Speech on Campus: Power Positions, Privilege, and Crisis
BY SUSAN E. RAMLO Academics and other university stakeholders are often unaware of their biases, privilege, and naivety regarding free speech issues on campus. An eighty-year-old research method called Q methodology (“Q”) revealed this in a continuation of my 2018 research.[i] Institution-A (the focus of this study) has been struggling with declining enrollment, financial troubles,…
Colleges Claim to Teach Civic Education. Some Beg to Differ
BY BRIAN C. MITCHELL In a thought-provoking essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Derek Bok, president emeritus of Harvard University, wrote eloquently about the failure of American higher education to provide civic education to college students. Mr. Bok noted: “Political apathy is not evenly distributed throughout the population.Very conservative and very liberal voters are…
On Missing the Point About Academic Freedom and Free Speech
BY HANK REICHMAN Not long after I posted an item on the shouting down of California Attorney General Xavier Becerra by pro-Trump protesters at Whittier College, I stumbled across one of the more sanctimonious and misguided pieces I’ve yet encountered about the current free speech battles on college and university campuses. In “Left-Wing Drexel Professor…
The Bad Ideas of the Wisconsin Regents
BY JOHN K. WILSON Is disrupting a speaker worse than rape? According to the University of Wisconsin Board or Regents policy passed last week, it is. Only one of them gets mandatory penalties. If a student is accused of rape, and even convicted of sexual misconduct twice, there is no requirement for an automatic suspension,…
Using Free Speech to Stifle Free Speech
BY DAVID MOSHMAN People often use their freedom of speech to disrupt the speech of others, especially on college campuses in recent years. Of course people have a right to protest, provided they are sufficiently quiet, brief, or distant so as not to prevent the speaker from being heard. On August 25, University of Nebraska–Lincoln…
Colleges: Illiberal Enclaves of Groupthink?
BY AARON BARLOW Hank Reichman, on this blog the other day, quoted Donald Moynihan, a professor at the University of Wisconsin: “More people now believe that students oppose free speech, based on a flawed survey and resulting headlines. No correction will fix that.” He was referring to a “survey” conducted by a Brookings Institution Senior…
Why Banning Speakers Is Absolutely Wrong
BY JOHN K. WILSON Milo Yiannopoulos’ much-hyped Free Speech Week at Berkeley has disappeared, not with a bang but with a whimper. The whimper came yesterday when Milo made a brief appearance on Sproul Plaza, where he sang the Star-Spangled Banner (without kneeling) and left about 30 minutes later. Berkeley spent an estimated $800,000 on…
Speech Is an Acquired Taste
BY JONATHAN MARKS Guest blogger Jonathan Marks teaches political philosophy at Ursinus College. John Villasenor, Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institute is only the latest commentator to worry aloud about our college young, who don’t understand or value freedom of expression. A survey he conducted contains familiar bad news. A majority of respondents holds…
Why White Supremacists Shouldn’t Be Banned
BY JOHN K. WILSON Today’s decision by the University of Florida to ban rental of space for an event by white supremacist Robert Spencer is a threat to free speech on campus, and the reasoning behind it poses a danger to a wide range of speech. University of Florida president W. Kent Fuchs justified his…