The Alliance Defending Freedom scored a win in federal court recently when it represented a Christian student organization that says it was the target of viewpoint discrimination at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL).
Ratio Christi — Latin for “the reason of Christ” — is a multinational organization that “equips university students and faculty to give historical, philosophical, and scientific reasons for following Jesus Christ.” In 2021, the UNL chapter requested $1,500 in student activity funding to host Notre Dame Professor Robert Audi. Professor Audi, who previously taught at UNL for nearly thirty years, was slated to give a speech on whether it is rational to believe in God. The University rejected the request, stating that funding could not be provided for “speakers of a political and ideological nature." The University also stated that Ratio Christi must invite a speaker to represent the opposite views of Audi to obtain the funding. In their suit, the ADF called this “viewpoint discriminatory on its face.” The policy set forward by the university “gives University officials unbridled discretion to engage in viewpoint discrimination by failing to set out narrow, objective, and definite standards for the disbursement of student fees for extracurricular speech.” Thankfully, a federal court recently ruled in favor of the ADF and Ratio Christi. On December 15th, the ADF announced that the university accepted the court’s judgment and agreed to pay Ratio Christi $1,500. Additionally, the university also changed its student organization funding policy “to promote the availability of diverse viewpoints to UNL students […]” Protect The 1st congratulates the Alliance Defending Freedom and Ratio Christi on their hard-fought legal victory. We also commend the University of Nebraska-Lincoln for accepting the Court’s judgment with magnanimity, and for taking necessary steps to ensure academic freedom and viewpoint diversity are upheld. The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida recently halted the enforcement of several higher education-related provisions of that state’s “Stop WOKE Act.” This action by a federal judge highlights the pitfalls of trying to extend Florida’s popular movement to define teaching about race and gender for elementary and secondary public schools to higher education.
In September, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) filed a suit challenging the constitutionality of the law’s higher-education restrictions. The Stop WOKE Act expands Florida’s anti-discrimination laws to prohibit schools and companies from promoting ideas of race- or sex-based guilt to students and employees. A person should not be made to “feel guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress” due to their race, color, sex, or national origin. The law includes higher education instruction, a provision that led to a proposal to link tenure to a professor’s adherence to this law. Like many laws restricting speech, the Stop WOKE Act sounds commendable, but the provisions at issue here would have the practical effect of making professors worry about their job security and tenure if they even touched on issues of race or gender in class. Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker, appointed by President Obama, called the law “positively dystopian.” The law, Judge Walker wrote, “officially bans professors from expressing disfavored viewpoints in university classrooms while permitting unfettered expression of the opposite viewpoints.” Judge Walker even colored his 138-page order with a vivid passage from George Orwell’s 1984 to make his point. The legal basis for the order rests on long-established judicial principles that academic freedom and the First Amendment go together. “[T]he First Amendment does not permit the State of Florida to muzzle its university professors, impose its own orthodoxy of viewpoints, and cast us all into the dark,” Judge Walker wrote. While Protect The 1st believes Florida had every right to regulate curricula of early grades in public schools in response to parental guidance, the law goes too far in trying to pass academia-wide restrictions, particularly in private, non-state schools. Public school teachers act on behalf of the state, and there are only so many hours in the school day. The state has a right to prioritize what it believes are the most important, elemental lessons that students should learn. But professors are not government spokespeople in the sense that public elementary school teachers are. Blanket restrictions on lessons and content, especially at the university level, strike at the very heart of academic freedom. Restrictions that could also chill the speech of professors at private universities or those with tenure expands the possibilities for future state intervention and widens the latitude for unconstitutional legislation. If you believe there’s a problem with ideological conformity, cancel culture, or “wokeism” in higher education, this approach is not the way to address those concerns. If anything, suppressing speech would create martyrs and only make their speech more popular. If you believe that higher education has become an echo chamber, agitate for more diversity in backgrounds, perspectives, and ideas, but not a gag order. More Students Support Violence Against Offensive Speakers A new poll of undergraduate students reveals they lack a basic understanding of the First Amendment’s guarantees and are growing in acceptance of the heckler’s veto and even violence against speakers on campus.
These are the results of the William F. Buckley, Jr., Program’s eighth annual survey measuring the opinions of college students at four-year colleges and universities. One might wonder if a survey commissioned by a group named for the famous conservative author of God and Man at Yale might have a built-in bias of its own. But the survey, conducted by McLaughlin & Associates of 803 undergraduates nationwide, shows a clear deterioration in basic understanding of the principles of free speech that matches growing reports of intolerance for speech on campus over the last year.
The deterioration of speech principles in higher education begins as a failure in American secondary education. Students are not in disagreement with the American tradition of free speech and the Constitutional order as much as they seem to lack a basic understanding of what that tradition is. As always, such discussions center around the most offensive speech imaginable, but the practical effect is to demonize anyone we disagree with as being the moral equivalent of a Nazi or Satan. Limiting speech on campus can come from conservatives as well as from liberals. Students need to understand that – except for explicit calls to violence – hate speech, as contemptible as it is, is allowed in America. This is based on a mature understanding that once we outlaw one kind of speech, rhetorical contortions will be made to define any opposing argument as somehow being hateful and thus worthy of repression. Students are also not taught that outlawing hate speech does not eradicate it: rather, it drives such speech underground and glamorizes it. Repression endows hate speech with a glimmering allure for immature and unhealthy minds. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently ordered the San Jose Unified School District to reinstate the Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) as a recognized student club. A tartly written concurrence by one judge vividly portrays a hostile culture of secularism that may be behind some recent overreaching official efforts to isolate students from religious observance.
The issue at hand was that FCA leaders are required to abide by a Statement of Faith, which includes the belief that sexual relations should be limited within the context of a marriage between a man and a woman. Judge Kenneth K. Lee, one of two out of three judges on the panel that decided in favor of the FCA, wrote a stinging concurrence. He vividly portrays “a stench of animus against the students’ religious beliefs” that pervades San Jose’s Pioneer High School campus. Judge Lee describes one Pioneer high school teacher, Peter Glasser, who “channeled his inner Martin Luther, pinning the [FCA’s] Statement of Faith and Sexual Purity Statement to his classroom whiteboard along with his grievances. But instead of a reformation, Glasser demanded an inquisition. As he explained in emails sent to Principal Espiritu, FCA’s ‘bs’ views ‘have no validity’ and amount to heresy because they violated ‘my truth.’ Glasser believed ‘attacking these views is the only way to make a better campus’ and proclaimed he would not be an ‘enabler for this kind of ‘religious freedom’ anymore.” Judge Lee then turned to the behavior of another school official. “Michelle Bowman,” Judge Lee writes, “also serves on the Climate Committee [a body that pushed to de-recognize the FCA] and as a faculty advisor to the Satanic Temple Club. In discussing this lawsuit with a former student, she opined that ‘evangelicals, like FCA, are charlatans and not in the least bit Christian,’ and choose darkness over knowledge and perpetuate ignorance.’ But it is not for Bowman to dictate what beliefs are genuinely Christian.” Hit with this onslaught of attacks, the FCA was derecognized in two days without giving FCA students any opportunity to defend themselves or their organization. Judge Lee goes on to describe the efforts by Glasser and others to further accuse the expelled group of creating a hostile work environment for students and faculty because of their beliefs. “In other words,” Judge Lee wrote, “teenagers – meeting privately to discuss the Bible – were creating a hostile work environment for adult faculty, according to Glasser.” Judge Lee concludes: “In sum, animus against the FCA students’ religious-based views infected the School District’s decision to strip the FCA of its ASB status. And that violates the First Amendment’s protection of the free exercise of religion.” Just as religion should not be taught in the classroom, it should also be free of harassment by educators and officials. When a federal district court upholds the First Amendment rights of a person or organization, can it enforce those rights in the future? The answer by The Protect the First Foundation before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit is a resounding “yes.”
The Hillsborough Area Regional Transit Authority (HART) of Tampa runs ads on its vehicles and bus shelters but prohibits ads that “promote a religious faith or religious organization.” When Young Israel of Tampa, an Orthodox synagogue, tried to place an ad for its “Chanukah on Ice” event, HART rejected those ads under its no-religion policy. A district court came down on the side of Young Israel on First Amendment grounds and issued a permanent order or injunction forbidding HART from “rejecting any advertisement on the ground that the advertisement primarily promotes a religious faith or religious organization.” HART appealed, arguing that the district court’s injunction was an abuse of its powers and that HART’s advertising policy was constitutional. The PT1st Foundation counter, filed Wednesday evening, demonstrates: “First Amendment rights are fundamental rights essential to every other form of freedom. As a result, First Amendment rights warrant special protection. Because courts cannot enjoin conduct and do not ‘strike down’ unconstitutional laws, a court cannot adequately protect First Amendment interests without including prohibitions against future illegal conduct in its injunction. “Without such preventative relief, governments would be free to repeat the same constitutional violation in the future. Any resolution of this case that fails to prevent future harm does not adequately vindicate the First Amendment.” PT1st believes remedies to violations of the First Amendment should be as enduring as our right to free speech. When Protect The 1st reports on crackdowns on campus speech, the stifling of First Amendment rights is usually the handiwork of either a combination of ideological zealots and cowardly administrators, or overweening state politicians. But in today’s global environment, the threat of retaliation for speech can also come from oppressive foreign governments operating on campus.
This is a rising concern with U.S. universities that financially benefit from the influx of students from the People’s Republic of China. In 2019-2020, 372,000 students from China studied in the United States. In 2020-2021, that number declined to 317,000. Given that Chinese students inject $15 billion into bursars’ coffers, even that modest drop in Chinese enrollment – due to Covid, geopolitics, and the rising allure of European and Australian universities – is concerning American academic leaders who’ve come to depend on this revenue stream. Another concern, however, should be the price of freedom in the American academy that comes with the Chinese Student and Scholars Association (CSSA), a collegiate organization on 150 campuses across the United States. National Review’s Isaac Schorr reports how Kinen Kao, a Cornell University student, put up posters for a discussion about China’s treatment of Hong Kong, Uyghurs, and Tibet. Under the vigilant eye of CSSA, Kao’s materials were routinely vandalized and removed. When Kao was physically assaulted by members of the Chinese student community, he pulled out his smartphone to record them – only to be pushed to the ground and have to fight to keep his phone from being snatched away. Such intimidation, as concerning as it is, is mild compared to reports of Chinese students having their families threatened with imprisonment or death after posting tweets or making on-campus statements critical of the regime. A similar problem occurred on American campuses after the now largely defunct Confucius Institutes were identified by the U.S. State Department as “foreign missions” with “skewed” takes on issues that comport with the ideology of the Chinese Communist Party. Schorr reports: “CSSA’s stated purpose is similarly cultural. A key difference, however, is that their marks are not unwitting Americans but Chinese students studying in the U.S. Propaganda remains the means, but the retention of Chinese nationals, rather than the recruitment of Americans, is the end.” Of the 118 Confucius Institutes in the United States, 108 are closed or are being closed after being identified as centers of propaganda. American universities might similarly decide that there is no place on campus for state-sponsored ideological enforcers. |
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