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…
BY JOHN K. WILSON Stanley Kurtz is at it again: He has another bad idea for unnecessary and counterproductive legislation. In the past, he’s sought to impose mandatory penalties on disruptive protesters and rules for institutional neutrality. This time, it’s an attempt to force public colleges to have more debates and conservative speakers by enacting…
BY JOHN K. WILSON It is shocking that the University of Illinois at Chicago would waste $694,000 in taxpayer funds to pay off a disgraced Chicago State administrator over a frivolous lawsuit. Angela Henderson was the acting provost at Chicago State when faculty critical of her took a look at her UIC dissertation and discovered…
BY JOHN K. WILSON Earlier today, a Turkish court sentenced an academic, Yonca Demir from Bilgi University, to three years in prison for the crime of signing a peace petition critical of the government. It marked the longest sentence yet given to the 1128 professors who signed a 2016 petition by Academics for Peace that angered…
BY JOHN K. WILSON The president of Franciscan University of Steubenville has openly announced that a book will be banned from being taught at the university, and all books at the university will be scrutinized to ensure that “scandalous materials” are prohibited. It’s a shocking case of censorship and a clear example of the suppression…
BY JOHN K. WILSON Peter Boghossian, an assistant professor of philosophy at Portland State University, and the co-author of the infamous recent “Sokal Squared” hoax against academic journals, was “found by his institutional review board to have committed research misconduct,” according to Inside Higher Ed. Some people wrongly think that Boghossian is guilty of fraud…