Missouri State University (Formerly Southwest Missouri State): Assault on Press Freedom

Case Materials

• "Press Freedom Under Assault at Southwest Missouri State University," FIRE Press Release, March 26, 2004: Southwest Missouri State University (SMSU), a public institution bound by the First Amendment, is investigating its campus newspaper, The Standard, for publishing an editorial cartoon that a Native American group found "offensive." SMSU has refused to rule out a formal hearing on the matter, has requested that The Standard's faculty advisor and editor-in-chief attend mediation to discuss the issue, and, according to the editor-in-chief, has contacted the paper to "advise" it that even reporting on the administration's intervention in this case could violate university policy.

Media Coverage

• "Cartoon draws ire of group; Newspaper adviser caught in fallout," Tracie Dungan, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, August 30, 2004: Just an hour's drive from the Arkansas border, Southwest Missouri State University has come under the scrutiny of a Philadelphia-based civil liberties advocacy group for its handling of an editorial cartoon published last fall in the student newspaper.
• "Under the Radar: Political Correctness Never Died," Cathy Young, Reason, July 1, 2004: These days, talking about political correctness in academia makes you sound like a quaint throwback to the 1990s. It seems utterly irrelevant to the post-9/11 era, a threat dwarfed by (depending on whom you listen to) either terrorism or losing our liberties to the war on terrorism. Eric Wasserman, executive director of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), says many people have a knee-jerk reaction to the very phrase political correctness, seeing it as an old story.
• "Campus Censorship," Charles Haynes, Naples Daily News, May 17, 2004
• "University Finds Nothing Corny About 'Offensive' Editorial Cartoon," Jim Brown, Agape Press, April 1, 2004
• "Free speech dilemmas; Free speech 'zones' and 'codes' go from campus to court," Gary Young, National Law Journal, January 12, 2004: The free speech wars continue to be waged on university campuses, producing their fair share of First Amendment litigation.