(Still) Boycotting academic boycotts, firing back at Fordham, & Beyoncé’s ‘Countdown’ clone!
Bringing you the latest free speech news (8/18/24)
Stories of the week
Academic freedom is a vast and majestic idea that relies on open communication across lines of difference in a global system of checking, arguing, researching, collaborating, and competing to produce better ideas. It’s a critical part of the way we come by new knowledge, creative solutions, and novel perspectives. The idea that a college might ban its scholars from working with scholars of a particular nationality or who work in a particular country in the name of opposing that country’s government is incompatible with this open, liberal system. It’s also foolhardy on any number of levels, including the fact that individual professors’ opinions often in no way reflect or even oppose the policies of their own governments.
FIRE to Fordham: You’re wrong about our College Free Speech Rankings by Ryne Weiss & Jordan Howell
Fordham’s abysmal track record on free speech is well established. As FIRE Legal Director Will Creeley wrote back in 2021: “Students, faculty, alumni, and the general public now know — if there were any doubt — that Fordham’s promises of free expression aren’t worth a dime.”
Which is why we at FIRE were more than a little surprised to hear Fordham President Tania Tetlow last week on the “Freakonomics Radio” podcast, where she responded to criticism of Fordham’s campus speech climate by raising questions about FIRE’s rankings.
This week in FIRE’s blog
After Capitol officials kicked Jeff Hunt out of the senate public gallery for wearing a pro-life sweatshirt, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression demanded in a July 16 letter that they stop playing fashion police. Faced with a potential First Amendment lawsuit, leaders of the Colorado House and Senate agreed to rescind the Capitol galleries’ unconstitutional ban on pins and apparel “expressing political statements.”
Trump can’t stop Politico from disclosing info allegedly stolen by hackers by Jay Diaz
Olympic controversies underscore the importance of free speech by William Harris
VICTORY: Bates College rescinds DEI statement requirement on job applications by Graham Piro
Bates College in Maine took a step in the right direction this summer when, following a letter from FIRE, it made DEI statements optional rather than required for faculty job-seekers. Required DEI statements can function as litmus tests to weed out applicants who may hold dissenting views on vital political issues, threatening academic freedom and faculty rights.
Atlanta nonprofit leader Chuck Taylor joins FIRE’s Advisory Council by Jordan Howell
This week in ERI
This week on ‘So to Speak’
This week, So to Speak host and FIRE EVP Nico Perrino spoke with Eric Kasper and Troy Kozma about their new book, “The Supreme Court and the Philosopher: How John Stuart Mill Shaped U.S. Free Speech Protections.”
International free speech stories of the week
Russia sentences American woman to 12 years for donation aiding Ukraine (Washington Post) by Robyn Dixon
Karelina, a dual passport holder and a beautician living in Los Angeles, was arrested by Russia’s Federal Security Service in February during a trip home to Yekaterinburg to visit family.
Karelina’s sentencing, weeks after the prisoner exchange, underscored the risks of travel to Russia, with U.S. officials warning of a sharp rise in hostage diplomacy — the practice of arresting foreign citizens for political leverage or use in prisoner exchanges.
London Calling: Ronnie’s First Amendment Roundup
Squeaking in just under the wire in time for inclusion, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirms in part and reverses in part a preliminary injunction against enforcement of the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act, which purports to ensure online products that children are likely to access are designed to recognize their distinct needs, while providing online privacy protections for them. The court agreed NetChoice was likely to succeed in showing the CAADCA’s requirement that covered platforms opine on and mitigate risks that children may be exposed to harmful or potentially harmful materials online raises First Amendment issues in every application, flunks strict scrutiny, and is thus facially unconstitutional. However, picking up a thread from the NetChoice v. Moody Supreme Court decision (involving Florida and Texas social media viewpoint-nondiscrimination laws), the court held the trial judge failed to properly analyze the facial First Amendment challenges to the CAADCA’s other provisions, some of which, the court indicated, do not necessarily impact protected speech in all or even most applications. So, “[a]s in Moody, the record needs further development to allow the district court to determine the full range of activities the law covers” to assess these remaining provisions’ constitutionality. This mixed bag of rulings also made it premature, the court held, to determine whether the CAADCA’s unconstitutional portions are severable, or whether they require invalidating the whole of the law. FIRE Chief Counsel Bob Corn-Revere argued the case for NetChoice.
Video of the week
This video — a faithful shot-by-shot recreation of Beyoncé's “Countdown” music video made by a teenager in basements around his Pennsylvania hometown — is honestly one of my favorite things I’ve ever seen on the interwebs. But I was a little hesitant to share it for a long time, because I was afraid people might think I was making fun of the kid. But I assure you, I am simply in awe of him. And, I'm also a fan of Beyoncé. (Yes. Seriously.) Check out this 2012 interview with him from Vulture so the youngins can understand how difficult this endeavor was in the age before so much video editing technology was common on your everyday iPhone.
"But instead we’re just being called hypocrites because we don’t suppress it. And they’re being hypocrites in accusing us of hypocrisy. So it’s very head-spinning, because what remains is the question of: Are you for this freedom or are you not?"
"This accusation of hypocrisy is confusing, and we are not sure how it could apply to FIRE..."
The "tu quoque" game is the game anyone can play. There are very few cases where a tu quoque cannot be countered by another tu quoque, if one chooses to play that (not very intellectually robust) game. It is technically an ad hominem logical fallacy, but is often used as a red herring instead.
Also, as your colleague Haidt has said, "fairness" is an important value to progressives, often to the exclusion of other values. This is where the progressive if not Marxian drive to "eliminate all contradictions" comes from.
City Journal subscribers, or first-time users, can look up how Fordham University treated its longtime professor and administrator William Baumgarth during the mandate madness to see how much that institution cares about civil rights, justice, and elementary decency. https://www.city-journal.org/article/ramming-through-a-mandate-at-fordham