Bettinger was a rising senior at the University of Virginia when a fellow student publicly accused her of telling a group of Black Lives Matter protesters that they would make "good speed bumps."

But a second investigation, this time from the school's civil rights office, ultimately cleared Bettinger of wrongdoing and concluded that there was insufficient evidence that Bettinger ever said that protesters would make "good speed bumps." Now Bettinger has filed a lawsuit, arguing that her speech was not a threat and was facially protected by the First Amendment—and therefore, the University of Virginia, as a public institution, had no grounds to punish her.

James Huffman
Quillette

Excerpt: Efforts to censure campus speech have occurred in almost every American state. The problem is not new. Advocates of academic censorship would do well to review the arguments of our predecessors. A little book published 74 years ago, in 1949, by Harvard University Press provides an opportunity to do just that. While the book focuses on American history, its insights are of worldwide relevance.

Annabelle Timsit
Washington Post

Excerpt: A federal judge in Arkansas temporarily blocked a state law that would have made it a crime for librarians and booksellers to give minors materials deemed “harmful” to them — a move celebrated by free-speech advocates, who had decried the law as a violation of individual liberties.

Section 1 would have made it a criminal offense to knowingly provide a minor with any material deemed “harmful” — a term defined by state law as containing nudity or sexual content, appealing to a “prurient interest in sex,” lacking “serious literary, scientific, medical, artistic, or political value for minors” or deemed “inappropriate for minors” under current community standards.

Jonathan Turley
Jonathan Turley’s Blog

Excerpt: I have previously written columns about the rising generation of censors in our country. After years of being told that free speech is harmful and dangerous, many young people are virtual speech phobics — demanding that opposing views be silenced as “triggering” or even forms of violence. Now a Pew poll shows just how much ground we have lost, including the emergence of the Democratic Party as a virulent anti-free speech party.

The result is reflected in the poll which shows that “Just over half of Americans (55%) support the U.S. government taking steps to restrict false information online, even if it limits people from freely publishing or accessing information.”

Ryan Stowers
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: Over the past several years, state lawmakers have debated a growing number of policies related to academic freedom and free expression on university campuses.

In the urgency to address such severe challenges, it is tempting to seek out the most expedient solution. And few solutions could be more expedient than the top-down coercive power of legislation. That’s not how truth-seeking works.

Piper Hutchinson
Louisiana Illuminator

Excerpt: A national free speech organization has sent a letter to LSU President William F. Tate that demands the university undo its termination of a graduate assistant who left a vulgar voicemail for a state senator.

In a letter sent Friday, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a national First Amendment advocacy organization known for its support of conservatives on college campuses, argued LSU had violated the constitutional rights of Marcus Venable, a grad assistant in LSU’s sociology department. He left a phone message for Sen. Mike Fesi, R-Houma, after Fesi gave a speech Tuesday in support of a ban on gender-affirming healthcare for transgender youth.

Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression

Excerpt: Today, a 17-year-old rising senior represented by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression sued his Tennessee public high school after the principal suspended him for posting memes lampooning the principal for being overly serious.

“The First Amendment bars public school employees from acting as a 24/7 board of censors,” said FIRE attorney Conor Fitzpatrick. “As long as a student’s posts do not substantially disrupt school, what teens post on social media on their own time is between them and their parents, not the government.”

Susan King
Chronicle of Higher Education

Excerpt: It’s happened again. Another accomplished Black woman recruited for a leadership role at a public university was offered tenure and then deceived, dissed, and dismissed.

Kathleen McElroy is reportedly returning to her tenured position at the University of Texas at Austin because Texas A&M University at College Station, her alma mater, backtracked on her appointment to lead its journalism program. Just a month ago, Texas A&M celebrated McElroy at a public signing ceremony. Then the university changed its offer.

Greg Sargent
Washington Post

Excerpt: In recent weeks, plaintiffs who are suing to invalidate Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s “Stop Woke Act” have been confronting its defenders with a seemingly loaded question: Would the law, which restricts school discussion of race, prohibit a public university professor from endorsing affirmative action in a classroom setting?

Surprisingly, lawyers defending the DeSantis administration just answered this question with a qualified “yes.” Which exposes a core truth about his anti-woke directives: They really do constitute efforts at state censorship, not just of concepts he likes to call “woke indoctrination” but also of viewpoints that are contested yet remain squarely within mainstream academic discourse.

Amna Khalid and Jeffrey Aaron Snyder
Washington Monthly

Excerpt: The Supreme Court’s rejection of affirmative action in college admissions will provoke widespread debate. But not in the classrooms of Florida’s public colleges and universities, because the Stop WOKE Act prohibits it. 

That’s why we were happy to submit an amicus brief last Friday to support the plaintiffs—seven faculty members and a student group—seeking to strike down the Stop WOKE Act. The law is subject to a preliminary injunction, pending appeal from Florida. The federal appeals court for the Eleventh Circuit is expected to rule in the next six months.

PEN America

Excerpt: The end of June marks the conclusion of most state legislative sessions. One new educational gag order and one higher education autonomy restriction became law in June, with others in Ohio and Texas going down narrowly to defeat.

After reviewing these new laws, we examine an aspect of higher education governance that has increasingly been targeted in legislative censorship efforts and seems likely to figure centrally in next year’s legislative sessions: college and university accreditation.