Oklahoma University Teaches its Teachers How to Indoctrinate Students

Oklahoma University teachers are being trained to violate their students’ constitutional rights. This link includes an audio recording on which you can repeatedly hear unconstitutional indoctrination techniques being taught to the teachers. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has contacted OU to put the university on notice. Here’s the problem:

The workshop in question trains instructors on how to eliminate disfavored but constitutionally protected expression from the classroom and guide assignments and discussion into preferred areas — all for unambiguously ideological and viewpoint-based reasons. . . . By limiting classroom discussion and silencing dissent, professors violate the rights of conscience of their students. The clear aim is not merely to advocate a point of view but to coerce, if necessary, their students into believing the professor’s or school’s version of truth. Such oppressive actions clearly cross the line between education and indoctrination.

Continue ReadingOklahoma University Teaches its Teachers How to Indoctrinate Students

Greg Lukianoff Discusses an “Eternally Radical Idea”

People utter the phrase "free speech" all the time, but it is a rare bird who appreciates how rare and precious this idea is, historically speaking. Here's an excerpt from an article by Greg Lukianoff:

What do you call an idea that has a clear track record of promoting innovation, human flourishing, prosperity, and progress, but is nonetheless rejected by every generation?

I would call that idea radical. And because it’s always so staunchly opposed, I would call that idea “eternally radical.”

So what is the Eternally Radical Idea? It is freedom of speech.

The unfettered right to state your opinion is extremely rare in human history. Your right to promote reform, contradict prevailing orthodoxies, or engage in artistic and personal expression is even rarer.

Indeed, human beings are natural born censors with a strong drive toward community conformity. Throughout the millennia, how have we typically handled dissenters? Often it’s ostracization or banishment. At other times, it’s arrest, torture, beheadings, burning at the stake, crucifixion, or drinking hemlock.

Continue ReadingGreg Lukianoff Discusses an “Eternally Radical Idea”

Stanford University Reverses Anti-Free-Speech Decision and Acknowledges the Right to Express Satire and Parody

Good work here by Fire (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education), which forced Standford University to reverse its decision withholding a law student's right to graduate because the student dared to write a email satirizing the Federalist Society, Sen. Josh Hawley, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, regarding the events of Jan. 6.

I had no part in this particular action, but I support the work of FIRE. In fact, I recently formed a working relationship with FIRE, a non-partisan free-speech non-profit. As a private practice attorney, I will be representing university faculty members who FIRE refers to me, people who are in need of legal support to address constitutional violations in the areas of free expression, academic freedom, and associational rights.

Continue ReadingStanford University Reverses Anti-Free-Speech Decision and Acknowledges the Right to Express Satire and Parody

University of Rhode Island Condemns its Women’s Studies’ Professor for Taking an Improper Position in her Op-Ed on LBGTQ

You would think it's a good thing for a Women's Studies' Professor to write an op-ed on an issue relating to LBGTQ. Much of the op-ed written by Donna Hughes criticized the the far right and its violent history and ideology. Her employer, University of Rhode Island had no problem with any of that.But she also criticized a position associated with the far left:

The American political left is increasingly diving headfirst into their own world of lies and fantasy and, unlike in the imaginary world of QAnon, real children are becoming actual victims. The trans-sex fantasy, the belief that a person can change his or her sex, either from male to female or from female to male, is spreading largely unquestioned among the political left.” She added that “[w]omen and girls are expected to give up their places of privacy such as restrooms, locker rooms, and even prison cells.

For criticizing LBGTQ ideology, she was publicly condemned by her employer in a flagrant assault on the First Amendment:

A faculty member’s First Amendment and academic freedom rights are not boundless, however, and should be exercised responsibly with due regard for the faculty member’s other obligations, including their obligations to the University’s students and the University community. As stated in the above referenced documents, faculty have a special obligation to show due respect for the opinions of others and to “exercise critical self-discipline and judgment” and “appropriate restraint” in transmitting their personal opinions.

The University, College of Arts and Sciences and Department of Gender and Women Studies are working to support our students and the community as we move through — and learn from — this situation.

The problem is, apparently, that if you criticize an ideology, it is the equivalent of doing violence to real life people. That's what happens when we make a high art of pretending that people are fragile (what we really need is anti-fragility).

Turley accurately concludes: "The only way that Hughes could not cause such harm would be to stay silent on her criticism of the movement. This is a matter that runs to the very core of her writings as an academic and identity as a feminist. , , The silence of other faculty at the university to support their colleague’s rights to free speech and academic freedom is, again, deafening."

Continue ReadingUniversity of Rhode Island Condemns its Women’s Studies’ Professor for Taking an Improper Position in her Op-Ed on LBGTQ