In this week's ERI, @thefireorg's Sean Stevens & I take a step back from current campus turmoil to reckon w/ some troubling trends re: student attitudes toward free speech.

Exactly. We feel this acutely at FIRE, where we have to analyze the facts closely to determine if a rights violation occurred.

On many occasions we’ve found the story to be more complicated than initially reported.

Jessica Schwalb Multiple arrests have been made at Columbia University.

WKCR reports police with sledge hammers and industrial equipment smashing their way into Hamilton Hall and tossing students out of their way.

Having been on the FIRE staff nearly 15 years, I can practically envision the company-wide email announcing these title changes & promotions as if I’d written it myself. Well done one and all!

People have been laughing about this, but do they realize how often student building takeovers have literally been catered? It had become fairly common place over the past several years.

WKCR, Columbia U’s station, reports such a surge in listeners tuning in on line to their terrific live coverage that they had to go off air for a sec to switch to lower sound quality to accomodate the demand on the stream. If you can switch to FM signal, they recommend it: 89.9

“After watching some of those same people order crackdowns on campus protests over the past few days,” writes Will Creeley, “you might have a few questions for them”: theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…

NOW: The situation at CCNY has rapidly spiraled out of control

Protesters tried to break through the barricades which led to absolute chaos breaking out

People thrown to the ground and journalists (including me) were hit and shoved by officers in the melee

THIS JUST IN

Ep 213: Campus unrest - live webinar

Host Nico Perrino joins his FIRE colleagues Will Creeley and Alex Morey to answer questions about the recent campus unrest and its First Amendment implications.

Timestamps

0:00 Introduction
0:41 What is FIRE?/campus unrest
5:44 What

It for sure does!

No student should be denied access to their campus because of their identity or beliefs.

Mob blockades against targeted students are illiberal and unlawful and cannot be tolerated.

“But no First Amendment exception exists for ‘hate-filled’ speech. & for good reason: In our pluralistic democracy, everyone has their own subjective idea of what, if any, speech is too ‘hateful’ to hear, making an objective definition impossible.” theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…

“where might students have got this sort of idea?”

EXACTLY. Campuses have modeled the very behavior they’re warning students away from now — Now that admins can’t reliably take sides on Israel/Palestine as they’ve done on so many other social and political issues for the better

Ah, yes, the famous fascist opposition to ideological purity tests. The people who think they are anti-fascist for supporting ideological loyalty oaths are really embarrassing themselves today.

The idea that there is *insufficient* homogeneity of ideology in higher education

Classic__Liberal The idea academic freedom arises from one specific “metaphysical orientation” is silly. Academic freedom not only can be, but routinely has been arrived at from multiple different philosophical, historical, & pragmatic perspectives. You don’t even have to agree on a definition or

To understand this you simply have to understand that a DEI statement req is a political
litmus, test, which is why our legislation targets both McCarthyite & modern political litmus tests.

But if you think political litmus tests are OK in higher education then maybe you don’t

UChicago has been showing the way for years. Universities should adopt their Chicago Statement on freedom of expression and the Kalven principles on institutional neutrality. Admins make their lives so. much. easier. with these in place. @uchicago The Chicago Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression

FIRE's Greg Lukianoff drops truth on the latest Future U episode!

🎙️ 'Penn and Harvard have a history of failing to uphold free speech principles consistently, particularly when it comes to controversial or unpopular viewpoints.'

Lukianoff argues that this inconsistency