free speech

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• SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
  5/17/2023
  

  Statehouses, not Stanford Students, Threaten Speech on Campus

  by Eduardo Peñalver

  Higher ed administrators have recently flexed their muscle in response to student protests of controversial speakers and demands for content warnings. They appear to have no such sense of purpose when it comes to defending free speech and free inquiry from legislative interference. 

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• SOURCE: Stanford Daily
  5/14/2023
  

  Free Speech Can't Trump a University's Obligation to Truth and Facts

  by David Palumbo-Liu

  A Stanford historian says that his own university's acceptance of Rupert Murdoch on the board of directors of the Hoover Institution is a rejection of the university's obligation to promote understanding over obscurantism. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  4/21/2023
  

  Brown President: States, not Students, are Threatening Speech on Campus

  by Christina Paxson

  "It is ludicrous to claim that state-sponsored censorship — which carries the full force of the government and can even entail criminal penalties — is justified by student misconduct or peer pressure."

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• SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
  3/30/2023
  

  House Hearings on Campus Speech Show Different Perceptions of the Problem

  For Republicans, the problem is about "self-censorship" in a climate supposedly hostile to conservatives. For Democrats, its about the power of state legislation to ban topics and ideas from research and discussion. 

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• SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
  2/22/2023
  

  Drawing the Line between Assigning and Endorsing

  by Steve Mintz

  Controversies about recent books about the history and legacy of colonialism raise questions about what it means to assign – or refuse to – a book for students to read, discuss, and potentially critique, and how provocation works in the liberal model of inquiry. 

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• SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
  12/6/2022
  

  Can FIRE's Free Expression Crusade Work Off Campus?

  The organization is pursuing a rebranding as an advocate for free expression off-campus. Supporters cheer its pledge to support free debate; detractors argue the group is advancing conservative complaints about "wokeness." 

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• SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
  11/30/2022
  

  Separating Good and Silly Criticism of FIRE in the Campus Speech Debate

  by Jeffrey Sachs

  One leading commenter on questions of academic freedom evaluates the criticism of an oganization on the front lines, concluding that many critics are asking silly questions and leaving significant ones aside. 

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• SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
  10/18/2022
  

  The Insidious Two-Step University Administrations Use to Squelch Faculty Speech

  by Joshua Clover

  Carnegie Mellon's treatment of a professor who made a controversial tweet about Queen Elizabeth and colonialism shows the willingness of universities to capitulate to outrage at the expense of free speech, as well as their lack of support for their faculty. 

• 
• SOURCE: NPR
  10/4/2022
  

  The Writer of "The Onion" SCOTUS Brief Takes Parody Seriously

  The satirical newspaper's brief employed the rhetorical mode to lay out the free speech implications of a case involving a man who faced retaliatory arrest for making a parody facebook account for his local police department. 

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• SOURCE: The Conversation
  8/25/2022
  

  The Bitter Irony of Rushdie Being Attacked at Chautauqua

  by Charlotte M. Canning

  Chautauqua was founded for the discussion of ideas, and while the attack shows there is no perfect asylum from repression, the Institution's survival represents the ongoing commitment to education and civic discussion. 

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• SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
  6/2/2022
  

  Do Heterodox Academy Surveys Tell Us Anything Useful About the Campus Speech Climate?

  Experts debate whether polls showing students perceive stifled speech on controversial subjects are reflecting or driving reality, and if they are being used in a conservative attack on higher education. 

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• SOURCE: PEN America
  5/4/2022
  

  Virtual Event: Scholars Discuss Free Speech at American Writers Museum May 18

  This event looks at historical moments where strident expressions of political thought, widely perceived to be anti-democratic in their own place and time, provoked new strictures.

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  4/25/2022
  

  Trying to Change Twitter's Content Moderation is Going to Disappoint Elon Musk

  by Evelyn Douek

  Musk is delusional if he thinks that Twitter can function without moderation. The problem this highlights is the ability of a small number of billionaires to make the decisions that shape the contemporary public sphere. 

• 
• SOURCE: Commentary
  4/16/2022
  

  Dan Patrick's Illiberal Attack on Higher Ed

  by Jonathan Marks

  There are good conservative arguments for abolishing faculty tenure; Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick isn't advancing one of them as he seeks to punish political opponents for their ideas.

• 
• SOURCE: Slate
  4/16/2022
  

  Longtime Professor: Campus Free Speech Problem Isn't What You Think

  by Lucas Mann

  The campus free speech debate is framed by a fishbowl of the most selective campuses serving a tiny fraction of the student population. 

• 
• SOURCE: ArcDigital
  3/27/2022
  

  Scholar Nicholas Grossman: What, Exactly is America's Free Speech Problem?

  "When identifying a national problem, presumably in pursuit of national solutions, the details matter a lot."

• 
• SOURCE: The Week
  3/21/2022
  

  The Thrill of Teaching Mill

  by Samuel Goldman

  Mill was prescient in focusing attention not only on the restriction of speech by the state, but on the cultural and social obstacles to dissenting opinion.

• 
• SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
  3/17/2022
  

  Russian Academics See "No Future" at Home

  While many Western academics have focused on the danger faced by Ukrainian scholars, it is clear that the domestic politics of Russia are increasingly dangerous for academic freedom as well. 

• 
• SOURCE: Substack
  3/8/2022
  

  Is Emma Camp Correct That College Students Silence Themselves?

  by Claire Potter

  Do the writings of an intellectually self-assured college senior actually reflect a crisis of self-censorship, or a long tradition of finding and campaigning against alleged "conformism"? 

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• SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
  2/24/2022
  

  Lessons From the Struggle Against the Old McCarthyism

  by Benjamin Mitchell-Yellin

  For a Texas professor, the Lieutenant Governor's push to abolish tenure and punish faculty for teaching certain ideas calls to mind the experiences of his grandparents in the heyday of McCarthy and HUAC.