We Need to Talk About Bruce
Nowhere is “cancel culture” more deeply entrenched than in academia; it was commonplace there long before the actual phrase was coined to describe the current social media phenomenon. The gears…
Posts tagged with
“free speech”
Blueprint for Reform: Free Speech on Campus
The “Blueprint for Reform: Free Speech on Campus” is a policy guide for state legislators and university trustees. It underscores the essential role of free expression in higher education, advocating…
Of Academic Freedom and False Alarms
It has been a very strange year. Three weeks ago I opened my email to find an unsolicited email from a lawyer, asking if I needed help. Odd, I thought,…
Censoring a Thousand Words: Universities Must Cease Punishing Students for Their Online Pictures
In 1980, Apple founder Steve Jobs called the computer “a bicycle for our minds.” Today, the advent of smartphones gives individuals the power to share images instantaneously with the rest…
Did You Know? Two British Reforms America Should Copy
Two recent British policy briefs on academic freedom and university reforms provide some broad suggestions applicable to colleges, British or otherwise. Policy Exchange, a center-right think tank, published “Academic Freedom…
Did You Know? Students, Faculty Punished for Speech on Social Media
Fordham University student Austin Tong has found himself in hot water over a protest picture on Instagram. In it, he posed with a gun to commemorate the 31st anniversary of…
Activist Academics Threaten the Integrity of Higher Ed
The rise of activist professors has shaped the culture in higher ed for decades. As activists have become more prominent, a familiar process has changed academic departments, pushing scholars out…
‘Witches’ and ‘Viruses:’ The Activist-Academic Threat and a Policy Response
How much of academia is infiltrated by activists? Some conservatives claim that “neo-Marxism” and its sister paradigms like feminist pedagogy, post-structuralism, and post-modernism have long infected certain departments in the…
Idaho’s Higher Education Earthquake?
Higher education reform will only come from the outside, probably from political reform. Or so we thought. Along came the coronavirus, also an outside force, that is upsetting the status…
What Provosts Get Wrong: A Failed Case for Campus Speech Restrictions
On picking up What Snowflakes Get Right: Free Speech, Truth, and Equality on Campus, one might expect a book urging those who dismiss today’s college students’ complaints about institutional racism,…