U. of Illinois Committee Recommends Reevaluation of Steven Salaita
The Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure (CAFT) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) has released a report assessing the university’s decision not to hire professor Steven Salaita because of a series of tweets he posted to his personal Twitter account just before the university’s board of trustees was set to vote on his appointment to the faculty. CAFT is part of the university Senate and is tasked with investigating potential violations of academic freedom and shared governance. Most critically, CAFT reaffirmed in its report that, contrary to statements from Chancellor Phyllis Wise, “civility does not constitute a legitimate criterion for rejecting [Salaita’s] appointment.”
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Category: The Torch Schools: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Speech Codes of the Year: 2014
Each month, FIRE singles out a particularly reprehensible campus speech code for our Speech Code of the Month designation. While all of 2014’s Speech Codes of the Month flagrantly violated students’ or faculty members’ right to free expression, two of them were so egregious that they deserve special mention as 2014’s Speech Codes of the Year.
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Category: Speech Code of the Month Schools: University of Richmond Pennsylvania State University – University Park
Kaminer: Students Seeking Censorship Might ‘Feel Right at Home in North Korea’
When it comes to tolerance for critical ideas, attorney, author, and FIRE Board of Advisors member Wendy Kaminer argues that today’s college students are in the same league as North Korea’s Kim Jong-un.
Writing for Cognoscenti, Kaminer takes stock of a depressing number of recent requests for campus censorship from students and draws a parallel with the North Korean Supreme Leader’s notoriously thin-skinned approach to expression he doesn’t like.
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Category: The Torch
Tenured Prof Sues Marywood U. for Ignoring Its Own Policies to Fire Him
Frederick Fagal, formerly a tenured professor at Marywood University in Pennsylvania, filed a lawsuit against the university in federal court last week alleging that it suspended him and then terminated his employment without following its own written procedures.
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Category: The Torch
Town’s Mayor Tries to Fine Wesleyan University for Student Speech
Cases where university administrators charge students activists unconstitutional security fees are not at all new to FIRE. But Mayor Dan Drew of Middletown, Connecticut, has put a new spin on the idea, sending an invoice to Wesleyan University for the police presence at an off-campus protest that Wesleyan students organized and in which they participated.
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Category: The Torch Schools: Wesleyan University
Bill Maher Delivers Commencement Speech Without Censorship
Bill Maher spoke at the University of California, Berkeley’s winter graduation ceremony on Saturday following months of demands that the university disinvite Maher because of his controversial statements about Islam. Thankfully, the UC Berkeley administration steadfastly resisted those demands, even releasing statements explaining why the university’s commitment to freedom of expression required it to allow Maher to speak.
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Category: The Torch
Schools: University of California, Berkeley
Cases: Nationwide: Colleges Across the Country Disinvite Commencement Speakers
FIRE’s Freedom in Academia Essay Contest Deadline Is Approaching
Less than two weeks are left until the deadline to enter FIRE’s Free Speech Essay Contest, with opportunities to win up to a $10,000 college scholarship!
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Category: The Torch
Donate Today and Support FIRE’s Victories on Campus
FIRE has a lot to celebrate this holiday season. In 2014, we marked one of our most successful media years to date, we hosted our largest FIRE Student Network Conference ever, we recorded yet another decrease in the percentage of schools maintaining repressive speech codes, we launched a whole new look, we stood front and center in the midst of a busy “disinvitation season,” and much more. With each of these accomplishments, FIRE once again demonstrated our capacity to advance First Amendment principles and protect individual rights.
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Category: The Torch
Strike Two for University of Iowa President Sally Mason
Two weeks ago, the University of Iowa (UI) forced artist-in-residence Serhat Tanyolacar to take down his statue of a Ku Klux Klan robe and hood made up of newspaper articles chronicling acts of racial violence. Although the artist intended the piece as anti-racist social commentary, some students found it threatening and called for its removal. UI added insult to injury when it apologized to those who were offended without acknowledging Tanyolacar’s First Amendment rights. Since then, FIRE and the National Coalition Against Censorship have explained to UI in a letter and subsequent press release how the university’s reaction betrays UI’s fundamental mission as an institution of higher learning.
Yesterday, UI President Sally Mason doubled down by issuing a self-congratulatory message to the campus that not only didn’t back down from the university’s censorship but also seemed to promise more in 2015:
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Category: The Torch Schools: University of Iowa
The ‘Year of the Heckler’: FIRE President Greg Lukianoff’s Review
As Torch readers know, the past year has seen many demands for censorship at colleges and universities across the country—and too many of those demands have been successful. Especially prominent this year were examples of the “heckler’s veto,” in which those who wish to censor particular viewpoints or speakers create such a commotion that the would-be speaker is forced to step down or even stop in the midst of a speech. FIRE President Greg Lukianoff reviewed some of these incidents in The Huffington Post yesterday, warning readers about the effects of this worrying trend—particularly as it appears outside the realm of higher education.
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Category: The Torch