FIRE Files Suit to Address First Amendment Problems with Florida’s “Stop Woke Act”

Once again, FIRE steps up when First Amendment rights are threatened. No matter where someone is on the political spectrum, good intentions are a poor guide to abiding by the First Amendment. This time, the problem is Florida's Stop Woke Act. Excerpt from FIRE's press release:

The First Amendment doesn’t allow Florida law to declare which concepts are too challenging for students and faculty to discuss in a college classroom.

Stop WOKE Act restricts college student and faculty members’ ability to play devil’s advocate, express viewpoints University of South Florida’s First Amendment Forum is the first student group to challenge the law in court TAMPA, Fla., Sept. 6, 2022 — To protect free speech, the government must censor. That’s the absurd argument put forth by Florida lawmakers in the controversial “Stop WOKE Act.”

The law suppresses viewpoints disfavored by Florida lawmakers, threatens tens of millions of dollars in annual funding for universities that don’t crack down on faculty who “promote” an opinion on a government blacklist, and encourages people to report other Americans to government authorities if they “advance” those views — all in the name of “individual freedom.”

Today, a professor and student group from the University of South Florida sued to protect professors’ ability to teach and students’ ability to learn. The lawsuit, filed by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, alleges that the higher education provisions of Florida’s “Individual Freedom” law (dubbed the “Stop WOKE Act” by its proponents), impermissibly chill free expression and promote unconstitutional censorship on the state’s college campuses.

“Without the freedom to engage in vigorous and robust debate about important issues and contentious concepts, a college education is just an exercise in memorizing facts and repeating government-approved viewpoints,” said FIRE attorney Adam Steinbaugh. “That’s not freedom or education.”

The Stop WOKE Act, passed on an exclusively party-line vote and signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis on April 22, prohibits “instruction” on eight specific “concepts” related to “race, color, national origin, or sex”that may run counter to government officials’ notions of “freedom.” For example, the bill unlawfully restricts discussions of advantages or disadvantages of a particular race or sex; whether individuals are unconsciously biased based on race or sex; and whether certain virtues — including “merit, excellence, hard work, fairness, neutrality, objectivity, and racial colorblindness” — are racist.

But in restricting which ideas may be considered in a college classroom, Florida’s political leaders ran headlong into the First Amendment.

Continue ReadingFIRE Files Suit to Address First Amendment Problems with Florida’s “Stop Woke Act”

Dysfunctional Conversation at Colleges, By the Numbers.

New report by FIRE and the news is not good:

More than three in five students (63%) expressed worry about damaging their reputation because of someone misunderstanding what they have said or done, and just over one in five (21%) reported that they feel a lot of pressure to avoid discussing controversial topics in their classes.

Twenty-two percent reported that they often self-censor. Roughly three in five students reported they would feel discomfort publicly disagreeing with a professor about a controversial topic or expressing an unpopular opinion to their peers on a social media account tied to their name.

At this link, you can download FIRE's brand new report.

Continue ReadingDysfunctional Conversation at Colleges, By the Numbers.

The NYT Excoriates BYU for Racial Slurs that Might or Might Not have Occurred During a Volleyball Game

Jesse Singal digs into this storiybut, more importantly, into the way the New York Times has once again committed journalistic malpractice. Our media outlets have turned into two competing teams that act like churches. It's as if we are relying on churches to provide us with factual accuracy regarding their respective dogmas:

In light of all this, it’s interesting to read the rest of the Times story and examine which information Patel did and didn’t include. There is no sign he (or the other two staffers who worked on the story) contacted any other member of either team or its coaching staff, or anyone in attendance at the game, or anyone who wasn’t in a leadership, issuing-an-official-statement position at BYU. In the age of ubiquitous social media and gigabytes of video being posted from every live event every second, I bet Patel and his colleague could have contacted at least two dozen individuals in attendance with about an hour of work, if only to get some color about what the atmosphere was like in the student section supposedly hurling these slurs. . . .

As of now, the Cougar Chronicle’s version of this story is better, more complete, and more accurate than The New York (freaking) Times’, in part because it didn’t treat the accusation as automatically true. Rather, the reporters did some reporting. All these days later, the Times story remains up, treating the maximalist account of this incident as more or less settled fact, spreading misinformation, without an update or follow-up article in sight.

This is reason number 2,342,392,398 why I don’t trust journalists who insist that the way forward for journalism is to intentionally stray further from the ideals of objectivity. While few will say it quite so bluntly, in practice, the idea seems to be that because in the past certain groups and claims weren’t given the benefit of the doubt, now they should reflexively be believed, with little need for due diligence.

I can’t emphasize enough how basic the stuff the Times failed to do here used to be: As a journalist, you should always have a tiny but insistent voice nipping at the back of your mind, demanding (to the extent possible) a bit more skepticism, a bit more independent confirmation, and so on. If you think things through journalistically, the fact that BYU hurriedly issued statements denouncing the racism shouldn’t be seen as proof it actually occurred, because of course the institution has its own goals and it wouldn’t look good for it to do anything but issue an abject apology.

Continue ReadingThe NYT Excoriates BYU for Racial Slurs that Might or Might Not have Occurred During a Volleyball Game

Maybe Next Time There is a Pandemic, We Will Do a Cost-Benefit Analysis Before Shutting Down Schools

Excerpt from a new article at Reason: New Data Show COVID School Closures Contributed to Largest Learning Loss in Decades: Teachers unions and progressive politicians pushed for school closures during the pandemic.

Last week, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) released new data showing a dramatic decline in test scores among American 9-year-olds since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The data indicate a devastating learning loss among American schoolchildren, marking the largest decline in reading scores since 1990, and the first ever recorded drop in mathematics scores.

These results come from a special administration of the National Assessment of Educational Progress long-term trend (LTT) assessments, which measured reading and mathematics outcomes among 9-year-olds. Since its inception, the LTT has tracked a steady rise in educational performance among 9-year-olds. However, from 2020 to 2022, the LTT revealed a steep drop in 9-year-old students' performance. Reading scores dropped by five points over the two-year period, while mathematics scores dropped by seven points. In all, the decline in test scores represents the reversal of around two decades of improvement in math and reading scores.

"These results are sobering," Peggy G. Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, told The Washington Post. "It's clear that covid-19 shocked American education and stunted the academic growth of this age group."

Glenn Greenwald was excoriated by many people when he suggested (in August 2021) that we do a cost-benefit analysis before shutting down schools. We do such a cost-benefit analysis in most other walks of life, such as automobile safety. We failed to think rationally with regard to our schools and now we've hurt millions of children. Too many of us became obsessed with achieving something that clearly impossible: Zero Covid." Too many of us were not interested in looking at statistics showing that Covid presented only a tiny risk to most school children. We did not follow the science.  Why are so many people still not willing to admit that Ron DeSantis made the right call about keeping the schools open in Florida? Why am I not confident that we've learned a damned thing from this tragedy?

Continue ReadingMaybe Next Time There is a Pandemic, We Will Do a Cost-Benefit Analysis Before Shutting Down Schools