Richard L. Cravatts, Ph.D., a Freedom Center Journalism Fellow in Academic Free Speech and President Emeritus of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, is the author of "Dispatches From the Campus War Against Israel and Jews."
Why the heckler’s veto is wrong, and why universities must stop it Something disturbing is taking place with increasing regularity at elite law schools. For the third time this year, a guest speaker has been rudely confronted by a mob of tendentious scolds intent on suppressing views with which they disagree. Not content to merely […]
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The tenured law professor fights back against those seeking to crush her academic freedom. When Orwell wryly observed that “During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act,” he may well have had academia in mind. Challenging prevailing ideology can have a calamitous effect on one’s personal reputation and academic career—something especially […]
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Reckless and wasteful spending by diversity-obsessed administrators is one of the real causes of the student debt crisis In a nod to his progressive base, one that seems to be a naked tactic to buy the votes of young, educated future Democrats, President Biden has made good on at least one of his campaign promises. […]
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It is not an uncommon occurrence at universities that certain unapproved speech is suppressed because it does not conform to prevailing ideologies. As part of what is now labeled “cancel culture”—purging thought and ideas that conflict with leftism—this unfortunate trend has shown itself at law schools as well, where lawyers in training have felt no […]
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In their zeal to create “safe” campus environments, universities have coddled, nurtured, and shielded from any criticism students from approved victim groups. So-called hate speech—which now includes any expression that contradicts the prevailing progressive orthodoxy on campuses—is said to be harmful, even violent, by those forced to listen to others’ ideas. Not content with simply […]
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Using the ‘as a Jew’ Accusation against the Jewish State As if further confirmation were needed to designate the CUNY system as an egregious purveyor of anti-Israel activism—often replete with anti-Semitic expression—the university is being made to answer for its failure to protect Jewish students and faculty with a new Title VI complaint filed on […]
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Universities’ misguided effort to enforce racial equity As universities’ obsession with race and pursuit of racial “equity” continues apace, the Board of Directors of California Community Colleges has decided that the system will now grade its employees, including, of course, its faculty, on the extent to which they promote “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility.” The […]
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The anti-Semitic crybully becomes the whining victim. As if to further confirm that the City University of New York School of Law (CUNY Law) has become a cesspool of anti-Israel activism masked as social justice, the school chose its most radical and toxic student, Nerdeen Kiswani, to give one its commencement addresses on May 13th. […]
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Princeton radicals promote a toxic referendum to divest from Caterpillar Last week, as Palestinian extremists murdered three more innocent Israeli civilians in Tel Aviv in an escalating campaign of terror, activist students at two American universities voted on repulsive resolutions to urge their respective universities to divest from companies doing business with Israel. On April […]
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Student newspaper retracts an op-ed challenging the tactics of anti-Israel radicals The suppression of pro-Israel views on college campuses has been a troubling development in the ongoing cognitive war against Israel. Now, the silencing of pro-Israel voices even appears in student newspapers. The McGill Daily, as one troubling example, has a long-standing, publicly announced policy […]
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Why the heckler’s veto is wrong and why universities must prevent its use As further confirmation that universities have devolved into islands of repression in a sea of freedom, some 120 Yale Law School students seriously disrupted a panel event on March 10th. Sponsored by the Yale Federalist Society, the event featured Kristen Waggoner, lead […]
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UC Hastings law students expose the intolerance of the race-obsessed Left As further evidence that the campus woke persist in trying to determine what may and may not be said on university campuses, activist students at UC Hastings College of Law shut down the appearance of conservative legal scholar Ilya Shapiro at a March 1st […]
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Its discrimination against Asians mirrors its treatment of Jews, but for different reasons On January 24th, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case, Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard University, which not only has profound implications for the future of affirmative action in college admissions but also recalls an ignoble part of Harvard’s history […]
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More lethal ammunition for the campus cognitive war against Israel In May, while Hamas was firing more than 3,000 deadly rockets from Gaza with the express purpose of murdering Jewish Israelis, members of academic communities around the world were falling over themselves to express their solidarity, not with the beleaguered citizens of the Jewish state […]
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The J-Word and the F-Word Join the N-Word As difficult as it is to believe that someone on a contemporary university campus could be so socially tone-deaf that he would publicly utter an ethnic slur, professors do regularly find themselves the target of indignant parties they have “harmed” with their careless, often inappropriate speech. Consider, […]
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When Talking About Diversity and Inclusion, Jews Are Not Part of the Discussion In 1978, the landmark case Regents of the University of California v. Bakke brought the term “diversity” into the lexicon of higher education. Although the Supreme Court found that the University of California at Davis School of Medicine had used an unconstitutional quota system in denying Alan […]
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Progressive activists seek to blacklist and purge pro-Israel Jews from campus As if to confirm the depth of its anti-Israel animus, the Student Union of the University of Toronto at Scarborough (SCSU) passed a poisonous motion during its virtual November 24th meeting. The motion stipulates that SCSU “reaffirm its commitment to the BDS movement by […]
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Duke’s student government shuts down a new pro-Israel group for defending the Jewish state from lies As if further evidence were needed for the First-Amendment hypocrisy on college campuses, the recent action by the Duke Student Government (DSG) to withhold recognition from a new pro-Israel student group seems to confirm that academic free speech is […]
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The death of a black man under the knee of a brutal police officer in Minneapolis sent shock waves of racial guilt throughout America. Protestors, led principally by Black Lives Matter, took to the streets to malign America’s troubled history with race and reignite the conversation about how to atone and pay for the country’s […]
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A stunning letter titled, “Department actions in solidarity with Black Lives Matter,” written by Rebecca L. Walkowitz, chair of Rutgers’ English Department, affirms how deeply academia is now in the thrall of racism hysteria, particularly after the death of George Floyd under the knee of a brutal police officer in Minneapolis. The letter is steeped […]
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This is an open letter by the author addressed to the administrators of McGill, York, and the University of Toronto. As you are certainly aware, in recent weeks a series of troubling incidents has occurred on your respective campuses. While the events in question were distinct, they all shared a common impulse by a groups […]
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