Is courage of your convictions good if your convictions suck? Can Trump ban foreign students from Harvard? Will Charles Negy get his day in court? All answered and more!
Bringing you the latest free speech news (5/25/25)
Stories of the week
Would banning international students even help the problem of antisemitism on Harvard’s campus? The administration’s attempts to deport international students suggest it believes that. But some of those international students are, in fact, Israeli, and even though over a quarter of Harvard’s student body is international, they’re a minority in creating the groupthink that helps antisemitism spread. What’s more, it does not require a Harvard historian to know that if foreign students are driven off campus in the name of antisemitism, the people likely to be blamed and targeted in an ideological backlash are the Jewish students on campus.
Too Many Convictions, Too Little Civic Virtue (Virtues & Vocations) by me
Humility and its fellow civic virtues—such as honesty, respect, tolerance, and compassion—create an environment that enables us to figure out when our neighbors have developed their convictions from a better understanding of the world. Through discussion, thought experimentation, devil’s advocacy, and counterfactuals, we can test and refine our convictions.
Maybe, just maybe, people saying things that merely offend you isn’t that serious. Maybe having someone in your community of nearly 70,000 students and over 13,000 faculty and staff members who says things that simply offend people is not actually a sign of a dire crisis. Maybe the students who demand that level of ideological conformity are not the ones you should be trying to attract. Because maybe, if you cultivate a level of automatic groupthink that rejects the possibility of dissenting views, you will come to discover that, eventually, your administration has a dissenting view.
This week in FIRE’s blog
This isn’t just about Harvard by
Trump bars Harvard from enrolling international students in alarming crackdown on speech
This week in ERI
This week on ‘’
This week, FIRE EVP & “
” host sat down with Heather Mac Donald to discuss the Trump administration’s free speech record and more.FIRE in the press!
Harvard Derangement Syndrome (NYT) by FIRE Advisory Council member
Harvard, as I am among the first to point out, has serious ailments. The sense that something is not well with the university is widespread, and it’s led to sympathy, even schadenfreude, with Mr. Trump’s all-out assault. But Harvard is an intricate system that developed over centuries and constantly has to grapple with competing and unexpected challenges. The appropriate treatment (as with other imperfect institutions) is to diagnose which parts need which remedies, not to cut its carotid and watch it bleed out.
Yes, Harvard had it coming — but Trump’s ‘fix’ is still unconstitutional (The Hill) by Connor Murnane
The solution to higher education’s crisis of public credibility lies not in federal mandates, but in institutional clarity. Colleges must reform themselves — voluntarily and meaningfully — to protect free expression and academic freedom. Harvard, and institutions like it, must demonstrate a renewed commitment to these principles, not because the Trump administration or any politician has told them to, but because it’s the right thing to do for their campuses and for the country.
International free speech stories of the week
Kneecap rapper charged with terrorism offence over alleged Hezbollah flag at London gig (The Guardian) by Nadeem Badshah
Bukele’s crackdown pushes top Salvadoran journalists to flee (WaPo) by Samantha Schmidt
“Interviewing a gang member doesn’t make me a criminal,” Peña said. “Just like interviewing a pope doesn’t make me a saint, and interviewing a corrupt politician doesn’t make me corrupt. But our job is to do those interviews.”
Quran burning permitted in Sweden, sparking debate on free speech (Caliber) by Vafa Guliyeva
Cancelation of the semester
Campus advocacy program officer Dominic Coletti recently had the honor of being the first FIRE staffer to be inducted into FIRE’s Campus Deplatforming Database when university administrators canceled Coletti's talk, titled "Why You Should Care About Free Speech on Campus," less than 24 hours before it was set to begin. And here I always thought I'd be the first!
Need to read the comments by Dr Robert Malone (https://www.malone.news/p/wwf-president-trump-vs-harvard?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=583200&post_id=164362072&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=false&r=1wyto6&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email) Problem is that Harvard has a whole host of sins beyond it's anti-semitism problem
"Colleges must reform themselves — voluntarily and meaningfully — to protect free expression and academic freedom. Harvard, and institutions like it, must demonstrate a renewed commitment to these principles, not because the Trump administration or any politician has told them to, but because it’s the right thing to do for their campuses and for the country."
Except they haven't and they won't, and when the violations of students' legitimate rights and and safety have been breeched, as they repeatedly and systemically have at Harvard, federal intervention is not only legally warranted, it is legally required. You merely contradict yourself when you have spent years pointing out the rot and cancer in the institution and now when surgery and chemo is finally being attempted you suddenly prefer a non-invasive faith healing? As if the progressive disease will spontaneously enter remission if we only continue to tolerate it for long enough even as it continues to poison our youth and culture? Harvard, as an institution, has demonstrated itself to be unethical, immoral, and illegal, unfit for purpose, a glaring negative example of what a university should not and must not become. That its doors are still open at all is an undeserved and likely unwise grace.