What Free-Speech Warriors Get Wrong
A representative of a college invites someone to campus to speak. The prospective speaker accepts the invitation, whereupon the arrangement is announced. Dissidents object and demand that the invitation be rescinded. At that point, have the dissidents failed to respect norms of open discourse, healthy pluralism, or freedom of expression? Some observers believe that in […]
The Partnership of Speech
Most of us agree, at least in principle, that a stronger commitment to free speech on our campuses and in public life would be a welcome improvement over the tense and constrained environment we have endured for too many years. Yet conditions seem only to be worsening. The murder of Charlie Kirk on an American […]
Diversifying the Academy
I have been a member of the law faculty at Vanderbilt University for nearly twenty years. Even though my faculty has grown over that time, there are fewer conservatives now than when I joined. We are down to four—a mere ten percent or so of the tenure-track faculty—and two of the four are nearly 80. […]
UNC Alumni Free Speech Alliance reflects broader trend of campus alumni engagement
The UNC Alumni Free Speech Alliance is an independent, nonpartisan organization founded in 2021 to combat campus “unrest” related to free speech, according to its website. The alumni-led organization is known for hosting events on campus featuring guest speakers discussing free speech issues and partnering with similar groups, including the Student Free Speech Alliance at […]
Americans Overwhelmingly Agree On What Universities Should Focus On
From congressional hearings to donor revolts to headlines about campus protests, American universities are being told—loudly—that they’ve lost the public’s trust. But beneath the noise, there’s a quieter question that rarely gets asked: when Americans criticize universities, what do they actually want them to do instead? A new study published in Science Advances by economists […]
Virginia’s New Governor Moves Swiftly to Overhaul State University Boards
Gov. Abigail Spanberger of Virginia lost no time on Saturday in altering the tenor of the board that controls the University of Virginia, appointing 10 new members to the 17-member body within hours of being inaugurated. She also acted to revamp the boards of two other state schools. The day before, she had asked five […]
UVA’s President Was Right to Resign
The University of Virginia drew national headlines last summer when its then-president, Jim Ryan, resigned in the face of a Department of Justice investigation into a potential pattern of civil-rights violations by the university. More recently, Ryan and others have accused the UVA board of conspiring to push him out. It’s amusing that Ryan would […]
NYT Podcast: The Lonely Work of a Free-Speech Defender
Over the past year, the federal government has taken a series of actions widely seen as attacks on the First Amendment. Greg Lukianoff, the head of a legal defense group called the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, speaks to Natalie Kitroeff about what free speech really means and why both the left and the […]
‘Extortion Dressed Up In The Language of Contracts’: Cornell Professors Weigh In On Settlement
Following a freeze of over $250 million from the federal government, the University announced its settlement — a legally binding agreement that ended the freeze and resulted in the dismissal of any pending civil rights investigations — with the Trump administration on Nov. 7. The settlement restored all funding for grants that were paused and […]
The Disturbing Politicization of UVA’s Faculty Senate
Inside Higher Ed, an online publisher of news and opinion in the higher education sphere, recently published an article entitled, “The Angry 8: On Faculty Senates.” The thrust of the story is that the faculty senates at many colleges and universities have been hijacked by a relatively small number of activists who have turned the […]
