BY JOHN K. WILSON The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) has released a Model Code of Student Conduct for colleges to adopt, and it’s a tremendous advance for student liberties on campus. All colleges should adopt this Model Code (with slight improvements, I believe). Too many colleges have vague and repressive provisions in…
BY JOHN K. WILSON I am often skeptical of the importance of surveying students about the First Amendment. “The First Amendment on Campus 2020 Report: College Students’ Views of Free Expression,” a new report just released this week of a survey in late 2019 by Gallup and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation…
BY JOHN K. WILSON Last year, after DePaul philosophy professor Jason Hill published an anti-Palestinian article that drew protests, I wrote a post titled “In Defense of Jason Hill and His Critics” in which I noted that Hill should not be punished for his offensive right-wing views–but also pointing out that Hill, in fact, hadn’t…
BY JOHN K. WILSON Liberty University has a long history of repression, including suppressing freedom of the press on campus by censoring its student newspaper. But Liberty reached a new low for liberty last week when president Jerry Falwell Jr. announced that the university has issued arrest warrants against two reporters for the crime of…
BY JOHN K. WILSON Because so many conferences and events have been cancelled, I wanted to provide some online events and resources dealing with academic freedom and free expression on campus. Below are some suggestions for content about campus free speech issues, including upcoming events, free online resources, recent presentations at conferences, and podcasts. (Note…
BY JOHN K. WILSON Rev. Joseph Lowery, known as the “dean” of the Civil Rights Movement, died yesterday at the age of 98. His list of accomplishments bringing justice to America is so long that many obituaries of him have overlooked a key one: He was the last surviving figure from the New York Times…
BY SUSAN E. RAMLO Academics and other university stakeholders are often unaware of their biases, privilege, and naivety regarding free speech issues on campus. An eighty-year-old research method called Q methodology (“Q”) revealed this in a continuation of my 2018 research.[i] Institution-A (the focus of this study) has been struggling with declining enrollment, financial troubles,…
BY JOHN K. WILSON This week, Arizona HB 2238 passed the state house education committee by a vote of 7-4. Stanley Kurtz (the mastermind behind these laws with the help of the Goldwater Institute) calls the Arizona bill the start of a “third wave” of legislation in the name of campus free speech, following earlier…
BY HANK REICHMAN The right-wing’s embrace of campus free speech has always seemed, well, more than a little hypocritical. The outrage machine kicks into high gear when invited speakers like Milo Yiannopoulos, Ann Coulter, Ben Shapiro, or Charles Murray are protested or disinvited. But what about when the speaker is someone these vocal free speech…
BY HANK REICHMAN On March 21, 2019, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that he claimed would require colleges and universities to uphold free speech or risk forfeiting federal support. When Trump first announced his intent to issue the order at the Conservative Political Action Conference the AAUP and eleven other groups issued a…