Free Republic

TALLAHASSEE — Opponents of a controversial 2021 law asked a federal judge this weekend to prevent the state from moving forward with surveys about “intellectual freedom and viewpoint diversity” on college and university campuses. Attorneys for students, faculty members and groups challenging the law filed an emergency motion Saturday seeking a temporary restraining order or a preliminary injunction. The motion said surveys could be distributed to college and university students and employees as soon as April 4. The opponents filed an overall challenge to the law last summer, contending that the surveys would violate the First Amendment. Under the law,...

[What] prompted Fidel Castro to order the Christmas decorations dismantled... was the light display forming the number 75. That's how many political dissidents Castro rounded up in March 2003 and threw into Cuban jails. At their trials, these librarians, journalists and peaceful political activists received sentences of up to 28 years. Now a loosely connected international movement of librarians is refusing to forget their Cuban colleagues. One inspiring example comes from the town of Vermillion, South Dakota, whose public library is sponsoring the independent -- that is, not government-run -- Dulce Maria Loynaz Library in Havana. The Loynaz Library was...

It's been an unusual week in the academy. The academic freedom that so incensed Bill Buckley as a student at Yale decades ago is now acting to protect a conservative scholar under fire. Baylor's J.M. Dawson Institute for Church-State Studies hired Francis Beckwith as its Associate Director last summer. Although previously known as a philosopher who had developed powerful critiques of abortion, Beckwith has used the past few years and a research fellowship at Princeton to transform himself into a legal scholar investigating the controversy over public schools and the teaching of human origins. His research culminated in publication of...

A British academic has sparked worldwide protests after sacking two scholars from her highly respected international journals because they are Israeli.Mona Baker, a professor at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST), admitted yesterday that she had dismissed Dr Miriam Shlesinger and Prof Gideon Toury because of their nationality.Despite a storm of complaints raised by her action, Prof Baker stood by her decision, telling The Telegraph: “I deplore the Israeli state. Miriam knew that was how I felt and that they would have to go because of the current situation.”Prof Baker asked Dr Shlesinger and Prof Toury...