Frederick Douglass said that the suppression of free speech is a “double wrong” because it “violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.”
 
Douglass had no lack of such speech suppressors to contend with, both in antebellum American and during the time of Jim Crow. But he likely never imagined that one day those who would be foremost in dismissing their own rights and those of others to hear would be in colleges and universities.
 
This dispiriting realization emerges from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), which has released its 2027 College Free Speech Rankings. Before we look at FIRE’s ranking of colleges, first take in the results of FIRE’s survey of their students.
​

• FIRE reveals that almost 70 percent of college students surveyed said that shouting down a campus speaker is acceptable under rare conditions.
  
  
• Fifty percent said it is acceptable to block some speakers.
  
  
• And 30 percent said using violence to stop a campus speech is sometimes acceptable.

 
These are responses to survey questions, not evidence that those students have disrupted an event or committed violence. But they reveal a dangerous confusion about what it means to protest. Students have every right to challenge a speaker, organize a competing event, or walk out. They have no right to prevent others from hearing a speech, much less to attack the person giving it.
 
The consequences of this misunderstanding became horrifyingly clear when Charlie Kirk was murdered during a campus event at Utah Valley University in September 2025. His killing tells us why the boundary separating argument from violence must be bright and inviolable.
 
FIRE’s new college rankings also describe a wider failure of campus openness.
 
Of 261 ranked schools, 121 received an “F” for their punitive speech climate. The University of Chicago came in first place for its open speech climate. New York University came in last.
 
At 61 schools, more than half of surveyed students said Kirk was difficult to discuss. Nine schools lost points after punishing faculty over comments about his death. Other campuses saw efforts to deny recognition to chapters of the organization he founded, Turning Point USA. 
 
Colleges should defend students’ freedom to condemn Kirk’s views, criticize responses to his murder, and debate the issues he raised. They should defend that same freedom for his supporters. Administrators can make the rule credible by protecting events from disruption and applying speech policies consistently, especially when the views at issue are unpopular with those on the far left or far right.
 
The troubled state of speech in American higher education is revealing that repression breeds repression. Or, as Douglass said: “No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck.”
 
The answer to a speaker you oppose is to make your case so well that others will want to hear it. A campus that teaches students to answer words with words is doing its part to preserve both free speech and peace.

​Religious organizations seeking official recognition on college campuses – and the same access to facilities as secular groups – are sometimes denied recognition. The reason?

Administrators have told student religious groups that they must open their leadership to people of all beliefs or no beliefs – otherwise, they would be guilty of discrimination. One such group at the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs, Ratio Christi, was told in 2019 that they had to leave their leadership positions open to all, regardless of their beliefs.

“It would be absurd for the university to require the vegan student group to appoint a meat-lover as its president,” observes Travis Barham, senior counsel at the Alliance Defending Freedom. “Likewise, the University of Colorado shouldn’t force Christian students to let atheists or other non-Christians to lead their Bible studies in order to become a registered club.”

Some universities, like Tufts, have reversed their positions. Ratio Christi reached a settlement with the University of Colorado after filing a lawsuit. But many universities continue to bar religious groups from becoming recognized student organizations. This might soon change thanks to the passage of a bill by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.

The committee recently approved the Equal Campus Access Act, legislation that would require public colleges and universities to afford religious student organizations the same rights, benefits, and privileges they provide to other campus groups. Institutions that discriminate against religious organizations could lose access to federal funding.

The bill, introduced by Chairman Tim Walberg (R-MI), would protect religious organizations’ access to official recognition, campus facilities, and other benefits available to student groups. Crucially, these protections would apply regardless of an organization’s religious beliefs, practices, speech, leadership requirements, or standards of conduct.

“That protection is necessary because freedom of association means more than permitting students to gather in the same room,” said Bob Goodlatte, former House Judiciary Committee Chairman and Protect the First Senior Policy Advisor. “It includes the ability of an organization to preserve its identity and pursue its mission by selecting leaders who share its fundamental beliefs.”

A university would never insist that College Democrats select a Republican as their president or require an environmental organization to accept a climate-change skeptic as its spokesperson. Religious organizations deserve the same freedom to choose leaders who can faithfully represent their principles.

Sen. James Lankford (R-OK), who introduced the Senate version with Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), framed the issue in appropriately constitutional terms:

“Freedom of religion, speech, and association are Constitutionally protected rights in every place in America, including America’s campuses. This bill makes clear that public colleges must grant religious student organizations the same rights as every other student group.”

The bill would codify a 2020 federal rule requiring the withdrawal of federal support from public colleges and universities that deny religious student organizations the rights available to comparable secular groups. It is backed by 47 organizations representing Christians, Jews, Muslims, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as well as First Amendment organizations.

Public universities should encourage a vigorous diversity of beliefs, not force religious students to surrender the defining characteristics of their organizations as the price of participating in campus life.
​
The committee has acted. The full House and Senate should follow.

We’ve long been critical of the brutal suppression of speech on college campuses, from the shouting down of a federal appellate judge at Stanford Law School to a Yale University noise riot that shut down a panel on – irony alert – censorship and free speech.

Institutions of higher learning are awakening to the need to end their tolerance of the heckler’s veto, often accompanied by coarse language and physical threats. But if the facts reported by WLRN public radio are accurate, Florida International University is punishing students not for disrupting an event, but simply for expressing a disfavored message.

In March, seven FIU students reportedly entered a “fireside chat” hosted by university president Jeanette M. Nuñez. The students wore shirts reading “ICE OFF FIU” to protest the university’s working arrangements with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The students stood in silence for a moment and quickly left.

WLRN reports that FIU brought disciplinary charges against the students under a policy prohibiting “expressive conduct” indoors. The university maintains that the rule protects its operations from disruption. Yet Jehnny Rivera, executive director of FIU’s Office of University Protocol, Ceremonies and Events, reportedly told an investigating officer that the protest did not disrupt the event or other university operations. If that is true, it is difficult to see what legitimate interest FIU’s punishment serves.

The First Amendment protects expression that is controversial and unwelcome. At a public university, officials should not convert a rule against disruption into a general prohibition on silent political expression inside campus buildings.

The students’ assigned punishment raises an additional concern. According to WLRN, FIU ordered them to record “original” and “thoughtful” videos explaining which university policies they had violated. The university can require the students to redo those videos until administrators find them satisfactory.

That sounds less like education than compelled contrition – the sort of thing one expects at a Maoist struggle session, not as a disciplinary measure at a university. The First Amendment generally protects Americans not only against being silenced, but also against being forced by the government to deliver a message they do not believe.

Universities can impose reasonable, viewpoint-neutral rules governing the time, place, and manner of demonstrations. They should punish protesters who shout down speakers, block access, threaten others, or materially interfere with an event.
​
But seven students silently displaying a message and then leaving do not constitute, on the reported facts, such a case. FIU should drop the disciplinary charges – and remember that a public university should be a marketplace of ideas, not a school for compelled conformity.

​When College Democrats invite speakers to campus, they usually aren’t forced to include Republicans for “balance.” Nor are conservative campus groups generally required to include liberals in their discussions. Yet the Catholic University of America is imposing this oppressive standard on its Students Supporting Israel (SSI) chapter (hat tip to Sara Weissman at Inside Higher Ed).

SSI tried twice to invite speakers Catholic University apparently considered too controversial and had their requests for an event on campus denied. In each instance, the group was told the university would reconsider approval “for this topic and speaker as long as there is a balanced presentation,” and asked SSI to kindly “restructure the event and resubmit a request to have speakers representing both sides of this issue.”

How many “sides” must a pro-Israel student group be required to invite to its pro-Israel – and by definition anti-antisemitic – event? And what exactly are the other “sides” that need consideration? A pro-Hamas speaker, many of whom defend the barbarity of Oct. 7?

For what it’s worth, it would be just as obnoxious for an event critical of Israel’s actions in Gaza or the West Bank to be forced to include speakers defending Israel’s current policies.

Whatever happened to free expression on campus, including the right to ask any invited speaker really tough questions? Or to protest peacefully outside the event? That’s the American way. And that’s exactly what happened last fall when the university approved SSI’s request to bring two Israeli Defense Force soldiers to campus. Difficult questions were asked and peaceful protesters showed up.

Catholic University’s new approach is now as inconsistent as it is capricious, which makes its administrators’ rationalizations in this case read more like recriminations. The university’s vice president for communications told Inside Higher Ed that the school wanted to hear from a greater variety of voices about how to fight antisemitism – beyond the ones that SSI chose to invite.

Fine, if so, then the university should sponsor its own event.
​
In an interview with Jewish News Syndicate, SSI chapter president Felipe Avila discussed the letter to CUA that the organization sent in response. It’s a refreshing (and much-needed) crash course on the First Amendment and we’ll close with one line from it. The university’s decision, it reads, is “not an exercise in academic freedom. It is forced speech.”

​Take your mind back to October 7, 2023. Hamas fighters, amped up by amphetamines and toxic ideology, sprinted from Gaza into Israel. They massacred young concertgoers. They raped Israeli women. They slaughtered babies in their cribs and murdered children in front of their parents.
 
More than 1,200 Israeli civilians were killed.
 
Three days later, University of California, Davis, American Studies professor Jemma DeCristo reacted to that event with the above statement on X. For the obtuse who still didn’t get her point, DeCristo added emojis of a knife, an axe, and three giant drops of blood.
 
For obvious reasons, this post sparked outrage around the world. Unlike many similar posts, it didn’t seek to justify violence in a distant land. It called for doxing and murder – how else is one to interpret axes and blood? – against American journalists and their children. After a two-year investigation, the university last week decided not to fire DeCristo, accepting her argument that the post was meant to be “sarcastic.”
 
This story highlights many academic controversies, from rising antisemitism on the American campus to the capture of many departments by far-left ideologues (DeCristo is a self-described “anarchist”). For our part, we see this case as a Gordian knot of First Amendment issues.
 
For example, did DeCristo have a First Amendment right to post this?
 
It could be argued that since DeCristo called for violence against an identified group of Americans – journalists and their children – DeCristo’s post met the U.S. Supreme Court’s definition of speech likely to incite imminent lawless action. The saving grace is that no such violence occurred. If this post wasn’t incitement, however, it was right up against the line.
 
Another issue: Would U.C. Davis – which put a letter of censure in her file – have been within the parameters of the First Amendment if it had fired DeCristo?
 
While the “right of expressive association” is not explicitly articulated in the Constitution, the U.S. Supreme Court has held that the right of expressive association is inherent in the First Amendment’s protection for free speech. Consider the impact on a group’s speech if the NAACP were forced to include the Klan in its leadership? Or the Freedom from Religion Foundation had to include clergy on its board?

Groups centered around a message have the right to set the terms of their membership and leadership, or else the integrity of their speech is destroyed. Perhaps the obverse of that principle is also correct. A First Amendment culture cannot thrive in the face of threats against people based on their race, religion, or gender. The U.C. Davis investigation confirmed that the post “injured members of the Jewish community, who felt scared, isolated, and angry to see this type of violent and hateful rhetoric from a U.C. Davis professor.” 

Professors enjoy wide latitude under the rubric of academic freedom. That is a good thing. But is that latitude infinitely elastic? U.C. Davis, as a public university, also has some degree of accountability to the California Legislature and the taxpayers of California. And it has a right to employ professors who convey respect for the values of tolerance and civility.  

One lesson should have been clear since 1956, when Autherine Lucy had to be driven from class to class by the dean of women at the University of Alabama while more than a thousand men screamed threats at her and pelted the car. Were they merely expressing their First Amendment rights through their rage at a Black woman who had the temerity to study at Alabama? If a professor had been among them, would he have been protected by the doctrine of academic freedom? 
​
Concerning the latter, we have to ask how vibrant the First Amendment can be in today’s academic monoculture. It is, for example, just and necessary to give students a full understanding of the ugly history of slavery in the United States. But shouldn’t students also know that if you scan world history – the empires of China, Persia, Greece, Rome, and ancient Mexico – you will not find another civilization waging a civil war against itself in order to eradicate slavery?
 
And yet the academic discipline to which DeCristo belongs literally seems to have nothing good to say about America, as detailed in a recent Wall Street Journal article by Richard Kahlengberg and Lief Lin entitled, “American Studies Can’t Stand Its Subject.” They found that of 96 articles in the flagship journal of the discipline, American Quarterly, 77 percent focused on American racism, imperialism, classism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia and transphobia. Not a single positive article was found over a three-year period – not one about America’s dominance in Nobel Prizes, the defeat of Nazi Germany, or the moon landing.
 
The First Amendment won’t thrive if the academy succumbs to a crabbed, ideological, and frankly pathological view of America – now spiced by hatred of American Jews – with screeds crowding out scholarship. Nor will it be restored by the clumsy, top-down efforts of some in the current Administration to dictate instruction by fiat.
 
What is needed is a cultural shift back to open debate and curiosity. A good first step would be to redirect Jemma DeCristo’s salary to an earnest American Studies scholar who will challenge students with hard questions about our nation’s complex history and culture.

​The media has had a field day with indignant headlines over Texas A&M University forbidding the teaching of Plato – in a philosophy class! There must be an Aggie joke in there somewhere.

But underneath the headlines are some deeper issues worthy of discussion.

The Texas A&M University System’s Board of Regents voted in November to require professors to seek the approval of their campus presidents in advance for any courses that “advocate race or gender ideology, or topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity.” They simultaneously prohibited faculty from teaching material inconsistent with a course’s approved syllabus.

Since Texas A&M is a public institution, it can be directed – or at least influenced – by public policy in a way that a private university cannot. The board was responding to the widespread conviction within the conservative majority in the Texas Legislature that “gender studies” is too ideological and crowds out serious studies with turgid, jargony papers.

But Plato is anything but turgid or jargony. The philosopher who invented the concept of academia had a lot to say about sex. The many facets of Plato’s discussion on eros provoke critical thinking, as it was meant to.

The proposed curricula included parts of Plato’s Symposium in which seven characters express varying views on sexuality. One speaker praises homosexuality as a way to create virtuous and courageous armies. Another extols the supposed benefits young males receive when having relations with older men. The drunken Alcibiades regrets that he couldn’t seduce the elderly, homely, Socrates.

Socrates, as usual, seems to speak for Plato when he turns from these earth-bound considerations to spiritual ones. He recounts a relationship he had as a young man with an older woman, Diotima. She taught him about the “ladder of love,” an escalation from physical attraction to a love of knowledge, ultimately to a sublime appreciation for Beauty. Socrates concludes by extolling the “pregnancy of the mind,” which gives birth to insights and virtue.

These passages would have also given Texas A&M students insights into Socrates’ unique take on eros as an invitation for the soul to climb the ladder of love. It certainly wouldn’t have corrupted them (leave that to the internet). Corruption of youth is the charge behind the sentence that resulted in Socrates drinking hemlock. Today, we just make the professor pull the course.

Texas legislators and leaders of the Texas A&M system alike should consider that their backlash is a mirror image of what they are reacting against. Is this action no less a betrayal of the First Amendment’s protection of the free expression of ideas than was the preceding, decades-long hostility towards conservative ideas (often disguised as “speech codes”)?

“This is what happens when the board of regents gives university bureaucrats veto power over academic content,” wrote Lindsie Rank of FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. “You don’t protect students by banning 2,400-year-old philosophy.”

If all of this strikes you (as it does us) as impinging on academic freedom, you’re not alone.

“That’s not education,” tweeted FIRE, “it’s risk management.” The purpose of higher education, from a First Amendment perspective, remains the opposite of that, namely intellectual risk taking. Should faculty follow their syllabi? Common sense requires that they do. But the content of those syllabi – by whom should that be governed?
​
After he founded the University of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson declared to his Enlightenment pen pal William Roscoe, “This institution will be based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind. For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.”

​Not since 1970, when the Weather Underground emerged from the University of Michigan to unleash a wave of bombings – and the nation witnessed the massacre of students at Kent State – has the American campus seemed so prone to ideological violence. What impact is violence having on students’ attitudes toward free speech?

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) sponsored a nationwide survey of 2,028 undergraduates in October, in the aftermath of the assassination of Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University (UVU). Some 204 UVU students were included in this survey.

The College Pulse Poll commissioned by FIRE found:

• Half of students say that they are less comfortable attending or hosting controversial public events on their campus.

 

• Forty-five percent are less comfortable expressing their views on controversial topics in class after the murder of Charlie Kirk; 43 percent are less comfortable doing so in common campus spaces, and 48 percent on social media.

 

• Roughly one in five students say they are now less comfortable attending class.

And these results were compiled before a gunman killed two students – at this writing, for reasons unknown – on the Brown University campus on Dec. 13.

Calm Surface, Roiling Emotions

The poll shows that UVU students appear more sensitive to speech rights than their peers, a sensibility born of trauma. The UVU campus, FIRE reports, “appears calm,” but “the survey data tells a more complicated story.”

• Seventy-four percent of students nationally say that the state of free expression in the United States is heading in the wrong direction. By contrast, 86 percent of UVU students believe the environment for free speech is deteriorating.

Confusing Words with Violence

One of the most provocative findings of the national survey is that nine out of ten students agree or partially agree that words can be “violence.” This prompted J.D. Tuccille in Reason to write: “Of all the stupid ideas that have emerged in recent years, there may be none worse than the insistence that unwelcome words are the same as violence.”

We would add some nuances. First, we doubt that all undergraduates immediately grasped the First Amendment implications of this question. Second, it deserves to be said that some speech can inflict wounds and leave lasting scars, much like physical violence. Imagine a drunken father berating his six-year-old daughter in the coarsest, most brutal language imaginable. That’s verbal violence that could lead to a court terminating parental rights.

But we take Tuccille’s point.

Imagine college students triggered into terrified paralysis by a speaker who argues that 19th-century colonialism brought some benefits to the peoples of Africa and Asia, or a professor denouncing Gen. George Washington for ordering massacres of Iroquois villagers during the American Revolution. College students who expect to practice critical thinking need to entertain such challenging thoughts.

“Telling young people who haven’t been raised to be resilient and to deal with the certainty of encountering debate, disagreement, and rude or hateful expressions in an intellectually and ideologically diverse world plays into problems with anxiety and depression,” Tuccille writes. “It teaches that the world is more dangerous than it actually is rather than a place that requires a certain degree of toughness. Worse, if words are violence, it implies that responding ‘in kind’ is justified.”

Is Some Speech So Heinous that Violence Is Justified?

Regarding Tuccille’s last point, perhaps the most interesting result of the survey is that before Kirk’s murder, 81 percent of UVU students responded that using violence to stop a campus speech was “never” acceptable. Now, 94 percent of UVU students believe violence is never acceptable. (We wonder, however, what the remaining 6 percent failed to notice.)
​
The FIRE poll shows that exposure to actual violence – including the impossible-to-unsee silencing of a man who only sought open debate – is making the vast majority of students appreciate the difference between violent acts and provocative speech.

​The University of Alabama shut down two student run-magazines – one for women, one for Black students. Why? The university holds that these publications’ targeting of readers among its 43,000 students constitutes unlawful discrimination on the basis of race and sex.

The theory suggests that the university is acting to protect Crimson Tide men who are writhing in pain from their exclusion from Alice, “the University of Alabama’s fashion and lifestyle magazine.” The same can be said for all the white, Asian, and Latino students who are in agony over their exclusion from Nineteen Fifty-Six, a publication dedicated to “Black culture, Black excellence, and Black student experiences.”

In other words, the university is singling out these publications for directing content to women and African-American students, which sounds a lot like – and is – viewpoint discrimination. “You cannot have a more blatant First Amendment violation here,” Mike Hiestand, senior legal counsel for the Student Press Law Center, told the student-run The Crimson White.

We would add that it would be hard to have a more profoundly stupid violation, either. This ranks up there with the decision by the U.S. Naval Academy to protect its non-Black students by removing Maya Angelou’s autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings from its library.

Why is this happening? Universities have an understandable desire to stay on the right side of the Trump administration’s crackdown on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. To be fair, DEI ideology and administrative departments had become domineering presences in campus culture and speech, threatening academic careers over faux pas and linguistic misdemeanors. A correction was certainly needed, but we are now veering into overcorrection.

The University of Alabama is acting on its interpretation of a July 29 memo from Attorney General Pam Bondi. That memo included “non-binding suggestions” to help institutions that receive federal funds avoid “unlawful proxies” and “ostensibly neutral criteria that function as substitutes for explicit considerations of race, sex, or other protected characteristics.”

Somehow, that has become a directive to avoid any channelization of communication or free association between Black Americans (12 percent of both the U.S. and the University of Alabama population), and women (51 percent of the U.S. population and 56.5 percent of that university’s population). Taken literally, any lawful interest magazine would have to cater to everyone, of all races, both genders, of all backgrounds, faiths, and national origins. Maybe Fencepost magazine, courtesy of the American Fence Association, fits the bill. (Although some might find its “modern wood designs that keep us coming back” a tad bit risqué.)

The bottom line is that the university’s actions constitute blatant viewpoint discrimination – one of the clearest violations of the First Amendment imaginable.

We draw this conclusion from the U.S. Supreme Court in Rosenberger v. Rector, which slammed the University of Virginia in 1995 for denying standing to a Christian-based student publication. The Court majority’s abiding concern was viewpoint discrimination, not that somehow non-Christians would be discriminated against by the publication’s existence.

A society based on free speech is one that respects pluralism – Christians, Muslims, Jews, atheists, women, men, gays and non-binary folk, fashionistas, sci-fi geeks, and football fanatics. An effort to enforce an artificial homogeneity is not anti-discriminatory. It is just a new form of discrimination: viewpoint discrimination.
​
We would not be surprised if between the time we post this piece and you read it the university will have listened to its lawyers and reversed these twin cancellations rather than face these students in court. As Nick Saban said, it’s never okay to lose a game.

​Nine universities have received letters from the Trump administration asking them to sign a “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education.” These institutions can receive extra funds in exchange for agreeing to freeze tuition for five years, enforce equality in admissions, adopt institutional neutrality on major issues, bring ideological diversity to hiring, limit international students, combat grade inflation, and bring about “transforming or abolishing institutional units that purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas.”
 
Does the administration’s Compact protect or violate the First Amendment?
 
Marc Rowan, chief executive of Apollo Global Management, took to the pages of The New York Times to mount a vigorous defense of the Compact in the face of a university system that is “broken.”
 
We cannot disagree with his characterization. Rowan writes that the Compact dispenses honey to persuade universities to make common sense changes:
“These are not politically partisan requirements. It is eminently reasonable for the government to expect all this of schools before providing them with public funds.
 
“Critics have charged that the compact threatens free speech. It does no such thing. It places no constraints on individual speech, nor does it intrude on academic freedom. The compact does require schools not to punish, intimidate or incite violence against conservative ideas. Those are not speech restrictions. They are restrictions on the suppression of speech.”
 
Genevieve Lakier of the University of Chicago Law School takes an opposing view.
 
She writes in Divided Argument that the Compact violates the “unconstitutional conditions doctrine, which holds that the government may not condition access to government benefits on the recipient’s agreement to waive their constitutional rights, including the rights protected by the First Amendment.”
Lakier continues:
 
“The First Amendment rights that the Compact asks universities to forego are almost too numerous to mention, but they are many and they are blatant. Consider for example the requirement that universities maintain ‘an intellectually open campus environment, with a broad spectrum of ideological viewpoints present and no single ideology dominant’ … It is a matter of political judgment what constitutes an open and undistorted, as opposed to a closed and distorted, marketplace of ideas – and therefore, the kind of judgment that members of the democratic political community must make for themselves …”
 
Where does Protect The 1st stand? We admit it – we are conflicted.
 
The imposition of speech standards by government funding – even if it broadens the diversity of speech – is an intrusion of government into the speech rights of universities. What constitutes an open versus a distorted marketplace of ideas is an invitation to endless legal and political wrangling. We especially worry that the Compact’s intrusion could one day become a weapon that can be wielded for much more illiberal purposes.
 
At the same time, federal funding has already been used to micromanage higher education for decades now. Would it hurt to use that power for at least some of these purposes? We are beyond frustrated at institutions that are supposed to be safe havens for free inquiry but are instead killing grounds for dissent.
 
Like many things Trump, the execution may be overbroad and overdone, but the challenge itself might have a bracing effect forcing institutions to finally consider long-needed changes.

​In the last few years, we’ve documented the abuse of government power to shut down conservative speech. Does that now make it okay to use government power to shut down progressive speech, especially if it’s way out of line?

Here’s a little history: the State Department under the Biden administration used its now-shuttered division, the Global Engagement Center, to fund efforts through a London-based NGO to persuade advertisers to boycott conservative- and libertarian-leaning news outlets. We’ve reported on the Twitter files and from Meta-Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg about threats from the White House to shut down conservative speakers.

The rationale for censorship was that conservative journalism, posts, and rhetoric were “disinformation” that was too “dangerous” to society to be permitted.

Now, in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s murder, some progressive voices are testing the patience of conservative critics of online censorship. Some posts about Kirk from progressives have been healing and compassionate, but some have been insensitive, cruel, and even gloating.

In reaction, Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA), who sits on the Committee on Homeland Security and the Committee on Oversight and Accountability, posted this:

“I am going to use Congressional authority and every influence with big tech platforms to mandate immediate ban for life of every post or commenter that belittled the assassination of Charlie Kirk. If they ran their mouth with their smartass hatred celebrating the heinous murder of that beautiful young man who dedicated his whole life to delivering respectful conservative truth into the hearts of liberal enclave universities, armed only with a Bible and a microphone and a Constitution … those profiles must come down.

“So, I’m going to lean forward on this fight, demanding that big tech have zero tolerance for violent political hate content, the user to be banned from ALL PLATFORMS FOREVER. I’m also going after their business licenses and permitting, their businesses will be blacklisted aggressively, they should be kicked from every school, and their drivers licenses should be revoked. I’m basically going to cancel with extreme prejudice these evil, sick animals who celebrated Charlie Kirk’s assassination. I’m starting that today. That is all.”

Virtually everything Rep. Higgins said to characterize these speakers – running their mouths with “smartass hatred” – could be leveled at some conservative speech. Of course, actual endorsements of Charlie Kirk’s murder shouldn’t be posted by any company. Beyond that, once we start down the path of banning insensitive speakers “from all platforms forever,” pulling their business licenses and permits, “blacklisting” their businesses, we will have created a Leviathan government censorship machine that can be used against anyone at any time, including Rep. Higgins himself the next time a progressive administration is in power.

It is hard to accept, but the landscape of free speech is bound to include smartasses, jerks, smirkers, and ghouls who run their mouths. Narrow the horizons and all speech will ultimately be in danger. Besides, letting the jerks be jerks allows them to reveal their real selves to the public.

Rep. Higgins correctly notes that the late Charlie Kirk went into what can often appropriately be called “liberal enclave universities” armed with nothing but a Bible, a microphone, and – we would add – a smile. Whether you nodded in agreement or seethed in objection to what Charlie Kirk said, he had the courage to say it with good humor and to respectfully listen to those who disagreed with him.
​
That’s the spirit America needs now, from people on all sides.

​Earning a graduate degree is one way to stuff knowledge into one’s brain. But the stomach still needs food, the body still needs a place to shower and sleep, and every student needs a little extra cash to go out with friends. This is why for graduate students, working as a teaching assistant is one way to make ends meet while earning a Ph.D.
 
For decades, teaching assistants – better known as “TAs” – have complained about being overworked and underpaid. Many grumble that their professors offload too much of their teaching load and benefit from free research help for their next paper or book. The running joke: TAs just grade papers until they pass out. Understandably, graduate students sought to unionize to set limits on their labor and seek better pay.
 
That is a good thing. But union membership should never come at the cost of freedom of speech.
 
“Campus labor groups once motivated by economic fairness are increasingly governed by ideological litmus tests,” writes Jon Hartley, a doctoral candidate in economics at Stanford University, in The Wall Street Journal. The unions that represent teaching and research assistants in academia are often steeped in far-left ideological agendas that many don’t support and don’t want to endorse support with their dues.
 
This was the case at the University of Chicago, where graduate students are going to court to protect their First Amendment rights against their union, the United Electrical, Radio, and Mine Workers of America. The union’s local, GSU-UE, is a proponent of the “Boycott, Divest, and Sanction” movement against Israel, branding Israel an “apartheid regime” that commits “ethnic cleansing.” The union has joined in the campaign to “fight against campus Zionists,” resist “pigs” (meaning the police), and “liberate” Palestine from the “river to the sea” by “any means necessary.”
 
Jewish students understandably regard their compelled dues as forced subsidies of antisemitism. So they are going to federal court for being compelled to pay a union that, they believe, leans hard against Israel and Jews.
 
Hartley himself is suing for being forced by the Stanford Graduate Workers Union for refusing to sign a membership form and pay dues to that same union that supports progressive causes such as abortion, public subsidies for “gender-affirming care,” and defunding the police. Because the union’s advocacy contravenes his Roman Catholic faith, he is seeking a religious-objector accommodation under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. Hartley writes:
 
“At both Stanford and Chicago, union leadership insists that such coercion is routine – part of collective bargaining. But there’s a world of difference between negotiating wages and punishing dissenters. When students are told they can’t work, teach or study unless they pay dues to a political organization, it’s no longer about labor rights – it’s about freedom of association, conscience and speech.”
 
On Labor Day, we celebrated the solid advantages unions have brought to all Americans, from the five-day work week to the eight-hour workday. Even if you buy the idea that Americans should be forced into union membership (and some of us don’t), no one should be forced to support speech they find objectionable. This is especially true in academia, where the freedom to study, teach, and research is held to be sacrosanct.

​Elite universities have undeniably become academies of progressive ideology, in dire need of diversity of thought and opinion. They have also become bastions of racial discrimination, as the Supreme Court found in its 2023 opinion, Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, ruling that Harvard’s admissions policy violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. With President Trump announcing on Friday that he will revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status, a court might well decide that Harvard’s admissions and hiring policies, and its tolerance of antisemitism on campus, make it a legitimate target for tough action.
 
But the order to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status and the administration’s April 11th letter to Harvard setting conditions for continued federal funding raise other concerns that should trouble defenders of academic freedom, especially those who are conservatives.
 
The administration tied further federal funding to reforms to the school’s curriculum and culture. Whether or not Harvard needs reform, this plainly infringes on Harvard’s First Amendment rights, endeavoring to trade Harvard’s progressive “ideological capture” for a different kind of capture – outright government control. And if successful, subsequent efforts to revoke the school’s tax-exempt status will open the floodgates to future abuses of power that conservatives will live to regret.
 
This is the inherent danger of the administration’s desire to create a superhighway for federal control of academic freedom. In Harvard’s complaint filed in federal court in Massachusetts, the university quoted the Supreme Court’s Moody v. Netchoice (2024) decision that “The First Amendment does not permit the government to ‘interfere with private actors’ speech to advance its own vision of ideological balance.’”
 
Harvard didn’t have to look far for that precedent. The U.S. Supreme Court proclaimed it in 2024, when it found that government cannot suppress disfavored speech by threat of sanctions. Based on the plain text of the government’s letter, that seems exactly the administration’s aim here. 
 
New questions will arise now that President Trump is ordering the IRS to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status. As The Wall Street Journal pointed out in a recent editorial, some precedent exists that could support such an action. It is true that in 1983 the Supreme Court upheld the IRS’ revocation of Bob Jones University’s tax-exempt status based on its overtly racially discriminatory practices. The Court at that time reasoned that “an institution seeking tax-exempt status must serve a public purpose and not be contrary to established public policy.” But many critics of Bob Jones were still concerned about such policies being made by the IRS on the basis of no law.
 
Beyond the legal and constitutional questions, there are more practical reasons why the administration’s actions are dangerous. Remember when the IRS targeted conservative groups for enhanced scrutiny, seemingly based on ideology? IRS official Lois Lerner catalyzed a furor among the right when emails revealed her antipathy towards conservative groups she targeted for investigation. Conservatives should also remember the many times the government has attempted to overrule traditional religious beliefs, from the FBI’s targeting of “radical, traditional Catholics,” to management of the conscience rights of religiously oriented healthcare clinics.
 
Should this administration prevail in its effort to subjugate Harvard’s academic freedoms in accordance with its own ideological preferences, a precedent will be set for future administrations to control speech in other directions. Expanded powers of the presidency don’t just go away when a president leaves. They stay with the office, accumulating over time.
 
There are any number of less constitutionally dubious means of working with colleges and universities to introduce more heterodoxy into academic circles. And Harvard, for your part, you ought to respond to this moment by hiring at least a few conservatives – intellectuals who represent a large plurality of this country and, recently, a majority of its voters.

​Student journalists and their supporters across the United States are celebrating the eighth annual Student Press Freedom Day. This year’s theme, "At the Forefront," emphasizes the resistance of student journalists and the challenges of prior restraint, censorship, and even the threat of arrest they face. How these challenges are met today will shape the future of tomorrow’s journalism, already facing stiff challenges from collapsing business models and social media fragmentation.
 
Student Press Freedom Day, organized by the Student Press Law Center, brings together students, educators, and press freedom advocates to raise awareness about the struggles of student journalists. Participants advocate for legal reforms, such as “New Voices” laws, which safeguard student journalists from administrative censorship.
 
Consider how the University of Northern Iowa handled student journalists, imposing unconstitutional prior restraint by requiring resident assistants to obtain approval before speaking to the media. The student newspaper, The Northern Iowan, exposed this policy, leading to its revocation and earning the publication the First Amendment Award at the Iowa College Media Association Awards.
 
Student Press Freedom Day also shines a light on precedents that threaten student press freedom.
 
The 1988 Supreme Court decision in Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier weakened protections for high school journalists by allowing administrators to censor school-sponsored publications if they could justify doing so for “legitimate pedagogical concerns.” Though the ruling was meant to apply to K-12 institutions, its logic was later extended to colleges in Hosty v. Carter in 2005. In that case, the Seventh Circuit Court ruled that a university could exert prior review over a student newspaper if it was not designated a public forum.
 
Courts have also upheld the rights of college journalists. Over the past four decades, more than 60 cases have addressed censorship in public college and university student media, with decisions consistently affirming that the First Amendment prohibits most administrative censorship of student-edited publications.
 
The challenges faced by student journalists are not limited to administrative censorship. In 2024, Stanford University student journalist Dilan Gohill was arrested while covering a protest after following demonstrators into the university president's office. Despite wearing a press pass and acting in his capacity as a reporter, Gohill faced potential disciplinary action and criminal charges. After seven months of uncertainty and advocacy from First Amendment groups, Stanford President Jonathan Levin confirmed there would be no disciplinary action from the university.
 
With changing business models and a polarized society, quality, independent journalism struggles to exist. Whether or not quality journalism can continue will require, at the very least, cultivating young reporters and editors who are free to learn their chosen profession by practicing it without restraint.
 
Protect The 1st is pleased to join student journalists in celebrating Student Press Freedom Day.

​The United States Military Academy at West Point last week ordered all extracurricular clubs centered around gender or race to immediately “cease all activities.” While the directive is likely legal, we might want to take a deep breath to navigate entry into tricky territory.
 
According to a recent memo issued by West Point deputy commandant Chad Foster, such clubs must immediately “unpublish, deactivate, archive, or otherwise remove all public facing content.” All other group activities, meanwhile, have been paused – presumably pending a review. Affected clubs include the Society of Women Engineers, the National Society of Black Engineers Club, the Asian-Pacific Forum Club, the Contemporary Cultural Affairs Seminar Club and the Latin Cultural Club. In total, at least a dozen groups are explicitly required to disband.
 
It's understandable why Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth would want to end DEI programs within our national security apparatus. DEI is an eccentric and extreme ideology that defines people based on their immutable characteristics – permanently branding them as privileged colonizers or oppressed victims. Replacing “equality” with “equity” is not exactly the best way to build unit cohesion in the military, or even to address racial disparities in the civilian world.
 
On the other hand, protecting us against the threat of the West Point chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers seems like overkill. Such affinity groups have traditionally been where minorities go for mutual support. West Point now has 280 women in a class of more than 1,200. It’s perfectly understandable why women might want their own affiliate group in a traditionally male-dominated institution like West Point.
 
Groups that will likely survive the order include gender-oriented clubs centered around athletics, such as women’s boxing and women’s team handball. West Point’s “Clubs and Organizations” web page is currently – and perhaps unsurprisingly – buggy and largely useless.
 
It is not immediately obvious how the First Amendment right to speech and free association should be treated at a military academy. Once a plebe takes the R-Day Oath to the Constitution, they are in a unique zone where some of those constitutional rules no longer strictly apply. It is reasonable to keep military education free of ideological indoctrination. But care must be taken to remove DEI in a way that is neutral in its application.
 
We’ll continue to closely monitor this situation as it develops.

President Trump’s appointment of Linda McMahon as U.S. Secretary of Education sends a single and unmistakable signal – this incoming administration will prioritize the expansion of school choice, and associated parental rights, across the country.
 
Opponents of McMahon’s appointment have already called her credentials into question, pointing to her tenure as CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment as too undignified for a Cabinet secretary, disqualifying for any role that does not involve pointed elbow drops or figure-four leglocks. McMahon’s defenders cite her business acumen – building WWE into a multibillion-dollar powerhouse – as a demonstration that she is a manager and a leader.
 
What the oppositional hand-wringing actually boils down to is a fundamental policy disagreement between the educational establishment and the prospective new leader of the Department of Education. McMahon is an outspoken proponent of parental school choice, having co-founded the America First Policy Institute, in part, to advocate for “putting parents and students – not bureaucrats, unions, or politicians – in charge of educating our Nation’s next generation.”
 
As Protect The 1st has often pointed out, parents’ ability to choose how to educate their children is a fundamental First Amendment right, because it determines whether and to what extent parents will be able to extend their values (including those based on religion or belief) across generations. Parents should be able to freely choose a school that fits their child’s needs and to select an education that reflects their values.
 
It's an overdue blessing, therefore, that support for school choice is on the upswing. Today, according to EdChoice, there are 75 school choice programs operating across 33 states. A full quarter of the states have embraced some form of universal school choice. And in 2023, support for school choice reached 71 percent among voters, with strong majority backing across all political parties and demographics. Conversely, a 2024 Pew Research study shows that more than one-half of Americans say that traditional, public K-12 education is heading in the wrong direction.
 
With McMahon at the helm of the Department of Education against the backdrop of a GOP-led Congress, chances are better than ever that we’ll see passage of the Educational Choice for Children Act. This measure would provide tax credits for charitable contributions to organizations offering school choice scholarships.
 
In the meantime, we’re increasingly likely to see the nation’s second-largest state, Texas, join the broadening coalition fighting for the future of our children. In 2023, 21 Republicans joined 63 Democrats to vote down education savings accounts, a top priority for Gov. Greg Abbott. In 2025, 14 of those members are not returning to Austin, giving the governor an education choice majority in both chambers of the state legislature. 
 
Again, it cannot be emphasized enough that school choice is broadly supported among voters of both parties. November’s GOP sweep likely resulted in some part from the disconnect between Democrats and their constituents over our failing public education system. Democrats, simply put, need to listen to their core constituents, upset about public schools that have failed children for decades.
 
Until Democrats wake up – and PT1st hopes they will – the task of reform is left to elected conservatives. Regardless of party, we need political leaders who understand that the quality education and values we bequeath to our children are among the most important expressions of our core beliefs. McMahon’s nomination is nothing less than a “People’s Elbow” in favor of that proposition.  

​The nation’s two presidential candidates sometimes seem at a loss to understand or appreciate the First Amendment, which protects religious expression and freedom of the press, among other forms of speech.
 
Case in point: when Vice President Kamala Harris was asked this week in an NBC interview if she would support a religious exemption for physicians on abortion, she flatly rejected any such “concession.” The Democratic nominee for president spoke about the “basic freedom” of a woman to control her own body, while rejecting the idea that a physician in a white surgical gown should have control over the actions of his or her own hands.
 
Let’s be clear what we’re talking about – the Harris position would pull the medical licenses of men and women of faith for declining to personally perform abortions. Never mind that this country has no lack of physicians willing to perform that procedure.
 
Contrast the vice president’s stance with the Democrats of New Mexico, where last year Gov. Michelle Lujan and her fellow Democrats in the legislature took a commendable step to improve a law they championed to make sure it observes the religious freedom of physicians. That law is the Elizabeth Whitefield End-of-Life Options Act, which went into effect in 2021. The law required doctors who objected to administering fatal drugs to a patient to refer them to a physician who would. Gov. Lujan and her allies in the New Mexico legislature heard the outcry from physicians of faith and responded with courage to correct their law to observe the religious freedom of expression.
 
Why can’t Harris follow that example?
 
Then there is former President Trump, who has been littering the airwaves with threats to pull the broadcast licenses of ABC and then CBS for disputes over their fact checks and editorial decisions. News flash: Networks don’t have broadcast licenses. Their local affiliates do. News organizations don’t need a “license” to practice journalism. Anyone can do it. Again, it’s called the First Amendment.
 
Contrast the Republican nominee’s frequent threats with those of his Republican predecessors. Presidents Reagan, Bush and Bush complained about media bias, but each of them found artful ways to counter it. The first President Bush forcefully rejected the contentions of CBS’s Dan Rather on air, then the allies of the second President Bush discredited him so badly that Rather eventually resigned from CBS. The presidential father and son did so by exercising their First Amendment rights, without resorting to threats of censorship.
 
Yet listening to our candidates today, we have to ask: is rubbishing the First Amendment the new normal in American presidential politics? At the very least, the current state of the presidential debate points to the urgency of restoring civics education that imparts a classical understanding of our Constitution.

​California’s move to ban legacy admissions across all colleges and universities, including private ones, marks a bold shift in the battle over fairness in higher education. Governor Gavin Newsom framed the bill as a way to open doors for students based on their own achievements rather than family connections, tapping into widespread frustration over how wealth and privilege often shape college admissions. The ban follows the Supreme Court’s decision limiting affirmative action, with many seeing legacy admissions as another form of unfair advantage in the scramble for elite education.
 
The legislation, Assembly Bill 1780, was introduced in response to growing scrutiny of admissions practices that favor wealthier applicants. Proponents of the bill argue that legacy admissions perpetuate inequality by giving an advantage to students with family ties to alumni, often from wealthier and less diverse backgrounds. The University of California system had already eliminated legacy preferences in 1998, but AB 1780 expands the ban to private institutions.
 
Supporters of the bill claim it ensures that merit, not personal connections, determines access to higher education. However, by targeting private colleges, the law goes beyond leveling the playing field and crosses into unconstitutional territory.
 
Imposing this ban on private institutions violates the constitutional right to freedom of association. Private colleges have the legal right to make independent decisions about whom to admit, including factoring in alumni relationships, as part of building their unique communities. This right to self-governance and association is protected under the First Amendment, and government interference with these choices oversteps constitutional boundaries.
 
Unlike bans on discrimination based on race—which targets a constitutionally protected class—prohibiting legacy admissions attacks decisions based on familial or alumni connections, categories that are not subject to the same legal protections. Wealth and privilege may be controversial factors, but they do not give the government the power to dictate how private institutions should build their student bodies. This ban effectively strips private schools of their right to shape their communities according to their values and traditions.
 
By enforcing a one-size-fits-all admissions policy through legislation, California undermines the autonomy of private institutions and their constitutionally protected right to freely associate. Forcing private universities to comply with a state-mandated admissions process infringes on their ability to pursue their own educational missions, which is a direct violation of their First Amendment rights.
 
While the new law purports to address inequities in access to higher education—and may well even do so in practice—it disregards the fundamental constitutional protections that allow private organizations to operate free from unwarranted government intrusion. California’s ban on legacy admissions at private schools is unconstitutional, and this overreach into the affairs of private institutions threatens the diversity and independence that make these academic communities vital.

​Cass Sunstein’s argument that the First Amendment functions as an “arms control agreement” is a sharp, compelling analogy. In a world where everyone wants to censor someone else—whether it’s banning critical race theory or eliminating speech that offends on campuses—Sunstein argues that the Constitution forces all parties to “lay down their arms.”
 
The First Amendment, in Sunstein’s view, serves as a neutral zone, preventing any one group from suppressing another’s speech, no matter how repugnant that speech might seem to them.
 
Sunstein draws a powerful parallel to the 1943 case of *West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette*. In that case, Justice Robert Jackson wrote what Sunstein calls “the greatest opinion in the history of the Supreme Court.” Jackson warned, “Those who begin coercive elimination of dissent soon find themselves exterminating dissenters.” In a clear rebuke to authoritarianism, Jackson argued that “no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion.”
 
For Sunstein, this is the essence of the arms control agreement: no viewpoint may be forbidden, no matter how tempting it might be to do so.
 
While Sunstein acknowledges that this broad understanding of the First Amendment is not easily squared with its original meaning, he points out that the robust protections we now have evolved in response to historical moments of danger, like World War II and the 1960s. “It is perhaps unsurprising that a robust understanding of free speech would develop during the war against fascism,” he writes, and that it would solidify during the fierce debates of the 1960s.
 
Sunstein’s advice for today? College administrators, and others in positions of power, “should avoid the temptation” to suppress views they find beyond the pale. They “should lay down their arms.” If we’re going to have a constitutional arms control agreement, everyone needs to disarm—especially those most eager to wield the weapons of censorship. After all, no one should have a monopoly on banning speech. That would be the ultimate arms race.

​The U.S. House recently passed the End Woke Higher Education Act. This bill, part of the GOP’s broader push against ideological bias, aims to limit increasingly Orwellian Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) control over speech and hiring in higher education. It passed by a 213-201 vote and now faces a tough battle in the Democratic-controlled Senate.
 
This bill would regulate the role accrediting bodies play in determining whether colleges qualify for federal funding. Currently, accrediting organizations often require institutions to align with certain DEI initiatives to maintain their status. The End Woke Act would block these requirements, ensuring that schools don’t have to adhere to any political or ideological viewpoint to stay accredited.
 
We ask: Why should private accrediting bodies have such influence over public funding in the first place? Accreditation has become a bureaucratic tool, often favoring particular ideologies. The government should not outsource funding decisions to external organizations, much like courts and legislatures should not be beholden to the advice of the private American Bar Association.
 
The bill also incorporates the Respecting the First Amendment on Campus Act, which takes cues from the University of Chicago’s 2014 principles on free speech. These principles emphasize that universities should be arenas for open debate, where no idea is off-limits, even if offensive to some. This legislation would require colleges to disclose their free speech policies and ensure students and faculty are aware of their rights to free expression.
 
However, we must also be cautious about how such attempts to liberate speech can wind up restricting it. Florida’s Stop WOKE Act is an example of how well-intentioned laws can overreach. Its broad restrictions on how race and gender can be taught in higher education have made professors afraid to even discuss certain topics. This same chilling effect could result from overly detailed regulations in the End Woke Act.
 
This bill commendably opposes political litmus tests in hiring and promotion. In recent years, some colleges have required applicants to submit statements affirming their commitment to DEI as part of the hiring process. The result is that faculties in the humanities are monolithically left-wing. The bill seeks to ban such requirements, arguing that they suppress intellectual diversity. Protect The 1st agrees. Whether someone supports or opposes DEI or any other political or partisan stance should not determine their eligibility for academic positions.
 
Any ban on litmus tests, however, that restricts the free associational choices of private colleges and universities, as opposed to public institutions, undermines rather than promotes First Amendment rights. This is true even if it is done in the name of promoting First Amendment values. A private Catholic university should have the right to hire faculty who uphold its religious values. Similarly, a private liberal arts college committed to the Constitution, or a private sustainability-focused institution, may want professors who actively promote these ideals. There is little overlap between the communities of Hillsdale and Oberlin colleges. This bill could prevent such schools from ensuring faculty align with their institutional identities and core missions.
 
This last point gets to a serious shortcoming in this legislation. It uses access to federal funds to impose these rules on private universities and colleges as well as public ones. Those who want to use these strings to outlaw “woke” instruction in private institutions of higher learning are paving the way for government to dictate instruction of all kinds, including religious schools. If this approach were to become law, you shouldn’t be surprised if some future administration tells a Catholic college that its teachings on traditional marriage or abortion are not allowed. Once you meddle with speech, you create a weapon that can be pointed in any direction.
 
We applaud the thrust of this bill – absurd ideological demands, like requiring DEI statements, are anathema to academic freedom. However, there has to be a better way to restore ideological diversity to the academy than to give the government the power to approve curricula and compel instruction at private universities.
 
We urge the bill’s authors to return with a more targeted approach to opening public institutions of higher learning to true intellectual openness and vigorous debate on wide-ranging ideas.

​Boise State University is on the hook for $4 million in damages after a jury found the school liable for violating a coffee shop owner’s First Amendment rights. It’s another in a trend of free speech verdicts at higher-education institutions, and a reminder of just how expensive suppressing speech is becoming.
 
The lawsuit, resolved last month, stemmed from a controversy surrounding a business called Big City Coffee, which opened its doors at Boise State in September 2020 in the wake of the George Floyd protests. After opening, the shop’s owner – then engaged to a former police officer paralyzed from a gunfight with a fugitive – displayed a “thin blue line” sticker near the door to her establishment.
 
It was not, to say the least, well received by all.
 
Soon, students angry from the summer’s heated discourse turn their discontent on the small display of police support. This ignited social media back-and-forth that – according to accounts – quickly snowballed into acrimony. One student posted on Snapchat: "I hope y’all don’t go there if you truly support your bipoc peers and other students, staff and faculty.” When the shop’s owner saw the post, she responded with an explanation for her support of the police. So far, both sides had exercised their rights to free speech under the Constitution.
 
Them the university got involved. The details of the discussions that took place between the coffee shop and the university are disputed. What’s undisputed is that the coffee shop’s contract with Boise State was terminated. The owner sued, and a jury found in her favor, awarding $3 million in compensatory damages and another $1 million in punitive damages.
 
This case in Boise recalls another not-too-distant controversy concerning Oberlin College, in which students and administrators boycotted a local bakery after an employee there caught a student attempting to shoplift bottles of wine.
 
In that instance, Oberlin officials joined with students in protest outside the bakery, where flyers distributed among the crowd accused the store of being a “RACIST establishment with a LONG ACCOUNT OF RACIAL PROFILING and DISCRIMINATION.”
 
A jury sided with the boycotted business in the Oberlin case, too, finding the university liable for intentional infliction of emotional distress, intentional interference with a business relationship, and libel. The verdict included a whopping damages figure of $36.5 million. (The shoplifter, for what it’s worth, pled guilty.)
 
Recognizing that such disputes are often of a “(s)he said, they said” nature, it’s clear that it doesn’t often pay for a university to take sides against local businesses, particularly when facts are at issue, or the situation is subject to enflamed passions.
 
Higher education institutions must tread carefully in such cases, which is why many colleges and universities are now adopting viewpoint neutrality policies which prohibit administrators from speaking out on issues of public concern that don’t directly implicate university functions.
 
When universities are confronted with controversy, their best course of action is to stand back, do what they can to ensure safety, and let others do the talking. Being an arbiter of social justice can be costly.

​An odd fellows coalition of left-wing supporters of Israel and Palestinians succeeded in forcing an Israeli lawmaker to retreat to Zoom to complete his remarks before the UC Berkeley School of Law.
 
The target was Simcha Rothman, a controversial right-wing member of Israel’s Parliament, who was invited to the law school as a guest of the conservative Federalist Society. Rothman had become a partisan lightning rod in Israel when he proposed a bill to give the Knesset greater oversight over Israel’s judicial system.
 
When Rothman tried to speak at Berkeley, he was hit with a barrage of criticism in Hebrew from members of UnXeptable, a group of liberal Israelis expats. He was next interrupted by a group of pro-Palestinian hecklers. The two groups turned on each other, heckling and jeering across the room. Rothman was rushed out of the room by security. Those who had reserved tickets to attend the event had to go home and watch Rothman on Zoom, losing a chance for personal interaction with the speaker.
 
Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of UC Berkeley law school, is no stranger to such controversies. In April, we reported on his ejection of protestors who mistakenly had imagined they had a right to disrupt a private dinner in the dean’s home. Dean Chemerinsky told the media that any students who were part of the disruption of Rothman’s talk would be punished. “It cannot be in an academic institution that we only hear those messages that aren’t shouted down,” he wrote.
 
We applaud Dean Chemerinsky’s willingness to deal with such a mess afterwards. But we respectfully suggest that campus security would be better used to remove the disruptors rather than the disrupted from the room. That is really the only way the heckler’s veto is going to stop.

​The University of Pennsylvania is punishing law professor Amy Wax with suspension and half-pay for her off-campus speech.
 
Wax has reportedly said in a podcast interview that “as long as most Asians support Democrats and help to advance their positions, I think the United States is better off with fewer Asians and less Asian immigration.” She also reportedly said that “Given the realities of different rates of crime, different average IQs, people have to accept without apology that Blacks are not going to be evenly distributed throughout all occupations. They’re just not, and that’s not a problem. That’s not due to racism.”
 
Wax is certainly provocative to a fault. Some see her statements as Socratic provocation, others as racist. For these infractions in her speech outside of the classroom, Wax has been given that one-year suspension at half pay as well as stripped of an academic chair in her name.
 
What is our take? Let us quickly admit that our ideal law professor would not be such an academic version of Don Rickles. But two things bother us about this case.
 
First, does academia deal with troubling remarks with an even hand? Would anyone in today’s academy have raised an eyebrow if Wax had instead said that America has too many Jews influencing U.S. foreign policy? Or if she had called for the end of Israel, as some professors have done?
 
Compare Wax’s treatment to that of Carol Christine Fair, the Georgetown law professor who in 2018 called for conservative Supreme Court Justices to die “miserable deaths” while being laughed at by feminists as “they take their last gasp.” Fair called for the dead Justices to then be castrated and to have their corpses fed to swine. Fair tweeted that she was merely trying to provoke thought by making people “UNCOMFORTABLE.” Georgetown reacted by dispatching Fair on an international journey for “university research” while things cooled down. Fair is now back teaching at Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service where, presumably, she is not making the men in her class UNCOMFORTABLE. By comparison, after scholar Ilya Shapiro issued an ill-worded tweet about President Biden considering only black women to fill a Supreme Court seat.
Georgetown responded by squeezing out Shapiro for an offer to lead the Georgetown Center of the Constitution.
 
Secondly, the principle of academic freedom should confer broad protection for speech outside of the classroom. The Academic Freedom Alliance recently warned against the dangers of this kind of “selective protection of academic freedom” and urged Penn not to sanction Wax. We agree. Penn’s Statutes of the Trustees permits discipline for “flagrant disregard of the standards, rules, or mission of the University, or the customs of scholarly communities.” The Statutes also say that “when speaking or writing as an individual, the teacher should be free of institutional censorship or discipline.” Wax’s provocations should fall well outside of the university’s wide standard.
 
Such controversies highlight the need for university and college leaders to quit hiding behind their desks and be bold in standing for free speech and academic freedom – even when it means defending the disagreeable.

Stanford University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Wisconsin have all embraced a viewpoint neutral stance that refrains from speaking out on the issues of the day. Protect The 1st hopes they will become national trendsetters for higher education.
 
The pitfalls of the old approach were made clear when the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, bedeviled by pro-Palestinian protests, cut a deal to end the protests in May. The administration agreed to consider severing ties with Israeli firms and to put the university’s prestige behind a call for a ceasefire in Gaza.
 
This was only a recent example of how university administrations became opinion factories, spitting out one declaration after another on the issues of the day. For example, the University of Pennsylvania put out a statement denouncing the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade. Stanford spoke out on Israel and Gaza.
 
The outspokenness of universities to take positions on the crisis of the day was a hard turn from the standards of the 1967 University of Chicago Kalven Report, forged in the crucible of the Vietnam era. The Kalven Report advocated that universities be true to their stance as fora for free speech by refraining from commenting on issues that don’t affect them as institutions.
 
This is partly out of concern for allowing maximum range for free thought and free speech on campus. A professor, after all, might legitimately believe that Israel has the right to prosecute the war against the terrorists of Hamas, or that the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision was correctly decided.
 
There are costs when universities negate opinions, as they did with their stance on Israel. These costs can be tangible when they offend the sensibilities of donors, as well as lawmakers who approve budgets for public universities. In the case of UW Milwaukee, the administration seemed panicked into trying to appease groups that used force to seize part of the campus. Such appeasement often encourages more pressure, turning the university into a mouthpiece for anyone willing to take over a quad or university building. It is no coincidence that Harry Kalven, who chaired the committee that produced the University of Chicago’s report on university neutrality, also coined the term “heckler’s veto.”
 
Appeasing the most animated and sometimes violent activists on campus with official statements is a guaranteed way to get more of the same. The challenge for universities is to be neutral without seeming heartless.
 
“The neutrality of the university as an institution arises then not from a lack of courage nor out of indifference and insensitivity,” the Kalven Report declared. “It arises out of respect for inquiry and the obligation to cherish a diversity of viewpoints. And this neutrality as an institution has its complement in the fullest freedom for its faculty and students as individuals to participate in political action and social protest.”
 
Here’s a tip for administrators: When a university is confronted with the next burning moral question, the best answer – after making clear that the university is a neutral forum – is have at the ready a list of professors and student groups willing to speak to the media. Let the university community speak out on the issues of the day. And let them disagree.