Free Speech is Now a Partisan Issue
Tweet by Glenn Greenwald citing Pew Surveys:
What do these numbers mean to those people who are thoughtful, who take the time to extrapolate into the future?
FIRE’s 2022 List of Worst Colleges for Free Speech
You would think colleges and universities would "get" the importance of free speech, especially given that they are so top-heavy with administrators who could study these sorts of things (Yale has 6,000 undergrads but more than 6,000 administrators). Further, many of these universities have law programs. Couldn't the administrators walk across campus and make sure they aren't acting unconstitutionally?
This excerpt is from FIRE's annual list of failing colleges. FIRE is a non-partisan organization dedicated to defending free speech at colleges and universities:
"There’s no shortage of colleges and universities that will go to great lengths to stifle free speech. Some institutions are worse than others, which is why each year for over a decade, FIRE compiles a list of the worst-of-the-worst.
Since our first list in 2011, FIRE has named and shamed 80 institutions in 33 states for actively working to shut down student and faculty speech rights."
FIRE Defends Law Professor Forced to Attend Hypocritical Re-Education Camp
Law professor Jason Kilborn is forging ahead in the battle to vindicate academic freedom rights at University of Illinois Chicago, which punished him for a test question that included two redacted slurs.
- University forces professor into sensitivity course that uses the exact same redacted slur in the training materials.
- UIC’s level of hypocrisy and cluelessness boggles the mind.
“UIC crucifies Kilborn for using a redacted slur, then turns around and forces him into anti-racism training that uses that same slur,” said Ronnie London, head of FIRE’s Faculty Legal Defense Fund. “Kilborn is effectively showing up to re-education and being handed his own text.”
The Mission of Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE):
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education’s mission is to defend and sustain the individual rights of students and faculty members at America’s colleges and universities. These rights include freedom of speech, freedom of association, due process, legal equality, religious liberty, and sanctity of conscience—the essential qualities of liberty. FIRE educates students, faculty, alumni, trustees, and the public about the threats to these rights on our campuses, and provides the means to preserve them.
The Re-Emergence of Politically Correct Culture on Campus
Greg Lukianoff (President of FIRE and co-author with Jonathan Haidt of "The Coddling of the American Mind") is delivering the bad news: Politically Correct culture went underground where it gained substantial followings and it has now re-emerged, led by an army of college administrators, many of whom come from colleges of education. His article includes a lot of doom and gloom, but also offers hope. The title to Lukianoff's article at Reason is "The Second Great Age of Political Correctness: The P.C. culture of the '80s and '90s didn't decline and fall. It just went underground. Now it's back."
Amid the Second Great Age of Political Correctness, American higher education has become too expensive, too illiberal, and too conformist. It has descended into a period of profound crisis wrought by shifts in hiring, student development, and politically charged speech codes developed during the Ignored Years, when too few were paying attention. American campuses should be bastions of free expression and academic freedom. Instead, both are in decline. We cannot afford to just give up on higher ed. College and university presidents can and should do the following five things:
1. Immediately dump all speech codes.Those who donate to colleges should refuse to do so without demanding these changes.2. Adopt a statement specifically identifying free speech as essential to the core purpose of a university and committing the university to free speech values.
3. Defend the free speech rights of their students and faculty loudly, clearly, and early.
4. Teach free speech, the philosophy of free inquiry, and academic freedom from Day One.
5. Collect data and open their campuses to research on the climate for debate, discussion, and dissent.
Twitter’s Free Speech Strategies
This conversation is two years old, but it is a fascinating look into the strategies Twitter was using to navigate the two challenges of allowing free expression and preventing harm. Jack Dorsey is at the table along with Vijaya Gadde, who serves as Twitter's global lead for legal, policy, and trust and safety at Twitter. It's important to note that Dorsey recently stepped down as CEO of Twitter, replaced by Twitter's chief technology officer, Parag Agrawal, who has sent signals that he will not be as accommodating to free speech as Dorsey.