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Campus Free Speech Needs Protection—The Question Is How
James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal ^ | April 3, 2019 | Donald Downs

Posted on 04/03/2019 5:49:23 AM PDT by reaganaut1

... Carrying through on a promise he made during a freewheeling speech he delivered at CPAC a few weeks ago, the president has issued an executive order that throws the power of the federal government into the protection of free speech in higher education.

Entitled “Improving Free Inquiry, Transparency, and Accountability at Colleges and Universities,” the order mandates that the heads of several federal agencies work with the Office of Management and Budget to take “appropriate steps” to safeguard “free inquiry” on campus. Schools that violate whatever regulations emerge from the order would be subject to losing their federal funding.

The first question one asks regarding a major new federal regulation is whether it is even needed. Is it an attempt to solve or ameliorate a problem, or a solution in search of a problem? The second question is the means chosen to deal with the problem. I address each question in order.

Debate rages over the nature and extent of the campus free speech problem—after all, higher education is a vast and complex enterprise. Regardless, Trump’s objective is highly defensible. Who except censors and narrow-minded political activists think free speech is not vital to higher education and the country? And reasonable observers agree that free speech is at least embattled in many institutions, and in worse shape at too many.

Witness, for example, the recent shenanigans at Sarah Lawrence College, one of America’s most expensive schools. Student activists issued a set of extremely problematic demands (discussed in detail here) as the latest installment of their jihad against tenured conservative professor Samuel Abrams. From whence came their wrath?

Late last fall Abrams had the temerity to write an op-ed in The New York Times criticizing what he considered the lack of intellectual diversity on campus

(Excerpt) Read more at jamesgmartin.center ...


TOPICS: Education
KEYWORDS: college; freespeech

1 posted on 04/03/2019 5:49:23 AM PDT by reaganaut1
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To: reaganaut1
Perhaps if we were to teach those kids...


2 posted on 04/03/2019 5:55:03 AM PDT by EasySt (Say not this is the truth, but so it seems to me to be, as I see this thing I think I see #KAG)
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To: reaganaut1

Every time a college or university issues a “speech code” or tries to enforce it, the administrator or official involved, often a state employee should be sued personally for violating the free speech rights of individuals who were effected and now have lasting “fears and damages” as a result of this violation. Make them pay personally and the nonsense will soon stop.


3 posted on 04/03/2019 5:57:31 AM PDT by allendale (.)
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To: reaganaut1

Hmmm...starting with ‘equal time’ would be nice.


4 posted on 04/03/2019 6:06:17 AM PDT by SMARTY ("Nobility is defined by the demands it makes on us - by obligations, not by rights".)
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To: SMARTY

I would start with the single, biggest sacred cow on University campuses at the moment. That sacred cow, of course, is Israeli Apartheid Week/Boycott-Divest-Sanction.

I think that every campus that has a large Muslim Brotherhood-run IAW rally needs to also have the largest AIPAC/B’nai Brith/JDL counter-rally that can possibly be mustered on the same campus at the exact same time. Likewise, I think the local and campus police need to completely back off. If clashes between the rallies get violent, so be it.
Or, maybe, some folks might learn the hard way once and for all, that actions have consequences.


5 posted on 04/03/2019 6:54:50 AM PDT by Kriggerel ("All great truths are hard and bitter, but lies... are sweeter than wild honey" (Ragnar Redbeard))
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To: reaganaut1

Pop the massive bubble of spending and massive debt that supports the leftist parasites that have overtaken “higher education”


6 posted on 04/03/2019 7:06:36 AM PDT by PGR88
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To: reaganaut1

The Question Is How

We do it the same way the Communists did it when they decided GOD was not allowed in the Public Square. ARREST AND PROSECUTE ALL TEACHERS AND ADMINISTRATORS that allow any type of censorship of free speech.


7 posted on 04/03/2019 7:39:22 AM PDT by eyeamok
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To: Kriggerel

For sure

Since univ. adm. seems to profile faculty new-hires on the basis of their political preferences...How’s bout... One Conservative faculty person for EVERY Liberal faculty person....?


8 posted on 04/03/2019 7:41:24 AM PDT by SMARTY ("Nobility is defined by the demands it makes on us - by obligations, not by rights".)
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