Calls for censorship at Ole Miss over professor’s salad tweet must be rejected
Officials at the University of Mississippi must resist continued calls to discipline a faculty member for a controversial tweet he wrote earlier this month — even where those calls come from elected officials.
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So to Speak podcast: Free speech in the digital age with Jameel Jaffer
On today’s episode of So to Speak, we speak with Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University.
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Category: Newsdesk, So To Speak, Top Story
Lawsuits by Syracuse Theta Tau students against SU seeing signs of success
Lawsuits filed by Syracuse University Theta Tau fraternity members against SU in state and federal court are showing promising signs as they seek to vindicate their free speech rights.
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Category: Newsdesk, Top Story
Schools: Syracuse University
Cases: Syracuse University: Students threatened with expulsion for satirical fraternity ‘roast’; fires professor who defended free speech
Debate suggesting “major religions should portray God as a woman” canceled at Georgetown University in Qatar
A debate suggesting “major religions should portray God as a woman” faced blowback at Georgetown’s Qatar campus, and was subsequently cancelled.
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Category: Newsdesk, Top Story Schools: Georgetown University
Law students: Apply to be a FIRE legal intern for next summer!
If you’re a first- or second-year law student who cares about defending civil liberties on college campuses, we have the perfect opportunity for you: FIRE’s 2019 Legal Internship Program.
Legal interns will spend the summer working in FIRE’s Philadelphia office on a range of work, including research for our Stand Up For Speech Litigation Project, case evaluation and letter-writing to fight back against rights violations with our Individual Rights Defense Program, and policy analysis for our legislative and policy reform teams. Your substantive work will help FIRE protect student and faculty freedoms of speech, association, conscience, and religion, as well [...] » Read More
DePaul outside speaker review policy predictably bad on free speech
The outside speaker policy at Chicago’s DePaul University vests a single DePaul administrator with broad powers to reject any campus speaker based on the content of his or her speech. The policy runs afoul of the free speech promises DePaul makes to its students and faculty.
Concerns over DePaul’s Student Organization Speaker Review Procedures again came to light last month, when the university rejected a request by the DePaul chapter of Turning Point USA to host an event featuring TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk and the group’s communications director Candace Owens on [...] » Read More
Category: Newsdesk, Top Story Schools: DePaul University
‘Commit to Expression’ through coalition building
At FIRE, one of our first pieces of advice to students seeking to get involved in activism on campus is to build coalitions with diverse student groups, as well as individual students. This advice is especially true in regard to FIRE’s new fall 2018 toolkit, Commit to Expression. This semester’s toolkit focuses on encouraging students to work toward the adoption of a free speech policy statement in the model of the “Report of the Committee on Freedom of Expression” at the University of Chicago (the “Chicago Statement”).
Sure, we often recommend building coalitions with other student groups [...] » Read More
Ruling in lawsuit challenging September 2017 Title IX interim guidance opens door for more lawsuits by advocacy groups
A federal judge has granted the Department of Education’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit challenging ED’s Sept. 22, 2017 interim guidance, which rescinded its problematic April 4, 2011 “Dear Colleague” letter regarding how schools must respond to allegations of sexual misconduct under Title IX. But the ruling still has the potential to make the government vulnerable to a barrage of lawsuits from nonprofit organizations that previously looked unlikely to succeed.
Back in January, nonprofit advocacy organizations SurvJustice, Equal Rights Advocates, and the Victim Rights Law Center filed a lawsuit against ED, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, and Assistant [...] » Read More
Category: Newsdesk, Top Story
Cases: U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights: Federal Lawsuit Challenges April 4, 2011, “Dear Colleague” Letter
Appellate court: UCSB denied accused student ‘even a semblance of due process’
On Tuesday, a panel of California appellate judges issued a scathing opinion ruling that the University of California, Santa Barbara denied a fair hearing to a student accused of sexual misconduct. The court wasted no time explaining what the university had done wrong:
John [Doe, the accused student] was denied access to critical evidence; denied the opportunity to adequately cross-examine witnesses; and denied the opportunity to present evidence in his defense. UCSB denied John a fair hearing.
Unlike most campus sexual misconduct cases, the question in this case was not whether the sexual contact between John Doe and his accuser, Jane [...] » Read More
Category: Newsdesk, Top Story Schools: University of California, Santa Barbara
FIRE’s 2018 policy statement on political speech on campus
With the 2018 elections approaching, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) reminds campuses nationwide of the importance of unfettered student and faculty political expression, debate, and peaceful protest.
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