Rights in the News: Duke, Southwestern College Both Called Out for Campus Offenses

It is getting harder by the day for Duke University to defend in public its unjust and wildly skewed sexual misconduct policy, especially after the trio of columns hitting Duke over the policy this week--from Reason contributing editor Cathy Young in The Boston Globe, FIRE Board of Advisors member Wendy Kaminer in The Atlantic, and FIRE's Robert Shibley in The Washington Times.

Elsewhere, President Raj K. Chopra and his administration at California's Southwestern College (SWC) were awarded a 2010 Jefferson "Muzzle" award from the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression. SWC, which maintains an unconstitutional "free speech patio" and punished professors over a peaceful protest of impending budget cuts, gets hammered by Greg in his Huffington Post column, where he gives honorable mentions to Yale University and Bucknell University as well. FIRE, of course, has been on the scene at SWC from the beginning while the college has been earning its well-earned reputation as a laughingstock of free speech. See also Greg's columns on Temple University's shenanigans in the hours leading up to his speech there on Wednesday.

Finally, as we announced earlier today, FIRE Co-founder and Chairman Harvey Silverglate addresses the First Amendment freedoms about to be decided in the Supreme Court case of Christian Legal Society v. Martinez in a column in the Wall Street Journal. Oral argument is scheduled for Monday.