Image of Stanford University and an American flag

In Defense of Tirien Steinbach

BY JOHN K. WILSON Last week, Stanford Law School announced that it had suspended Tirien Steinbach, associate dean for diversity, equity and inclusion, in the wake of the outrage over the disruption by protesters of a Federalist Society speech by Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan. Stanford must end this suspension immediately. Stanford’s suspension of Steinbach is…

two rows of blocks reading "free" and "speech". the blocks that spell "free" are being lifted away by a hand

Adam Kissel’s Totalitarian Turn

BY JOHN K. WILSON Adam Kissel has written an article in the Federalist titled “The Smart Lawmaker’s Guide To Writing Anti-Critical Race Theory Laws That Will Stand Up In Court.” As scary as that headline is, the full essay is much more alarming in its open advocacy of repression. Kissel’s piece was in response to…

graffiti of someone spraying free speech on a brick wall

The Stanford Arguments over an Academic Freedom Conference

BY JOHN K. WILSON A conference on academic freedom being held this weekend at Stanford has spurred controversy over its perceived conservative bias and closed format. A group of more than fifty Stanford academics signed “A Closed Conference on Academic Freedom is a Contradiction,” a statement denouncing the conference for its lack of public access.…

FBI poster for members of Weatherman faction of Students for a Democratic Society

Healy v. James, Fifty Years Later

BY JOHN K. WILSON Fifty years ago, on June 26, 1972, the US Supreme Court issued one of the most important rulings protecting free speech on campus in the case of Healy v. James. As the conservative Supreme Court has proven this week, even a fifty-year precedent is not safe if five justices decide to…

Princeton arches

In Defense of Joshua Katz

BY JOHN K. WILSON On May 23, the Princeton Board of Trustees voted to fire tenured professor Joshua Katz on the recommendation of a dean and the president, and with the approval of a faculty committee. Katz’s defenders claim that he is being persecuted for his extramural utterances calling a black student group a “terrorist…

Horse with Boise State Broncos emblazoned on a boulder.

Learning from the Boise State Hoax

BY JOHN K. WILSON On March 16, 2021, Boise State University ordered the suspension of fifty-five classes enrolling more than 1,299 students in its required course, UF 200: Foundations of Ethics & Diversity. The mass suspension lasted for eight days, and it is one of the largest targeted suspensions of a course in the history…

Princeton University's Nassau Hall at night

Academic Freedom at Princeton

BY JOHN K. WILSON This week, the Academic Freedom Alliance (AFA) wrote a letter to the president of Princeton, asking him to censor a campus website in order to protect a conservative professor’s hurt feelings. This letter is not a defense of academic freedom; it’s an attack on academic freedom. And the AFA is not…