BY JOHN K. WILSON The presidents of Harvard, Penn, and MIT testified on Capitol Hill on December 5, 2023, at a hearing on “Holding Campus Leaders Accountable and Confronting Antisemitism,” and the bipartisan political backlash with demands for their resignations is unprecedented in the history of higher education, including the forced resignation of Penn president…
BY JOHN K. WILSON It’s always distressing during contentious times when neutral statements for free speech are twisted beyond recognition with false smears of bias and bigotry. In a November 27 essay in The Hill, Northwestern law professor Steven Lubet denounced the American Association of University Professors for a November 15 statement, “Polarizing Times Demand…
BY JOHN K. WILSON Last Friday, the administration of Indiana University decided to delay seeking trustee approval of a plan announced just two weeks earlier to move its Kinsey Institute to a separate nonprofit organization. The plan, made in response to legislators requiring a ban on all state funds to the Kinsey Institute because of…
BY JOHN K. WILSON Written by a who’s who of conservative and centrist campus free speech advocates—including Donald Downs, Robert George, Alan Charles Kors, Greg Lukianoff, John Tomasi, and Keith Whittington—the Princeton Principles for a Campus Culture of Free Inquiry released this month follow in the wake of the Chicago Principles, saying they “affirm this…
BY JOHN K. WILSON On August 14, the Cornell Free Speech Alliance (CFSA) issued a report, “Lifting The Fog: Restoring Academic Freedom & Free Expression At Cornell University,” that made policy recommendations for how Cornell can improve its climate for free speech. Keith Whittington at Reason called the report “a valuable agenda for faculty across…
BY JOHN K. WILSON The news that Cornell University’s administration sternly rejected a student demand for trigger warnings has spread across the country for the past month. The New York Times reported that “the conflict illustrates a stark divide in how different generations define free speech” with repressive students on one side while “proponents of…
BY JOHN K. WILSON Last week, Stanford Law School announced that it had suspended Tirien Steinbach, associate dean for diversity, equity and inclusion, in the wake of the outrage over the disruption by protesters of a Federalist Society speech by Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan. Stanford must end this suspension immediately. Stanford’s suspension of Steinbach is…
By JOHN K. WILSON Christian Coons, an associate professor of philosophy at Bowling Green State University, has been suspended and faces a hearing on March 20 that could lead to his dismissal. His crime? Sending emails to his colleagues about his department’s alleged past misconduct in hiring decisions. A university is seriously considering the dismissal…
BY JOHN K. WILSON There have been a lot of evil and stupid bills proposed by state legislators to abolish tenure and destroy academic freedom, but North Dakota’s House Bill 1446 sinks to new depths of depravity in the attacks on higher education. The Tenure with Responsibilities Act, introduced on January 18 by North Dakota…
BY JOHN K. WILSON John K. Wilson interviewed Bradford Vivian, author of Campus Misinformation: The Real Threat to Free Speech in American Higher Education (Oxford University Press), by email for Academe Blog. To learn more about Vivian’s book, you can listen to interviews with him on the podcasts Democracy Works and Politics Is Everything. John…