FIRE's Adam Kissel on The Gallo Radio Show Friday Morning
July 29, 2010
Tomorrow morning, Adam will appear on The Gallo Radio Show to discuss FIRE's victory this week at Hinds Community College. Adam will be on at 6:30 AM Central Standard Time, and those listeners outside of SuperTalk Mississippi's broadcast range can stream the show live over the web.
Permalink | E-mail comments | Posted by William Creeley on July 29, 2010, at 5:32 PM
Double Standard as Loyola University Chicago Unequally Restricts 'Potentially Political Speakers'
July 29, 2010
FoxNews.com quotes me in an article today about the double standard at Loyola University Chicago (LUC), a private religious university that has denied political strategist Karl Rove a chance to speak on campus prior to the November 2010 elections.
The FoxNews.com article emphasizes the double standard involved: according to LUC spokesman Steve Christensen, LUC has banned Rove until November because "the IRS has become increasingly more scrutinizing over not-for-profit universities and their tax-exempt status as it relates to political or potentially political speakers invited to come on campus." Yet LUC and its Division of Public Affairs (and others on campus) are co-sponsoring a major visit from Eboo Patel on August 27, 2010, whom LUC describes as "founder and executive director of Chicago-based Interfaith Youth Core and a member of President Obama's advisory council of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships." Patel is expected to "headline the First-Year Student Convocation, where he and President [Michael J.] Garanzini will induct first-year students into their graduating class, officially kicking off the students' academic careers at Loyola."
If there is any question whether Patel is a "potentially political speaker," take a look at this article of his on Inside Higher Ed on June 17, 2010, in which he explicitly connects the theme of his upcoming LUC talk, "Interfaith Leadership and Transformative Education," with President Obama's administration:
This is the voice that LUC students will hear on August 27—yet Rove's voice is too "political."Last week, leaders from higher education gathered at the White House for a conference on Advancing Interfaith Service on College Campuses. Senior administration officials from the Department of Education, the Corporation for National and Community Service and two White House offices - of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships, and of Social Innovation - addressed the crowd of university presidents, professors, chaplains and students.
That the White House would hold a conference on interfaith cooperation is no mystery; President Obama made the topic a theme of his presidency from the very beginning. But why a gathering that focuses on campuses? I think there are four reasons for this: [...]
President Obama has shown the way in each of the above categories, and college campuses are uniquely positioned to follow his lead.
In his inaugural address, Obama lifted up America's religious diversity and connected it to America's promise: [...]
Interfaith initiatives have been growing on campuses for several decades. The White House invited the vanguard of the movement to Washington, D.C., last week with a clear message: this administration appreciates what you have been doing, and we think you can do more. A movement goes from niche to norm when a vanguard recognizes its moment. For the movement of interfaith cooperation, this is the moment.
Lest anyone think that LUC can maintain such a double standard because it is a private school, LUC appears to have freely given up its claim to such a distasteful violation of academic freedom. Here is a line from LUC's "Mission & Identity" statement:
Perhaps worst of all, however, is LUC's flimsy excuse that somehow the IRS is to blame. Even if we were to believe that this is the real reason that Rove is not being allowed on campus, it is a false line of argument. As I state in the FoxNews.com article:The search for truth is carried out in an atmosphere of Academic Freedom and open inquiry based on two fundamental assumptions of the Catholic faith. First, that the truth will set us free. Second, that faith and reason ultimately bear harmonious witness to the unity of all truth.
It does not threaten the school's 501(c)(3) status to permit a student group to bring even a politician to campus while the politician is in office.In fact, LUC is far more endangered by IRS regulations if it directly sponsors a politician's speech than it would be by permitting a student or student group to sponsor that same speaker. Students and student groups speak for themselves and may bring partisan speakers to campus even during an election season. To explain why—and how a university can best understand its rights and responsibilities in such cases—FIRE released a Policy Statement on Political Activity on Campus prior to the 2008 elections. I encourage LUC administrators to read it and live up to their school's own mission of academic freedom.
Permalink | E-mail comments | Posted by Adam Kissel on July 29, 2010, at 3:35 PM
'Chronicle of Higher Education' on FIRE's Victory at HCC
July 29, 2010
The Chronicle of Higher Education writes today about FIRE's successful free speech battle at Hinds Community College (HCC) in Mississippi, where Isaac Rosenbloom has finally had his record cleared after being found guilty of "flagrant disrespect" after uttering a single profane remark outside of class time.
The Chronicle's Don Troop sums up the case:
Fortunately, HCC eventually removed the finding and demerits from Rosenbloom's record and restored Rosenbloom's financial aid, allowing him to continue with his advanced training to be a paramedic—but only after FIRE obtained legal assistance and HCC was faced with the unappealing prospect of an embarrassing court fight.Mr. Rosenbloom and a few other students had remained after a speech class one day to discuss their grades with the instructor, Barbara Pyle. ... Mr. Rosenbloom testified in a recorded disciplinary hearing that he turned to a classmate and said, "This grade is going to [expletive] up my entire GPA." He said the instructor had told him his language was unacceptable and ordered him to detention.
[...]
Hinds found Mr. Rosenbloom guilty of "flagrant disrespect" and issued 12 demerits against him. The college also blocked him from finishing the course and placed a record of the incident in his student file, an action that FIRE says caused Mr. Rosenbloom to lose his student aid.
Importantly, Troop notes that while Rosenbloom now can continue with his studies, the larger issue of HCC's retrograde speech code remains unresolved:
He said that while he was happy to be able to finish his course of study, he's disappointed that Hinds is not going to do away with its speech code. "They're just going to turn around and do this to the next guy," Mr. Rosenbloom said.We've said as much here at FIRE, of course, regarding HCC's prohibitions on "public profanity, cursing and vulgarity," violations of which can result in penalities ranging from a $25 fine to suspension from the college, and we will continue to press HCC to do away with it.
Permalink | E-mail comments | Posted by Peter Bonilla on July 29, 2010, at 12:13 PM
Why the Claremont University Consortium Should Revise Its Policy on 'Bias Related Incidents'
July 28, 2010
Last week, I wrote about an exchange between FIRE and Washington State University (WSU) that led WSU to promise to make changes to its "Bias Hotline" policy that would bring the policy into compliance with the First Amendment. I wrote that a revision along such lines would be a great benefit to students on WSU's campus, and that more universities should do the same in light of the abuses of bias incident policies that we see each year. (Indeed, in our 2009 Spotlight report (PDF) on speech codes, we highlighted these policies and their proclivity for being used to restrict constitutionally protected expression.)
In my discussion of WSU's Bias Hotline policy, I highlighted some of the abuses FIRE has seen of such policies, all at the Claremont University Consortium (CUC). Suffice it to say that you could draw all of the examples needed to illustrate the problems with bias incident policies solely from the cases we have witnessed at the CUC's five undergraduate campuses—Pomona College, Scripps College, Harvey Mudd College, Claremont McKenna College, and Pitzer College.
Recently, Robert A. Walton, Chief Executive Officer of the CUC, wrote us earlier this month in response to a letter from FIRE. In our letter, we highlighted the constitutional flaws found in a policy shared by the five colleges, called The Claremont Colleges Communication Protocol for Bias Related Incidents (linked from Scripps College's website), which we had named as our Speech Code of the Month for April 2010. The policy was summarized as follows by Samantha Harris in our Speech Code of the Month feature:
The protocol contains all sorts of directions for what must happen in the event of a bias related incident on any of the five campuses, including communication among administrators at all five schools and, frequently, dissemination of notice of the incident to the entire student body.Our letter to CUC highlighted the overbreadth and vagueness problems presented by this policy, as well as the chilling effect it creates at the Claremont Colleges. We discussed the fact that under the policy, students on all five Claremont campuses are left guessing about the extent of their free speech rights, that their rights are at the mercy of the most hypersensitive members of the campus community, and that students appear to be denied the right to engage in even core protected speech such as satire and parody and political expression.
The protocol defines "bias related incidents" as "expressions of hostility against another person (or group) because of that person's (or group's) race, color, religion, ancestry, age, national origin, disability, gender or sexual orientation, or because the perpetrator perceives that the other person (or group) has one or more of those characteristics." The protocol adds that "the term 'bias related incident' is limited to conduct that violates one or more of the Claremont colleges' disciplinary codes and which is not protected by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution or by analogous provisions of state law." This is confusingly contradictory, since most "expressions of hostility" are entirely protected by the First Amendment unless the expression rises to the level of, for example, harassment or true threats.
In his response letter, Walton acknowledged our concerns. His response in its entirety is as follows:
This is to acknowledge your letter dated July 2, 2010 and your expressions of concern about the bias related incident policy of members of The Claremont Colleges.It's not the immediate change that students at CUC schools deserve under the First Amendment and California's "Leonard Law" (which makes the First Amendment applicable at non-sectarian private colleges in the state), but reason for hope nonetheless.
The Claremont University Consortium as a custom and practice regularly reviews existing policies and procedures, and I will include your comments in the materials used during the review process at the appropriate time.
I sincerely hope the administration at CUC reviews its policy and revises it in accordance with FIRE's First Amendment analysis. By e-mailing students on all five of the CUC's undergraduate campuses for "incidents" ranging from "Hilary is a foxy lesbian" to an advertisement for a "Wild Wild West" party to a penis drawn in chalk to an advertisement for a "White Party," CUC's administration has made campus-wide incidents out of almost nothing and, along the way, has put its students' free speech rights in doubt. These overreactions to perfectly protected (except for the chalk vandalism) and, frankly, rather tame expression have undoubtedly chilled student speech at the Claremont Colleges. The students on these campuses deserve better, and I hope our correspondence with Walton goes some way towards accomplishing the necessary change.
Permalink | E-mail comments | Posted by Azhar Majeed on July 28, 2010, at 4:01 PM
Victory for Free Speech on Campus: Mississippi College Reverses Punishment of Student for Swearing Outside of Class
July 28, 2010
Four months after he was threatened with "detention" and then forced to endure a disciplinary process that put his and his family's livelihoods at risk, Isaac Rosenbloom is again able to pursue advanced training as a paramedic at Mississippi's Hinds Community College (HCC). HCC has finally reversed his punishment for swearing a single time outside of class. Rosenbloom, who supports his wife and two young children as an emergency medical technician, was barred from one of his classes and denied financial aid before FIRE was able to get his case resolved.
Rosenbloom's ordeal began on March 29, 2010, when professor Barbara Pyle and a few students stayed after class to discuss the students' grades. At one point, in the doorway of the room, Rosenbloom said to a fellow student that his grade was "going to f--- up my entire GPA."
According to Rosenbloom's account in a recording of his April 6 hearing, Pyle began to yell and told him that his language was unacceptable and that she was giving him "detention." Rosenbloom replied, accurately, that detention was not a punishment at HCC. Pyle then told him that she was sending him to the dean. She submitted a disciplinary complaint against Rosenbloom, stating that "this language was not to be tolerated [and] he could not say that under any circumstances [including in] the presence of the other students."
HCC found Rosenbloom guilty of "flagrant disrespect" and issued him twelve demerits—just three short of suspension. He also was involuntarily withdrawn from Pyle's course, and a copy of the decision was placed in Rosenbloom's student file. As a result, Rosenbloom lost his Pell grant, effectively ending his academic and professional career. Rosenbloom unsuccessfully appealed the decision twice.
FIRE wrote HCC President Clyde Muse on April 27, pointing out not only that HCC's policy is unconstitutional but also that it was applied unconstitutionally to punish Rosenbloom for his protected speech outside of class. In contravention of the First Amendment, HCC bans "public profanity, cursing and vulgarity," assessing a fine of $25 for the first offense, $50 plus ten to fifteen demerits for the second offense, and suspension for the third offense.
After Muse failed to respond to FIRE, FIRE obtained the assistance of attorneys Robert B. McDuff and Sibyl Byrd, who took up Rosenbloom's case and secured a settlement in his favor. HCC has removed the finding and demerits from Rosenbloom's record and has restored his financial aid. McDuff is a civil rights and criminal defense attorney practicing in Jackson.
Will Creeley notes in today's press release that "Hinds Community College isn't some Victorian finishing school—it's a public institution bound by the First Amendment." Even after doing right by Rosenbloom in the face of possible litigation, however, HCC's speech code remains stuck in the days of Oscar Wilde and Charles Dickens and in defiance of the First Amendment. It is only a matter of time before another student will be unjustly punished and HCC won't be able to head off an embarrassing court battle—one that will be much costlier than the $25 it collects from violators of its prohibition against "vulgarity." Will HCC learn its lesson in time?
FIRE is heartened that Rosenbloom now can continue his training and earn a better life for himself and his family. We will be watching Hinds Community College and urging it to reform its unconstitutional policy.
Permalink | E-mail comments | Posted by Peter Bonilla on July 28, 2010, at 3:18 PM
CFN Conference Attendee's 'Thoughts from a Terrific FIRE Conference'
July 27, 2010
Last week, I posted a detailed summary of what students experienced at the Third Annual CFN Summer Conference. In a similar vein, American University student and CFN member Irena Schneider has recently posted to Students for Liberty's blog a summary of her thoughts: "Why Care About Free Speech?—Thoughts from a Terrific FIRE Conference."
Irena writes:
Irena discusses administrators' efforts to use campus speech codes to protect students from unkind words and to engage in thought reform for people holding viewpoints they find disagreeable. Labeling these efforts a "travesty and an insult to what makes us productive students and human beings," she instead asks for a free marketplace of ideas where universities "let us insult and be insulted, let us have our feelings hurt, let us laugh, let us be complete idiots, let us write outrageous columns."As I reflect, I think that we can never impress upon ourselves enough the deep-seated importance of free speech in the life of the academy and ultimately, of society itself. Abuses of students' rights to freely express themselves are not mere nuisances in the speech codes found in our universities. They are, in the deepest sense, an insult to human intelligence and advancement. The purpose of a university is to provide a forum for the free exchange of ideas. Some ideas can be dangerous, but nothing is more dangerous than their inhibition.
Irena proposes that students have their ideas put up to criticism and attack, to be tried and found wanting or tried and found true:
The post is well worth reading in full here.Administrators: Let us think. We're strong enough to be human and to live in liberty.
Permalink | E-mail comments | Posted by Luke Sheahan on July 27, 2010, at 2:55 PM
Los Angeles College District Taken to Task for Misconstruing 'Martinez'
July 27, 2010
Last week, I blogged about the threat of universities opportunistically mischaracterizing the Supreme Court's recent decision in Christian Legal Society v. Martinez to justify their unconstitutional speech codes. Before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, in the speech code case of Lopez v. Candaele, the Los Angeles Community College District (LACCD) has already done just that by filing a supplemental letter contending that Martinez requires courts to "defer to decisions of educational administrators, even in the free speech context and even in higher education."
The Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), which represents the plaintiff in Lopez, submitted its response to LACCD's letter last Thursday, and their response raises many of the same arguments as does my post against the application of Martinez in the speech code context.
First, ADF's response directly quotes Martinez to incisively counter LACCD's claim that Martinez requires courts to give university decisions more deference, even when university policy may intrude upon First Amendment rights:
Contrary to the College's position, Martinez does not suggest deference to colleges when reviewing policies that restrict speech. "[A] public educational institution exceeds constitutional bounds ... when it restricts speech ... simply because it finds the views expressed by a group to be abhorrent." [Martinez, slip op. at *13]. When students' rights are at stake, the Court instructs that there should be no deference: "This Court is the final arbiter of the question whether a public university has exceeded constitutional constraints, and we owe no deference to universities when we consider that question." Id. at *14 (emphasis added). Educational policy is different and not at issue here, but a court may not abdicate its responsibility to uphold free speech under the guise of "decent respect." Id. at *14 & n.16.
Further, ADF quotes Martinez to show that the decision actually demonstrates why LACCD's speech policy is unconstitutional:
Unlike Martinez, the College's policy "wield[s] the stick of prohibition" on any student viewpoint deemed "offensive" or "harassing." [Martinez, slip op. at *12.] This is a direct viewpoint discriminatory burden on speech because it allows subjective definition of what qualifies for punishment. (Answering Br. at 25-28, 37-39.) By contrast, the Court found Martinez's policy did not exclude any particular viewpoint. [Martinez, slip op. at *19.] The College punishes students for "offending" others, but in Martinez students could "express any viewpoint they wish—including a discriminatory one." Id. n.26.
FIRE contributed an amicus brief in this case prior to the Supreme Court's ruling in Martinez, arguing that LACCD's speech code unconstitutionally restricts protected speech and discriminates on the basis of the speaker's viewpoint. Martinez has the potential to erode students' speech rights if courts misapply its narrow ruling, and we are heartened that ADF has brought these important points to the Ninth Circuit's attention. We hope that the Ninth Circuit recognizes LACCD's attempts to misconstrue Martinez for what they are.
Permalink | E-mail comments | Posted by Erica Goldberg on July 27, 2010, at 11:11 AM
Victory for Academic Freedom: 'Human Heredity' Professor Receives $100,000 Settlement
July 26, 2010
Nearly three years after she was terminated over her protected classroom speech, the San José/Evergreen Community College District (SJCCD) has agreed to pay adjunct professor June Sheldon $100,000 in lost earnings in exchange for dismissal of her First Amendment lawsuit.
Sheldon's trouble began in the summer of 2007 when, in her Human Heredity course at San José City College, she led a brief discussion on sexual orientation. The topic was covered in the course readings. When a student asked her to comment on the nature/nurture debate regarding sexual orientation, Sheldon noted the complexity of the issue, citing examples from the textbook as well as relevant research findings. A student complained a month later that the material was "offensive and unscientific."
Dean of Mathematics and Science Leandra Martin then launched an investigation into Sheldon's comments by surveying other science faculty about the state of the nature/nurture debate among experts. All of the faculty members agreed that the nature/nurture question was complex, but Martin still concluded that Sheldon was teaching non-scientific material as science. Martin then withdrew SJCCD's offer for her to teach further courses. On December 18, 2007, SJCCD Vice Chancellor of Human Resources Anita Morris wrote Sheldon a termination letter, citing Sheldon's relevant and protected classroom expression.
In a statement she submitted in her defense, Sheldon addressed the student's allegations and demonstrated the failures of due process in her case.
FIRE wrote to then-SJCCD Board of Trustees President Richard K. Tanaka on February 6, 2008, asking that the finding and punishment against Sheldon be reversed. The Board did not respond but upheld the termination at a subsequent hearing. On July 16, 2008, the Alliance Defense Fund and attorneys from the Pacific Justice Institute filed a lawsuit against the district and several administrators involved in her case. Her case cleared an important legal hurdle in November 2009, when a federal district court dismissed the district's claim that Sheldon had no First Amendment rights in the classroom, rejecting the district's application of the Supreme Court's 2006 decision in Garcetti v. Ceballos to her case.
Finally, last week, on July 21, 2010, the district agreed to compensate Sheldon $100,000 in lost wages and to remove her termination from her file. That money, of course, comes courtesy of California's taxpayers, who are also on the hook for the district's legal fees in addition to the settlement.
As Adam Kissel noted in today's press release, "The district had better things to spend its money on than fighting a First Amendment lawsuit against a professor who was just doing her job." Indeed, it did, and SJCCD is not the first educational institution to learn this lesson the hard way this year. The University of Wyoming recently spent more than $86,000 in legal fees—including the plaintiffs' legal fees—after its ill-fated attempt to prevent education professor William Ayers from speaking on campus, which resulted in a lawsuit brought by Ayers and a UW student.
Torch readers will know that FIRE recently has intervened in a similar academic freedom case in Illinois, where University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) adjunct professor Kenneth Howell was not rehired after a student complained regarding his teaching about the Catholic position on sexual conduct in his Introduction to Catholicism course. Hopefully, UIUC is paying careful attention to the outcome of Sheldon's case and the price tag involved when a college violates a professor's First Amendment rights.
SJCCD, meanwhile, still has not acknowledged any wrongdoing in Sheldon's case; indeed, it gives no indication that it has learned any lesson from this expensive debacle. FIRE is pleased that Sheldon can finally put this ordeal behind her, but the district's demonstrated ignorance of the First Amendment and academic freedom ensures that we will be keeping our eye on it in the future.
Permalink | E-mail comments | Posted by Peter Bonilla on July 26, 2010, at 4:47 PM
'Indiana Daily Student' on FIRE's Big Ten Spotlight Ratings
July 26, 2010
The Indiana Daily Student, the student newspaper for Indiana University-Bloomington (IU), published an article this week about the university's yellow-light rating in Spotlight, FIRE's speech code database.
The article highlights several restrictive speech policies at IU, including the policy establishing a free speech zone. Reporter Nathan Miller quotes Samantha Harris, FIRE's Director of Speech Code Research, who wrote that "The right to engage in spontaneous expressive activity is an important aspect of the right to free speech, and this policy is unnecessarily restrictive."
Miller also cites the preamble to IU's Code of Student Rights, Responsibilities, and Conduct as another yellow-light policy. This policy states that students are expected to "behave in a manner that is respectful of the dignity of others, treating others with civility and understanding." The article explains FIRE's objection to this language:
Harris' complaint with the policy is that free speech can often be offensive, and yet even the offensive speech is protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution.The article also compares IU's Spotlight rating to those of other universities in the Big Ten conference. Currently, none of the Big Ten schools has earned a green-light rating; most of them have a red-light rating. FIRE hopes that Miller's article has raised awareness of the problem, and the university community will engage IU to amend its policies and fully protect free speech on campus.
"For example, it is very common for political cartoons and other kinds of social satire to be extremely disrespectful and mocking of its targets. And yet this type of expression, however much it may not 'respect the dignity of others,' is at the heart of what the First Amendment protects," Harris said in an e-mail.
Permalink | E-mail comments | Posted by Jaclyn Hall on July 26, 2010, at 4:05 PM
FIRE's Lukianoff and Creeley Published in 'Free Inquiry'
July 23, 2010
We are proud to announce that FIRE President Greg Lukianoff and Director of Legal and Public Advocacy Will Creeley join a distinguished group of writers discussing free thought and free speech on campus in the April/May issue of Free Inquiry magazine. Their article is titled "Is Campus Censorship the New Normal?"
Greg and Will explore a number of the outrageous cases of censorship that FIRE has seen in recent years and develop five themes. First, campus censorship follows a "familiar pattern," in which "[o]ffense was taken and offical threats of censorship soon followed." A prominent example is the censorship of a campus t-shirt at Yale quoting F. Scott Fitzgerald saying, "I think of all Harvard men as sissies."
Second, the article returns to a theme Greg developed in "P.C. Never Died" in Reason magazine in February: campus censorship under the aegis of political correctness is still around and in many ways, it's getting worse.
Third, speech critical of Islam is increasingly being censored. FIRE has taken cases ranging from an investigation of an anti-terrorism rally at San Francisco State University to Yale University Press' refusal to publish the Danish Mohammed cartoons in a book about the Mohammed cartoons.
Fourth, while people on the political left are largely responsible for theories of censorship prevalent in the academy (such as hate speech, to use one example), no ideology has a monopoly on censorship. FIRE has intervened to halt conservative censors at the University of Maryland who targeted a student showing of Pirates II: Stagnetti's Revenge, a pornographic film, in conjunction with a lecture by a Planned Parenthood representative, as well as at the University of Oklahoma, where the state legislature attempted to bar famed Oxford scientist Richard Dawkins from speaking.
Finally, religious students in particular face censorship for their views. The double standard for "offensive" speech when it comes to religion is striking. A community college in Florida would not allow a screening of Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" because it was "controversial" and R-rated. At the same time, students were performing a play titled "Fucking for Jesus," which featured a scene where a student masturbates to a painting of Jesus. Further examples are legion.
We urge you to pick up a copy of this issue of Free Inquiry and read the article in full. It is an enlightening exposition on current trends in censorship on campus, and highlights the very real threat collegiate censorship poses to our democracy. As Greg and Will write,
By teaching students that they possess an illusory, extra-constitutional "right not to be offended," colleges and universities have privileged faux outrage over meaningful dialogue and romanticized censorship of unpopular speech as being not only effective and efficient, but in fact morally required. As a generation of college graduates trained to silence "offensive" speech assumes its station in our society, increased cultural polarization is an all but inevitable outcome.
Permalink | E-mail comments | Posted by Luke Sheahan on July 23, 2010, at 3:02 PM
Washington State University Appears to Have Gotten the Message on Bias Reporting Protocols; Will Other Universities?
July 23, 2010
The advent of bias reporting protocols on university campuses is viewed by FIRE as a pernicious threat to student speech, and with good reason.
Universities that maintain and operate such policies typically encourage students and others on campus to report, often anonymously, occasions in which they experience or overhear any speech that they deem biased, prejudiced, or hostile on the basis of listed categories. Even though speech that is prejudiced or biased, standing alone, is entitled to constitutional protection, many universities have unwisely enacted such reporting protocols in order to protect students from mere offense or politically incorrect speech.
In so doing, they have placed a harmful chilling effect on speech on their campuses, ignoring that the investigation of protected expression—even absent official punishment—is impermissible under the First Amendment and free speech principles. Thankfully, at least one university has expressed to FIRE its understanding of these problems and its willingness to do away with the constitutional infirmities in its own bias reporting policy.
Washington State University (WSU) was recently the recipient of a letter from FIRE pointing out the threat to freedom of expression presented by its "Bias Hotline" policy. (The letter was part of FIRE's national mailing campaign to universities in the wake of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals' precedent-setting decision in DeJohn v. Temple University.) As currently formulated, the policy reads in pertinent part:
If you witness or experience something that discriminates, stereotypes, excludes, or harasses anyone based on some part of their identity - such as race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, or mental, physical, or sensory handicap, report it immediately.In our letter to WSU, we explained that the Bias Hotline policy threatens much protected speech. We pointed out, for instance, that the policy's aim at speech that merely "stereotypes" another person "based on some part of their identity" renders it overbroad on its face. Indeed, by its terms the policy has seemingly no bounds and could be applied against some of the most innocuous speech imaginable, such as speech that stereotypes another on the basis of his or her sports allegiances, musical preferences, regional ties, and much more. Likewise, the statement that WSU is committed to investigating any and all reported incidents of "hate" and "bias" encompasses protected speech; even so-called "hate speech," as FIRE has had to point out time and time again, is protected under the First Amendment, as the Supreme Court has made clear. Our letter also pointed out that the policy's use of amorphous, undefined terms likely renders it unconstitutionally vague. Due to these and other flaws, we warned that the policy unquestionably places a major chilling effect on speech at Washington State, violating the rights of its students.
Washington State University and Washington State University Police Department is committed to responding to and investigating all reported incidents of discrimination, harassment, hate, and bias.
Last week, the university sent us a response letter in which it recognized the concerns we raised and promised to revise the policy in order to bring it into compliance with the First Amendment. In relevant part, the university's response letter reads:
The Hotline is introduced by a statement crafted to encourage those victimized by hate crimes and discrimination to report the incident. It is not a policy and is not directly reflective of WSU policy. Nonetheless, WSU understands your concerns that these introductory statements should be crafted to encourage appropriate reporting without chilling constitutionally protected speech. Accordingly, WSU will review case law guidance, including the cases cited in your letter, and amend the language as appropriate to reflect WSU's actual practice, which is to investigate only those reports of behavior which, if found to be true, would constitute illegal discrimination, harassment or criminal behavior.We are hopeful that Washington State will follow through on its word, and we will be following along to see if they do. If the university truly intends to investigate only matters in which the reported behavior would fall into one of the enumerated categories that fall outside the First Amendment, it has some substantial revisions to make to the Bias Hotline policy's introductory statements. FIRE will be watching keenly to see whether these revisions end up happening.
If WSU makes good on its promise, the policy change will be a benefit to students on its campus. One need not look far to see the harm that comes from such bias reporting protocols. California's Claremont University Consortium by itself has seen a number of instances in which students engaging in clearly protected expression, typically harmless jokes and parody, have been accused of violating the respective policy on bias-related incidents at one of the Consortium's five campuses. On each such occasion, the Consortium's administration has responded by sending a warning e-mail to students on all five campuses, an over-the-top reaction to something as silly as "Hilary is a foxy lesbian" or a "Wild Wild West" party advertisement.
That the administration has had these disproportionate reactions, instead of letting common sense prevail and employing more measured responses, demonstrates the dangers of bias reporting protocols and the chilling effect they engender. What student at any of the Claremont campuses, after seeing these e-mails, is going to say or write something that might be controversial (especially edgy, pointed humor) and thereby risk a lengthy investigation? The typical student will instead self-censor. This deprives students on campus from hearing the full range of ideas and views out there and from enjoying a true marketplace of ideas.
Finally, there is an another major incentive for Washington State to pursue policy revision. A look at WSU's policies on expression reveals that it has one red-light policy, the Bias Hotline policy, and a number of green-light policies. As such, if WSU were to correct the constitutional infirmities in its policy in a manner sufficient to earn a green light, the university may be in line to receive an overall green-light rating from FIRE. This would place WSU in a rare, prestigious group of colleges and universities—indeed, there are currently only 11 green-light institutions in FIRE's Spotlight database. It would be an achievement that WSU could be justifiably proud of, and FIRE would be only happy to sing the university's praises publicly to our many supporters and to our nationwide media network.
Therefore, I urge Washington State's administration to follow through on its promise to FIRE, not only to earn a prestigious green-light rating for the university, but also to set an example for the many other schools that maintain bias reporting protocols to the detriment of their students' speech rights.
Permalink | E-mail comments | Posted by Azhar Majeed on July 23, 2010, at 11:46 AM
Greg Baylor on the CFN Conference 'Philosophy' Panel
July 22, 2010
On Tuesday, I wrote a summary of what students experienced at the Third Annual Campus Freedom Network Conference. The same day, Greg Baylor, Senior Counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, posted an excellent recounting of the "Philosophical and Practical Underpinnings of Academic Liberty" panel at the conference.
He begins by noting Adam's explanation of the utilitarian case for free speech drawn from John Stuart Mill's work, then describes the "deontological" claim for free speech—that people have an inherent right to speak and listen even if the speech does not necessarily have any positive effect. This view is expressed in the Declaration of Independence, for instance, as "inalienable" or "unalienable" rights. Baylor additionally notes writers who have tried to add free speech exceptions by expanding Mill's "harm principle" to include "offensive speech" or "hate speech." Among these he names paternalism, whereby the censors deem certain speech or viewpoints damaging to the very people thinking or expressing them; a paternalistic censor acts to protect the speakers from themselves.
Baylor uses these theories to explain some of the reasoning in the Supreme Court's ruling in Christian Legal Society v. Martinez. Justices Ginsburg and Stevens, he says, appealed to an expanded "harm principle," and Justice Kennedy appealed to paternalism, writing, "A vibrant dialogue is not possible if students wall themselves off from opposing points of view." In other words, Kennedy argued that forcing students to abandon their group's mission and allow dissenting voices is good for them.
It also is worth paying special attention to Baylor's final point:
It bears noting that Justice Ginsburg invoked a rationale that, as I understand things, rarely is invoked to justify government restriction on free expression: the government's own desire to "send a message" that it condemns the speaker's expression.Please read the whole post in full for Baylor's concise analysis of the philosophical errors he finds in the CLS v. Martinez decision. We thank Baylor for his participation, incisive analysis, and kind words for FIRE's conference.
Permalink | E-mail comments | Posted by Luke Sheahan on July 22, 2010, at 3:42 PM
Rauch on Liberal Science and the UIUC Case
July 22, 2010
Jonathan Rauch is not your typical free speech junkie or your typical introvert. He expertly works a crowded room despite proclaiming shyness.
An introvert is the type of person you might expect to be hostile to the concept of unfettered speech, as if any semi-offensive word could breach his artificial defenses and send him running back into the safety of solitude. But this past weekend, surrounded by occasionally loud, often outspoken free speech advocates, the Yale graduate and author of six books, including Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought, proved more than ready to deliver the keynote address at the Campus Freedom Network's annual conference.
Speaking before roughly 75 of the nation's premier First Amendment advocates on their college campuses, and flanked by FIRE and CFN banners, Rauch stood tall and proud as he delivered an eloquent disquisition on the necessity of unbridled speech in a free society.
He began by discussing an ongoing case at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In that case a professor of Catholic thought, Kenneth Howell, lost his class after nine years following an e-mail he sent out, which contained in the subject line the words "Utilitarianism and Sexuality" and presented (among other things) his understanding of the Catholic argument against homosexual conduct.
Outlining the university's violations of freedom of speech and academic freedom, Rauch made a compelling case for not only the legal standard by which the professor was protected but also, more importantly, the moral or "liberal" standard.
As Rauch rightly asserts, controversial and sometimes offensive speech, which many would consider the content of Howell's e-mail to be, is not only protected by the Bill of Rights but is also essential to finding truth in a society driven by what he has defined as "liberal science" or, generally, the Western "liberal" system that drives knowledge forward. Rauch defines this system as a "checking of each by each through public criticism," resulting in the survival of the more defensible truths while the lesser theories fall by the wayside. (FIRE usually refers to this system by the more general term "the marketplace of ideas.")
This system of liberal science has undoubtedly worked. Since this system was effectively put in place in the last few centuries—in science today, nobody has the final say, and personal authority alone won't do—knowledge has advanced at a rate unmatched in human history. Similarly, in "liberal" society, individuals and minority groups have begun to acquire more equality under the law.
The problem with this open system, however, is that with the criticism required to achieve "truth" also comes the possibility to offend. Howell's e-mail, which stated his view of the Catholic position that "sexual acts are only appropriate for people who are complementary," did offend some people, in particular the individual who wrote a widely publicized letter of complaint. In that letter, a friend of a student who took Howell's Introduction to Catholicism class complained that he had heard that Howell "would say things that were inflammatory and downright insensitive to those who were not of the Catholic faith."
This person's assertion was not backed up with any evidence. But if Howell's e-mail felt "insensitive" to some, it bears emphasis that what Howell was saying was in fact his sincere understanding of the actual beliefs and arguments of the Catholic Church. Howell has a First Amendment right to freely give his students his opinions on any subject matter germane to the course.
"Tolerance" and "Sensitivity": An Attack on Free Speech
This case really gets to the crux of recent attacks on what Rauch calls liberal science. In the name of tolerance, diversity, and sensitivity, individuals are increasingly calling for censorship of speech that does not conform to their perception of those ideals. This type of censorship breaks both of the golden rules of liberal science by saying not only that there is an authority on what speech and beliefs are acceptable, but also that this authority has the final say about what ideas may be heard in the marketplace of ideas.
Howell's assertions about Catholic views against homosexual conduct did not conform to the thoughts held by many of his critics. Challenging his views is part of liberal science, but the critics who have called for censorship or punishment have stepped outside the bounds of liberal science.
Rauch explains such phenomena in his book Kindly Inquisitors as he lays out the case for liberal science. His explanation notes the attractiveness of some of the censors' goals, such as the avoidance of emotional pain, but he explains why the means to achieve those goals are often completely incompatible with the process of producing knowledge:
Somehow the idea has grown up that "liberal" means "nice," that the liberal intellectual system fosters sensitivity, toleration, self-esteem, the rejection of prejudice and bias. That impression is misguided. The truth is that liberal science demands discipline as well as license, and to those who reject or flout its rules, it can be cruel. It excludes and restricts as well as tolerates. It thrives on prejudice no less than on cool detachment. It does not give a damn about your feelings and happily tramples them in the name of finding truth. It allows and-here we should be honest-sometimes encourages offense. Self-esteem, sensitivity, respect for others' beliefs, renunciation of prejudice are all good as far as they go. But as primary social goals they are incompatible with the peaceful and productive advancement of human knowledge. To advance knowledge, we must all sometimes suffer. Worse than that, we must inflict suffering on others.
The idea that we all must sometimes suffer to find truth is a harsh reality. It is a reality that the University of Illinois, according to Rauch, is going to have to accept if it wants to be a fruitful contributor to liberal science.
Rauch explained at the CFN conference that he knows this reality all too well. As a gay man who recently married under the laws of the District of Columbia, he finds the position that Howell described in his e-mail particularly offensive. Rauch stated that he couldn't think of an opinion more adverse and offensive to his own beliefs. Yet, despite the offensiveness to him of what Howell expressed, Rauch understands the importance of Howell's right to say it. Rauch understands that in order to defend his position, which for years has been in defense of gay rights and gay marriage, he must be able to listen to what the other side has to say and must be able to respond to it in the arena of liberal science, where the weapons are facts and arguments, not guns or repression of ideas. Again, in the long run, Rauch believes, the better arguments will win.
If Rauch were to join the censors in suppressing the speech of individuals like Howell, he would allow his position to weaken, for, according to J.S. Mill, "both teachers and learners go to sleep at their post, as soon as there is no enemy in the field." Furthermore, he would be undermining the very system that gives minorities such as himself a voice and arena to express their own opinions. Rauch reminds us that a tool used by minorities to censor a majority can be wielded with much more damage by the majority against minorities.
It isn't hard to recall instances from history when those in power interfered with the free flow of ideas, such as when the Catholic Church suppressed Galileo's idea of a heliocentric universe and when the English government opposed John Locke's political ideas (best known today, perhaps, in Two Treatises of Government, though it was published anonymously) and sent him into exile.
Asserting his identity as (among other things) a member of many minority groups, Rauch knows that he needs to defend the system that has given his causes a voice. In Howell's case, it may well be true that Howell's views are shared with a majority off campus but are in the minority on campus. Rauch and Howell benefit equally from the system that lets both of them speak both on and off campus, regardless of whether their views are in the majority or in the minority. A liberal society promises no less.
Permalink | E-mail comments | Posted by Nico Perrino on July 22, 2010, at 1:56 PM
Alliance Defense Fund Goes Head to Head with the University of Illinois over Howell Case
July 21, 2010
Late yesterday, the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) reported that the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) has replied to ADF's warning that it had violated the constitutional rights of adjunct professor Kenneth Howell. UIUC decided not to rehire him after he had been teaching for nine years. Its decision, by all indications, came because Howell had e-mailed the students in his class comparing what he described as Catholic and utilitarian criteria for making moral judgments about sexual conduct. FIRE also intervened in the case last week, and I provided further analysis of the situation on Monday. Today we examine the University of Illinois' reply and ADF's response to the reply.
On July 15, 2010, University of Illinois Deputy University Counsel Steven A. Veazie wrote ADF a short reply to its July 12 letter. Veazie cites the University of Illinois Statutes to assert that the university is dedicated to faculty members' individual rights after all:
The University is fundamentally committed to upholding the principles of the First Amendment and academic freedom. The University of Illinois Statutes ... state that it is the policy of the University to maintain and encourage full freedom within the law of inquiry, discourse, teaching, research and publication ... [Emphasis in original.]
Good start. Veazie then gets to the point:
First, contrary to some reports, Prof. Howell has not been "fired." He held, and continues to hold, the appointment of adjunct professor. Second, his teaching assignment for this coming fall is as yet undetermined pending a review of this matter by the Faculty Senate's Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure (CAFT).
This is a reversal of all previous accounts of what happened to Howell. According to The News-Gazette, Associate Dean Ann Mester told other UIUC staff that "the e-mails sent by Dr. Howell violate university standards of inclusivity, which would then entitle us to have him discontinue his teaching arrangement with us." And just about everyone, including FIRE, has been reporting on the basis of this evidence and more that Howell undoubtedly had been let go. He even lost his job at the nearby Newman Center (which was paying his salary for the UIUC courses he was teaching, in an arrangement I discussed on Monday) because the Newman Center was convinced that he had been let go by UIUC.
Yet, as I wrote on Monday, this is a welcome development. It shows that the university is backtracking in the right direction, and thus I agree with ADF's Heather Gebelin Hacker when she writes that Veazie's letter means that the university is "suspending" its earlier decision.
Finally, Veazie seeks to encourage ADF not to litigate this matter, suggesting that CAFT will indeed reverse the non-rehire decision and that thus there has been no actual adverse action against Howell:
While I do not want to speculate on the outcome, the CAFT and University administrators who[m] you wrote to are fully committed to upholding principles of academic freedom and the requirements of the First Amendment. The University has not implemented any action which would violate these principles or Dr. Howell's legal rights. For these reasons, there is no case or controversy upon which legal action would be warranted at this time.
We disagree. As FIRE's letter to UIUC stated, the harm at UIUC has already occurred and is ongoing; an investigation of a professor's protected expression violates his or her rights. Further, every day without a resolution of Howell's case deepens the chilling effect on the rest of the university's faculty members, who must now understand that honestly stating their interpretation of the Catholic position on sexual conduct could make them the next ones getting the axe. According to Veazie, a professor can be told he will be punished because of his protected speech, but until the decision has been "review[ed]," there is no controversy.
ADF also disagrees. According to ADF's response to Veazie on July 20, reviewing UIUC's non-rehire decision is not sufficient:
While this is a step in the right direction, suspension of the University's decision to relieve Dr. Howell of his teaching duties does not reinstate him or cure the constitutional injuries he suffered. Prior to the University's actions against Dr. Howell, he was scheduled to teach during the fall 2010 semester. Yet as of today, he does not have a teaching assignment. While he continues to hold his appointment as adjunct professor, that title is virtually meaningless if he has no classes to teach.
Further, the University's current actions do not change the fact that Associate Dean Ann Mester stated that Dr. Howell's academic email to his class violated "university standards of inclusivity." Relieving Dr. Howell of his teaching duties based on violation of these standards chilled his speech and violated his First and Fourteenth Amendment rights. [Footnote reference omitted.]
ADF also challenges Veazie's suggestion that CAFT might be predisposed to rule in Howell's favor. Indeed, quoting University of Illinois President Michael Hogan, there is reason to believe the opposite:
We are concerned that the Committee's investigation into this matter is tainted already with bias toward affirming the dismissal. President Michael Hogan commented that the purpose of the Committee is to "reassure ourselves there was no infringement on academic freedom here." ... Also, the University has provided no assurance that this review will be fair and in accordance with due process. [Footnote reference omitted.]
Finally, I agree with ADF's conclusion that
[i]f the University is truly committed to the First Amendment freedoms of its faculty and their academic freedom in the classroom as your letter claims, then there is no need for the Committee's review of this matter. President Hogan [or whoever has the authority to do so] must simply correct the constitutional injuries by restoring Dr. Howell to his previously assigned teaching responsibilities.
The ball is now in the university's court for a few more days. ADF asks for a response by July 27, 2010; FIRE asked for a response by July 30. Stay tuned here to The Torch for further developments.
Permalink | E-mail comments | Posted by Adam Kissel on July 21, 2010, at 3:35 PM
Attention, University Counsel: Narrow Holding in ‘Martinez’ Is Irrelevant to Speech Code Cases
July 21, 2010
Well, that didn't take long. In an unfortunate but not unexpected development, universities have already begun misguided attempts to exploit the Supreme Court's recent decision in Christian Legal Society v. Martinez by citing it out of context to justify their unconstitutional speech codes.
In a filing with the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit last Thursday, attorneys representing the Los Angeles Community College District (LACCD) in the case of Lopez v. Candaele cited Martinez for the broad proposition that courts must "defer to decisions of educational
administrators, even in the free speech context and even in higher education." But, contrary to the LACCD's attempt to broaden Martinez's holding, the Supreme Court held only that public universities do not violate students' freedom of association when they require official student organizations to accept all students as voting members and leaders. This disingenuous attempt to import the language of Martinez into a speech code case misconstrues the subtleties of Martinez and has the potential to erode well-established First Amendment freedoms if accepted by courts.
In Lopez, LACCD's speech code was challenged by plaintiff Jonathan Lopez after a professor told Lopez to "ask God what your grade is" in response to Lopez's religiously themed speech delivered in a public speaking class. The federal trial court deemed LACCD's speech policies unconstitutional, which prohibited, among other things, "generalized sexist statements" and "actions and behavior that convey insulting, intrusive or degrading attitudes/comments about women or men." LACCD appealed, and the case is now pending before the Ninth Circuit. FIRE filed an amicus brief arguing that LACCD's policy restricts protected expression and imports workplace "harassment" standards into a university setting, which demands greater First Amendment safeguards.
The LACCD's submission last week cites Martinez as authority to support the propositions that (1) a university's policy can be viewpoint neutral even if it imposes an incidental burden on certain speakers, and (2) federal courts should give "decent respect" to decisions of educational administrators, even when challenged on First Amendment grounds. But these arguments fundamentally misconstrue Martinez's holding and rationale.
First, the all-comers policy at issue in Martinez (despite the disagreement about the policy's implementation) applied to all student groups in its requirement that they include any members wishing to join or run for an elected position. In its opinion, the Court held only that such an all-comers policy did not violate the First Amendment rights of the Christian Legal Society, which sought to limit voting membership and leadership to those students who actually agreed with the group's core tenets. In sharp contrast, university speech codes like LACCD's target and restrict specific viewpoints as inappropriate. For example, LACCD's ban on remarks insulting to one's gender might chill students' expression of political views about the role of women in the military, or the reason for the differences between boys' and girls' test scores in elementary school. Because of speech codes' encroachment upon protected expression, for more than two decades, federal courts have universally held speech codes to be unconstitutionally viewpoint based.
Even more alarming is LACCD's contention that Martinez implies that greater deference should be given to university decisions, even when they contravene First Amendment values. Citing the majority's claim that the Court was required to give "decent respect" to educational policy judgments in the context of determining whether the university's policy goals in setting up registered student organizations were reasonable, attorneys for LACCD now argue that the Court has somehow "charged federal courts to defer to decisions of educational administrators, even in the free speech context and even in higher education." In fact, the opposite is true: The majority opinion in Martinez held that "[t]his Court is the final arbiter of the question whether a public university has exceeded constitutional constraints, and we owe no deference to universities when we consider that question." (Emphasis added.)
Further, there is no "reasonableness" inquiry when determining whether a speech code violates the Constitution. In Martinez, the Court held that the student organization recognition structure comprised a limited public forum, where speech restrictions must be "reasonable" in light of the purpose of the forum and viewpoint neutral. In contrast, the university campus as a whole, to which a speech code like the one at issue in Lopez applies, is not a limited public forum, and much greater speech protections apply. "Decent respect" for the reasonableness of educational policy judgments would not permit an educational policy that flatly violates the Constitution, like a viewpoint-based speech code, to pass muster.
FIRE strongly cautions university attorneys against invoking the language of Martinez, which governed a narrow, specific set of circumstances, when assessing the constitutionality of their speech codes. Universities must not opportunistically capitalize on some of the nebulous language in Martinez to bolster their ability to restrict speech.
Permalink | E-mail comments | Posted by Erica Goldberg on July 21, 2010, at 9:44 AM
UIUC 'Suspends Decision' against Adjunct Professor, Fails to Resolve Rights Violation
July 20, 2010
The Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) has just reported that UIUC has suspended its decision not to rehire adjunct associate professor Kenneth Howell because of an e-mail about Catholicism that he sent his students in a class about Catholicism. However, UIUC's partial response has not resolved the issue of the violation of his constitutional rights. As Heather Gebelin Hacker, ADF Litigation Staff Counsel, writes:
Late Thursday, we received a letter from the University stating that they are "suspending" the decision of his department chair pending review by the committee. While this is a nice step, this does not resolve the issue. It is meaningless for Professor Howell to retain his status as an adjunct professor without being able to teach any classes, and the committee's review of the situation does not change the fact that Professor Howell was relieved of his previously scheduled teaching responsibilities because his instruction to students was deemed not to meet standards of "inclusivity." Save for that email, Professor Howell would still be teaching Introduction to Catholicism in the approaching semester. That is a violation of his constitutional rights, and we have indicated as much to the University in our response letter, sent today.
Read the letters and the whole post, and stay tuned for FIRE's analysis tomorrow.
Permalink | E-mail comments | Posted by Adam Kissel on July 20, 2010, at 5:12 PM
FIRE's CFN Conference a Huge Success
July 20, 2010
This weekend, FIRE wrapped up its Third Annual Campus Freedom Network Conference. About fifty students from across the country congregated at Bryn Mawr College to hear from FIRE's staff and some of the leading advocates of free speech on campus. Dozens of students and community members tuned in on the CFN website and on the CFN's Ustream channel. Students and staff engaged in vigorous discussion not only at the conference, but also on Twitter.
After meeting each other and the staff, students were treated to University of Massachusetts at Amherst professor and FIRE Board of Directors member Daphne Patai's opening speech, including a satire on utopian motivations which drew on her personal experience and her academic study of dystopian literature. She thus provided serious insight into how many administrators may view the world when writing speech codes.
On Friday morning, FIRE Board of Directors Chairman Harvey Silverglate gave a scintillating speech on the importance of FIRE's Campus Freedom Network members. Harvey speculated that when starting FIRE with University of Pennsylvania professor Alan Charles Kors, he thought that it would take about a decade to set the academy straight on speech codes. In hindsight, he reflected, he was naive about the depth of universities' interest in censorship, even if they are less strong bastions of censorship than they were ten years ago. That is why the CFN is so important. Students have a unique position on campus that allows them to influence the administration in ways that others simply cannot. Harvey encouraged students to make the most of their position and to work to change the campus culture of censorship.
FIRE President Greg Lukianoff followed Harvey to discuss the phenomenon of "Unlearning Liberty," whereby students learn from unconstitutional speech codes that it is not only effective, but a moral imperative, to censor ideas they disagree with. Greg related this phenomenon to the decline in political discourse and showed how it threatens our democracy. Greg expressed similar ideas in his chapter "Students Against Liberty?" for the book New Threats to Freedom.
Then Greg moderated a distinguished panel on "The Philosophical and Practical Underpinnings of Academic Liberty." Adam Kissel, Director of FIRE's Individual Rights Defense Program, discussed the utilitarian case for free speech, drawing from John Stuart Mill, and discussed Plato's account of Socrates' habit of encouraging people to own up to how little they really know so that they become willing to really listen to opposing ideas. Greg Baylor, Senior Counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, explained various rationales for censorship and how the Supreme Court incorporated these rationales into its decision in Christian Legal Society v. Martinez. Finally, Daphne Patai gave tips on practical ways that students can respond to philosophical objections to free speech within the academy. It was a fascinating discussion.
After lunch, Will Creeley, FIRE's Director of Legal and Public Advocacy, discussed First Amendment case law as it relates to free speech on campus. He demonstrated how federal courts have recognized that the First Amendment applies with full force on college campuses and that it protects controversial and subversive speech.
Samantha Harris, FIRE's Director of Speech Code Research, gave a brief overview of speech codes and FIRE's rating system and Spotlight speech code database. Then, students split up into four groups, each led by a staff member, to work through a worksheet on common problems in speech codes. Students had the opportunity to discuss what constitutes a "red-light" policy and how and why their own schools' codes receive the ratings they do from FIRE.
For Friday night's keynote address, Brookings Institute Scholar, contributing editor for The Atlantic Monthly, and author of Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought Jonathan Rauch discussed the importance of free thought and free exchange in a liberal society. He emphasized how openness to dissent, controversy, and even offense advances knowledge. Rauch posited that it is only through a grand societal discussion, where no voice is censored, that you can hope for progress in both science and society. He pointed out that in a liberal society, instead of asserting the truth of our own ideas and the falsehood of others' by killing those with whom we disagree, we attack the ideas themselves. That is, "In liberal science, we kill our hypotheses instead of each other."
Rauch also challenged the claims of college administrators that speech codes protect minorities, arguing that free speech protections offer the best benefits to minorities. In fact, minorities are more likely to be marginalized or harmed by the majority if it gains tools like speech codes to enforce its will. That is why, he concluded, "You, the people in this room, and the people of FIRE, are the real defenders of the weak."
On Saturday morning, FIRE's Sweidy Stata Video Fellow Joe Stramowski discussed how to record good video on a low budget. He covered shooting (including proper framing), editing, and how students can record censorship on campus easily and cheaply. I added a few tips on how to get the word out about their blogs and videos through the blogosphere, Twitter, and Facebook.
Then, students were treated to a few horror stories from past FIRE cases. Chris Lee talked about how Washington State University paid for forty students to attend Chris's play and disrupt it in an outrageous act of censorship. Michele Kerr discussed how Stanford University's School of Education attempted to kick her out of the program—twice—for expressing disagreement with the school's educational philosophy. Braum Katz then explained how he was able to work with the student government at The College of William & Mary to reform the college's speech codes to receive a green-light rating in FIRE's Spotlight database.
Finally, students split into small groups for one final session on activism. Students were able to discuss their speech codes with a member of FIRE's staff as well as brainstorm and plan out ways to encourage their schools to reform their codes.
All in all, it was a very successful conference. We look forward to working with these bright and engaged students to advance liberty on their campuses throughout their higher education careers.
Permalink | E-mail comments | Posted by Luke Sheahan on July 20, 2010, at 5:05 PM
Check Out FIRE's Ad in August/September Issue of 'Reason'
July 20, 2010
On page 43 of the August/September issue of Reason magazine, readers will find a reminder of the coming school year: a reproduction of FIRE's 2009 U.S. News & World Report advertisement calling out the schools on FIRE's Red Alert list. Currently the "worst of the worst" schools are Brandeis University, Bucknell University, Colorado College, Johns Hopkins University, Michigan State University, and Tufts University. (Bucknell, the most recent addition to the list, was not named in the U.S. News ad last year, but has been put in its rightful place here.)
Torch readers will remember the ad's arresting image of Todd Tucker's book Notre Dame vs. the Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klan bound in chains, an homage to Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis' shameful punishment of student Keith John Sampson for simply reading Tucker's book.
In September, FIRE will unveil its newest full-page ad when U.S. News publishes its 2010 college rankings issue. Until then, I encourage readers to pick up Reason's August/September issue to get a preview of things to come.
Permalink | E-mail comments | Posted by Peter Bonilla on July 20, 2010, at 1:54 PM
More Developments at UIUC in Case of Punished Catholic Professor
July 19, 2010
Meghan reported last week on FIRE's letter to University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Chancellor Robert A. Easter in the matter of adjunct professor Kenneth Howell, who was let go as the teacher of his UIUC courses on Catholicism after he sent his students an e-mail comparing what he described as the Catholic and the utilitarian criteria for making moral judgments about sexual behavior. According to The News-Gazette, Associate Dean Ann Mester told other UIUC staff that "the e-mails sent by Dr. Howell violate university standards of inclusivity, which would then entitle us to have him discontinue his teaching arrangement with us."
This adverse employment action left Howell with no courses and no job at UIUC. Since he held his job through a contractual arrangement between the school and the independent college ministry St. John's Catholic Newman Center, the Newman Center also declined to rehire him.
But University of Illinois President Michael J. Hogan is disputing that such a decision has been made in a form letter responding to critics, as reported on Facebook:
Prof. Howell has not been dismissed from the University, as misreported on the Internet and by several media outlets. He continues to hold his appointment as an adjunct professor. No decision has been made regarding the appointment of an instructor for the course Prof. Howell previously taught in the Fall semester; and no decision will be made until the review is complete.This is a weird statement, even if it were true that Howell was not actually let go (although Howell himself apparently believes he has not been retained, and has e-mails and conversations to back up his claim, not to mention public statements by university officials—and the Newman Center, Alliance Defense Fund, and others who are close to the situation apparently believe that Howell was cut loose as well). Does UIUC really keep up a relationship with everyone who has ever been an adjunct faculty member, even after they have been given no further expectation of any courses to teach, and keep them in the official UIUC directory as adjunct faculty members? I doubt it. But it is tempting to take Hogan at his word, because it seems to me that UIUC has opened the door to say that this was all a big misunderstanding and Howell has not been denied reemployment.
At any rate, a delay in deciding Howell's fate is unacceptable for the reasons outlined in FIRE's letter. The First Amendment violation involved in this case creates a serious chilling effect across the campus. Which professor will be the next one to stick out his or her neck and wait for UIUC to lop it off, simply for expressing interpretations of different moral traditions and thus offending students? As University of Alaska President Mark Hamilton wrote in another case involving investigation of a professor:
[R]esponses to complaints or demands for action regarding constitutionally guaranteed freedoms of speech CANNOT BE QUALIFIED. Attempts to assuage anger or to demonstrate concern by qualifying our support for free speech serve to cloud what must be a clear message. Noting that, for example, "The University supports the right to free speech, but we intend to check into this matter," or "The University supports the right of free speech, but I have asked Dean X or Provost Y to investigate the circumstances," is unacceptable. There is nothing to "check into," nothing "to investigate."
Because of the chilling effect on faculty speech that increases every day without a resolution of this issue, an immediate resolution is required. UIUC should not wait for the results of its Faculty Senate's Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure in order to resolve this injustice.
Reviewing the Whole Arrangement and Questions of Institutional Academic Freedom
Not only has UIUC declined to rehire Professor Howell for an impermissible reason, but it has started down a second path that could keep Howell out of a job for different reasons. The Chicago Tribune reported yesterday that a second university committee, the Faculty Senate's General University Policy Committee, has been brought into the conflict in order to resolve the broader issue of the relationship between the university and the Newman Center. This issue involves the question of how UIUC hires faculty members in conjunction with community partners.
As I understand the current arrangement, the Newman Center chooses the faculty member who will teach certain courses about Catholicism, and the university has the final say in whether to hire the person selected. The Tribune reports that the university has exercised its right to have the final say over its own faculty in this matter: "Previous instructors have been let go or not approved by the university."
This arrangement seems acceptable. Unless the contract between the university and the Newman Center proves otherwise, regardless of the professor's other commitments and allegiances, UIUC's rights and responsibilities toward the professor are exactly the same as for other faculty members. The fact that an outside community partner, even a religious one, engages in the initial consideration of the professor does not change the fact that UIUC still has the last word, and UIUC apparently exercises its authority to make sure that its faculty members are qualified to teach under UIUC's banner.
Whether this arrangement is smart or not is a different question, but that question is (almost) entirely up to the university. The university enjoys the institutional academic freedom to decide for itself how it wants to hire, assess, and fire its own faculty members. If that means having outsiders weigh in on a candidate, weakly or strongly, that's fine—so long as the university has the last word and ensures that the final decision is made lawfully.
Community partnerships are valuable in many ways, and it is nothing new to note that students and faculty members have multiple allegiances and many masters. Social work and teaching students, for instance, are bound by the rules at their field placements as well as the rules of their academic programs, and faculty members who are on government grants also have to follow the government's rules while fulfilling their grants. As a member of the General University Policy Committee, Nicholas Burbules, suggested, such arrangements blur the lines of authority. But such is academic life for all but the most isolated faculty members and students.
If the university decides that community partnerships are not so good an idea because of their influence on "academic integrity" (to quote the Tribune article), it is vital to keep equal treatment in mind. Is there something fundamentally different between partnering with a highly activist social work placement and partnering with the Newman Center? It not only is unwise to treat partnerships by different standards, but doing so also may indicate that the university is not contending with the relevant issues in an academically neutral way. This would be an abuse of the discretion granted the university in the name of academic freedom. If the General University Policy Committee members find themselves contorting their arguments in order to keep the Newman Center—but not other organizations—away from the university's academic programs, I hope they will take a step back and make sure that they are treating all community partners by the same standards.
A worse development would be an indication that this second review committee was convened simply to provide an additional way to get rid of Professor Howell. That seems possible under the circumstances, but less likely given the broader context of debate about the institutional arrangements over many years (as reported by the Tribune and others).
Yet, I see no indication that the review would have occurred at this time but for the controversy over Professor Howell's e-mail. This is troubling in itself as a matter of Professor Howell's rights.
Permalink | E-mail comments | Posted by Adam Kissel on July 19, 2010, at 4:44 PM
Greg's 'Stossel' Appearance Now Available on Fox Business Channel Website
July 19, 2010
For those who were unable to watch FIRE President Greg Lukianoff's appearance on Stossel last Thursday, the interview is now available online at the Fox Business Channel website. Watch John Stossel's interview with Greg and former Washington State University student Chris Lee, where they discuss WSU's deplorable attempts to censor Lee's satirical musical and the wider infirmity of politically correct speech codes on campus. Torch readers can also read Stossel's earlier coverage of Lee's and other FIRE cases here and here.
Permalink | E-mail comments | Posted by Peter Bonilla on July 19, 2010, at 3:39 PM
FIRE Intervenes after UIUC Professor Dismissed, Highlighting Violation of Academic Freedom
July 16, 2010
Dr. Kenneth Howell, an adjunct professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), was not rehired by the university after a student complained in an e-mail to the department chair that Dr. Howell was "inflammatory and downright insensitive" in his class on Catholicism. Howell had sent an e-mail to the students in his class comparing what he described as Catholic and utilitarian criteria for moral judgments about sexual conduct. The complaining student, who was not enrolled in Dr. Howell's class, stated that the e-mail was "absurd" and constituted "hate speech." Because he was let go from his university position, Dr. Howell also was let go from his position at the campus Catholic Newman Center.
Howell's case strikes at the core issue of academic freedom for professors and, as such, has received a lot of attention in the press. One article, "University of Illinois Instructor Fired Over Catholic Beliefs," details that an associate dean at UIUC said that Howell's e-mails "violate university standards of inclusivity, which would then entitle [UIUC] to have him discontinue his teaching arrangement with [UIUC]." This is despite a provision in UIUC's Academic Staff Handbook that recognizes that faculty "are entitled to freedom in the classroom in developing and discussing according to their areas of competence the subjects that they are assigned."
A detailed Inside Higher Ed (IHE) article captures the thoughts of various professors and First Amendment advocates on Howell's case. Jordan Lorence, senior legal counsel at the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), lamented that silencing Dr. Howell detracts from the marketplace of ideas that a university is supposed to provide its students:
The bigger picture problem is that this is teaching students—the next generation of American leaders—that you don't respond to opinions you disagree with with more debate, but by feeling offended and then complaining to some school authority so that the person is disciplined in some manner and censored. We are teaching students they can have an environment cleansed of opinions that they disapprove. That's shocking.
ADF is considering representing Howell and in the meantime has sent UIUC a letter that decries that the university "would succumb to such a 'heckler's veto,' jettison principles of academic freedom, and violate Dr. Howell's First Amendment freedoms" in firing him.
Ann H. Franke, a lawyer with expertise in legal issues for universities, commented to IHE that "[a] public institution effectively can fire an adjunct for no reason, but you can't fire an adjunct for a wrong reason." The case also raises important due process questions, particularly for adjunct professors, who are often simply not rehired without explanation. Adjunct professors in situations like Dr. Howell's need to be afforded an opportunity to defend their speech and vindicate their rights.
FIRE agrees with Lorence and Franke. Students cannot simply cry "hate speech" whenever they hear opinions with which they disagree. And universities cannot fire (or not rehire) faculty members for engaging in their constitutionally protected right to express views that might not be popular on campus. Further, adjunct faculty do not have diminished First Amendment rights because of their employment status. Adverse employment action against an adjunct faculty member, when that action is due to the professor's protected expression, violates the professor's First Amendment rights.
Others, however, have missed the mark in their understanding of the case. In the IHE article, Ayesha N. Khan of Americans United for Separation of Church and State characterized Howell's e-mail and teachings as "preaching." But she fails to recognize that the course Dr. Howell taught was on Catholicism and that he told students they did not have to accept the views of the Catholic Church as right. To the contrary, he insisted in his e-mail that students should make up their own minds.
Currently, a UIUC faculty committee is reviewing the university's decision not to rehire Dr. Howell to determine whether it violated his academic freedom. FIRE has now written UIUC's chancellor asking him to uphold Howell's rights immediately and to make UIUC a place where rigorous debate—not unilateral stifling of unpopular opinions—flourishes.
Stay tuned for more coverage of this case.
Permalink | E-mail comments | Posted by Meghan Grizzle on July 16, 2010, at 5:53 PM
Tune in to the CFN Conference--Going on Now!
July 16, 2010
Following last night's welcome reception and dinner featuring a lecture by scholar and FIRE Board of Directors member Daphne Patai, today's events at FIRE's third annual Campus Freedom Network conference are under way, to be capped off this evening with a keynote address by author and Brookings Institution scholar Jonathan Rauch. If you aren't attending the day's events but still want to tune in, watch the live-streaming video feed of the conference at the CFN's Ustream channel or at the CFN website. Conference attendees and FIRE staff will also be tweeting from the conference throughout the day, and you can follow the conference by using the hashtag #CFN10.
Permalink | E-mail comments | Posted by Peter Bonilla on July 16, 2010, at 10:30 AM
Tonight on 'Stossel': Here Come the Speech Police
July 15, 2010
Recently, as Torch readers saw here, John Stossel's syndicated column paid heed to Keith John Sampson's outrageous case at Indiana University - Purdue University Indianapolis. Today, in a blog entry previewing tonight's Stossel program, he notes an equally outrageous case: that of Washington State University student Chris Lee, whose satirical The Passion of the Musical was viciously shouted down by students whose tickets had been bought and paid for by WSU administrators.
As Stossel puts it:
Lee appears as a guest on tonight's program, along with FIRE President Greg Lukianoff and several other contributors to the recently released New Threats to Freedom. Don't miss it.[Lee] didn't trick people. He got everyone who attended the show to sign a statement saying that they knew the play was offensive.
But some students complained anyway. His school's administration then bought 40 of them tickets to the show, and they interrupted the play with jeers and threats, some of which were caught on camera. Disruptive students shout[ed] things like "Only a black boy can say nigga. Don't you ever f---ing say that again, you little bastard." In the end, Chris had to censor the show before he could continue.
Permalink | E-mail comments | Posted by Peter Bonilla on July 15, 2010, at 5:06 PM
Watch Greg on 'Stossel' Tonight
July 15, 2010
FIRE President Greg Lukianoff will be appearing on Stossel tonight to talk about the state of free speech on college campuses. Greg will be joined by Chris Lee, the former Washington State University student who had his comedy musical shut down. The show also will feature Adam Bellow, editor of New Threats to Freedom, and some of the book's other contributors, Katherine Mangu-Ward, and Michael Moynihan.
Tune in to Stossel on Fox Business tonight at 9:00 pm Eastern to watch!
Permalink | E-mail comments | Posted by Claire Jenkins on July 15, 2010, at 1:49 PM
Threats to Freedom of the Press on Campus, 2009-2010
July 15, 2010
Over at The Huffington Post, Dan Reimold provides an alarming list of violations and threats to freedom of the press on college campuses from the past academic year.
FIRE was involved in several of these cases where students, administrators, or other campus officials—and in one case a county prosecutor—interfered with campus press.
- We reported on the massive theft of papers by the Texas A&M University football team, under the approving direction of the football coach, Guy Morriss. At the time, Will wrote:
Not only was Coach Morriss blustering on record about being proud of his team's lawless disregard for speech, but all signs point towards him actually planning the mass theft, since even the school's own Athletic Director thinks the team is too dumb to put together the scheme by themselves.
- About 10,000 more papers were stolen from The Daily Wildcat at the University of Arizona, which Robert reported. Although the evidence seemed fairly clear that the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity was involved, the fraternity was let off the hook after a police "investigation" in which the fraternity members were never questioned. Perhaps it comes as no surprise that the university's Greek Standards Board also declined to find anyone responsible for the theft.
- Yet another case of newspaper theft occurred at American University (AU), with vandalism to boot. This case did not make it onto Reimold's list, but FIRE today has sent AU a letter asking about the status of the investigation, now that at least one student has admitted taking part.
- FIRE also is investigating the strict enforcement of a relatively recent rule at Missouri Southern State University, which seems to ban professors from talking with the media unless they are contacted through the Director of University Relations. Every once in a while we hear of another school that, like MSSU, has "gone corporate" and decided that controlling the university's message is more important than freedom of speech.
- Recently, I reported on a county prosecutor's unlawful seizure of about 1,000 photos taken by journalists at The Breeze at James Madison University; the prosecutor later apologized to the paper and was given only 20 of the photos in question.
- FIRE and the Student Press Law Center (SPLC) intervened at the University of Utah on behalf of editors of the independent student paper after the administration threatened to withhold their degrees, pending personal meetings with university officials, because of vulgar "hidden" words spelled out in the paper.
- Will and I also reported on attempts by Virginia Tech administrators to strong-arm The Collegiate Times into changing its policy of allowing anonymous comments on its website, like many newspapers do nationwide. Reimold quotes my opinion about these attempts, which ultimately failed:
Virginia Tech is acting because of content-based concerns, which is plainly unconstitutional. Virginia Tech, after all, is a public university bound by the First Amendment, although it seems that Virginia Tech has little interest in acknowledging this fact. ... Woe be to Virginia Tech."
Reimold has more information about these cases and several others in his story. The good news, however, according to Reimold, is this:
Thanks to Dan Reimold for being part of the fight. We often cite the words of Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis to this end: sunlight is said to be one of the best disinfectants.Simply put, it is tougher than ever to mess with the student press. The organizational backing on a national level—including the SPLC, SPJ [Society of Professional Journalists], FIRE, and the Associated Collegiate Press (ACP)—has never been stronger. The web also enables a rapid response scenario in which the professional press, the blogosphere, and the Twitterverse can immediately band together, offer advice and other assistance, and spread the word about an injustice worldwide. The responses often create public relations nightmares for student press opponents.
They also breed confidence. Student media are now much more secure drawing firm lines in the sand over controversial issues because they know they will not be alone when times get tough. Nowadays, a fight against a particular student press outlet is also a fight against college media, free press advocates, and the very power of the web itself.
Permalink | E-mail comments | Posted by Adam Kissel on July 15, 2010, at 11:54 AM
National Association of Scholars Draws Attention to University of Iowa Faculty Applicant's Lawsuit Alleging Viewpoint Discrimination
July 15, 2010
Here on The Torch last August, we covered the case of Teresa Wagner, a faculty applicant at the University of Iowa College of Law who alleged that she had been discriminated against as an applicant for full-time and adjunct Writing Instructor positions due to her political beliefs. In a complaint filed in federal court, Wagner claimed that despite being qualified for the positions and already having served as a professional staff member in the College of Law's Writing Resource Center, she encountered resistance from those doing the hiring and was passed over in favor of less qualified candidates.
This week, the National Association of Scholars (NAS) is drawing attention to Wagner's lawsuit against the law school, which claims the law school discriminated against Wagner in its hiring decisions on the basis of her political beliefs. NAS's article summarizes her case as follows:
Wagner believes that she was denied the appointment on political grounds. Like [historian Mark] Moyar she is a Republican. She was also outspoken in her advocacy of some conservative positions. None of this seemed to matter in a variety of professional positions she held before applying for the Iowa opening, and in fact Wagner seemed to pass through two rounds of interviews at the law school with flying colors. At that point, however, her appointment was blocked and the position was instead granted to an individual who had never practiced law or published, and who professed to "hate" Republicans and "right wingers."
NAS reports that Wagner's case is currently pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, after the district court judge denied Wagner's claims at the summary judgment stage and she appealed the decision. Given the weight of the allegations involved, this is a case worth following.NAS is also making a good number of documents related to the case available on its website (to view them, simply scroll to the bottom of the article). The article highlights two of these documents in particular:
If you have time to look at just one document, we recommend the first one, which is a half-page internal memorandum from the law school's associate dean, Jon Carlson. Carlson expresses his puzzlement at the Faculty's unwillingness to hire Wagner, even for a lesser position, and worries that this might have something to do with her political views:
Frankly, one thing that worries me is that some people may be opposed to Teresa serving in any role in part, at least, because they so despise her politics (and, especially, her activism about it). I hate to think that is the case, and I don't actually think it is, but I'm worried that I may be missing something.
As the article notes, that's a significant change in position. One wonders what is really going on behind the scenes at the law school, and whether Wagner's appeal to the Eighth Circuit will bring it to the light of day. We will keep you posted on developments in this case, and in the meantime we encourage you to check out the documents from the case for yourself.
Permalink | E-mail comments | Posted by Azhar Majeed on July 15, 2010, at 10:07 AM
Watch the CFN Conference Live!
July 14, 2010
Permalink | E-mail comments | Posted by Luke Sheahan on July 14, 2010, at 5:16 PM
Here's What Students Will Learn at the CFN Conference
July 14, 2010
The Campus Freedom Network Conference begins tomorrow evening! Here's what students have to look forward to in the coming days.
Thursday night, students will network and meet FIRE's staff at a reception and dinner. Then University of Massachusetts at Amherst professor and FIRE Board of Directors member Daphne Patai will kick off the conference with an after-dinner speech. Professor Patai has been a long-time critic of censorship on campus, publishing extensively on campus illiberalism.
Students will be up bright and early Friday morning to hear from the chairman of FIRE's Board of Directors, Harvey Silverglate. Harvey is a long-time civil liberties attorney, experienced advocate for First Amendment rights, and author of numerous articles and two books, The Shadow University: The Betrayal of Liberty on America's Campuses (with Alan Charles Kors) and Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent.
FIRE President Greg Lukianoff will follow Harvey with a speech on "The Problem: Students Against Liberty." Torch readers will remember that Greg contributed a chapter to the book New Threats to Freedom on this phenomenon. Students will then hear from a distinguished panel on free speech as a philosophical concept and why it is important. Panelists include Greg Baylor, senior counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund; Adam Kissel, Director of FIRE's Individual Rights Defense Program; and Daphne Patai. Greg Lukianoff will moderate.
After lunch students will learn about the First Amendment case law as it relates to campus speech from Will Creeley, FIRE's Director of Legal and Public Advocacy. Will has coordinated FIRE's efforts for its amicus briefs in federal and state courts across the country.
Following Will, Samantha Harris, FIRE's Director of Speech Code Research, will give a short overview of speech codes and FIRE's Spotlight rating system. Then students will break up into workshops, each led by a FIRE staff member, to work through a worksheet on common problems in campus speech policies. Each student will also receive a copy of the speech codes at their own schools and have the opportunity to work through the problems with those policies.
Friday night, students will network at a reception and dinner and then hear from Brookings Institute scholar and contributor to The Atlantic Jonathan Rauch, author of Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought.
Saturday morning, students will have a workshop led by FIRE's Sweidy Strata Video Fellow, Joe Stramowski, and me on how to make good video and how to use new media to get the message out about liberty.
Finally, students will hear from a panel of recent graduates who have faced and fought censorship on campus. Chris Lee will discuss his experiences being shouted down by a mob of students funded by the Washington State University administration; Michele Kerr will explain how she was nearly expelled from Stanford University's Education program for questioning its adherence to ideological dogma; and Braum Katz will provide activism tips he learned from making The College of William & Mary a green-light school.
The conference promises to be an enlightening and invigorating experience. We look forward to meeting our student attendees in person and learning how we can help them reform their campuses for liberty.
Permalink | E-mail comments | Posted by Luke Sheahan on July 14, 2010, at 2:42 PM
John Stossel on Over-Regulation and FIRE's Case at IUPUI
July 14, 2010
Do you remember the case of the young girl who put a single french fry in her mouth as she entered the Washington, DC, Metro, and found herself handcuffed and arrested? Here's the story as told by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit:
Ansche had stopped at a fast-food restaurant on the way and ordered a bag of french fries—to go. While waiting for her companion to purchase a fare-card, Ansche removed and ate a french fry from the take-out bag she was holding. After proceeding through the fare-gate, Ansche was stopped by a plainclothed Metro Transit Police officer, who identified himself and informed her that he was arresting her for eating in the Metrorail station. The officer then handcuffed Ansche behind her back while another officer searched her and her backpack. ... Ansche was transported to the District of Columbia's Juvenile Processing Center some distance away, where she was fingerprinted and processed before being released into the custody of her mother three hours later.
Ansche sued but lost her case. This story and more are featured in the new book One Nation Under Arrest: How Crazy Laws, Rogue Prosecutors, and Activist Judges Threaten Your Liberty. It appears to be a good companion volume to Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent by Harvey Silverglate, Co-founder of FIRE and Chairman of FIRE's Board of Directors.
Harvey has explained quite well how campus speech codes are related to abuses of the criminal justice system off campus. Indeed, FIRE certainly knows how vague and overbroad speech restrictions are used to crack down on expression that campus administrators do not like.
Journalist and columnist John Stossel juxtaposes these topics, too, in his latest column for Townhall.com, "Attacks on Freedom." Stossel brings attention both to the french fry villain and to FIRE's case at IUPUI, where a student-employee was found guilty of racial harassment for reading a book. (See this video about the case.) Stossel writes:
Keith John Sampson, a student-employee at Indiana-Purdue University Indianapolis, had the temerity to read "Notre Dame Versus the Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klan" during breaks on the job. One student complained because the book's cover depicted the Klan. The university then found Sampson guilty of racial harassment! Thankfully, a great organization, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), came to his defense and got his school record cleared.Stossel sees cases like these as examples of over-regulation by administrative officials:
Congress creates, on average, one new crime every week. Federal agencies create thousands more—so many, in fact that the Congressional Research Service itself said that merely counting them would be impossible.This statement fits well with what FIRE sees in the college and university context, where vast armies of redundant administrators, needing to justify their positions, enact more and more regulations to police the speech and conduct of their adult students. Thanks to Harvey and John Stossel for keeping the public informed.
Permalink | E-mail comments | Posted by Adam Kissel on July 14, 2010, at 12:04 PM
University at Buffalo Revises Unconstitutional Speech Code
July 13, 2010
In January 2009, FIRE named the University at Buffalo (also known as SUNY Buffalo) our Speech Code of the Month for a residence hall "Statement of Civility" which provided that
Shortly after FIRE's announcement, FIRE supporter Lee Brink wrote to Buffalo's president John Simpson asking, "What is the penalty for someone who ‘breaks' this statement, and how does it reconcile with the First Amendment which New York State, of which SUNY is a part, is required to respect and recognize?" The university responded by clarifying that the civility statement was aspirational and could not be used to punish student speech, and by stating that "the language will be clarified in the future to ensure that this is fully understood."Students are expected to act with civility. To be civil means to be courteous and polite or, simply put, to be mannerly. Acts of incivility — whether verbal, written, or physical — will not be tolerated by the Residential Life community.
I am happy to report that this promised policy change has occurred. The updated Statement of Civility (see p. 37 of the PDF) now clearly sets forth the fact that
FIRE is very pleased that the university has made this important policy change, and particularly that it seems so receptive to constructive criticism on issues of free speech. In that vein, we hope that the university will also consider changing its red-light student sexual harassment policy, which prohibits any "Unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature." In reality, while unpleasant, such conduct does not constitute sexual harassment unless it is severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive; Buffalo's blanket ban on any "verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature" is so broad that it threatens a great deal of protected speech.This civility statement is a declaration of the values and beliefs of the University at Buffalo Residence Halls and Apartments and is not intended to and does not provide grounds for disciplinary action against any student of the University.
FIRE is also thankful to Lee Brink for following up on our Speech Code of the Month feature with a personal e-mail to Buffalo's president. We'd like to remind all of our supporters that these efforts are very important. Just a brief e-mail like Lee's can make a big difference for individual rights on campus, so please help FIRE by speaking up when you hear about a policy or practice that threatens those rights.
Permalink | E-mail comments | Posted by Samantha Harris on July 13, 2010, at 3:52 PM