BY JOHN K. WILSON Last week, I criticized a proposal by the Goldwater Institute for model legislation on the “Campus Free Speech Act,” pointing out the flaws of the model and the danger in allowing legislators to dictate campus policies. On February 9, Tennessee legislators introduced bills in the House and Senate SB1165/HB0739) based upon…
BY JOHN K. WILSON The Goldwater Institute, a right-wing think tank working along with National Review writer Stanley Kurtz, has issued a new report calling for model legislation to impose more free speech on campus with a model “Campus Free Speech Act” intended to be imposed on every public college by state legislatures. The biggest…
BY JOHN K. WILSON January 23, 2017 marks the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Keyishian v. Board of Regents, perhaps the most important case defending academic freedom in the history of law (see the essay by Marjorie Heins today about the case). Five years ago, I interviewed Harry Keyishian via email for AcademeBlog…
BY JOHN K. WILSON The National Association of Scholars (NAS) has issued a new report, “Making Citizens: How American Universities Teach Civics” (pdf) that is absolutely breathtaking in its call for political repression of education. The NAS Report demands, “The New Civics must be excised from every part of the American educational system, from kindergarten…
BY JOHN K. WILSON CNN is reporting some very important news about talk show host Monica Crowley, Trump’s pick as senior director of strategic communications for the National Security Council: she is a plagiarist. And this is not your garden-variety, “oops I copied a few things accidentally” excuse kind of plagiarism. This is massive, systematic, intentional…
POSTED BY JOHN K. WILSON Donald Trump announced today that he will be shutting down the Donald J. Trump Foundation. But he won’t be shutting down the investigation by the New York Attorney General’s office, nor should he shut down the scrutiny over his corrupt charity. The Trump Foundation existed for Trump to use for…
BY JOHN K. WILSON Donald Trump has nominated Betsy DeVos to be his Secretary of Education. DeVos grew up as part of the wealthy Prince business family, and then married into the even wealthier DeVos (Amway) family. Her husband lost his run for governor and has pushed for right-to-work laws in Michigan. Inherited wealth is…
BY JOHN K. WILSON Donald Trump spent most of the 2016 campaign saying almost nothing about education. But recently, Trump has made comments revealing that if he wins the presidency, it could have dramatic and alarming effects on public schools and universities. In his latest pronouncements about universities and in his “Contract with the American…
BY JOHN K. WILSON I thought I was reading a campus newspaper from the 1950s when I saw this headline yesterday in the Chicago Maroon: “Communist Plans To Defy Campus Ban.” Suddenly, the University of Chicago has become the epicenter of several free speech controversies. It turns out that it’s pretty easy to write big…