Stories of the week
How I fought ‘land acknowledgements’ on campus — and won (New York Post) by Stuart Reges
So in the name of student safety, all of our major public universities in Washington state want to protect students from hearing ideas tha@t might upset them. They don’t realize that they are doing these students a great disservice. Especially in modern times, when we have such bitter arguments over public policy, our students need to learn how to cope with disagreement and how to have open, honest and productive debate. Otherwise we have no hope of solving the critical problems we face.
I moved here in good faith, with an open heart and mind, and the hope for better things. My interview process was memorably warm, without the guile and pretension that can sometimes typify academia. Fred Hawkins had not yet arrived as president. So, in my final interview, when the vice president told me, “We’re a community; we’re a family and we take care of each other,” I believed it.
The projects range from wearable AI for memory and cryptographic tools for scientific collaboration to a benchmark based on pre-1940 thought on machines and autonomy.
GREG: I’ve long made the argument that the story of free speech in America is the story of American music, and vice versa. This could be one of many episodes in a great documentary or short series around that idea.
This week in ERI
Higher ed doesn’t have a perception problem
Higher education has spent years worrying about its loss of public confidence. Now Washington is asking colleges to tell the public what they plan to do about it.
This week in Expression
We are a country made great in no small measure by more than two centuries of welcoming brilliant minds from abroad. Add to this that there was once something deeply American about taking pride in saying the unpopular thing, and saying it loud. Now we find ourselves telling visitors that they had better watch what they say, or simply keep their thoughts to themselves, lest they bruise our fragile sensibilities and lose their right to remain in the country.
In China and Hong Kong, remembrance is a crime by Sarah McLaughlin
Why is China dictating who speaks at a religious event in Texas? by Sarah McLaughlin
This federal case against Minnesota protesters is worth watching if you care about your civil liberties by Matthew Harwood
“None of these individuals did anything other than engage in First Amendment speech in a church meeting room,” wrote Riach in the discovery motion. “Yet now their personal information is memorialized in a DHS dossier.”
This week in FIRE’s blog
“Reasonable people can disagree about the value of land acknowledgments,” said FIRE attorney Gabe Walters. “What’s not up for debate is academic freedom. Today’s settlement vindicates Reges’s right to express his own opinion rather than towing the university’s line. UW learned the hard way: Ignoring the First Amendment can be costly. The livelihoods of professors shouldn’t be at the mercy of student or administrator outrage, and this ruling will help protect other professors across the country.”
FIRE in the press!
Was Frederick Douglass a Free Speech Absolutist? Part 2 by Jacob Mchangama
Academia’s Problem Is Bigger Than Tenure’s Decline (The Dispatch) by Robert Shibley
Without tenure, college administrators have far more leeway to hire and fire—and college administrators are actually more left-leaning than the faculty. If groupthink and lack of viewpoint diversity are the problem, there’s every reason to believe that giving administrators increased power over faculty will only worsen the situation.
International free speech stories of the week
The Alberta Court of Appeal has ruled that a school board was wrong to demand an apology from a former school trustee who posted a meme likening 2SLGBTQ+ pride to Nazi ideology while serving on the board.
However, in a written decision released Wednesday, the three-member panel of appeal judges dismissed former Red Deer Catholic Regional Schools trustee Monique LaGrange’s other claims of legal errors.
Quoting another court ruling about coerced speech, the judgment says a forced apology is “ ... likely to be regarded primarily as a form of unjust humiliation and not necessarily as a vindication of what is right.”
Thai activist jailed for two years over insult to monarchy (Independent) by Stuti Mishra
Footage of Tibet floods is being heavily censored in China - and we know little about victims there (BBC) by Laura Bicker
Book of the Month (to pre-order!)
FIRE’s Executive Vice President, and host of the illustrious So To Speak podcast, Nico Perrino has been hard at work on his first book, Free Speech Generation: The Civil Libertarians Who Saved the First Amendment and Transformed America. In it he tells the dramatic story of the lawyers, activists, journalists, students, and other civil libertarians who transformed the First Amendment from a largely hollow promise into one of America’s most powerful principles. Through landmark battles over war, civil rights, obscenity, extremism, flag burning, the internet, and more, it asks whether America’s hard-won tradition of free speech is a lasting inheritance—or a fragile achievement beginning to crack. It hits shelves (both virtual and physical) in January, but pre-order it today!
I'm trying to come up with a joke about the above comments argument. This is humor! (or at least, an attempt at it). Something *like* - not final form - this:
"ACLU is principled liberals who are willing to defend the free-speech rights of [Nazis|Fascists|far-right|right-wingers|conservatives]"
"FIRE is principled [Nazis|Fascists|far-right|right-wingers|conservatives] who are willing to defend the free-speech rights of liberals"
The problem is that the joke needs the same word in both slots to work, for parallelism. But something like "principled [Nazis]" is way too harsh. While "free-speech rights of [conservatives]" doesn't pack the necessary punch. I can't come up with the correct word with enough bite, but not insulting. Maybe there's a way to use "Nazi" but make it clear the second use is meant as a parody of the tendency to use it as a slur? That seems difficult, as parody doesn't work well on the Internet.
Anyway, consider this "workshopping", I do think there's a good joke somewhere in there.