The Harvard Saga continues, Europe triples down on censorship, FIRE messes with Texas, coercion at Columbia, & more!

Bringing you the latest free speech news (4/27/25)

Story of the week

• Europe Really Is Jailing People for Online Speech by

  Yascha Mounk

Europe’s embrace of stringent and ill-defined limits on free expression is both a moral and a practical mistake. Some disagreement about where to draw the line between speech that is merely morally noxious and speech that is criminal may—even in debates premised on the validity of the First Amendment—be inevitable. And while I personally believe in the universal value of America’s First Amendment, it is reasonable for other countries with different political traditions to adopt a somewhat more expansive notion of what constitutes incitement to violence or when false statements cross the line into outright slander. But in practice, European restrictions on free speech have long since gone far beyond the realm of reasonable disagreement: they are now so extensive that all of the classic arguments about the dangers of state censorship fully apply to them.

This week in FIRE’s blog

• Trump administration’s coercion at Columbia is unlawful and unconstitutional

• FAQ: Responding to common questions about the fight between Harvard and the Trump administration

One of the reasons we created our rankings was to give colleges and universities an incentive to do better. Protecting expressive rights on campus is a big part of our mission, and Harvard has a long way to go. Indeed, Harvard (like Columbia) makes a politically popular target precisely because so many people resent its years of engaging in the kind of behavior towards dissenting students and faculty that FIRE was founded to combat.

But lately Harvard has been making an effort, and we won’t succeed by writing schools off. And we definitely won’t succeed by allowing the federal government to take them over, trading one dominant ideology for another.

• FIRE and ACLU of TX: University of Texas must drop unconstitutional drag ban

• George Mason University calls cops on student for article criticizing Trump by Zach Greenberg

• ‘I hate freedom of opinion’ meme leads to sentencing in German court by

  Sarah McLaughlin

• UT Dallas bars FIRE from speaking at student event by Dominic Coletti

FIRE and The Retrograde planned to hold an event…to celebrate the triumph of these student journalists over censorship. And Texas has a law requiring public universities to allow student groups to bring in guest speakers. So Gutierrez told the university he planned to bring FIRE Program Officer Dominic Coletti as a guest speaker. The administrators, resistant to allowing any critical speech on campus, told Gutierrez that only registered student organizations could invite guest speakers. And since UT Dallas has conveniently refused to recognize The Retrograde, Coletti could not speak on campus.

This week in ERI

• Harvard in the Crosshairs by me

I can understand all the reasons for disliking Harvard, but I feel like I’m stepping between them and the civil libertarian's biggest threat: the power of the federal government. And when the federal government is exceeding its power, or claiming new powers that it never previously had, we have to step in. We have to defend against it.

This week on ‘So to Speak’

• This week on

  So to Speak
  , host and FIRE Executive Vice President
  Nico Perrino
  chats with University of Texas law professor David Rabban and UC Berkeley law professor and dean Erwin Chemerinsky about the Trump administration’s threats to deny funding to Columbia and Harvard as well as the dozens of other colleges now under federal investigation for allegedly violating civil rights law.

Ep. 241: The government’s money, the government’s rules?

FIRE in the press!

• It was a lot of fun to join

  Saagar Enjeti
  and Emily Jashinsky on Breaking Points to discuss Harvard’s lawsuit against the Trump administration, and how imposing viewpoint diversity by government fiat is a cure worse than the disease.

• The New McCarthyism (The Dispatch) by

  Jacob Mchangama

• The Deportation of Dissent (The Bedrock Principle) by

  Jacob Mchangama
  and
  Hirad Marami

• For the rich, free speech — for the others, a SLAPP in the face (The Gilmer Mirror) by Carolyn Iodice

• The president and his enemies (Fox News) by Bob Corn-Revere

• Free speech is the loser in Trump’s battle with Harvard by Tyler Coward

International free speech stories of the week

• European press group says detention of 2 journalists in Macau a ‘serious attack press freedom’ (Hong Kong Free Press) by Irene Chan

• Vietnam: Crackdown on Dissent Intensifies (Human Rights Watch)

• Israeli police ban Gaza children photos from anti-war protest, then backtrack (Middle East Eye)

Book of the month

“Abundance,” by

Ezra Klein

and

Derek Thompson

is my April book of the month!

I know I'm late to the party on this one, but I have a weird habit of actually reading a book cover-to-cover before commenting on it. Now that I have, I can — and I definitely recommend it.

In their book, Klein and Thompson articulate the very vision I've been advocating for since 2003, when I started begging all my Democrat friends to refocus on energy policy. Whether you think you'll love it or hate it, this book is a must-read!