America’s Crumbling Institutions and Their Discontents

America's Institutions are crumbling. We can see it all around us, according to this recent Gallop poll:

Jonathan Haidt comments on one of the main causes of institutional decay: The failure of institutions to nurture and encourage free and vigorous speech resulting in the lack of viewpoint diversity:

America’s institutions were once strong, he says.

“By the mid to late 20th century, America had the best epistemic institutions in the world, epistemic meaning institutions that generate knowledge, like universities, research institutes, intelligence agencies.

“Social media comes in and makes us afraid of dissent. Because if you tell a joke, if you raise a question, if you even so much as tweet, a link to a study, an academic study, that questions an orthodoxy about race, or gender, you can be fired for that.

“When critics go silent, the institution gets stupid.”

Continue ReadingAmerica’s Crumbling Institutions and Their Discontents

Bari Weiss Invites All of Us to Become “Founders”

Bari Weiss is one of my heroes. She was forced off the staff of New York Times a few years ago because she refused to be muzzled on important issues of the day. She is now building her own media institution. I don't agree with her on everything, but I do see eye to eye with her on most of the topics of this podcast, an address she recently gave to a brand new college. One of her themes is that we need to bravely tell the truth, even when it causes people to dislike us. Even when they call us names. And we should never feel compelled to say things we don't believe to placate the mob. She invites each of us to avoid cynicism and to become "Founders."

Continue ReadingBari Weiss Invites All of Us to Become “Founders”

FIRE’s Expanded Mission

FIRE's new billboards:

FIRE is now the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, reflecting its newly expanded mission. Defending free speech in schools is still critically important, but the new mission has been expanded.

June 8, 2022 Statement by Greg Lukianoff, FIRE's President and CEO:

Today, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Educationbecomes the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.

America’s leading defender of free speech, due process, and academic freedom in higher education is expanding its free speech mission beyond campus. The $75 million expansion initiative will focus on three main areas of programming: litigation, public education, and research.

“America needs a new nonpartisan defender of free speech that will advocate unapologetically for this fundamental human right in both the court of law and the court of public opinion,” said FIRE President & CEO Greg Lukianoff. “FIRE has a proven track record of defeating censorship on campus. We are excited to now bring that same tireless advocacy to fighting censorship off campus.”

Continue ReadingFIRE’s Expanded Mission

Gettysburg Address and Lincoln Bust Woke-Washed at Cornell University

A Cornell University Library has removed a display containing a copy of the Gettysburg Address and a bust of Abraham Lincoln from its library based "on a complaint."

A bust of President Abraham Lincoln and a plaque of the Gettysburg address have been removed from a Cornell University library.

"Someone complained, and it was gone," Cornell biology professor Randy Wayne told the College Fix of the matter.

The bust of Lincoln and the bronzed plaque of the former president’s historic 1863 address had been in the Kroch Library, where the university’s Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections is located, since 2013.

Continue ReadingGettysburg Address and Lincoln Bust Woke-Washed at Cornell University

Biden’s Giant Leap Backward on Title IX

Here is an excerpt from a new article on the common sense changes to Title IX that occurred under the Trump Administration that are being reversed by the Biden Administration.  This article is titled: "Biden's Sex Police: The White Houses's new regulations will gut due-process rights for college students accused of sexual misconduct." It appears at Bari Weiss' excellent Substack, Common Sense.

The new rules recommend a return to a “single investigator” model that was barred under the DeVos reform. This means one administrator can act as detective, prosecutor, judge, and jury on a Title IX complaint. The new rules also undo many of the procedural protections for the accused—including the right to see all the evidence, inculpatory and exculpatory, gathered against him. “It’s an evisceration of the procedural protections given to the accused,” says historian KC Johnson, co-author of The Campus Rape Frenzy: The Attack on Due Process at America’s Universities.

Under the DeVos rules, adjudication of a formal complaint required a live hearing be held that included cross examination. The Biden administration lifts this obligation. The Biden rules also call for a return to investigations initiated by third parties, even if based on rumors or misunderstandings, in which male students can be subjected to Title IX proceedings over the objection of their female partners. (Robby Soave at Reason has a good summary of the Biden proposals.)

“It’s a document that validates all of the concerns we had about due process and free speech being on the chopping block,” says Joe Cohn, legislative and policy director at The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. He adds that the administration is giving schools the blessing of the Department of Education “to cut many corners that are essential for fundamental fairness.”

As vice president, Biden made clear that campuses were just the first stop in an effort to remake throughout society how males and females interact. He said in a 2015 speech at Syracuse University about sexual misconduct, “We need a fundamental change in our culture. And the quickest place to change culture is to change it on the campuses of America.”

[More . . . ]

Continue ReadingBiden’s Giant Leap Backward on Title IX