Weekend Free Speech Update
A happy punchline for a reporter fired for jokes & other news from the free speech beat!
Story of the week
Reporter fired for moonlighting as a comedian just got his job back — but his joking days may be numbered: WHYY fired Jad Sleiman for his off-hours ‘inflammatory’ jokes. But there’s nothing funny about employers exercising this level of scrutiny over private expression. By Aaron Terr.
This week in ERI
Welcome to the Conformity Gauntlet!: Higher ed has created far too many pressures that promote conformity at the expense of truth. (Keep an eye out for this expanded excerpt from ‘Canceling’ on the cover of February’s Reason Magazine!)
This week in FIRE’s blog
ATTENTION HIGH SCHOOLERS & THEIR PARENTS! FIRE is bringing together the next generation of free speech leaders in Philadelphia, this summer: Sign yourself or your kid up for FIRE’s Free Speech Leadership Summit for high schoolers. By Josh Haverlock.
VICTORY! University of Missouri clarifies policy forcing student journalists to name confidential sources: Victims at Mizzou are now free to share their stories with reporters without fear that an interview will launch an institutional investigation.
Also, FIRE IS HIRING!
FIRE’s First Amendment News
Robert Post: ‘There is growing pessimism about the future of free speech in the United States’ — First Amendment News 407 by Ronald K. L. Collins
In other news
This week I spoke with Rudyard Griffiths on the Munk Dialogue podcast about the consequences for free speech from the congressional hearings on anti-Semitism
Cartoon of the week!
My recommendation for this week is the great Netflix cartoon, Kid Cosmic. It’s part-comic book, part-family show, part-epic, and my kids and I love it (so much in fact that I wore my beloved Kid Cosmic T-shirt during my interview for the Lex Fridman podcast).