On Outside Speakers and Academic Freedom, Part IV

BY HANK REICHMAN “We can respect the right of free speech without having to respect the ideas being uttered.” — Joan W. Scott, “On Free Speech and Academic Freedom” (forthcoming) This is the final installment in a four-part series.  Part I may be found here; part II is here; part III is here.  Academic Freedom…

On Outside Speakers and Academic Freedom, Part II

BY HANK REICHMAN “The speech we must protect most forcefully is not the speech we hate the most, but the speech that is most endangered.” — CUNY Professor of History Angus Johnston (@studentactivism) on Twitter, April 25 “The countless fruitful discussions that happen all the time in college classrooms don’t grab headlines.” — UW Milwaukee…

On Outside Speakers and Academic Freedom, Part I

BY HANK REICHMAN “A university without student protests against visiting speakers would be like a forest without birds.” — Timothy Garton Ash, Free Speech: Ten Principles for a Connected World, p. 155 This is the first of three four posts in a series. The issue of the right of controversial and sometimes deeply offensive invited…

On Commencement Speakers

BY HANK REICHMAN Commencement season has come to a close for another year, so perhaps it is a good time to reflect on the sometimes thorny issue of the extent to which challenges to commencement speakers, especially those invited to receive an honorary degree, represent a threat to free speech or academic freedom.  As Princeton…

Controversial Speakers and DePaul U

POSTED BY MARTIN KICH On August 3, the Editorial Board of the Chicago Tribune published an editorial titled “DePaul University’s Fear of Words.” This spring, protesters disrupted a talk by Milo Yiannopoulos, sponsored by the university’s Young Republicans. In response to that event, which might have escalated to violence, the university’s president “described the gold…

Buildings at Catholic University of America in Washington, DC, with trees and grass in the foreground along with two parked cars and a small construction crane

In Defense of Melissa Goldberg and Academic Freedom at Catholic Colleges

BY JOHN K. WILSON Last week, the Catholic University of America (CUA) fired psychology professor Melissa Goldberg one week after she invited doula Rachel Carbonneau to address her class, Psychology 379: Lifespan Development. Doulas coach women during the birthing process, and Carbonneau discussed helping “birthing persons” deal with having abortions and assisting transgender men. One…

Thoughts on the “Heckler’s Veto”

BY HANK REICHMAN The so-called “heckler’s veto” is much in the higher ed news these days, with Inside Higher Ed this week running a piece, “Shouting Down Speakers Who Offend,” focusing on incidents at SUNY Albany, Stanford, and San Francisco State Universities. The Stanford incident has prompted two prior posts to this blog (here and here).…