Article Highlights Partisanship of Campus Speech Codes

Article Highlights Partisanship of Campus Speech Codes

by Luke Sheahan

September 29, 2006

Former FIRE president David French has an article on speech codes on National Review Online today. He explains the “mental agility” of the 1960s free speech activists who have become the architects of today’s campus speech codes. David writes:
Those who formerly glorified dissent clamp down on campus with a mind-numbing level of intellectual conformity. Scientific inquiry is welcome, unless it results in tough questions about possible innate gender differences. Open debate is the hallmark of the academy, unless of course that debate intrudes into areas where policy should be settled and morality decided (like when dealing with race, class, gender, war, peace, and sexuality).
FIRE exists to counteract this suppression of dissent and to “defend and sustain individual rights on America’s increasingly repressive and partisan colleges and universities.” From College Republicans holding affirmative action bake sales to PETA groups tabling the campus quad, we will protect everyone’s freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of conscience, and due process rights no matter where they land on the political spectrum.