A Tale of Two Cancelled Speeches: Beloit and Columbia
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…
PEN America v. Trump
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN Today the writers’ organization PEN America, represented by the nonpartisan nonprofit Protect Democracy and the Yale Law School Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic, filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York against President Donald Trump. The suit seeks to stop President Trump from using…
Wrong Answer: PEN America White Paper Questions Campus “Free Speech” Laws
BY HANK REICHMAN Tennessee, North Carolina, and Wisconsin have already enacted comprehensive new campus speech laws based on model legislation proposed by the Goldwater Institute, which in critical respects defend free speech by attacking it. (I discussed this legislation previously in a section of one of my lengthy posts on outside speakers, under the subtitle…
PEN America: Writers and Artists Interrogated Because of Travel Ban
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH On its website, PEN America has published an item on writers and artists detained and interrogated as a result of the Trump administration’s travel ban. The article includes the following anecdotes, the second of which involves a distinguished historian invited to speak at Texas A&M University: “The bestselling children’s book author Mem Fox,…