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Cass Sunstein
Volokh Conspiracy, Reason Magazine

Excerpt: Public colleges and universities are bound by the First Amendment. Their private counterparts are not (though a state might choose to apply the requirements of the First Amendment to them, as California has largely done). But if private universities choose to follow the First Amendment, they will make life a lot easier, and also a lot better, for faculty, administrators, and students alike.

One reason is that First Amendment principles make most cases easy. Still, there are plenty of hard cases. Many of the hardest arise when a college or university claims that restrictions are justified by its educational mission. In some cases, such restrictions really can be so justified. A university can direct a history professor to teach history, not physics, in a history class. That's a form of content discrimination, and it's okay.

Aaron Ross Powell
The Unpopullist, Substack

Excerpt: Today we’re diving into one of the most pressing issues of our time: free speech. Our host Aaron Ross Powell is joined by a special guest, Ken White—better known online as Popehat—a First Amendment expert, seasoned criminal defense attorney, civil litigator, and cohost of the Serious Trouble podcast.

Together, they’ll explore some of the most pressing questions in free speech discourse today: Have we become too quick to label some speech as offensive? Are we idealizing a past where free expression was supposedly more open? And, most importantly, how can we foster richer, more nuanced conversations in an increasingly polarized world?

Olivia Sanchez
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: On Sept. 5, the University retracted its decision to ban protests on the front lawn of Nassau Hall. Cannon Green and the Prospect House grounds remain off-limits locations to protest.

According to University spokesperson Jennifer Morrill, the change was made because the walkways in front of Nassau Hall “have long been an approved protest site.” “Historically, we have recognized — and we continue to recognize — that protests legitimately spill onto the lawn. We have changed our language to reflect that,” she wrote in a statement to The Daily Princetonian.

Paul Brest and Emily J. Levine
New York Times

Excerpt: With colleges and universities beginning a new academic year, we can expect more contentious debate over programs that promote diversity, equity and inclusion. Progressives are doubling down on programs that teach students that they are either oppressed peoples or oppressors, while red states are closing campus D.E.I. programs altogether.

Natalie Schwartz
Higher Ed Dive

Excerpt: Missouri Rep. Jason Smith, the chair of the Ways and Means Committee, and North Carolina Rep. Virginia Foxx, chair of the Committee on Education and the Workforce, sent letters last week asking that the institutions share their campus plans with lawmakers by Sept. 5.

The two legislators also asked the college officials to explain what changes they’ve made to their disciplinary procedures to “help deter future misconduct.” The letters signal that Republican lawmakers will continue to scrutinize how colleges are responding to campus unrest in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war.

Josh Moody
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: Roughly two dozen pro-Palestinian protesters, many wearing masks and keffiyehs, blocked access to a convocation ceremony at Pomona College Tuesday, The Claremont Courier reported. The local news outlet said that protesters refused to comply with requests from campus safety officers who asked them to move, remove their masks and show their student identification. The group Pomona Divest From Apartheid took credit for the protest.

“WE SHUT DOWN CONVOCATION,” the group posted on Instagram Tuesday.

Susan H. Greenberg
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: Police arrested four pro-Palestinian protesters at the University of Michigan Wednesday after demonstrators sought to disrupt a student activity fair, The Detroit Free Press reported.

None of the arrested were students, Colleen Mastony, assistant vice president for public affairs, told the Free Press; three were unaffiliated with the university and one was a temporary employee. About 50 protesters showed up during the campus's annual Festifall event and refused requests to leave.

Greg Lukianoff
The Eternally Radical Idea

Excerpt: Two things became inevitable after the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump: Some people who don’t like Trump would make edgy social media posts about it, and some people who have chafed under Cancel Culture in left-leaning spaces for the last decade would call for cancellations in response. Just as with censorship more broadly, too many folks hate it when it’s done to them but can’t wait to do it to others once they have the chance.

Joseph M. Knippenberg
James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal

Excerpt: Earlier this summer, Harvard dean Lawrence Bobo wrote an essay for the Harvard Crimson that provoked a chorus of criticism, much of it justified. Reflecting on the post-October 7 turmoil on his campus, which had led, among other things, to the resignation of President Claudine Gay, Bobo argued that faculty should be disciplined for airing the university’s dirty laundry in public.

I would like to approach Bobo’s argument by focusing on the goal that he and his critics share: the institutional independence of the university as a knowledge-seeking enterprise.

Ryan Quinn
Inside Higher Ed

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

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

Dissident Dialogues

Excerpt: Leading academics come together to discuss and debate whether Western universities can be saved from peril. With free speech on campus in jeopardy, and weekly Palestine protests following years of attacks on curriculum and the pulling down of statues. Can they be salvaged or do new universities need to be built?

Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Press Release

Excerpt: Human rights experts today expressed grave concern at the massive crackdown on pro-Palestinian student protests at various university campuses across the United States of America.

“The banning and attacks on student protests are a grave violation of the rights to peaceful assembly and freedom of expression guaranteed by international human rights law, and must stop immediately,” said the experts, who addressed their concerns to the US government in a previous communication.

Francesca Block
The Free Press

Excerpt: Don’t expect the anti-Israel protests that roiled college campuses earlier this year to disappear for good. In fact, recent moves from one university group suggest they might get far worse when school starts back in the fall.

Last week, NYU’s Palestine Solidarity Committee rebranded as the People’s Solidarity Coalition and announced a new mission hinting that they are prepared to use violence in their fight to “dismantle” the college’s “involvement in settler-colonial occupation, genocide and imperial wars.” The group went on to state that they “recognize and welcome the diversity of tactics that lead to victory,” including “armed struggle, non-violent direct action, cultural production, and world building.” The group declared it will “not condemn the brave actions of our allies nor will we limit ourselves to resistance through organizational means.”

Ryan Quinn
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: As the news broke about a gunman’s July 13 attempt to kill former president Donald Trump during a Pennsylvania rally, John James, an English instructor at Bellarmine University in Louisville, posted on Instagram above one of the latest headlines: “If you’re gonna shoot, man, don’t miss.”

That university said it received a bomb threat July 15 connected to anger over the post, though police eventually determined the threat wasn’t credible. Bellarmine fired James the next day, three days after the shooting, he said. “I wasn’t given an opportunity to clarify my statement, to apologize or anything,” he said.

FIRE

Excerpt: The Senate is gearing up to vote on the Kids Online Safety Act as early as tomorrow. FIRE urges opposition to both the Senate (S. 1409) and House (H.R. 7891) versions of the bill because they treat Americans’ speech not as a fundamental right and an indispensable ingredient of human progress, but as a hazardous product.

This opens the door to insidious government regulation of speech of both minors and adults, which the bill enables by empowering the Federal Trade Commission to define how social media platforms can operate.

Jess Deutsch
Princeton Alumni Weekly  

Excerpt: While 120 hostages remained captive and the death toll in Israel and Gaza continued to rise, President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 described the last year as the “most turbulent and difficult on college campuses in the U.S. since the late 1960s.” With world news weighing heavily this spring and campus protests broadcasted widely, I wondered about the impact of the war and protests on the mental health impact Princeton students and alumni.

At Princeton’s encampment, students seemed to talk within their own bubbles or make statements using a megaphone. Students, faculty, and staff often walked by, heads down. As the semester was ending, more than one student who had no involvement told me they couldn’t wait to leave campus, scared to say the wrong thing. I worried about the conversations that didn’t happen.

Graham Piro
FIRE

Excerpt: A University of Wisconsin-La Crosse faculty committee formally recommended last week that professor Joe Gow lose his tenured faculty role for the on-his-own-time activity of making pornographic videos with his wife and writing books about the experience. The recommendation, which undermines what tenure is meant to protect — including faculty members’ right to express themselves outside the classroom — clashes with the First Amendment and threatens the rights of all UW faculty.

UW already fired Gow from his role as chancellor in December after discovering he made the videos. Under continued pressure from lawmakers and donors who wanted Gow gone from his faculty role, too, the faculty hearing committee unanimously recommended Gow’s dismissal in a decision publicized late Friday.

Katherine Knott
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: For America’s colleges and universities and the students they serve, the four years of Donald Trump’s first term as president were fraught, defined by threats to international students, allegations of “radical left indoctrination,” free speech controversies and far-reaching attacks on fundamental institutional values such as diversity.

Now, Trump is back and seeking another four years in the White House, and higher education could be in for greater scrutiny and heightened pressure if he wins. Higher education wasn’t high on Trump’s priority list the first time around, but an increasing anti–higher education sentiment among Republicans and sectors of the public has shifted the political winds. That could open the door to more radical policy options.

Eric Kelderman
Chronicle of Higher Education

Excerpt: Ben Sasse’s appointment as president of the University of Florida in late 2022 was hailed by his supporters as an opportunity to remake a flagship institution. Less than two years later, he is stepping down before having time to meaningfully influence the university’s direction.

Sasse announced his resignation late on Thursday with a social-media post on X (formerly Twitter) explaining that he needed to spend more time helping his wife, Melissa, deal with the ongoing effects of an aneurysm she suffered in 2007.

Ryan Quinn
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: After months of delaying a planned vote on the issue, the University of California’s Board of Regents voted 13 to 1 Thursday to prohibit academic departments and other academic units from posting political statements on their website homepages.

The ban comes after some UC departments posted statements supporting Palestinians. Josiah Beharry, the student member on the board, was the only no vote.

Academic Freedom Alliance

Excerpt: The Academic Freedom Alliance urges federal agencies that fund research in STEMM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics and Medicine) to desist from demanding that plans to advance DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) be included in their grant proposals.

Widespread requirements for such plans in STEMM grant proposals have been implemented rapidly with far too little attention to their potential misuse, their effects on quality and integrity of funded research, and the threat they represent to academic freedom.

Matthew Kuchem
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: As the U.S. presidential campaign takes a violent turn, colleges and universities need to prepare for major political upheaval and campus disruptions. Last academic year’s campus protests demonstrated that much of higher education is ill-equipped to handle certain political controversies.

But the fall will not just be a redux of the spring. When students return to campuses, the wild presidential campaign will be entering the final stretch, setting the stage for disruptions that will accelerate through the end of the semester and possibly beyond. The forecast is grim, and the conditions are ripe, not for a flare-up but for an inferno.

Abigail Anthony
National Review

Excerpt: An anonymous male student is suing the Trustees of Princeton University for breach of contract, violations of Title IX, and negligence. According to the lawsuit, “John Doe” began studying at Princeton University in 2022 and was suspended after the disciplinary proceedings that followed from two women filing separate charges of choking accusations.

Nat Malkus and John W. Boyer
The Report Card Podcast

Excerpt: In the spring, campuses saw a wave of protests erupt over the war in Gaza. These protests, along with the controversial ways in which universities handled them, raised important questions about free expression on campus, the role that university administrations play in maintaining and fostering a culture of free expression, and the role of university presidents.

On this episode of The Report Card, Nat Malkus discusses these questions, and more, with John W. Boyer.

Johanna Alonso
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: Starting today, Utah joins the growing list of states that have implemented a ban on diversity, equity and inclusion programs and practices at colleges and universities.

According to guidance on implementing the new law released by the Utah System of Higher Education, public colleges and universities are required to eliminate any offices, programs or practices that are “discriminatory,” a term that is extensively defined and includes anything that excludes individuals due to their identities. The guidance does not advise colleges to close their cultural centers—spaces on campus dedicated to supporting minority students with specialized resources and opportunities to socialize. But many institutions are shuttering their cultural centers anyway.

Ryan Quinn
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: In this moment of intense public and political scrutiny of American higher education, Harvard University has been a major mark.

Adam Liptak
New York Times

Excerpt: The Supreme Court handed the Biden administration a major practical victory on Wednesday, rejecting a Republican challenge that sought to prevent the government from contacting social media platforms to combat what it said was misinformation.

The court ruled that the states and users who had challenged those interactions had not suffered the sort of direct injury that gave them standing to sue.

Alex Morey
Persuasion

Excerpt: “College administrator tries to silence faculty critics” is hardly a new scenario. But the censors usually aren’t quite so upfront about it.

There are many reasons why sanctioning faculty who speak out against the university is dangerous. Most obviously, it would gut their expressive rights to publicly criticize Harvard’s shortcomings or abuses, amounting to the kind of “professionalism” policy colleges routinely abuse to punish all manner of controversial student and faculty speech. An administrator need only deem speech unprofessional, and they’ve found a convenient loophole around their academic freedom and free speech policies.

Ryan Quinn
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: In 2022, Florida’s Republican state legislators passed the Stop WOKE Act, championed and signed by GOP governor Ron DeSantis. The law would limit the way faculty members at public universities can teach about race and gender.

Attention-grabbing oral arguments a week ago before the U.S. Court of Appeals’ 11th Circuit conveyed what could happen if they lose. A heavy-hitting Washington lawyer, known for representing big-name Republicans and now defending the Florida law, made a series of arguments that academic freedom advocates have called “extreme.” If judges adopt these conclusions, they say, states could demolish the tradition of academic freedom in American higher education.

Keith E. Whittington
Chronicle of Higher Education

Excerpt:It is not surprising for a boss to think that employees should avoid saying things in public that might damage the organization for which they both work. It is not even surprising for the boss to understand “damage” to include making the boss’s own life more difficult.

Piper Hutchinson
Louisiana Illuminator

Excerpt: Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry has enacted a law to exclude acts of civil disobedience from free speech protections on college campuses.  

Senate Bill 294 by Sen. Valarie Hodges, R-Denham Springs, was billed as a pro-free speech proposal. The bill was designed to “shore up protections” for campus speech, Hodges said.

Students and faculty opposed the bill because they fear it will criminalize free speech. The new law specifically excludes any act that carries a criminal penalty from free speech protections, meaning campus free speech policies would no longer protect acts of civil disobedience.

Jessica Wills
Foundation for Individual Rights in Expression

Excerpt: At the end of May, Stanford’s faculty senate formally voted to approve free expression and institutional neutrality statements, making Stanford the third university in the last month to put into writing its dedication to these principles.

The new Statement on Freedom of Expression proclaims that the “freedom to explore and present new, unconventional, and even unpopular ideas is essential to the academic mission of the university.” The language in Stanford’s statement closely mirrors the “Chicago Statement” on free expression, which FIRE considers to be the gold standard for campus free speech policies.

Alyssa Lukpat and Nicholas Hatcher
Wall Street Journal

Excerpt: A new round of pro-Palestinian demonstrations swept the University of California, Los Angeles, where 25 protesters were arrested after setting up an encampment, the latest outburst of campus tensions over the Israel-Hamas war.

The UCLA Police Department said about 100 people put up tents and barriers Monday afternoon and moved the encampment twice after being ordered to disperse. The protesters made enough noise to disrupt students taking final exams nearby, police said. The people in the demonstration were affiliated with a student group on campus, according to the police department.

Jeremy W. Peters
New York Times

Excerpt: Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have each recently announced that they will no longer require diversity statements as a part of their hiring process for faculty posts.

The decisions by two of the nation’s leading institutions of higher learning could influence others to follow suit.

Andrew Manuel Crespo and Kirsten Weld
Chronicle of Higher Education

Excerpt: Two weeks ago, roughly sixteen hours before commencement exercises at Harvard University were set to begin, the institution’s governing board, known as the Harvard Corporation, rejected the list of undergraduate degree candidates put forward by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. In its place, the corporation adopted a list that omitted thirteen graduating seniors. Each of those students had met all the academic requirements to graduate. But a few weeks earlier, they had also each participated in a pro-Palestine encampment in Harvard Yard. For that reason, the corporation refused to grant them the degrees their teachers had voted to confer.

Ryan Quinn
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: Last month something happened that has little, if any, public precedent: A university fired a faculty member almost immediately not for out-of-classroom speech but for an optional course assignment. DePaul University dismissed adjunct Anne d’Aquino midway through her first quarter teaching Health 194: Human Pathogens and Defense.

DePaul spokespeople said students and others had expressed concern about the assignment and an accompanying email from d’Aquino that focused on Palestine and included the terms “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing.” The assignment asked students to, among other things, explain “the impact of genocide/ethnic cleansing on the health/biology of the people it impacts.”

Alexandra Orbuch
Tablet Magazine

Excerpt: As a current Princeton student, I believe that I am receiving an unparalleled education. While I will cherish my classroom experience for the rest of my life, my time outside the classroom has led to bitter disappointment.

I had to fight for months to remove an unjustly imposed university order, yet I have witnessed errant anti-Israel protesters who seem to violate university policy and the law being privileged with an expedited disciplinary process, often resulting in no discipline at all. The reality is that these universities, by validating this ethos of entitled thuggery, have abandoned their core mission and become shells of their former selves.

Peter Berkowitz
RealClearPolitics

Excerpt: Following Hamas’ bloodthirsty Oct. 7 assault on Israel’s southern border communities, woke leftists and jihad enthusiasts on campuses and beyond formed a perplexing alliance. The left advocates social justice; celebrates diversity, equity, and inclusion; and professes special concern for historically oppressed minorities. Meanwhile, Gaza’s Iran-backed jihadists torture and kill based on race, ethnicity, and sexual preference; loathe and wage war against Israelis, Jews, Americans, and the West; and, by all available means, seek to establish Islamist theocracy. What could unite two such seemingly mutually exclusive camps?

Adam Kredo
Free Beacon

Excerpt: Harvard University failed to implement a sweeping set of recommendations from its in-house Antisemitism Advisory Group (AAG) and turned a blind eye to numerous instances of campus harassment even after they were raised with the school's leadership, according to a congressional report.

Katrina Lantos Swett
RealClearPolitics

Excerpt: I graduated from Yale University in 1974. As a first-generation American, the child of Holocaust survivors, and among the first women admitted to this incredible school, it is hard to adequately express how grateful I was for this opportunity. I have enjoyed returning to campus frequently over the years, including watching two of my own children graduate from Yale.

Elisabeth H. Daugherty, Brett Tomlinson, Julie Bonette, and Carlett Spike
Princeton Alumni Weekly

The pro-Palestinian encampment was gone from Cannon Green by Thursday morning. Protesters had slowly begun clearing it on Tuesday, May 14, after signs appeared around the area reading, “This space is CLOSED in preparation for University events,” and workers began installing lighting for Class Day.

Michael Poliakoff
Forbes

Excerpt: In 1931, Winston Churchill mocked the prime minister, Ramsay MacDonald, as a “boneless wonder.” The last couple weeks on campus have already given us too many such specimens whose tergiversation and ethical compromise are yet more egregious.

Wise institutions have steadily, especially since October 7, recognized, albeit late, the wisdom of the University of Chicago’s 1967 Kalven Committee: Report on the University’s Role in Political and Social Action. Written amidst the desperate turmoil of the Vietnam war, it counsels “a heavy presumption against the university taking collective action or expressing opinions on the political and social issues of the day, or modifying its corporate activities to foster social or political values, however compelling and appealing they may be.”

Michelle N. Amponsah and Joyce E. Kim
Harvard Crimson

Excerpt: Members of the pro-Palestine encampment rejected a proposal from interim University President Alan M. Garber ’76 to end their two-week occupation of Harvard Yard and avoid receiving involuntary leave of absence notices, according to an Instagram post published shortly after midnight on Friday by the group leading the encampment.

Christopher L. Eisgruber
Inside Princeton, Princeton University

Excerpt: Since April 25, a group of protestors has conducted a round-the-clock sit-in at Princeton, first in McCosh Courtyard and then on Cannon Green.  I write now with an update about how the University is responding to the protestors’ concerns and those of the broader community.

Over the course of the last week, several colleagues in my administration met multiple times with members of the protesting group.  They explained that issues of general interest to the University community must be addressed, whenever possible, through appropriate processes that respect the interests of multiple parties and viewpoints, not through negotiations with a single interest group.  Our goal was accordingly to identify concerns that might be addressed through established channels consistent with existing University processes and principles.

Guest Contributors
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: We, the undersigned faculty members and academic staff at Princeton University, write this letter to condemn your repression and vilification of Princeton students and other community members currently protesting and engaging in civil disobedience in solidarity with Palestine.

Paul Alivisatos
Was Street Journal

Excerpt: As president of the University of Chicago, I ended the encampment that occupied the University’s Main Quad for more than a week. The Tuesday morning action resulted in no arrests. Recent months have seen tremendous contention over protests on campuses, including pressure campaigns from every direction. That made this a decision of enormous import for the university.

Ashraf Khalil
Associated Press

Excerpt: Police used pepper spray to clear a pro-Palestinian tent encampment at George Washington University and arrested dozens of demonstrators on Wednesday just as city officials were set to appear before hostile lawmakers in Congress to account for their handling of the 2-week-old protest.

The House Committee on Oversight and Accountability canceled the hearing after the crackdown, with its chairman and other Republicans welcoming the police action. House Speaker Mike Johnson said, “it should not require threatening to haul D.C.’s mayor before Congress to keep Jewish students at George Washington University safe.”

Michael Brendan Dougherty
National Review

Excerpt: Conservatives have sought to prevent the encampments from spreading by drawing strong distinctions between free-speech protections for the students and standards of manners, anti-harassment regulations, and the like. This may be what is legally required of state universities like the University of Florida, where Ben Sasse made those distinctions as clear as possible.

But it’s entirely inadequate for the role that Columbia and the other Ivy League colleges want to play in our republic. The standard is not just free speech, or more speech to counter bad speech, but truthful speech.