The Torch
University of Delaware Insists on Optional Programming and Strict Oversight of Dorm Education Program
May 13, 2008
The University of Delaware Faculty Senate has passed along to the Board of Trustees a proposal for educational programming in the residence halls. The proposal now states explicitly that almost all programming will be optional, and Vice President Michael Gilbert promised the Faculty Senate that there would be strict oversight of the program by faculty and senior administrators. Resident assistants will not be providing any of the education, which will be run only by full-time professional staff and faculty. With very little debate about the details of the plan, the upshot of the vote was that the Faculty Senate was sending a message to ResLife insisting that ResLife stick to the letter of what the proposal actually says. The Senate seemed to agree that ResLife officials should not abuse UD power to insert their personal political agendas into ResLife's educational programming.
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Read More About University of Delaware: Students Required to Undergo Ideological Reeducation »
Press Release
May 7, 2008
A complaint filed in federal court today by attorneys from the Alliance Defense Fund alleges that Shippensburg University has dishonestly reinstituted unconstitutional policies in violation of the terms of a 2004 legal settlement reached with members of FIRE's Legal Network. The 2004 settlement came after the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania issued a preliminary injunction against the university, ordering Shippensburg's then-president, Anthony F. Ceddia, not to enforce unconstitutional provisions of Shippensburg's code.
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Update: May 8, 2008, Read More About Shippensburg University: Speech Code Litigation »
The Torch
May 2, 2008
FIRE announces its Speech Code of the Month for May 2008: the University of Louisville. The University of Louisville's Code of Student Conduct prohibits "[e]ngaging in intentional conduct directed at a specific person(s) which seriously alarms or intimidates such person(s) and which serves no legitimate purpose," but this hopelessly vague and overbroad restriction on speech has no place at a public university. Louisville also defines "hostile environment harassment" as "unwelcome comments or conduct that have the purpose of... creating an intimidating, hostile or offensive working or learning environment that a reasonable person would find threatening or intimidating." However, this definition fails to meet the exacting standards for peer-on-peer harassment supplied by the Supreme Court, resulting in an impermissibly vague restriction on expression that serves to chill speech on campus.
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Press Release
May 1, 2008
Administrators at Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis have revoked their finding that a student-employee was guilty of racial harassment merely for publicly reading the book Notre Dame vs. the Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klan. Following pressure from FIRE, IUPUI has declared that Keith John Sampson's record is clear and said it will reexamine its affirmative action procedures relating to internal complaints.
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Update: May 9, 2008, Read More About Indiana University - Purdue University Indianapolis: Student employee found guilty of 'racial harassment' for reading a book »
The Torch
April 30, 2008
Today, FIRE launches its first annual "Freedom in Academia" essay scholarship contest for high school students. High school students planning on attending college in the fall of 2009 are invited to enter. Students' essays should be based on two short documentaries on FIRE's multimedia page chronicling FIRE's history and FIRE's cases at San Francisco State University and Valdosta State University. FIRE will award a $5,000 scholarship to the student who writes the winning essay.
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Press Release
April 28, 2008
Colorado College has denied student Chris Robinson's appeal of its finding that he and another student violated the school's "violence" policy for posting a flyer that parodied a flyer of the Feminist and Gender Studies program. The school also has decided not to remove any letters about the case from the students' files until after graduation. FIRE is assisting Robinson in his case against the school.
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Update: May 2, 2008, Read More About Colorado College: Students Found Guilty for Satirical Flyer »
The Torch
April 24, 2008
FIRE is thrilled to announce that FIRE co-founder and Chairman Emeritus Alan Charles Kors will be a winner of the 2008 Bradley Prize. In the words of Michael W. Grebe, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Bradley Foundation, "The Bradley Foundation selected Alan Charles Kors not only for his original scholarship in European intellectual history, but also for his defense of free speech as well.... In these times, free-thinking students have had no greater champion than Dr. Kors." We could not agree more.
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The Torch
April 16, 2008
Nearly a year after Teachers College President Susan Fuhrman indicated to FIRE that changes in the school's use of "dispositions" were forthcoming, the silence from Teachers College remains deafening. To our great disappointment, FIRE has, as of yet, received no response to our most recent letter to Teachers College and its Board of Trustees. In the letter, sent March 12, 2008, FIRE asked, yet again, that the school cease its current practice of evaluating students according to their adherence to a predetermined institutional ideology. Teachers College's continuing refusal to eliminate its reliance on "dispositions" as evaluative criteria means that Teachers College students remain in effect, subject to an ideological litmus test as a condition of matriculation, despite the school's public commitments to free expression and academic freedom.
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Update: March 12, 2008, Read More About Columbia University: Ideological Litmus Tests at Teachers College »
The Torch
April 15, 2008
All week, FIRE's president Greg Lukianoff will be debating with Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine and Scientific American columnist, on issues concerning academic freedom in higher education. As part of the Los Angeles Times' opinion section "Dust-Up", Greg and Michael will answer questions on political bias, indoctrination of students, and ideological curricula at universities. Today, they debated over what role a school's administration should play in monitoring the expression of its students.
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The Torch
April 14, 2008
The University of Delaware has revised a speech code that used to classify "any instance that is perceived by those involved as being racist, sexist, anti-Semitic, homophobic, or otherwise oppressive" as an emergency equal to fire, suicide attempts, and alcohol overdose. Now, the code refers only to "significant bias related acts that have the potential to create a significant disturbance to the community" at the same emergency level. But the university also maintains that "those who engage in acts of hatred and bias-motivated threats and behavior will be confronted, prosecuted and expelled from our community." FIRE is pleased that University of Delaware has improved its code, but the university still has a long way to go to bring it in line with the Constitution.
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Update: May 13, 2008, Read More About University of Delaware: Students Required to Undergo Ideological Reeducation »
