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Will Bardenwerper
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Excerpt: The article was so bizarre I thought it might be an April Fool’s hoax, given the April 1 byline. The author of “We must not let eating clubs be ideological safe spaces” in The Daily Princetonian had invited a prominent Princeton professor to join him as a guest for lunch at his “eating club” (essentially a private club serving as hybrid dining hall and fraternity/sorority for Princeton juniors and seniors). He later learned that a “group of membership” felt “caught off guard” when they saw the professor, and they were deeply upset by his presence.

If our future leaders are coddled to the point that they cannot share a dining room with an accomplished professor with whom they disagree, where does that leave us as a country? What good comes from four years spent reinforcing the ideas one arrived on campus with?

Jenna Silber Storey and Benjamin Storey
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: Universities today feel understandably besieged. State legislators are intervening in curricular debates, members of Congress are taking aim at university presidents, and public support for college is at historic lows. Because criticism of the university from the outside comes most intensely from the right, and professors and administrators on the inside are mostly on the left, it is natural for insiders to respond to external critics by appealing to partisan passions, summoning one another to the barricades, and attempting to repel the barbarian onslaught.

Dialogue Vanderbilt, Vanderbilt University

Excerpt: From our beginning, we’ve believed in the power of bringing together people of differing viewpoints for a common purpose. A long-standing commitment to free expression is fundamental to who we are.

At Vanderbilt, we have a long tradition of free expression. At a moment when free expression on college campuses and in American civic life is at risk, we are proud to affirm our commitment to this core principle.

Josh Blackman
The Volokh Conspiracy, Reason Magazine

[Editor’s note: The original image was pulled from Berkeley Law Students for Justice in Palestine’s Instagram and replaced with one that does not feature bloody utensils]

Excerpt: Back in October, UC Berkeley Dean Erwin Chemerinsky wrote that "Nothing has prepared me for the antisemitism I see on college campuses now." At the time, I praised Erwin's bold remarks, though I feared things would only get worse. And they have.

Last week, Berkeley Law Students for Justice in Palestine depicted Dean Chemerinsky in a cartoon with blood-soaked utensils. This image appeals to the ancient blood libel that has pervaded anti-semitic propaganda for millennia. That students thought this image was appropriate is shocking. Failure to use the appropriate pronouns is immediately grounds for cancellation. But invoking the trope that Jews eat children is just another meme.

Greg Lukianoff
The Eternally Radical Idea, Substack

Excerpt: About a decade ago, I had a weird idea. At the time, I had for 13 years defended free speech and academic freedom in higher education at FIRE — then the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, now and Expression — but something began to change around 2014. There was a sudden surge in attempts to deplatform speakers, and students were arriving on campus requesting things I’d never heard of, like “trigger warnings,” “safe spaces,” and the policing of “microaggressions.”

I was developing a theory about what happened, but I wanted to talk it through with someone knowledgeable. That’s when I asked Jonathan Haidt out to lunch to discuss it. Jon is a world-renowned social psychologist and professor at New York University. We met at an Indian restaurant near his campus, and I started to lay out my thoughts. What followed was the beginning of a working relationship and friendship that continues to this day.

Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff
Washington Post

Excerpt: The University of Texas at Austin is laying off dozens of employees who previously worked in diversity, equity and inclusion roles in response to a state law that banned such programs, according to the Texas chapter of the American Association of University Professors.

Employees who had previously worked in DEI roles received layoff notices Tuesday. That came months after the university had reassigned them from those positions to comply with the legislation, which went into effect Jan. 1. The school declined to provide a specific tally of the number of people affected, though the AAUP said 60 is a “conservative estimate.”

Jonathan Turley
Jonathan Turley’s Blog

Excerpt: University of Maryland President Darryll Pines has joined the ignoble line of educators and administrators enabling the growing anti-free speech movement on our campuses. Pines has defended the shouting down of Rep. Jamie Raskin (D., Md). as exercising free speech as hecklers. He is dead wrong and the Board of Directors should address his inimical view of free speech in higher education.

As for Raskin, it is an ironic but telling moment from a member of Congress who has supported censorship and consistently opposed efforts to investigate the silencing of those with opposing views.

National Review
Abigail Anthony

Excerpt: This week, a Princeton University student-run newspaper published an op-ed by senior undergraduate Matthew Wilson, who detailed the controversy that emerged when he brought conservative professor Robert P. George to dine at an eating club. (For those unfamiliar, an “eating club” functions similarly to Greek life for juniors and seniors, where they eat their meals and, on weekends, enjoy less virtuous activity.)

In the article, Wilson relays that a group of students filed complaints after George’s visit, and therefore the club adopted a policy requiring that the leadership approve guests for meal-time hours who are not friends or family.

Ethan Hicks, '26
Princetonians for Free Speech

On Tuesday, March 19, 2024, Princetonians for Free Speech and the James Madison Program welcomed Kyle Duncan, Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, along with Professor Robert George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program, for a discussion on "What Free Speech Is — And What It Isn't."

Johanna Alonso
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: Pro-Palestinian protesters interrupted a speech by Maryland Congressman Jamie Raskin, a Democrat, at the University of Maryland on Thursday, the Capital News Service reported.

The protesters shouted that Raskin was “complicit in genocide,” to which he responded that he has advocated for hostages to be freed and for a ceasefire. Raskin was unable to continue his planned speech on democracy as the protesters continued heckling him and arguing with audience members. But he said he was willing to take questions, which led to further discussion about Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza. University President Darryll Pines eventually stepped in to end the lecture early.

Rita Koganzon
Hedgehog Review

Excerpt: When I was a graduate teaching assistant at Harvard University a decade ago, one of my students missed a final exam because he forgot to set his alarm. I didn’t learn about this because he told me, in person or even by email; nor did he apologize for his oversight or ask if he could make up the exam. Instead, in the manner customary at Harvard, I was informed by a message from his “Residential Dean,” a faculty member living in the dorms whose job was to liaise between delinquent students and their professors, in part by composing their excuses for them.

This is not some recent, overzealous response to the outsized demands of student activists; it is, rather, an old model that Harvard and only a few other very selective colleges have long followed, but which other schools all over the country now strive to imitate.

Maggie Hicks
The Chronicle of Higher Education

Excerpt: When Kenneth Stern drafted the working definition of antisemitism 20 years ago as director of the antisemitism division for the American Jewish Committee, he wanted to help researchers better understand the frequency of violence targeted at Jewish communities.

Stern, who is now the director of the Bard Center for the Study of Hate, is alarmed by its use on college campuses. He believes colleges and politicians who adopt his definition into antidiscrimination policies could then censor anyone who criticizes or says something controversial about Israel. While the definition itself should help people identify clear harassment, using it in legislation allows colleges and lawmakers to clamp down on any protected speech, no matter if it’s harmful or offensive, Stern says.

Nick Gillespie
Reason Magazine

Excerpt: Reason's Nick Gillespie and Pinker discuss if higher education is doomed, why so many people on the right and left are skeptical about moral and material progress, and how his "stereoscopic" photography fits into his larger worldview.

Christopher Winship
The Harvard Crimson

Excerpt: There have been demands by faculty that the University better protect academic freedom and that the broader Harvard community better ensure civil, reasoned discourse. (For an important statement on inclusion and academic freedom, see Harvard’s 2018 Presidential Task Force Report on Inclusion and Belonging.)

I fully support such calls. I doubt, however, that they will change the behaviors of those who are genuinely convinced about the erroneousness of others’ beliefs and the validity of their own. I will make a different argument: that for academic freedom to prevail, all at Harvard must tolerate others and their beliefs.

Luqmaan Bamba
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: Despite ample opportunities on campus to connect across class and culture, Princeton students often cluster in groups of similar kinds of people. As a result, we often inadvertently form bubbles closed to those who do not share our identities. Less formally and in everyday campus life, a clique-centered social life can be the norm. As students, we must work harder to reach out to those who are different from us and to form a more interconnected campus community.

Academic Freedom Alliance

The Academic Freedom Alliance (AFA) today sent a letter to Columbia University regarding its investigation into a professor for criticizing the political statements of certain students and student groups on social media. On February 8, 2024, Columbia’s Office of Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action informed Professor Shai Davidai that it had begun the investigation based on complaints that he “harassed” members of the community, asserting that his “public commentary since October 2023 . . . is perceived to be anti-Palestinian/Arab.”

Keith E. Whittington
The Dispatch

Excerpt: Ever since the Trump administration issued an executive order barring federal agencies from holding diversity, equity, and inclusion workshops, Republican state legislatures have explored ways to rein in “divisive concepts” within their jurisdictions. Some legislatures have sought to ban state university professors from requiring that students “believe” such divisive concepts.

Indiana is the latest state to take a similar approach, hoping to incorporate “intellectual diversity” requirements to its colleges’ hiring protocols. But much like previous legislative attempts that try to tell universities what they should teach, Indiana’s proposed law is misguided.

Bill Hewitt
Tiger Roars, Substack

Editor's Note: The little-known but important Council of the Princeton University Community (CPUC), established in 1969 as “a permanent conference of the representatives of all major groups of the University," is the University's second most important governing body after the Board of Trustees. Its charter is at cpuc.princeton.edu.

Excerpt: I write you directly because my March 11 petition, filed with the CPUC
Secretary, seems not to have been distributed to the CPUC membership. This
failure happened despite my explicit request that each member receive it. Nor
have I received explanation why my request was not honored.

The agenda announced last week for tomorrow’s March 18 meeting makes
no reference to my March 11 petition. Not by coincidence, I submit, the agenda
instead includes as its second item a proposal by Provost Rexford on behalf of the
CPUC Executive Committee. This proposal is to ban any and all video recording
of CPUC meetings. Any vote on such a consequential measure should be by roll
call. A full video record best enables all interested persons themselves to study
public CPUC proceedings and to judge their conduct and substance.

Olivia Sanchez and Annie Rupertus
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: At the meeting of the Council of the Princeton University Community (CPUC) on Monday, March 18, Vice President for Campus Life W. Rochelle Calhoun introduced Princeton University’s renewed partnership with the Jed Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to issues of emotional health and suicide prevention among young people.

Provost Jennifer Rexford introduced a proposal to establish a recording policy for CPUC meetings. Rexford also serves as the chair of the CPUC Executive Committee. Rexford read the draft proposal, “In order to promote the freedom to share ideas, video recording is prohibited at all meetings of the CPUC. Audio recording and still photography are permitted. Those in violation of the policy will be asked to stop recording. If repeated requests to cease recording are necessary, appropriate disciplinary action will be taken.

Ilya Somin
The Volokh Conspiracy, Reason Magazine

Excerpt: Notre Dame law Professor Derek Muller—a leading election law scholar—has posted a study he conducted of the partisan distribution of political donations by law professors between 2017 and 2023. Not surprisingly, they skew overwhelmingly towards Democratic candidates.

The overall result here is far from surprising. Lots of previous studies find that law professors are skew towards the political left. Still, the extent of the imbalance is notable. Exclusively Democratic contributors outnumber exclusively Republican ones by over 35 to 1. That's a larger disproportion than in previous studies.

Washington Times
Stephen Dinan

The University of Virginia shells out $20 million a year to employees who work on diversity, equity and inclusion, according to a new analysis of the public school’s spending.

OpenTheBooks.com said the university has at least 235 employees whose job titles signal they do DEI work for the school.

They are paid a total of $15 million, and the state-funded school spends another $5 million on annual benefits, according to OpenTheBooks’ calculations.

Emily Nayyer, Sean Stevens
Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression

Excerpt: Cancel Culture is getting worse. As FIRE President and CEO Greg Lukianoff has pointed out many times, more college faculty have been fired during the nine-and-a-half years (and counting) of Cancel Culture, which FIRE defines as roughly starting in 2014 and accelerating past 2017, than lost their jobs during the Red Scare of the 1950s. But who is driving this anti-speech trend on college campuses?

One recent study has pinned the blame on older faculty, but FIRE has its doubts.

Francesca Block
The Free Press

Excerpt: An activist group in California has paid nearly 100 public high schoolers $1,400 each to learn how to fight for racial and social justice, The Free Press has learned.

Contracts between Long Beach Unified School District and Californians for Justice from 2019 to 2023, exclusively obtained by The Free Press, show the school district used taxpayer funds to pay the group nearly $2 million to facilitate equity and leadership development training for students and teachers. In addition to the student stipends, the contracts also allocated a total of $20,200 to 13 parents for participating in the group’s programs.

Randall L. Kennedy
The Harvard Crimson

Excerpt: The scenario is familiar: A university invites a speaker to campus that outrages some sector of the community. Perhaps the guest is Ann Coulter, Angela Davis, or Mohammed El-Kurd. Angered or disappointed, protestors demand that the invitation be withdrawn.

Many free speech advocates categorically denounce campaigns to disinvite speakers, pointing to such protests as evidence of moral and intellectual rot. They decry even more harshly authorities that rescind invitations, portraying them as shameful cowards. It’s important that universities host a diversity of perspectives. But, as a strong supporter of free speech myself, I have to say: The reflexive, absolutist scorn for these campaigns ought to be reconsidered.

Sergiu Klainerman
Tablet

Excerpt: In the wake of Harvard, Penn, and MIT’s congressional testimony debacle, followed by the plagiarizing travails of Harvard’s President Claudine Gay and her reluctant and ungracious resignation, it is broadly recognized that America’s elite universities are afflicted by a rapidly metastasizing cancer. Harvard, our oldest and most admired university, is now the poster child for this terrible affliction.

Specific measures to improve our campuses include reviving free speech, institutional neutrality, viewpoint diversity, and individual merit as the only admissible criteria of selection for hiring and promotion. Such reforms are all self-evident within the framework of the traditional telos of the university, which prizes uncompromising dedication to truth and the pursuit of wisdom. If these ideas are controversial at all, it is only because the old telos has been eroded by new demands made in the name of social justice.

Yascha Mounk
The Good Fight Podcast, Persuasion, Substack

Excerpt: Larry Summers is an economist, the Charles W. Eliot University Professor and director of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at Harvard Kennedy School, and a member of the board of directors of OpenAI. Summers is the former President of Harvard University, the former Secretary of the Treasury under Bill Clinton, and was a director of the National Economic Council under Barack Obama.

In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Larry Summers discuss how universities can re-commit to pursuing truth and protecting academic freedom; how current economic indicators contrast with how many people actually experience the economy; and how Biden can improve his odds for re-election.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown
Reason Magazine

Excerpt: State lawmakers are getting creative in their attempts to control what young people read. Across the U.S., we're seeing legislation aimed at school materials and public libraries.

These measures often wear the mantle of "parental rights" or "protecting kids" from obscenity. But in practice they tend to take aim at any books depicting sex or sexuality. These aren't outright book bans. But they still strike at the heart of things like student privacy and academic freedom, giving the most conservative parents, politicians, or administrators the power to determine what anyone can access of offer at public institutions.

Greg Lukianoff and Adam Goldstein
The Eternally Radical Idea

Excerpt: Greg appeared on the PBS NewsHour last week to debate the pluses and minuses of the DEI bureaucracy on campus. Taking the “pro” DEI office position was Dr. Shaun Harper, Founder and Executive Director of the USC Race and Equity center — and someone you may recall from Greg’s appearance on the Dr. Phil program in 2022.

Megan Zahneis
Chronicle of Higher Education

Excerpt: Public colleges in Idaho would have to close offices and centers that do diversity, equity, and inclusion work if a Republican-backed bill introduced last week is enacted.

But, in a shift from the other bills targeting DEI measures that The Chronicle is tracking, the Idaho legislation also lists three dozen examples of specific jobs at Boise State and Idaho State Universities and at the University of Idaho that would be prohibited upon its passage.

Jessica Blake
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: As college and university presidents face growing backlash from state and federal lawmakers for their responses to student protests against the war between Israel and Hamas, higher education leaders are cracking down on student demonstrations—particularly those that support Palestinian people.

In the last week, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology became one of several institutions that have suspended student groups for violations of campus protest rules, and Stanford University threatened to take disciplinary action against students who occupied a campus plaza for nearly four months.

Jonathan Marks
The UnPopulist

Excerpt: No organization defends free speech on American college campuses more effectively than the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). It fights not only in the court of public opinion but also in real courts.

Challenging serious free speech abrogations on campuses is a worthy goal. But overstating the extent of repression on campus, as FIRE’s CEO and president Greg Lukianoff does in a recent article in the Atlantic, undermines that cause.

Stella Lee and Annalisa Fang
Daily Pennsylvanian

Excerpt: Penn Political Union hosted a discussion with political science professor Ian Lustick discussing free speech and the criteria for guest speakers in a university setting.

Penn Political Union president and College sophomore Mia Antonacci moderated the event, focusing on the question of whether it is “appropriate to prohibit individuals from speaking at a university based on the falsehood of their statements.” Around 30 people attended the discussion on Feb. 7, which took place at the Perelman Center for Political Science and Economics.

Pippa Norris
Harvard Crimson

Excerpt: The animus for much of the recent debate roiling Harvard is the claim that the liberal tilt of the academy has accelerated in recent years. This process is believed to have excluded heterodox voices and thereby restricted academic freedom of expression on college campuses.

Is there solid evidence that viewpoint diversity has indeed worsened over time in academia, as widely assumed? A 2023 survey I helped conduct with The World of Political Science monitored the economic and social ideological values of political scientists, as well as their attitudes towards academic freedom of expression and perceptions of cancel culture. Focusing upon a subset of respondents living and working in western universities and colleges, cohort analysis by decade of birth is a technique which can provide proxy insights into trends over time.

Jerry Coyne
Why Evolution is True

Excerpt: Now social psychologist Jon Haidt, who cofounded Heterodox Academy, has come out against DEI as well. Previously he kept pretty quiet on the issue, though he often spoke out favoring the pursuit of truth over the pursuit of social justice as the mission of a university. But now he’s at bat against DEI in the UnHerd article below (click to read). Note the strong title: abolishing DEI will “save academia.”

UPDATE: Jon Haidt has commented below (comment #19) and notes that the UnHerd characterization of his talk is incorrect; in particular he doesn’t oppose students chanting “Intifada” and “From the River to the Sea,”  but (like me) deplores the hypocrisy of punishing some speech and not other speech.

Deborah Gerhardt
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: It’s been a challenging time for Jewish students and faculty across our nation. Antisemitic incidents on campuses have increased; protesters we encounter on our paths to class chant hateful words or tear down notices about Israeli hostages, students disrupt speakers instead of listening, and faculty members worry we may find antisemitic greetings on the whiteboards in our classrooms. It can be hard to see where to find a friend or ally.

Jews are tough. The need to hide or flee to escape hatred has plagued us historically. But living with socially acceptable hate among those we thought shared our values— taking punch after punch when we’re already licking painful wounds—is new for many of us.

Susan Svrluga
Washington Post

Excerpt:  Students returned to Harvard’s campus last month after a turbulent and polarized start to the academic year, one punctuated by protests, a disastrous congressional hearing and the resignation of the university’s first Black president. The school has been sharply divided over the Israel-Gaza war; diversity, equity and inclusion efforts; and the limits of free expression. It has been attacked by politicians, wealthy alumni and its own students, a rare sign of vulnerability for one of the country’s most powerful and influential academic institutions.

Megan Zahneis
Chronicle of Higher Education

Excerpt: Utah has become the sixth state to adopt legislation that limits diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts at public colleges, after Gov. Spencer J. Cox, a Republican, on Tuesday signed a sweeping measure into law. The bill passed by wide party-line margins in both the House and Senate, and earned Cox’s signature just two weeks after its introduction; that fast pace drew criticism last week from Utah’s top higher-education official.

The bill is the first targeting DEI to be signed into law this year, after seven bills in five states became law in 2023, according to The Chronicle’s tracker. At least 16 states will consider restrictions on campus DEI this year.

Jessie Appleby
FIRE

Excerpt: In a speedy victory for FIRE and the Anti-Defamation League, Princeton amended its no-contact order policy on Jan. 26 to conform to parameters we recommended in our joint letter sent the day before. FIRE and the ADL wrote Princeton last week to express our shared concern about its continued improper use of no-contact orders and similar “no-communication” orders in ways that lead to censorship of student journalists.

Princeton’s updated policy — significantly shortened from a whopping 13 pages to a far more manageable two — appropriately  limits the circumstances in which no-contact orders will issue.

Emily Aronson
Princeton University

Excerpt: Princeton has released its third annual Diversity, Equity and Inclusion report, which shares the important work of students, faculty, staff and alumni to build community and support success and belonging at the University. The report highlights Princeton’s long-term and continuing efforts to be more diverse, inclusive, accessible and accountable.

The report provides a snapshot of the many initiatives, programs and events that occurred during the 2022-23 year — all of which were open to all members of the University.

It summarizes a range of activities under the themes of: climate, inclusion and equity, such as workshops on Jewish identity, inclusion and antisemitism available to students and staff of all faiths and ethnicities; academic experience, such as workshops on free speech and academic freedom led by the national organization PEN America for senior administrators, staff, faculty and others; and outreach and access, such as the new Transfer Scholars Initiative supporting the success of talented community college students from across New Jersey.

Eugene Volokh
Volokh Conspiracy, Reason Magazine

Excerpt: An excerpt from an opinion piece that she wrote at the Washington Post Dec. 10, but that I had missed:

    I was one of three co-chairs of Harvard's Presidential Task Force on Inclusion and Belonging, which in 2018 delivered a strategic framework for the campus…. Across the country, DEI bureaucracies have been responsible for numerous assaults on common sense, but the values of lowercase-i inclusion and lowercase-d diversity remain foundational to healthy democracy….

    We wrote [in our report]: "Our shared pursuits … depend on the open and direct expression of ideas and on criteria of evaluation established by the judgments of experts. Excellence therefore also requires academic freedom. Inclusion and academic freedom — these principles are linked in each being necessary to the pursuit of truth."

Editor’s note:

Below is the exchange of emails between Professor Sergiu Klainerman and Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber about the administration’s attacks on now-fired Professor Joshua Katz for his article about racial issues on campus. Professor Klainerman provided the emails to PFS.

From: seri@math.princeton.edu<seri@math.Princeton.EDU>
Sent: Monday, October 11, 2021 8:26 AM
To: Christopher L. Eisgruber<eisgruber@Princeton.EDU>; Deborah A. Prentice <predebb@princeton.edu>; Gene A. Jarrett <gjarrett@princeton.edu>
Subject: RRR complaint


Dear President Eisgruber:

I am writing to inform you that together with a group of colleagues, I filed a complaint last week to the online DEI system, requesting an investigation of those responsible for the official university webpage “To Be Known and Heard: Systemic Racism and Princeton University” and the accompanying video in which Professor Joshua Katz was vilified and misquoted. These were mandatory materials that all incoming first-year students had to read and watch. In addition to the violations of the University’s Regulations 1.1.5 and 1.1.1, detailed in our complaint, there are, we believe, three additional and important academic issues involved in this incident.

Alan Rozenshtein
Volokh Conspiracy, Reason Magazine

Excerpt: According to the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL), a conservative advocacy group, the University of Wisconsin Law School conducted a mandatory 1L "reorientation DEI session" last week for which students had to fill out a "race timeline worksheet" with "7 significant moments at least" of "significant life events around race" and read a worksheet listing 28 "common racist attitudes and behaviors," including views like "I'm colorblind" and "We have overcome." A student who attended the session confirmed to me that WILL's reporting was broadly accurate.

But I want to focus on a different point: that an educational institution committed to academic freedom and free inquiry should not use mandatory trainings to impose contested moral claims (again, without taking a position on the specifics of how the Wisconsin session was conducted).

Hank Reichman
Academe Blog

Excerpt: Today the New York Times published an article recounting the continuing struggle at Barnard College, the women’s college of Columbia University in New York, over the academic freedom and free speech rights of faculty and students.  

While perhaps more draconian than some, the Barnard measures are, unfortunately, just one example of a broad assault on academic freedom and campus free speech focused at the moment on pro-Palestinian expression that some may construe as antisemitic (but not all Jewish scholars do; see, for example, here).  That assault, however, will have an impact on more than expression concerning the current Mideast morass.  Well before October 7, many university administrations sought to curb faculty and student expression that they fear may alienate important external players: trustees, alumni, donors, or politicians.

James Huffman
DC Journal

Excerpt: What will come of the presidents of three of America’s most prestigious universities being called on the congressional carpet to explain their responses to Hamas’ brutal assault on innocent Israelis?  

Will the resignations of University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill and Harvard President Claudine Gay mark a turning point for American higher education? Will the leaders of other colleges and universities be encouraged to reflect on how far their institutions have strayed from their historic missions — namely, the pursuit of truth and dissemination of knowledge? Not if the lesson learned is implementing the policies implicit in the legislators’ questions.

Josh Moody
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: On Monday, the Florida Department of Education honored civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. for his “dedication to service and equality.” On Wednesday, Florida’s State Board of Education voted to prohibit spending on diversity, equity and inclusion programs at 28 state colleges.

The vote marks the latest strike against DEI programs in a state where such initiatives have come under fire from Republican governor—and current GOP presidential candidate—Ron DeSantis, who has called such programs both wasteful and “hostile to academic freedom.”

Vanderbilt University News

Excerpt: Jonathan Rauch, a distinguished Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at The Brookings Institution, will visit Vanderbilt as an Open Dialogue Visiting Fellow for a discussion on Jan. 22. The event, “Why Free Speech Is the Only Safe Space for Minorities,” promises a thought-provoking exploration of the crucial role free speech plays in safeguarding the interests of minorities and fostering inclusivity and understanding within society.

Walter M. Kimbrough
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: The past three months have been interesting for higher education. The Hamas attack; the protests on college campuses and elsewhere; the high-profile congressional hearing where three inexperienced presidents faced withering, partisan attacks; and now the resignation of two of three of those presidents.

While there has been plenty of commentary about the backlash against Gay, the ensuring plagiarism allegations and her resignation last week from the Harvard presidency, I have been wrestling with a broader idea. What was the context?

Robert Corn-Revere
Reason Magazine

Excerpt:  Freedom of speech on American college campuses is now facing great challenges in the aftermath of the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel and Israel's bombardment of Gaza. According to some, the outpouring of ugly, inexplicable, and vituperative speech unleashed by these events means that now is the time to abandon the concept of free speech at our universities. Apparently, to these "sunshine constitutional scholars," speech can only be free if it is polite and unchallenging.

There is no need to infantilize students by telling them they are simply too brittle to fully participate in the heated debates going on in the world around them. Instead, we need clear leadership from university presidents and others that stresses our commitment to free expression. This commitment must remain strong especially in turbulent times.