Northeastern University
Location: Boston, Massachusetts
Website: http://www.northeastern.edu
Type: Private
Federal Circuit: 1st Circuit
Speech Code Rating
Northeastern University has been given the speech code rating Red. A red light university has at least one policy that both clearly and substantially restricts freedom of speech. Read more here.
Red Light Policies
Student Organization Resource Guide: Demonstrations
Speech Code Category: Protest and Demonstration Policies
Last updated: December 5, 2018This policy applies to demonstrations on University property or in connection with University events. This policy applies to all University faculty, staff, students, vendors, volunteers and visitors.
No person or organization shall hold, cause or permit to be held a demonstration on University property or in connection with a University event unless all necessary reservations of space and permissions from the Center for Student Involvement have been obtained prior to the demonstration. … Fill out the Demonstration Permit Application form at least 7 days before your organization intends to demonstrate on campus property.
Student Handbook: Appropriate Use of Computer and Network Resources Policies
Speech Code Category: Internet Usage Policies
Last updated: December 5, 2018In addition to all of the requirements of this Policy, it is specifically prohibited to use Northeastern University information systems to:
- Harass, threaten, defame, slander, or intimidate any individual or group;
- Generate and/or spread intolerant or hateful material, which in the sole judgment of the University is directed against any individual or group, based on race, religion, national origin, ethnicity, age, gender, marital status, sexual orientation, veteran status, genetic makeup, or disability; …
- Transmit or make accessible material, which in the sole judgment of the University is offensive, violent, pornographic, annoying, or harassing, including use of Northeastern information systems to access and/or distribute obscene or sexually explicit material unrelated to University-sanctioned work or bona fide scholarship …
Code of Student Conduct: Bias-Related Incidents
Speech Code Category: Policies on Bias and Hate Speech
Last updated: December 5, 2018Conduct, prohibited by this Code, may include, but is not limited to harassment, bullying, abuse of others, disorderly conduct, and vandalism that is motivated in whole or part by prejudice toward an individual’s or group’s real or perceived race, color, religion, religious creed, genetics, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, national origin, ancestry, veteran status, or disability.
Code of Student Conduct: Misuse of Electronic Resources
Speech Code Category: Internet Usage Policies
Last updated: December 5, 2018Misuse of electronic systems or methods (for example, email, “hacking,” etc.) to steal, misrepresent, threaten, harass, or bully (including online aggression or cyberbullying), or violations of the Appropriate Use of Computer and Network Resources Policy (pages 41–50) and/or any other computer or system use
Code of Student Conduct: Harassment
Speech Code Category: Harassment Policies
Last updated: December 5, 2018Repeated and/or continuing unwanted behavior, coercion, or intimidation of an individual or group, either directly or indirectly .
Code of Student Conduct: Bullying
Speech Code Category: Bullying Policies
Last updated: December 5, 2018A verbal, electronic, or physical act or gesture, or the repeated use of written, verbal, or electronic expression or communication, or any combination thereof that (i) causes or is intended to cause physical, psychological, and/or emotional harm to another person or damage to property; (ii) places a University community member in reasonable fear of harm or damage to property; or (iii) creates a hostile, threatening, intimidating, humiliating, or abusive environment for a University community member or substantially interferes with academic performance, opportunities, or benefits . For purposes of this section, bullying may include, but is not limited to: social exclusion or isolation, humiliation or degradation, threats, intimidation, harassment, stalking, theft and/or damage/destruction of property, or the perpetuation of any of the conduct listed in this section by inciting, soliciting, or coercing others to demean, embarrass, humiliate, or cause emotional, psychological, or physical harm to a member of the University community.
Office for University Equity and Compliance: Policy on Sexual Harassment
Speech Code Category: Harassment Policies
Last updated: December 5, 2018Unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature is sexual harassment when: … Such conduct has the purpose or effect of unreasonably interfering with an individual’s employment or educational performance by creating an intimidating, hostile or offensive environment for that individual’s employment, education, benefits, housing, or participation in a University activity.
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The legal definition of sexual harassment is broad and in addition to the above examples other sexually oriented conduct, whether it is intended or not, that is unwelcome and has the effect of creating a workplace environment that is hostile, offensive, intimidating, or humiliating to male or female workers may also constitute sexual harassment. While it is not possible to list all those additional circumstances that may constitute sexual harassment, the following are some examples of conduct which, if unwelcome, may constitute sexual harassment depending on the totality of the circumstances. This list is not intended to be exhaustive:
Unwelcome sexual advances – whether they involve physical touching or not;
Sexual epithets, jokes, written or oral references to sexual conduct, gossip regarding one’s sex life;
Comment on an individual’s body, sexual activity, deficiencies or prowess;
Communicating by any electronic means or displaying sexually suggestive objects, statements, pictures, cartoons;
Unwelcome leering, whistling, brushing against the body, sexual gestures, suggestive or insulting comments.
Code of Student Conduct: General Expectations
Speech Code Category: Advertised Commitments to Free Expression
Last updated: December 5, 2018As citizens and as members of an academic community, students enjoy the same basic privileges and are bound by the same responsibilities as all citizens.
Student Handbook: Demonstrations
Speech Code Category: Advertised Commitments to Free Expression
Last updated: December 5, 2018The University supports as fundamental to the democratic process the rights of all University students to express their views and to protest actions or opinions with which there is disagreement.
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Crossed lines of protest, free speech at Northeastern
March 29, 2014
By Joan Vennochi at The Boston Globe NORTHEASTERN SAID it suspended a pro-Palestinian rights student group because it broke multiple university rules — not because it wants to silence controversial speech. The group, Students for Justice in Palestine, believes it was targeted for its politics. Whatever the reason, speech was squelched. A private university is not bound by the First Amendment. But any school of supposed higher learning should think twice before adopting that exception as one of its guiding principles. Northeastern’s SJP chapter was suspended after members slipped 600 “mock eviction” notices under dorm doors to draw attention to what the group calls […]
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Free Speech Debate Rekindled At Northeastern
September 5, 2013
Students are moving into dorms, apartments and houses, getting ready for the new school year, but a debate over free speech last semester still lingers at Northeastern University, where a group of pro-Palestinian students says administrators have stifled its free speech.Back in April, the group Students for Justice in Palestine staged a walkout of a presentation by Israeli soldiers inside a lecture hall at Northeastern. Their goal, they say, was to protest human rights abuses in the Middle East. More than 20 students marched out. Some captured video with their smartphones. Others heckled the soldiers, calling them criminals."They’re not welcome […]
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Stifling student voices
June 13, 2013
by Yvonne Abraham The Boston Globe It’s not the ’60s anymore. Colleges used to be hotbeds of political activity, combative marketplaces of ideas. Now they’re overpriced country clubs with climbing walls, sushi, and a culture of enforced politeness that is downright depressing. Which makes a dispute playing out at Northeastern University especially remarkable, and significant. It began in April, when the school’s Students for Justice in Palestine staged a walkout at a presentation by Israeli soldiers. At the start of the event, 35 students stood, small signs taped to their shirts. One member called the soldiers war criminals. One or […]
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Commentary: Hypocritical media ciphers should smarten up
June 20, 2007
After reading the concerns of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), a non-profit organization that advocates for civil liberties, voiced about how the university is violating our privacy and freedom of speech I couldn’t help but wonder how hypocritical the issue seemed. On one hand, I understood why the university has to monitor e-mail servers and university computers to maintain a certain level of safety and order on campus and to protect us from harassment, identity theft and such. On the other, I was mesmerized to see that the same process is not used in all aspects of […]
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Keeping a watchful eye
June 6, 2007
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), a non-profit organization that advocates for civil liberties in academia, recently placed Northeastern on its watch list and has argued that several of Northeastern’s policies restrict free speech on campus. In an op-ed published May 21 in the New York Post, FIRE berated the university for enforcing campus speech codes that it said limit free expression otherwise protected by the First Amendment. FIRE’s op-ed, authored by the organization, called the university “the self-appointed arbiter of good taste” and cited a section of the Northeastern’s Appropriate Use Policy (AUP) that prohibits the use […]
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Campus Alert: Don’t laugh too hard
May 21, 2007
How would you feel if you got in trouble not for telling an off-color joke, but simply for laughing at one? Sounds inconceivable, right? Not at Drexel University in Philadelphia, where school policy prohibits not only “inconsiderate jokes” but also “inappropriately directed laughter.” Not only won’t they let you tell certain jokes, they promise to punish you for finding them funny. Drexel is not alone in its prohibition of what can only be described as typical college student interaction. Northeastern University in Boston, apparently the self-appointed arbiter of good taste, prohibits sending any e-mail message “which in the sole judgment […]
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Speech Code of the Month: Northeastern University
November 1, 2018
The way Americans consume news has shifted dramatically over the past few years. According to Pew Research Center Fact Tank analysis from 2017, 94 percent of 18-29 year-olds get news on mobile devices, while in 2013 that number was just 75 percent. Another Pew Research Center report found that more than half of smartphone users even get news alerts as push notifications on their devices. More than ever, young adults read breaking stories right as they’re unfolding. So what happens when students want to respond to breaking news right away through protests or demonstrations on their campuses? Many colleges have […]
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FIRE Chairman Calls Out Northeast Colleges in Annual ‘Muzzle Awards’
July 6, 2015
Each summer for the past eighteen years, FIRE Co-founder and Chairman Harvey Silverglate has announced the winners of his annual “Campus Muzzle Awards”: colleges and universities in the Northeast stifling campus discourse in particularly outrageous ways. Along with myself and fellow research assistant Timothy Moore, this year, Harvey has written about incidents at Brown University, SUNY Buffalo State, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Norwich University, and Harvard Law School. As always, a key theme is students’ and administrators’ desire to shield themselves from uncomfortable speech or ideas. Regarding the incident at Harvard Law School, Harvey writes: The campus “disinvitation” trend forces […]
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Boston’s WGBH Announces Muzzle Award ‘Winners’
July 9, 2014
Boston’s WGBH News has just announced the “winners” of its 2014 Muzzle Awards, given to those who have particularly impeded freedom of speech over the past year. Formerly published in the Boston Phoenix, WGBH has adopted the awards and is continuing the tradition of “singl[ing] out the dramatic and the petty, the epic and the absurd.”
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‘Globe’ Columnist: Northeastern Censorship Squelches Speech, Learning
March 31, 2014
Joan Vennochi has a brilliant column in ‘The Boston Globe’ about Northeastern University’s suspension of its campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine. Not only does Vennochi quickly dismantle all of the university’s excuses for the suspension, she also gets to the heart of why so many universities are so quick to squelch campus protests.
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Free Speech Concerns Swirl Around Northeastern University’s Suspension of Pro-Palestinian Group
March 14, 2014
In recent days, FIRE has been following the story—reported today by The Boston Globe—that Northeastern University has suspended the group Northeastern Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) for reasons that seem largely related to the group’s expression.
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Students Protest Northeastern U.’s Demonstration Policy
August 12, 2013
Earlier this summer on The Torch, we reported on a controversy at Northeastern University surrounding the school’s requirement that student organizations obtain a permit at least seven days in advance of campus protests. After the student group Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) was sanctioned for a walkout-style demonstration at a talk by Israeli soldiers, some questioned whether the school’s response was motivated more by SJP’s message than by their failure to obtain a permit. Last Wednesday, SJP and supporters of the group staged a protest against what they say was selective enforcement of the policy. But as FIRE’s Will […]
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Creeley in ‘Boston Globe’: Northeastern U’s Requirements Stifle Free Expression
June 13, 2013
Boston Globe columnist Yvonne Abraham wrote today to criticize Northeastern University’s inconsistent handling of student protests by pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian students. The controversy centers on Northeastern’s requirement that student groups obtain a permit at least seven days in advance of protests. But Abraham questions whether the requirement was the real reason for sanctioning the school’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and whether such a requirement should even exist. In April, members of SJP staged a quickly-executed walkout at a presentation by Israeli soldiers and were placed on probation by the university ostensibly for not obtaining a permit. Northeastern says […]
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Northeastern Student Speaks Out; FIRE Responds
June 13, 2007
In response to my blog entry about Northeastern’s speech code, Northeastern undergraduate Daniel Kamyck sent us the following comment: While I enjoy keeping aware of FIRE’s work across the country, and though I support the defense of individual rights in an academic setting, I’m disappointed that FIRE has chosen to ridicule the Acceptable Use Policy at Northeastern University. As an undergraduate student, I support the existing policy. I think it’s quite silly that you’ve declared, by your measure, that most students at Northeastern would support having this policy rescinded. More likely, most reasonable students here, constituting the majority, would agree […]
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Northeastern University: Students Question, Administration Defends Speech Code
June 8, 2007
Northeastern University’s student newspaper, The Northeastern News, recently did a feature story on Northeastern’s Appropriate Use Policy, which makes punishable any e-mail “which in the sole judgment of the University is offensive.” FIRE was so appalled by this policy that we named it our February 2007 Speech Code of the Month, and now it seems to have caught the concerned eye of Northeastern students as well. According to the article, FIRE’s concern over censorship at Northeastern is warranted: In recent years there has been at least one case of censorship under the AUP. In September 2005, university administrators ordered the […]
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Today’s ‘Campus Alert’: Don’t Laugh Too Hard
May 21, 2007
Our weekly Campus Alert column in the New York Post focuses today on speech codes at Drexel University, Northeastern University, and Johns Hopkins University—all of which have been named FIRE’s Speech Code of the Month for banning constitutionally protected expression on their respective campuses. Drexel, which was given the dubious honor of being recognized as FIRE’s Speech Code of the Month for September 2006, prohibits not only “inconsiderate jokes,” but also “inappropriately directed laughter.” So students can be punished not only for telling a joke some may find offensive, but also merely for laughing at one. Not so funny […]
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Speech Code of the Month: Northeastern University
February 2, 2007
FIRE announces its Speech Code of the Month for February 2007: Northeastern University in Boston. We would like to congratulate Northeastern on being named one of America’s Top 100 National Universities by U.S. News & World Report this past summer. On behalf of everyone at FIRE, welcome to our radar screen!* Northeastern’s Appropriate Use of Computer and Network Resources Policy provides that no student may use Northeastern’s information systems or facilities to “[g]enerate and/or spread intolerant or hateful material, which in the sole judgment of the University is directed against any individual or group, based on race, religion, national origin, […]
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Policies are rated on their inclusion of 10 due process safeguards. Each policy may receive 2 points for fully including that safeguard, 1 point for partial inclusion, and 0 points for no meaningful inclusion. Most, but not all, institutions have separate policies for sexual misconduct and all other misconduct. See FIRE’s Spotlight on Due Process report for more information.