BY JOHN K. WILSON One of the strongest arguments for free speech and against allowing speakers to be shouted down speakers was made on May 5, 2019 by a group of 15 white supremacist Holocaust deniers in Russellville, Arkansas. Billy Roper, who runs the racist ShieldWall Network, led the group who disrupted a March of…
BY JOHN K. WILSON The University of Massachusetts at Amherst is hosting an interesting event on May 4 called “Not Backing Down: Israel, Free Speech, and the Battle for Palestinian Human Rights.” The event will feature Roger Waters, Linda Sarsour, Patrisse Cullors, Marc Lamont Hill, Dave Zirin, and Vijay Prashad, and is being organized by…
BY JOHN K. WILSON DePaul ethics professor Jason Hill has sparked controversy with an essay harshly denouncing Palestinians. You might think this is the point where we start talking about protesters demanding his firing, but the reality is quite different. One radio show host denounced the “DePaul weak-minded students calling for censorship of a respected…
BY JOHN K. WILSON I interviewed Henry Reichman, chair of the AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure, about his new book, The Future of Academic Freedom (Johns Hopkins University Press). Reichman will discuss his book on a panel at the AAUP’s Annual Conference on June 13, 2019 in Arlington, Virginia and other future…
BY JOHN K. WILSON The Trump Administration’s decision to ban Omar Barghouti from coming to America is an alarming attack on academic freedom and free speech. Barghouti, a co-founder of the Boycott, Divest, Sanction (BDS) movement, was scheduled to speak at Harvard and New York University but the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) ordered…
BY JOHN K. WILSON Two cancelled speeches last week, at Beloit College and Columbia University, have brought new attention to the issue of censoring speakers. At Beloit College, a speech by Erik Prince was cancelled out of fear of student protesters. At Columbia University, a panel about censorship in Turkey was cancelled because the administration…
BY JOHN K. WILSON At 4:07pm ET today, Donald Trump signed an Executive Order imposing “free inquiry” on college campuses. In reality, this hypocritical order by an open enemy of free expression is nothing but a political tool that Trump wants to use to silence his ideological opponents. The Executive Order requires public colleges to…
BY JOHN K. WILSON Today marks the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court ruling in Tinker v. Des Moines, upholding the right of students to wear black armbands in school to protest the Vietnam War. The Tinker case established a standard of “substantial disruption” for punishing K-12 students, and it is a landmark case for student…
BY JOHN K. WILSON I was intrigued by a Facebook post yesterday from the National Association of Scholars which announced, “Want a promotion? Too bad; you’re not a union member, says St. Cloud State.” That’s a shocking claim. Or it would be, except that there’s no evidence that it’s true. The post linked to an…
BY JOHN K. WILSON Last week, the Loyola Phoenix, the student newspaper of Loyola University Chicago, published a remarkable editorial about the repressive media policy on campus. Loyola’s communications spokesperson, Evangeline Politis, had written to the student newspaper recently, angry that student journalists had dared to ask questions to faculty and staff at Loyola: “This…