What Harvard Needs Next: A Conversation with Steven Pinker and John Tomasi
Join Harvard Alumni for Free Speech (HAFFS) for a conversation about the future of institutional reform at Harvard. Steven Pinker, renowned psychologist and Harvard professor, and John Tomasi, President of Heterodox Academy, will reflect on how institutions can recommit to genuine intellectual pluralism, and how alumni, faculty, and administrators can help create an environment where […]
Preserving Our Community of Trust: Nine Practical Observations to Save The Honor System
For most alumni — regardless of age, gender, profession, or political persuasion — one of the most influential aspects of their Washington and Lee experience is The Honor System. Unfortunately, it is now being challenged, and perhaps unsupported, as never before. The benefits of living in W&L’s “community of trust” are clear. Students are presumed […]
Podcast: The Role of Universities as Bastions of Free Speech and Open Debate in Polarized Times
As centers of learning, universities should be places where ideas, opinions and beliefs can be openly discussed, challenged and interrogated. They also have a duty of care to ensure their diverse community of students and staff feel safe, welcome and free from discrimination. But some claim that an overzealous focus on inclusion and appeasing students […]
Do Americans Still (Mostly) Love Their Universities?
If you’ve picked up a newspaper or talked to the average American about colleges in the last few years, you’ve likely gotten mixed reviews. After all, tuition rates keep rising, the wage premium of college degrees isn’t what it used to be, and colleges are increasingly accused of ideological intolerance and inadequate education. Yet a […]
FIRE Gives Furman’s Latest Non-Discrimination Policy a “Yellow Light”
Our team at the Furman Free Speech Alliance is working on an important Data Din for November, which we look forward to publishing next week. In the meantime, we want to present you with this special report from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), which analyzes the new “non-discrimination” policy that Furman released […]
Spanberger’s Premature Takeover of UVA
Virginia Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger ran as a moderate, but now it looks as if she might be trying to make the University of Virginia woke again. In a letter last week, Ms. Spanberger asked the university to suspend its search for a new president until she takes office and appoints new members to UVA’s board. […]
Building Momentum on Open Inquiry
Professor of Government Eric Beerbohm asked a packed Sanders Theatre audience of first-years to debate a provocative question: How do we value our friends who disagree with us? The question stemmed from a dining hall conversation he had with a student in Quincy House, where he serves as faculty dean, about how to maintain a […]
Higher Ed Needs Receivership, Not Reform
Of the 10 sections of President Trump’s Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education, the second is the real key to reform. It asks that schools cultivate a “vibrant marketplace of ideas on campus”—exactly what campus radicals have destroyed, reducing higher education to its present appalling condition. But this remedy also exposes the main weakness […]
On the Spectrum Between Free Speech and Cancel Culture, Where are Today’s Colleges?
As political polarization intensifies, America’s colleges and universities face threats to free speech from both the left and right. Campus conservatives risk ostracization, shaming or social media mobbing for expressing unpopular views on hot-button identity and social justice issues. Complaints about progressive faculty periodically go viral, triggering torrents of online abuse. Students protesting Israel’s conduct […]
The Jefferson Council: Democrat’s Win May Upend a Conservative Push in Virginia Universities
When she takes office as governor of Virginia in January, Abigail Spanberger will step into a partisan war over the political direction of one of the nation’s most respected public university systems. The schools have lately been at the center of a push by Republicans to overhaul universities that they see as having liberal biases. […]
