POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN University of California at Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks, who resigned last summer pending installment of a replacement (to be announced soon, it is said), has suffered the arrows of considerable criticism from his faculty, Bay Area media, and, to some extent, from me on this blog (e.g., here, here, and here). …
BY MICHAEL MERANZE The following post by UCLA history professor Michael Meranze is reposted by permission from the Remaking the University blog that he runs along with UC Santa Barbara professor Christopher Newfield. I have offered my own view of the Milo controversy at Berkeley in “On Milo’s Right to Speak.” The turmoil surrounding Milo…
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 MARTIN KICH Writing for the Detroit News, Michael Gerstein reports: A northern Michigan Republican Party official resigned on Wednesday after landing in hot water for implying in a tweet that university protesters in California should be stopped violently. Dan Adamini, the Marquette County Republican Party secretary, apologized for his tweet. It made national news…
BY HANK REICHMAN I thought of the old adage in my title when I read the following in today’s San Francisco Chronicle: UC Berkeley police are investigating the theft of names and emails of people interested in joining the Berkeley College Republicans, the student group whose invitation to Milo Yiannopoulos of Breitbart News prompted a…
BY MARTIN KICH What follows are some excerpts from an article written by Andrew Haffner for the Bismarck (ND) Tribune: A bill described by its sponsor as a means to ensure freedom of speech in North Dakota higher education by rejecting ‘political correctness gone crazy’ has passed in the state House. “Rep. Rick Becker, R-Bismarck,…
BY MATTHEW BOEDY Guest blogger Dr. Matthew Boedy is in his second year as Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and Composition in the English Department at the University of North Georgia in Gainesville, Ga. He is a member of the AAUP. When I stood in front of my students on the first day of the semester…
BY AARON BARLOW In an opinion piece published by The New York Times, Leon Botstein, president of Bard College, writes: American colleges and universities, public and private, are properly seen as nonpartisan elements in civil society, committed to research and teaching in a manner that transcends ordinary politics. But to succeed, these institutions must ensure…
BY ALAN-MICHAEL WEATHERFORD This is a cross-post of an editorial by Alan-Michael Weatherford. It originally appeared as a guest editorial on the website of The Daily, the student newspaper of the University of Washington. The Daily Editor’s Note: Story includes vulgarity, anti-gay, and transphobic slurs. When internet hate-monger and Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopolous spoke on University of…
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…