Professors are speaking out against progressive dogma University faculties are reeling from an unrelenting bombardment of progressive artillery aimed at decimating American traditions and laws intended to protect free speech, academic freedom, and racial and gender impartiality. Expressing even modest dissent prompts escalating aggression from students, administrators, and others. Careers, the Fourteenth Amendment, civil rights […]
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In my last piece, I covered the recent decision in Coalition for TJ v. Fairfax County School District, where the court declared that a new admissions process for a highly-regarded STEM-focused high school was unconstitutional, finding that scrapping the old merit-based process in favor of “racial balancing” (based on Kendian “equity” principles) was clearly illegal […]
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Joan Scott, professor emerita in the School of Social Science at Princeton, has been arguing that the great threat on academic freedom comes not from the smothering blanket of political correctness or the violence-laced actions of left-wing protesters, but from the anti-intellectual right. Scott’s interview in the Chronicle of Higher Education, “How the Right Weaponized […]
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Alt-Right, Alt-Left, “both sides,” white supremacists, Antifa, CEO resignations: America is having a moment. Tempers are flaring, and statues are falling. President Trump and the press are in an angry stand-off. The death of a young woman, Heather Heyer, in the midst of protests and counter-protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, and the injuries to 19 others […]
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In January 2015 the University of Chicago Committee on Freedom of Expression issued a brief report which eloquently made a case for the importance of free speech as “an essential element of the University’s culture.” I commented at the time in an approving manner. Over the ensuing months, the Chicago statement has gathered more and […]
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Excerpts from Ian McEwan’s commencement speech at Dickinson College, May 17, 2015 I would like to share a few thoughts with you about free speech. Let’s begin on a positive note: there is likely more free speech, free thought, free enquiry on earth now than at any previous moment in recorded history (even taking into […]
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