University of Alabama: Faculty Senate ‘Hate Speech’ Resolution

Case Materials

Media Coverage

  • "10 great cigars and why I smoked them," Mike Adams, Townhall.com, June 13, 2005: I smoked my first CAO Cameroon the week that the FIRE defeated speech codes at two American campuses on two consecutive days. Where do these guys get all their energy?
  • "An illiberal left," Anthony Dick, The Cavalier Daily, March 15, 2005: IT ISN'T often that a group of college professors is soundly and thoroughly embarrassed by a collection of mere students in an intellectual arena. But that's exactly what happened at the end of February, when the University of Alabama's Student Senate passed a sharp resolution directly opposing a heavy-handed, short-sighted and illiberal "hate speech" resolution that their Faculty Senate had already passed. The Faculty Senate's original resolution called for the creation of a series of new regulations which threatened to drastically curtail First Amendment rights at their public university. With their remarkably independent and sophisticated response, UA's students have schooled their teachers with a much-needed lesson in the fundamentals of a free and open society.
  • "Students Frown on UA Faculty's Free-Speech Shutdown Attempt," Jim Brown, Agape Press, March 3, 2005: University of Alabama students are reacting to a perceived attack on their First Amendment rights.
  • "Speech resolution draws ire," Marlin Caddell, The Crimson White, November 15, 2004: The UA Faculty Senate is a free speech violator and created a "speech code" with its resolution that condemns hate speech, officials at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education say.