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Eugene Volokh
Volokh Conspiracy, Reason Magazine

Excerpt: As readers of the blog may know, Hamline University declined to renew Erica López Prater's instructor contract because she displayed Islamic Art containing images of Mohammed in her World Art class, and some students objected. López Prater sued, and on Friday Judge Katherine M. Menendez (D. Minn.) allowed her religious discrimination claim to go forward (López Prater v. Trustees of the Hamline Univ. of Minn.)

Hannah Natanson
Washington Post

Excerpt: As gold sunlight filtered into her kitchen, English teacher Mary Wood shouldered a worn leather bag packed with first-day-of-school items: Three lesson-planning notebooks. Two peanut butter granola bars. An extra pair of socks, just in case. Everything was ready, but Wood didn’t leave. For the first time since she started teaching 14 years ago, she was scared to go back to school.

Six months earlier, two of Wood’s Advanced Placement English Language and Composition students had reported her to the school board for teaching about race. Wood had assigned her all-White class readings from Ta-Nehisi Coates’s “Between the World and Me,” a book that dissects what it means to be Black in America.

Christopher Eisgruber
Office of the President, Princeton University

Excerpt: Thank you for your letter of September 10 questioning whether a professor at this University may assign and teach Dr. Jasbir Puar’s controversial book, The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability.

Princeton’s commitments to inclusivity coexist with equally vigorous commitments to free speech and academic freedom.  Though people today sometimes seek to drive a wedge between free speech and equality, they are both fundamental to America’s constitutional tradition and they are essential to the aims of a great university.

Aidan Gouley
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: This year’s Pre-read, “How to Stand up to a Dictator: The Fight for Our Future,” by Maria Ressa ’86, argues that defending democracy requires no less than a transformation in how liberal societies engage in discourse — not simply specific policy prescriptions or direct action-based activism. Ressa’s call for open discourse should be resonant on a campus where free speech is considered core. Each of us must work to build such an environment. As Ressa says, effective activism can only be preserved in environments that catalyze rigorous discussion and critical thought.

Should free exchange erode, the University community does not merely risk losing the educational value of speech, but also threatens to concede a critical pillar of free society altogether. We have to reclaim the mantle of free speech from right-leaning groups and ensure that free speech isn’t harmed by either institutional overreach or communal neglect.

Joshua T. Katz
City Journal

Excerpt: It’s September, students and teachers are returning to classes, and the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), in partnership with the survey research and analytics company College Pulse, has released its 2024 College Free Speech Rankings. The statistics are as disheartening as ever.

Of the 248 colleges and universities surveyed (plus six “warning colleges”)—up from 55 in 2020 and 203 (plus five) last year—only four are ranked “Good”: Michigan Technological University, Auburn, the University of New Hampshire, and Oregon State.

Donald A. Downs
Academe Blog

Excerpt: In late August, John Wilson posted a critique of the recently published Princeton Principles for a Campus Culture of Free Inquiry. I have long respected Wilson’s views on higher education. In this case, however, I find his critiques misplaced. The Principles’ authors had two main objectives: garnering support for the Principles by individuals and institutions and engendering a broader debate on reform. I welcome Wilson’s critique as a catalyst in this debate.

Michael Powell
New York Times

Excerpt: Yoel Inbar, a noted psychology professor at the University of Toronto, figured he might be teaching this fall at U.C.L.A. Last year, the university’s psychology department offered his female partner a faculty appointment. Now the department was interested in recruiting him as a so-called partner hire, a common practice in academia. The university asked him to fill out the requisite papers, including a statement that affirmed his belief and work in diversity, equity and inclusion. He flew out and met with, among others, a faculty diversity committee and a group of graduate students.
 
But a few days later, the department chair emailed and told him that more than 50 graduate students had signed a letter strongly denouncing his candidacy. Why? In part, because on his podcast years earlier, he had opposed diversity statements — like the one he had just written.

Liz Navratil
Star Tribune

Excerpt: Amna Khalid hears frequently from fellow professors who are shying away from teaching controversial material as political polarization rises and attacks on teachers' independence become more common.

"It's a rational decision for professors to be dropping it," said the Carleton College professor and founding member of the Academic Freedom Alliance. "I don't like it, but I totally understand it."

On August 29, Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, spoke alongside Princeton University president Christopher Eisgruber at a mandatory freshman-orientation event ostensibly meant to highlight the university’s commitment to freedom of speech and academic freedom. More than 1,000 Princeton freshmen were required to attend this event as a part of their regular sequence of orientation activities; I was there as an undergraduate academic adviser for freshmen and out of my own personal curiosity.

Rick Sobey
Boston Herald
 
Excerpt: Just as the school year kicks off and students return to campus, Harvard University has been ranked as the worst college for free speech in the country. Harvard ranked last out of 248 colleges in a survey of more than 55,000 students across the U.S., receiving the only “Abysmal” rating in the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and College Pulse free speech rankings.

“Each year, the climate on college campuses grows more inhospitable to free speech,” said FIRE Director of Polling and Analytics Sean Stevens.

PEN America Press Release
 
Excerpt: A group of free expression and anti-censorship groups sent a letter to schools across Florida today, alerting them to legal filings by the state’s Attorney General that the “Don’t Say Gay” law doesn’t apply to school libraries.

Although many Florida schools shuttered or restricted their libraries as the school year began, three separate  legal filings by Attorney General Ashley Moody state that the law’s restriction on discussion of sexuality applies only to classroom instruction, not school libraries. The Florida Department of Education has offered no such guidance to schools.

Jonathan Turley
Jonathan Turley’s Blog

Excerpt: We now have a positive ruling for free speech out of the District of Maine where Chief Judge Jon Levy has ruled in favor of a professor terminated by the University of Southern Maine for questioning mask and vaccination policies.

Judge Levy’s decision in Griffin v. University of Maine System is balanced and fair. He does not offer a full-throated endorsement of the claim by Professor Patricia Griffin, but rules that she has a right to a trial on the free speech claim.

PEN America Press Release

Excerpt: PEN America called on Daytona State College in Florida to reschedule a photo exhibition by Jon Henry in light of a dispute over why the show was cancelled. PEN America said the contentious development creates a “troubling precedent” and called on the college to offer to host the show in the future.

Joe Killian
NC Newsline

Excerpt: The UNC System has issued directives to its 17 campuses on how to comply with the U.S. Supreme Court’s June decision on the role of race in admissions. Over five pages, it lays out specific policies for universities and warns against actions and policies not explicitly prohibited by the Supreme Court decision, due to “the high cost of litigation” for those who might sue.

As NC Newsline has reported, legal scholars and critics of the decision have warned threats of lawsuits by conservative activists may intimidate universities into going beyond what is required by the ruling. The UNC System’s directives appear to substantiate those fears.

Jessica Blake
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: A year and a half after Stephen Kershnar, a polarizing philosophy professor at SUNY Fredonia, was barred from the campus and relegated to teaching online courses, university officials are still intent on keeping him out.

The university’s lawyer argued last Friday during a federal district court hearing on a lawsuit filed by Kershnar against the State University of New York at Fredonia president and provost that Kershnar’s controversial past comments about pedophilia—which included his questioning whether “adult-child sex” is always wrong—make it impossible for him to return to campus without posing a risk to students and faculty and staff.

Charles Oliver
Reason Magazine

Excerpt: Officials at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville have agreed to pay $80,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by Maggie DeJong, a graduate art therapy student, claiming the university violated her First Amendment rights. The school ordered DeJong to have no contact, even "indirect communication," with three students who complained that statements she posted on social media or made in classroom and informal discussions defending conservative or Christian positions were "harassment" or "discrimination."

Guest Contributors
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: In light of the right-wing Zionist attacks on Professor Satyel Larson’s plans to teach Dr. Jasbir Puar’s “The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability” in NES 301, we, the undersigned, stand in solidarity with Professor Larson, whose teaching and scholarship we value and admire greatly.

We are deeply troubled by the attempt to censor Professor Larson, ban Puar’s book, limit intellectual inquiry, and silence faculty-student exchange within and beyond the classroom, particularly on issues of such political, moral, and philosophical significance.

[Please refer to the article to see the signatures under the open letter].

Editor's note: Below is an excerpt of and link to an important statement issued by the Princeton Open Campus Coalition, the student free speech group at Princeton University.

Princeton University contributes to society through truth seeking, a pursuit necessitating academic freedom and institutional neutrality. Yet recent discussion of an upcoming Princeton course has prompted us, as leaders of the Princeton Open Campus Coalition (POCC), to reiterate the truth-seeking mission and how it functions on Princeton’s campus.

Alexander Schmidt
Globe Gazette

Excerpt: Books are being pulled from the shelves of Mason City Schools' libraries to comply with newly enacted state legislation Gov. Kim Reynolds says will protect children from damaging and obscene material.

At its Monday, July 17 meeting, the Mason City School Board conducted the first reading of a series of policy changes that would bring the district into compliance with newly enacted statewide legislation, most notably regarding the review of instructional materials and the district's policy towards students' gender identity. The policy changes, as recommended by the Iowa Association of School Boards, were made as a result of a sweeping educational reform bill championed by legislative Republicans and signed by Reynolds in May.

Bruce Gilley
Law & Liberty

Excerpt: It sounds like a miracle. A small community college with a politically divided student body achieves the impossible: an agreement on the need for civil discourse among different political viewpoints. Free speech becomes a campus-wide value, and a growing number of students participate in contentious debates with no hurt feelings or ex-post investigations.

But for all the fuss about Linn-Benton, the true story of this campus along the Calapooia River in central Oregon is a stark reminder of deep-seated censorship in American higher education. It also shows the inadequacy of superficial fixes often put forward by Heterodox Academy or the new faculty-led Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard.

Menachem Wecker
Jewish News Syndicate

Excerpt: A 2017 book that is part of a sample reading list for an upcoming Princeton University humanities course has drawn charges of antisemitic blood libels. It also raises broad questions about academic freedom and what kinds of scholarship are appropriate for classroom study.

Frances Brogan
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: On May 30, Larry Giberson ’23 graduated from Princeton with a degree in Politics. His graduation deserves attention because he participated in the January 6th riots at the Capitol. He has identified himself in photos at the riot and recently pleaded guilty to a felony charge of interfering with police during a civil disorder. So why did Princeton grant him a degree?

Ashlynn Warta
James G. Martin Center for Academic Freedom

Excerpt: In July of 2020, UNC-Chapel Hill’s chancellor sent an email to the university’s leadership cabinets requesting responses to three questions regarding “structural racism.” Through public records requests, the Martin Center obtained a copy of the many responses submitted over the following days by Chapel Hill’s academic and administrative units.

Our previous article on this subject introduced the chancellor’s DEI questionnaire and examined some of the more extreme proposals supplied by respondents. Below, we look in greater detail at the “solutions” proposed by Chapel Hill’s various divisions and schools.

Giovanna Dell'orto
Associated Press

Excerpt: A University of Notre Dame professor has filed a defamation lawsuit against a student-run publication over news coverage of her abortion-rights work. The case is raising questions about press freedom and academic freedom at one of the nation’s preeminent Catholic universities.

Tamara Kay’s suit, filed in May, alleges falsehoods in two articles published by The Irish Rover in the past academic year. The Rover defended its reporting as true in a motion filed earlier this month to dismiss the case, under a law meant to protect people from frivolous lawsuits over matters of public concern.

Keith Whittington
Academic Freedom Alliance (AFA)

Excerpt: We are dismayed by the reports that you suspended and launched an investigation of a member of your faculty for comments she made as a guest lecturer in a college class. We are relieved that the investigation was eventually dropped, but it never should have been launched in the first place. This affair shows a disturbing lack of concern with academic freedom principles in the Texas A&M System.

The Editorial Board
Wall Street Journal

Excerpt: Critics of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis argue he has gone too far in trying to root out “wokeness” from public universities, but look to California to see where academic groupthink is going if left unchecked. A legal complaint filed this month by a history professor in Bakersfield says that his community college’s performance and tenure reviews are being used to force faculty to adopt woke progressive values in their classrooms.

Lori Rozsa
Washington Post

Excerpt: The Florida State Board of Education approved new rules Wednesday for how Black history will be taught in public schools that critics are decrying as a “step backward.”

The updated standards say students should learn that enslaved people “developed skills” that “could be applied for their personal benefit,” and that in teaching about mob violence against Black residents instructors should note “acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans.”

Douglas Soule and Ana Goñi-Lessan
Tallahassee Democrat

Excerpt: To be or not to be on the shelf? That’s the question school districts across Florida are asking themselves as they figure out how to apply a new book challenge law. In Leon County, a media specialist says even The Bard William Shakespeare could be at risk.

HB 1069 took effect on July 1. Malloy says she and other media specialists around the state are interpreting this to mean that districts could be breaking the law if they do not pull media that contains the state’s definition of “sexual conduct.” That media includes many books needed to take the College Board’s Advanced Placement Literature exam and dual enrollment classes.

Johanna Alonso
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: A women’s soccer coach at Geneva College, a Christian institution in Pennsylvania, was fired in June for posting messages supporting the LGBTQ community on her Instagram page, Religion News Service reported.

The coach, Kelsey Morrison, identifies as gay but was celibate, allowing her to remain within the university’s conduct code, which forbids “sexual immorality” including “homosexual behavior.” She had coached at Geneva for two years.

Michael Bailey
The Free Press

Excerpt: I am best known for studying sexual orientation—from genetic influences, to childhood precursors of homosexuality, to laboratory-measured sexual arousal patterns.

Zach Gardner
Princeton Tory

Excerpt: The Constitution had a great week at the Supreme Court. In the span of 24 hours, the Court prohibited the violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment in Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College (SFFA v. Harvard), reaffirmed the First Amendment’s prohibition on compelled speech in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, and upheld the separation of powers in Biden v. Nebraska.

By Kathleen Stock
UnHerd

Excerpt: Is it ever possible to take a neutral position on the importance of free speech? The task certainly seems quite difficult. As Vogue’s favourite philosopher, Amia Srinivasan, notes this month in the London Review of Books, many Right-wingers seem to assert the value of free speech, mainly or even only to make room for political views the Left would prefer smothered at birth. Occasionally, someone on the Right will complain about the suppression of a position or person they don’t agree with, but usually more to avoid complaints of inconsistency than anything else.

By Vimal Patel
New York Times

Excerpt: Rebecca Journey, a lecturer at the University of Chicago, thought little of calling her new undergraduate seminar “The Problem of Whiteness.” Though provocatively titled, the anthropology course covered familiar academic territory: how the racial category “white” has changed over time.

By William Barnett
Medium

Excerpt: The attacks on academic freedom in Florida and elsewhere have pernicious effects on higher education for faculty and students alike.

When I taught courses on religion and public policy, controversial issues arose frequently. Since I was teaching at a Jesuit college, abortion and social justice concerns became the focus of many discussions online and in class. In these courses, I made sure to include resources and discussion about official Catholic teachings (the tradition is rather complex and historically varied) along with material about other religious and secular positions. In today’s educational climate, I would likely be prohibited from including such materials and discussion in my courses in Florida, Texas, and several other states.

By Jeremy Bauer-Wolf
Higher Ed Dive

Excerpt: The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday ruled against race-based admissions practices at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, shattering decades of legal precedent and upending the recruitment and enrollment landscape for years to come.

In fact, most colleges don’t rely on race as an admissions factor, as they accept a majority or all of their applicants. Thus, only a small swath of selective higher ed institutions will likely need to remold their admissions policies. But no matter what, when enrollment offices have accounted for race, it was not supposed to be the sole admissions criterion, which court precedent already established as illegal.

By Jonathan Turley
Jonathan Turley's Blog

Excerpt: University of Pennsylvania Anthropology Professor Theodore Schurr is apparently an academic recidivist in allowing a diversity of viewpoints in a classroom. For that offense, Dr. Schurr is again the subject of complaints and a call for suspension. Tolerating, let alone encouraging, such diversity of viewpoints in a classroom is now considered harmful and abusive.

By Todd J. Zywicki
Minding the Campus

Excerpt: Identifying the problems does not answer the more important question: what is to be done? What practical, real-world policy responses are available that might arrest, then reverse, the decline of modern American higher education? And, equally important, what policy proposals will not have unintended consequences that will actually make matters worse?

By Holly Lawford-Smith
Quillette

Excerpt: Kathleen Stock tweeted recently that ‘Many philosophers have existed only in their own minds, but I think I may well be the first to exist only in other people’s.’ She was responding to the latest outbreak of leftist moral panic about gender-critical feminism, in this case a series of actions taken by student activists at the University of Oxford in protest against her being invited to participate in a debate hosted by the Oxford Union—which describes itself as ‘the world’s most prestigious debating society’.

By Michelle Bocanegra
Gothamist

Excerpt: Faculty at the CUNY School of Law are calling on the university’s administration to retract a statement characterizing a student’s graduation address as “hate speech,” following criticism of her speech as antisemitic.

By Harrison Rosenthal
Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression

Excerpt: In a recent turn of events, FIRE’s understanding of actions by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s School of Medicine regarding recommendations from a diversity, equity, and inclusion task force have come into question.

By Pete Peterson
Fox News

Excerpt: The scenes of ideological intolerance have become all too familiar to Americans. Law students shouting down a federal judge at Stanford Law School. College students protesting the new president of the University of Florida, former Republican U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse. Many of our most prestigious colleges and universities have been reduced to ideological monocultures – both inside and outside the classroom.

By Ava Menkes
Daily Cardinal

Excerpt: A conundrum emerged across UW System campuses following the release of the Student Views on Freedom of Speech survey conducted in the fall of 2022.

By Emma Camp
Reason Magazine

Excerpt: On Tuesday, conservative activist and New College of Florida trustee Christopher Rufo announced that the college had declined to renew a visiting professor's contract because of his purportedly "left-wing" views.