Pennsylvania House of Representatives Select Committee on Student Academic Freedom
Case Materials
Media Coverage
- "Speech codes make universities intolerant," Charles Mitchell, The Patriot-News (Harrisburg, Pa.), January 5, 2006: How much more data does one need? Arms of the state, including Surra's own alma mater, are enacting and enforcing clearly unconstitutional policies. In plain English, they're breaking the law, at taxpayer expense.
- "Pennsylvania Lawmakers Hold Hearings on Political Bias in College Classrooms," Jennifer Jacobson, The Chronicle of Higher Education, November 25, 2005: After Mr. Maher's testimony, Rep. Thomas L. Stevenson, a Republican and the committee's co-chairman, asked for comment from David A. French, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a watchdog group that has fought to do away with speech codes on college campuses, who serves as a legal adviser to the panel.
- "Pennsylvania's Historic Academic Freedom Hearings," David French, Front Page Magazine, October 28, 2005: Those who continue to doubt the wisdom of Justice Louis Brandeis’s famous statement “Sunlight is the best disinfectant” should pay close attention to the news from Pennsylvania. A House Select Committee on Student Academic Freedom is conducting an investigation into the state of liberty and genuine intellectual diversity in Pennsylvania’s public universities, and the academic establishment is fighting back.
- "Academic rights panel told to watch where it steps," Paul Peirce, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, September 20, 2005: David French, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education in Philadelphia, told the Select Committee on Student Academic Freedom that as it studies whether students have had their academic rights violated by professors "you must make sure you do not violate the constitutional rights of professors."