Joined by Coalition, FIRE Urges Department of Education to Protect Freedom of Speech on Campus
January 6, 2012
In an open letter sent today, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) and ten other organizations urge the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) to defend free speech on campus by ending the lingering confusion surrounding the definition of student harassment.
While the last two decades have provided a consistent string of First Amendment defeats for unconstitutional harassment codes in court, restrictions on student speech continue to be enforced by universities nationwide. In response, the letter’s signatories ask OCR to publicly affirm that harassment means no more and no less than the speech-protective standard for student harassment announced by the Supreme Court in a 1999 decision.
FIRE is joined in signing today’s letter by Accuracy in Academia, the Alliance Defense Fund Center for Academic Freedom, the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, Feminists for Free Expression, the Heartland Institute, the National Association of Scholars, the National Coalition Against Censorship, the Tully Center for Free Speech at Syracuse University, and the Woodhull Sexual Freedom Alliance. The open letter’s call for clarity is echoed in an op-ed by FIRE President Greg Lukianoff published today in The Washington Post.
“Since the 1980s, universities have relied on broad, shockingly unconstitutional definitions of ‘harassment’ to justify generations of campus speech codes and countless punishments of students for speech clearly protected under the First Amendment,” Greg said in today’s press release. “Joined by a broad coalition, FIRE is asking OCR to put an end to this confusion so that necessary bans on real harassment don’t continue to be an excuse for illiberal campus speech codes and punishments.”
The Office for Civil Rights is responsible for enforcing federal anti-discrimination laws on campus. Previous OCR guidance made clear that these statutory obligations in no way require colleges to maintain policies that violate student First Amendment rights. However, in recent initiatives concerning bullying and sexual harassment, OCR has shied away from explicitly safeguarding First Amendment rights.
In the absence of clarity from OCR, colleges have continued to enforce overly broad and confusingly vague definitions of campus harassment. As the open letter notes, Jackson State University in Mississippi, for example, defines harassment as “verbally abusive language by any person on University-owned or controlled property”—a policy that bans simply calling a person or idea “stupid.” Such restrictions—and many similar policies in force at institutions across the country—prohibit a vast amount of speech protected by the First Amendment and in common use by nearly every American.
Today’s open letter and op-ed ask OCR to endorse the standard for student-on-student harassment announced by the Supreme Court in Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education (1999). In Davis, the Court defined student-on-student harassment as targeted discriminatory conduct which is "so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive, and that so undermines and detracts from the victims' educational experience, that the victim-students are effectively denied equal access to an institution's resources and opportunities."
This carefully crafted standard strikes an appropriate balance between prohibiting harassing behavior and protecting free expression on campus. As the open letter states: “Under the Davis standard, heated discussion is acceptable, but the truly harassing behavior that federal anti-discrimination laws are intended to prohibit is not.” The letter’s signatories call on OCR to “recognize Davis as the controlling standard for student-on-student harassment in the educational context” and to mandate that colleges adopt no more and no less than the Davis standard to be deemed compliant with federal law.
“By simply following the Supreme Court's guidance, the OCR would assure that serious harassment is punished on campus while free speech is robustly protected,” Greg writes in his Washington Post op-ed. “In one move, OCR could rid campuses of a substantial portion of all speech codes, while protecting institutions from losing still more First Amendment lawsuits.”
We shall see whether OCR sees fit to reply to this letter from a diverse coalition of 11 organizations and, more importantly, whether OCR chooses to protect freedom of speech on our nation’s campuses.
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| Posted by Adam Kissel on January 6, 2012, at 4:25 PM
Following Publication of Streaker Photos, Student Newspaper Adviser Fired
January 6, 2012
The East Carolinian and the Student Press Law Center both reported yesterday that Paul Isom, Director of Student Media at Eastern Carolina University (ECU), was fired on Wednesday. Isom's advising portfolio included the campus radio station, television station, yearbook, and several student magazines. But it was a student editorial decision by The East Carolinian, the independent campus newspaper, that apparently landed him in hot water with ECU administrators.
On November 8, 2011, The East Carolinian published uncensored photos—including a sort-of-full-frontal shot—to accompany an article about a streaker at an ECU football game. The pictures prompted some outcry, and copies of the issue were reportedly stolen. Virginia Hardy, ECU's Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs, responded with a statement saying that running the photos was "in very poor taste" and that ECU officials did not support the decision to print them.
The East Carolinian's editor, Caitlin Hale, defended the paper's decision to run the photos, saying, "we felt that our audience, which is primarily the ECU student body, should have access to unedited and factual photos of the streaking incident." As newsworthy photos of a streaker do not meet the Supreme Court's Miller test for obscenity, they are constitutionally protected. Freedom of the press seemed to prevail.
But now, Isom has been fired. He told The East Carolinian that campus administrators "were very careful not to give a specific reason," although he "asked twice." This response (or non-response) strongly suggests that ECU fired the adviser in order to punish the paper—and if that's indeed why Isom was fired, ECU has acted unconstitutionally. That's because the First Amendment protects the right of student journalists to print and disseminate photographs like those published on November 8, and courts have long held that adverse administrative action taken by a public university against a student newspaper as a result of protected speech (including firing its adviser) violates the First Amendment.
The impermissible chill on student speech that ECU has engendered on campus by firing The East Carolinian's adviser is obvious and shameful. ECU will be hearing from FIRE soon.
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| Posted by Jaclyn Hall on January 6, 2012, at 12:14 PM
FIRE Intervenes at Harvard after Faculty Fires Economics Professor over Political Article Published in India
January 5, 2012
Today, FIRE has asked Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) to reverse its action against a controversial economics professor after it canceled all of his courses due to an op-ed he published in India in the wake of last year's Mumbai terrorist bombings. Although Harvard's administration had defended Professor Subramanian Swamy's rights after intervention by FIRE, FAS blatantly and shamefully violated them in its meeting in December. Anyone reading the op-ed will have no trouble detecting why it was controversial, but this action by the Harvard faculty places speech and academic freedom in danger at Harvard.
On July 16, 2011, Swamy published an opinion piece in the Indian newspaper Daily News & Analysis in response to a series of terrorist bombings in Mumbai on July 13 that killed 26 people and injured 130 more. The column made several suggestions about how to "negate the political goals of Islamic terrorism in India," advocating that India "[e]nact a national law prohibiting conversion from Hinduism to any other religion," "[r]emove the masjid [mosque] in Kashi Vishwanath temple and the 300 masjids at other temple sites," and "declare India a Hindu Rashtra [nation] in which non-Hindus can vote only if they proudly acknowledge that their ancestors were Hindus."
In response, a group of Harvard students began a petition to fire Swamy, demanding that Harvard "repudiate Swamy's remarks and terminate his association with the University" on the ground that he is "a bigoted promoter of communalism in India" whose column "breaches the most basic standards of respect and tolerance." FIRE wrote President Drew Gilpin Faust on July 27, stating that Harvard is obligated to uphold the promises of free speech contained in the "Free Speech Guidelines" adopted by FAS in 1990:
Curtailment of free speech undercuts the intellectual freedom that defines our purpose. It also deprives some individuals of the right to express unpopular views and others of the right to listen to unpopular views.
Because no other community defines itself so much in terms of knowledge, few others place such a high priority on freedom of speech. As a community, we take certain risks by assigning such a high priority to free speech. ... Because we are a community united by a commitment to rational processes, we do not permit censorship of noxious ideas. We are committed to maintaining a climate in which reason and speech provide the correct response to a disagreeable idea.
Although President Faust did not respond directly to FIRE's letter, Harvard released a statement around August 1 defending free speech, and the administration took no action.
But the Harvard administration's admirable promises now stand in sharp and unflattering contrast to the action by FAS led by Professor Diana C. Eck, as reported by The Harvard Crimson and Harvard Magazine. The op-ed comes nowhere near the careful definition of unprotected "incitement" announced by the Supreme Court in 1969. According to the Supreme Court, for speech to be considered "incitement," it must be "directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and [be] likely to incite or produce such action." Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969).
As we state in today's letter to FAS Dean and Chief Academic Officer Michael D. Smith, while Harvard is not directly bound by First Amendment jurisprudence, such tolerant patience has much wisdom behind it. For example, former Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, in his concurring opinion in Whitney v. California, 274 U.S. 357, 375-76 (1927), described the appropriate response to "dangerous" speech:
Those who won our independence believed ... that freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think are means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth; that without free speech and assembly discussion would be futile; that with them, discussion affords ordinarily adequate protection against the dissemination of noxious doctrine ...
They recognized the risks to which all human institutions are subject. But they knew that order cannot be secured merely through fear of punishment for its infraction; that it is hazardous to discourage thought, hope and imagination; that fear breeds repression; that repression breeds hate; that hate menaces stable government; that the path of safety lies in the opportunity to discuss freely supposed grievances and proposed remedies; and that the fitting remedy for evil counsels is good ones.
Fear of serious injury cannot alone justify suppression of free speech and assembly... To justify suppression of free speech there must be reasonable ground to fear that serious evil will result if free speech is practiced... [N]o danger flowing from speech can be deemed clear and present unless the incidence of the evil apprehended is so imminent that it may befall before there is opportunity for full discussion. If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehoods and fallacies, to avert the evil by the process of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence. Only an emergency can justify repression. [Emphases added.]
The only emergency here is the grave threat to freedom of expression caused by FAS's misguided action. I hope that FAS remedies its mistake at its next meeting. Failing that, higher-ups at Harvard must act to uphold Harvard's legal and moral obligations. As my colleague Daniel Schwartz eloquently describes in his article in FIRE's academic journal The Lantern, Harvard has already embarrassed itself far too much over free speech issues in recent years.
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| Posted by Adam Kissel on January 5, 2012, at 4:26 PM
A Roundup of 2011's Faculty First Amendment Rights Case Law
January 5, 2012
Last year saw a handful of important cases related to university faculty First Amendment rights in the courts. Particularly, a number of cases dealt with the application of the United States Supreme Court case Garcetti v. Ceballos, 547 U.S. 410 (2006). Yesterday marked the first day of the annual meeting of the American Association of Law Schools; tellingly, the theme of this year's meeting is academic freedom, and the AALS notes that after Garcetti, the "zone of protected professorial speech is shrinking."
We have written about this worrying case many times before. To recap, Garcetti deals with when, precisely, the government acting as employer may regulate its employees' speech. Breaking with prior precedent, the Garcetti Court ruled that when public employees engage in expressive activity pursuant to their official duties, that speech is normally not protected by the First Amendment. The Court in Garcetti declined to apply its holding to public university professors; Justice Kennedy's majority opinion states that the Court "need not, and for that reason do[es] not, decide whether the analysis we conduct today would apply in the same manner to a case involving speech related to scholarship or teaching."
Following Garcetti, FIRE and other organizations (most notably, the American Association of University Professors) worried that courts might apply Garcetti to public university professors anyway. Our worrying has proven to be with good reason: Some courts have held that Garcetti applies to public university professors, and other courts have held just the opposite. This is a truly unsettled area of law.
In February, the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois issued a disappointing decision in Capeheart v. Hahs, 08-1423, 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 14363 (N.D. Ill. Feb. 14, 2011). FIRE has written about this case before. Loretta Capeheart is a tenured associate professor of justice studies at Northeastern Illinois University (NEIU) in Chicago. She was a vocal anti-war advocate who spoke out in support of members of the Socialist Club of NEIU when they were arrested by campus police for protesting a CIA recruitment event in early 2007. Subsequently, Capeheart was passed up for a promotion, which she attributes to her political involvement. She filed suit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. The court later dismissed her lawsuit, applying Garcetti v. Ceballos and holding that her political activity was pursuant to her "official duties" and therefore not protected by the First Amendment. On December 8, however, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit heard oral argument in Capeheart's appeal, and we hope for a good decision in the coming year. The AAUP filed an excellent amicus brief on behalf of Capeheart, and it can be found here.
On the positive side, in April the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit issued a landmark decision in Adams v. Trustees of the University of North Carolina - Wilmington, et al., 640 F.3d 550 (4th Cir. 2011). Professor Mike Adams is a conservative columnist who sued the University of North Carolina-Wilmington (UNCW) when his bid for promotion failed. He sued in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina, alleging a number of claims, including First Amendment viewpoint discrimination and retaliation. The suit was dismissed on the university's motion for summary judgment, but on appeal, the Fourth Circuit reversed the lower court's dismissal of the First Amendment speech claims, noting that "the district court applied Garcetti without acknowledging, let alone addressing, the clear language in that opinion that casts doubt on whether the Garcetti analysis applies in the academic context of a public university." The Fourth Circuit then held that, as a matter of law, Adams had been speaking as a citizen upon a matter of public concern, and remanded the case to the district court for further proceedings. Joined by the AAUP and the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression, FIRE had filed an amici curiae brief with the Fourth Circuit in July of 2010 urging this result. FIRE's detailed analysis of the ruling is available here.
In October, the United States District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana ruled in favor of Ivor van Heerden, an engineering professor at Louisiana State University (LSU) who claims he was fired as a result of comments he made that were critical of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for their design and construction of the levees that broke following Hurricane Katrina. FIRE has written about this case before. When LSU filed a motion for summary judgment, it cited Garcetti for the proposition that his comments about the levees were pursuant to his employment and therefore unprotected by the First Amendment. The court disagreed and denied that part of the summary judgment, noting that, partly because LSU warned van Heerden not to speak with the media, when he did speak with the media it was unauthorized, outside the scope of employment, and thus protected by the First Amendment.
In December, the Idaho Supreme Court upheld the lower court dismissal of Habib Sadid's lawsuit challenging his firing from his tenured professorship at Idaho State University. We wrote about Sadid's lawsuit when it was filed in 2009. A representative for the American Federation of Teachers characterized the decision as a "massive win," because while Sadid's claims were dismissed, the court held that his speech was not made pursuant to his official position, and that his speech was on a matter of public concern. In so holding, the Idaho Supreme Court was implicitly affirming the lower court's reliance on the application of Garcetti by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Eng v. Cooley, 552 F.3d 1062 (9th Cir. 2009). The AAUP also filed a brief in support of Sadid, also applying Eng.
To wrap up, 2011 demonstrated widely disparate applications of Garcetti. To what extent a public university professor's speech is protected by the First Amendment remains unsettled. We look forward to a decision by the Seventh Circuit in Capeheart, but unless and until the Supreme Court clarifies its academic exception in Garcetti, things will remain muddled.
FIRE has a survey of 2011's student First Amendment caselaw here.
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| Posted by Andrew Kloster on January 5, 2012, at 11:54 AM
Victory for Free Speech: California’s Chico State Scraps Unconstitutional ‘Speech Code of the Year’
January 4, 2012
Today's press release announces a welcome victory: After FIRE named California State University-Chico's definition of sexual harassment one of two "Speech Codes of the Year" for 2011, the university has scrapped the language in question.
As of mid-December 2011, Chico State maintained an informational page on sexual harassment stating that faculty members committed sexual harassment if they "implicitly devalue[d] students for their gender or sexual orientation." Examples of such harassment included "reinforcement of sexist stereotypes through subtle, often unintentional means," including the use of "stereotypic generalizations" and the "continual use of generic masculine terms such as to refer to people of both sexes or references to both men and women as necessarily heterosexual."
Citing its shocking vagueness and striking breadth, FIRE named this restriction on protected speech our "Speech Code of the Month" for March 2011. Sam pointed out just how this policy could be cited to shut down academic discussion on campus:
Unintentional reinforcement of sexist stereotypes is sexual harassment? Statements that subjectively "trivialize" people on the basis of gender or sexual orientation are sexual harassment? A look through CSU Chico's course catalog reveals that, as would be expected at a major university, the university offers courses that necessarily involve sensitive issues relating to race, gender, and sexual orientation. In the university's Multicultural and Gender Studies department, for example, course offerings include "Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Issues and Identities"; "Perspectives on Gender and Disease"; "Multicultural Health"; "Sociology of Gender"; "Women, Men and the Media"; and "Cultural Images of Women."
Now look back over those bolded examples of sexual harassment and think about whether, as a faculty member teaching one of these courses, or one of the many other course offerings that touch on issues of race, gender, and sexual orientation, you might fear running afoul of this policy when discussing controversial but wholly germane subjects in your classroom. In FIRE's experience, concern over a policy like this one is far from hypothetical; since our inception, we have handled all too many cases involving faculty members who faced discipline for classroom expression that should have been wholly protected by the principles of free speech and academic freedom.
When the policy hadn't been revised by mid-December, we decided it had earned the dubious distinction of being one of our two Speech Codes of the Year.
Happily, Chico State has seen the light. In a phone call yesterday, Chico State notified us that its policy was no longer published on the university's website. In fact, we found that the university had also removed a policy that had defined sexual harassment as including "sexist comments," "sexual innuendoes, comments, and remarks," "suggestive, obscene, or insulting sounds," and "humor or jokes about sex or gender in general." Unfortunately, the university still has some work to do, as it maintains a definition of sexual harassment that includes "subtly demeaning behavior (including sexist jokes and assumptions), and unwelcome physical gestures like leering." But the revisions already in place are a welcome and necessary start.
Today's press release points out how successful our Speech Code of the Month feature has been. Since we named Rhodes College's Policy on Discrimination and Harassment our first Speech Code of the Month in June 2005, 32 universities have fully revised the policies that earned them the "honor," including four schools named Speech Code of the Month in 2011.
For now, our other Speech Code of the Year, the University of Florida's Student Rights and Responsibilities policy, remains in place. That policy warns students that "Organizations or individuals that adversely upset the delicate balance of communal living will be subject to disciplinary action." As Sam wrote back in April:
This policy is unconstitutionally vague because it is impossible to know, from its plain language, what is prohibited. If students are forced to guess at what speech might qualify as sufficiently "upsetting" to warrant punishment, many students will decide it's best not to speak up at all.
Hopefully, now that Chico State has left the University of Florida as the sole owner of 2011's Speech Code of the Year, we'll see a quick revision there, too. We'll be watching.
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| Posted by William Creeley on January 4, 2012, at 4:27 PM
Hans Bader Deconstructs Widener's 'Retaliation' Argument
January 4, 2012
Over at Minding the Campus, Hans Bader exposes the flimsy legal underpinnings of Widener University's finding this past July that Professor Lawrence Connell was guilty of "retaliation" for defending himself against baseless charges of racial discrimination.
We've covered Connell's ordeal extensively here on The Torch, but in case you've forgotten the shocking details, here's Bader's useful summation of the case:
Having set forth the facts, Bader—a former staff attorney for the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights—proceeds to destroy Widener's justification for its finding:Connell was convicted of "retaliation" because he and his lawyer denounced meritless racial harassment charges against him over his classroom teaching .... Connell, who is white, was charged with racial harassment and removed from Widener's campus because he discussed hypothetical crimes in his criminal law class, including the imaginary killing of the law school dean, Linda Ammons, who happens to be black. (He was also accused of harassment because he "expressed his philosophical concerns about the fairness and utility of hate crime" laws).
But there was never any evidence that Connell used the dean in these hypotheticals because of her race. (Comments are not "racial harassment" unless they target a victim based on her race, and are severe and pervasive, according to Caver v. City of Trenton, a ruling by the appeals court that has jurisdiction over Widener.) Far from being a racist, Connell had spent 15 years successfully working to save the life of a black man who had been sentenced to die after he was convicted of murder by an all-white jury.
[...]
After Connell was exonerated by a committee of law professors, the charges against him were resubmitted to a disciplinary panel including Dean Ammons herself, another Widener administrator, and a professor hand-picked by Ammons.
While even this panel was forced to concede that Connell had not committed racial harassment, it found him guilty of two acts of "retaliation": the first was an email protesting his innocence after he was suspended and banned from campus, and the second was his lawyer's public statement that he was preparing to sue over the unfounded allegations.
Bader's full legal analysis is well worth reading.Connell's email did not constitute "retaliation" under controlling legal authority. But Widener was able to claim otherwise with a straight face, by cherry-picking language from court rulings it selectively cited. First, it recited the vague, broad definition of retaliation from the Supreme Court's decision in Burlington Northern v. White (2006): conduct that "could well dissuade a reasonable worker from making or supporting a charge of discrimination." The email, it suggested, could dissuade complaints by making complainants uncomfortable or inciting ostracism against them.
But Widener ignored language in that court ruling saying that mild expressions of hostility in response to a complaint do not rise to the level of "retaliation." The Supreme Court declared that "snubbing by supervisors or co-workers" or "petty slights" in response to a complaint do not rise to the level of retaliation, since they would not be "material" enough to dissuade a "reasonable" person from complaining. If actual snubbing is not retaliation, Connell's email can't qualify based on Widener's speculation that it could lead to snubbing. The Supreme Court also said that only "significant" rather than "trivial harms" constitute retaliation, and that "sporadic" "abusive language" or "occasional teasing" does not qualify.
Second, Widener cited a ruling from a Midwestern appeals court (which has no jurisdiction over Widener), that rejected a challenge to a professor's discipline for publicly criticizing a harassment complaint. That disturbing ruling, Bonnell v. Lorenzo, essentially held that bans on "retaliation" trump the First Amendment, menacing academic freedom.
In doing so, Widener ignored other First Amendment rulings limiting the reach of retaliation law. For example, in BE&K Construction Co. v. NLRB (2002), the Supreme Court held that an employer's reasonable, but unsuccessful, lawsuit was protected by the First Amendment's petition clause even if it had a "retaliatory motive." In Bain v. City of Springfield (1997), the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled that a mayor was entitled to publicly denounce a sexual harassment complaint against him, even if that could dissuade the filing of harassment charges, since retaliation prohibitions are limited by "constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech. The interest in remedying discrimination is weighty but not so weighty as to justify what amounts to a restriction on core political speech." Similarly, in Brooks v. City of San Mateo (2000), the Ninth Circuit held that "retaliation" could not be found based on "mere ostracism" or employees' refusal to associate with an employee after she brought an unsuccessful harassment complaint, citing a potential clash with the "First Amendment freedom of association."
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| Posted by William Creeley on January 4, 2012, at 1:40 PM
A 2011 Harvard Retrospective
January 4, 2012
The bucolic red-brick environs, falling leaves, and austere columned library bespeak an institution rife with history and a word Chaim Topol popularized with his portrayal of Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof: "tradition." Indeed, Harvard has developed and grown over its 375 years, forging for itself new qualities with every generation, yet maintaining its identity as a unique backdrop to the education of the country's elite. Harvard has been around longer than the government of the United States—140 years longer—making it the oldest continuous institution founded in the country. Harvard not only teaches American history—it has long produced educated men and women who have helped create American history.
While many wonderful traditions still abound at the most famous of American universities, a new one has developed which can erode any university's fundament, and runs counter to the school's stated purpose. Two events this year—one involving freshmen students, the other a longtime faculty member—remind us that despite the pursuit of "Veritas," Harvard remained in 2011 among the vanguard of the politically correct, embracing a cynical suppression of speech and academic discourse in favor of dishonestly built ideas of comfort.
Swearing an Oath to KindnessAt the outset of the 2011-12 academic year, Harvard College attempted to institute a new tradition when Dean of Freshmen Thomas Dingman pressured the class of 2015 to sign a pledge placing kindness on par with academic achievement. Former Dean of Harvard College Harry Lewis broke the news and posted the pledge on his blog. The oath envisions Harvard's commencement exercises as a morality play, reading in full:
Continue reading this article on The Lantern, FIRE's academic journalAt Commencement, the Dean of Harvard College announces to the President, Fellows, and Overseers that "each degree candidate stands ready to advance knowledge, to promote understanding, and to serve society." That message serves as a kind of moral compass for the education Harvard College imparts. In the classroom, in extracurricular endeavors, and in the Yard and Houses, students are expected to act with integrity, respect, and industry, and to sustain a community characterized by inclusiveness and civility.
As we begin at Harvard, we commit to upholding the values of the College and to making the entryway and Yard a place where all can thrive and where the exercise of kindness holds a place on a par with intellectual attainment.
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| Posted by Daniel Schwartz on January 4, 2012, at 12:28 PM
Why the Office for Civil Rights' April 'Dear Colleague Letter' Was 2011's Biggest FIRE Fight
January 3, 2012
Looking back at the year just ending, it's extraordinarily easy to identify FIRE's biggest fight of 2011: the dramatic new regulations announced by the federal Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) in its April 4 "Dear Colleague Letter."
In my five years here at FIRE, I can't remember it ever being this easy to select a topic for my end-of-year review. Simply put, FIRE's legal work has been dominated this year by OCR's letter: analyzing OCR's new requirements of every college and university that accepts federal funding (read: virtually all of them); crafting and publicizing our response and concerns; answering critics of our defense of student rights; tracking the importation of the worst of OCR's new regulations into proposed federal legislation; documenting the impact OCR's letter has already had on individual students and schools nationwide; and more.
So while Greg already provided a round-up of the national media response to OCR's letter earlier this week, it is also useful to provide a summary of our work on this front throughout the year, and then to discuss what 2012 might hold.
Let's begin with an explanation of OCR and its April 4 letter.
OCR is the federal agency charged with enforcing federal anti-discrimination statutes-like Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which forbids discrimination on the basis of sex, or Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin. OCR has jurisdiction to oversee compliance with these and other federal anti-discrimination statutes by every college and university nationwide that accepts federal funding.
As I said above, in practice, this means all but a very few colleges are subject to OCR's provisions, as nearly every institution of higher education in the country relies on federal funding to some degree: accepting student loans backed by the federal government, soliciting federal research grants, and so on. Indeed, OCR derives its enforcement power through this virtually uniform reliance on federal funding by our nation's colleges and universities: Failure to comply with OCR directives and regulations can result in the loss of federal funding. That would be a devastating punishment—really, an existential threat for all but the wealthiest institutions, and even those lucky few would be severely damaged. So when OCR talks—most often, in the form of so-called "Dear Colleague" letters—administrators and university counsel listen.
On April 4, OCR issued a 19-page "Dear Colleague" letter announcing a new emphasis on addressing sexual harassment, including sexual violence. Introducing the new regulations contained therein, Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Russlynn Ali wrote:
OCR's increased focus on sexual violence was precipitated by studies suggesting that sexual violence on campus is widespread and underreported. Ali wrote:The U.S. Department of Education and its Office for Civil Rights (OCR) believe that providing all students with an educational environment free from discrimination is extremely important. The sexual harassment of students, including sexual violence, interferes with students' right to receive an education free from discrimination and, in the case of sexual violence, is a crime.
[...]
In order to assist recipients, which include school districts, colleges, and universities (hereinafter "schools" or "recipients") in meeting these obligations, this letter explains that the requirements of Title IX pertaining to sexual harassment also cover sexual violence, and lays out the specific Title IX requirements applicable to sexual violence. A number of different acts fall into the category of sexual violence, including rape, sexual assault, sexual battery, and sexual coercion. All such acts of sexual violence are forms of sexual harassment covered under Title IX. [Internal citations omitted.]
In response, OCR's Dear Colleague letter announced requirements for colleges and universities, specifically with regard to their response protocol for allegations of sexual harassment and sexual violence. These requirements—some previously stated, but others newly introduced—mainly concerned elements of campus judicial procedures, reporting requirements, and staff responsibilities.The statistics on sexual violence are both deeply troubling and a call to action for the nation. A report prepared for the National Institute of Justice found that about 1 in 5 women are victims of completed or attempted sexual assault while in college. The report also found that approximately 6.1 percent of males were victims of completed or attempted sexual assault during college. [Internal citations omitted.]
In terms of FIRE's concern with protecting student rights, some of the new requirements were unobjectionable and even welcome—for example, OCR's emphasis on making sure that students accused of sexual harassment and sexual violence are afforded the same access to hearing documents, counsel, party statements, and meetings, as well as the opportunity to present witnesses and evidence. It's vitally important that both the accused and the accuser enjoy an impartial and fair hearing process, particularly when a campus judicial procedure is grappling with an allegation of sexual assault, one of the most heinous and awful of all crimes.
Unfortunately, however, OCR's other new requirements presented grave threats to student rights, particularly due process and freedom of expression. I documented these concerns at length in FIRE's May 5 response to OCR, but here's the abridged version from the "Frequently Asked Questions" we authored over the summer:
Again, that's the short summary of our concerns. If you're interested in the legal nuts and bolts of the problems with OCR's new requirements, check out our letter, which is as thorough as was warranted, given the high stakes for student rights.With regard to due process, OCR's April 4 letter requires colleges and universities investigating and hearing allegations of sexual harassment and sexual violence on campus to use a "preponderance of the evidence" standard to determine if someone is guilty. This standard merely requires that it is "more likely than not" that someone is responsible for what they are accused of, and it is our judiciary's lowest standard of proof. This is because whoever is serving as the "jury" in such a case need only be 50.01% certain that the accused person is at fault.
Given the seriousness of allegations of sexual misconduct—which range from sexual harassment to rape—FIRE believes that requiring universities to find accused students guilty based on this "more likely than not" standard does not sufficiently protect the accused person's right to due process. For comparison, if you are tried in a real court for any crime, no matter how minor, the more familiar "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard must be used, which means that the judge or jury must be virtually certain of your guilt.
In another threat to due process rights, OCR is mandating that if a university judicial process allows the accused student to appeal a verdict, it must also allow the accusing student the right to appeal as well. As explained below, this requirement means that a student found innocent in a hearing may be retried, even if the charges against him or her have already been proven baseless.
With regard to freedom of expression, the April 4 letter fails to explicitly acknowledge that colleges owe free speech rights to their students. It also fails to recognize the fact that truly harassing conduct (as defined by the law) is distinct from protected speech. Public universities may not violate First Amendment rights, and private universities must honor their promises of freedom of expression. Previous OCR letters on this subject were clear about this, but this most recent letter is not.
The reason this lack of clarity is so important (and so disappointing) is that many colleges already enforce vague and overly broad sexual harassment policies, and often confuse speech protected by the First Amendment with speech or conduct that is actually punishable as harassment. With its lack of guidance on this issue, OCR's April 4 letter compounds these problems. Under OCR's new mandate regarding the standard of proof, students falsely charged with sexual harassment need only be found "more likely than not" to have violated a poorly written harassment policy to suffer disciplinary action.
Speaking of our letter, we sent it to OCR on May 5—and, to our amazement and disappointment, we still haven't heard back. OCR's silence is all the more galling when one considers the fact that FIRE isn't the only organization concerned about the threat to due process rights posed by the Dear Colleague letter. Indeed, our deep concerns were echoed over the summer by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). In fact, the AAUP wrote twice, with the first letter from Gregory F. Scholtz, Associate Secretary and Director, and the second from Cary Nelson, the AAUP's President, and Ann E. Green, Chair of the AAUP's Committee on Women in the Academic Profession. Both letters shared our concerns about the threat to due process and freedom of expression presented by OCR's new requirements. Given the gravity of these threats and the nearly eight months that have passed since we first voiced our worries about them, we're disappointed to still be waiting for a response. Considering that government agencies traditionally respond in some way to just about any letter you send them, the silence from OCR is deafening.
But while OCR has thus far maintained silence, some university administrators chose instead to attack FIRE for our defense of student rights, casting us as being callously unconcerned with the seriousness of sexual assault. Of course, we answered these critics point-by-point; those interested should read our thorough responses here and here. Moreover, we continued to publicize the erosion of due process rights presented by OCR's new requirements in a number of ways: writing opinion pieces and blog entries, sending out press releases, authoring the FAQ, alerting our supporters, and asking allies to help us spread the word. The fruits of our efforts are collected on our website here.
Unfortunately, we quickly learned that our concerns about utilizing the weak preponderance of the evidence standard weren't simply academic. We began to receive case submissions like that of student Caleb Warner, who was suspended for three years from the University of North Dakota for sexual assault under the preponderance standard—despite the fact that local law enforcement not only declined to prosecute him, but actually filed charges against his accuser for lying to police. FIRE Co-founder and Chairman Harvey Silverglate wrote about this shocking injustice in The Wall Street Journal in July, and with FIRE's help, the finding against Caleb was vacated in October.
As we wondered how many other students would be forced to endure erroneous guilty findings as a result of the lowered standard of evidence now mandated by OCR, we were dismayed to find in October that, just as we had predicted, institutions nationwide were beginning to reduce their own standards to comply with OCR's requirement. Our survey of the nation's top universities as ranked by U.S. News & World Report revealed the dramatic impact OCR's Dear Colleague letter will have, as 39 colleges ranked in the top 100 maintained evidentiary standards other than the preponderance of the evidence standard, and thus have already changed or will be required to change their standard of evidence to comply with the OCR mandate. Interestingly, the nation's top colleges will feel the impact most of all, as nine of the top 10 colleges did not use the OCR-mandated "preponderance" standard prior to the OCR letter.
OCR's disregard for due process rights was bad enough, but we were even more concerned to learn that federal legislators were attempting to codify the low preponderance of the evidence standard in federal legislation. The attempt came in two parts, with the first being the Campus Sexual Violence Elimination (SaVE) Act, which would mandate the adoption of the preponderance of the evidence standard and require universities to allow alleged victims of sexual assault to appeal the results of college disciplinary hearings, subjecting accused students to a form of "double jeopardy" not allowed in our nation's courts. The Campus SaVE Act was introduced in both the Senate and the House of Representatives, but seemed safely mired in congressional committees. Unfortunately, that failure to gain traction may have been what prompted the bill's backers to successfully push for its inclusion in a draft of the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2011 circulated by Senator Patrick Leahy's office this past fall. The draft incorporated requirements virtually identical to those contained in the Campus SaVE Act—indeed, Section 304 of the draft VAWA bill was titled "Campus SaVE Act."
In response, FIRE sounded the alarm, issuing a press release and asking concerned citizens to contact their legislators to voice their concerns with including this threat to due process in the VAWA reauthorization bill. In mid-November, we were thrilled to learn our efforts had been successful: Senator Leahy, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, announced he was dropping the provision. The Burlington Free Press (Vt.) quoted Erica Chabot, spokeswoman for the committee, as saying, "Because of the feedback [Sen. Leahy] has received concerning this proposal, he does not plan to include it in the bill he later will introduce." In a fight for student rights that began in April, this was FIRE's clearest sign yet that due process rights could be protected if people came to understand the threat presented to them.
So what does 2012 hold for FIRE's campaign to roll back OCR's new mandates? Of course, we'll continue to spread the word about the rights reductions contained in the April 4 letter, educating students and faculty about the threat to their rights to due process and freedom of expression. We'll keep pressing OCR to answer the concerns raised by FIRE, the AAUP, and others. We'll also be increasing our presence on the legislative side of the effort, as we're hiring a Legal and Legislative Policy Associate to help us monitor developments on Capitol Hill and elsewhere that threaten campus rights.
Of course, we'll keep you posted on all of these developments right here on The Torch. Thank you so much for your support in 2011. With your help, we'll be successful in our efforts and we'll make sure that by the end of 2012, student and faculty rights are defended like never before.
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| Posted by William Creeley on January 3, 2012, at 1:25 PM
Happy New Year 2012!
December 31, 2011
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| Posted on December 31, 2011, at 1:35 PM
2011: FIRE's Best Year Ever
December 31, 2011
By many measures, 2011 has been FIRE's best year ever, despite serious, ongoing threats to fundamental rights on campus.
Read Peter's post for a rundown of the highlights of the worst and craziest free speech cases of 2011, and read Azhar's post for a rundown of our most significant Individual Rights Education Program victories. We have more "green light" schools (those that maintain no policies that seriously imperil free speech) than ever, now including Arizona State University, which revised its speech codes to protect free speech for its more than 60,000 students.
And since FIRE's Speech Code of the Month became a regular feature in June 2005, 31 universities have fully revised the policies that earned them that dubious distinction. As Sam's post explains, three of the schools listed in 2011 have already revised their policies. This is significant, as Bridget points out that success in higher education reform depends on protecting the freedom to dissent and transforming the culture on campus to give all views a chance in the marketplace of ideas.
This week we blew by 4,000 Twitter followers and 4,500 Facebook likes, and we're just a few shy of 850 YouTube subscribers following the wild success of our latest video, Don't Mess with Firefly! How SciFi Fans Made a Campus Safe for Free Speech. That video alone has gained 60,000 views over the past few days. Thanks to Robert and Joanna for getting our video projects and online presence so far in 2011.
Huge thanks to all of our friends and supporters, students, faculty, staff, parents, donors, trustees, and more, for contributing so much to FIRE's success in 2011. Have a Happy New Year!
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| Posted by Adam Kissel on December 31, 2011, at 1:21 PM
Academic Freedom and Scientific Integrity in Jeopardy at UCLA: New Document Posted
December 30, 2011
FIRE has just posted a letter from the Academic Freedom Committee at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) to UCLA Chancellor Gene D. Block. In the letter, the members of the committee express "unanimous concern that the decision by the School of Public Health not to re-appoint James Enstrom, Ph.D. in the Professional Research series may represent a violation of academic freedom."
FIRE has been fighting for Professor Enstrom's academic freedom and free speech rights at UCLA since August 2010. I encourage those who are new to FIRE to read about this disappointing case of a professor whose department cut short his career after decades of service to UCLA. In short, Dr. Enstrom and a few of his colleagues have disagreed strongly about research on environmental health issues—for example, on the extent of the threat to public health posed by certain air pollutants—a topic of Enstrom's research which has been the subject of intense debate in California. His research on environmental health issues falls squarely within his department's research mission, but his department chair declared that "your research is not aligned with the academic mission of the Department."
Non-rehire decisions made because of a scholar's protected expression, of which this case is an example, violate the First Amendment—and in this case academic freedom as well.
Furthermore, while permitting Enstrom to take his case through UCLA's grievance process, UCLA has refused to sign off on new research proposals by Enstrom, further violating his academic freedom while he remains at UCLA. This is a central concern of UCLA's Academic Freedom Committee. As the committee wrote in its April 15, 2011, letter:
[I]n spite of ongoing funding that is projected to last until the end of 2011, Dr. Enstrom was notified that he was to be laid off. Simultaneously, Dr. Enstrom was denied the opportunity to submit further grant applications. He has raised concerns that his non-reappointment was motivated by improper concerns relating to the content of his research and his criticisms of others' research. [...]
UCLA has an obligation to protect the ongoing research activities of its academic staff. Its failure to do so when their research is funded by extramural agencies has the further serious consequence of preventing him (and possibly the University) from meeting his obligations to his extra-mural funders, although the University represented that it would allow him to do so when it accepted the extramural funding. Retraction of such protection, especially in cases involving individuals, like Dr. Enstrom, who have a lengthy history of research activity on campus, must be supported by strong reasons.
Right now, UCLA is looking for a new dean of its School of Public Health, of which Enstrom's department is a part. I encourage UCLA to place academic freedom at the top of its agenda when considering candidates for the next dean. UCLA has created a damaging and embarrassing "chilling effect" whereby research scientists now understand that if their research points toward an inconvenient or politically unpopular scientific conclusion, they ought to remain silent lest they be punished or even fired by UCLA. The new dean could resolve Dr. Enstrom's case and mitigate its very unfortunate repercussions.
If you agree, please read up on the case and then let the executive search firm for this search, Witt/Kieffer, know what you think. You also can include Traci Considine, manager of executive searches in the Office of the Chancellor, at PublicHealthSearch@conet.ucla.edu.
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| Posted by Adam Kissel on December 30, 2011, at 3:23 PM
Eighth Circuit: Administrators May Be Personally Liable for Political Discrimination in Faculty Hiring
December 30, 2011
On Wednesday, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit issued a decision in Wagner v. Jones, No. 10-2588, 2011 U.S. App. LEXIS 25879 (8th Cir. Dec. 28, 2011). The opinion is an interesting read, even for non-lawyers.
The suit at issue was brought by Teresa Wagner, currently the Associate Director of the Writing Resource Center at the University of Iowa School of Law. Prior to this position, Wagner's applications for the position of Legal Analysis, Writing, and Research (LAWR) instructor were repeatedly rejected. Wagner subsequently filed suit in federal court against the dean of the law school, Carolyn Jones, alleging violations of her First Amendment rights of political belief and association. Specifically, Wagner alleged that she was denied the position because of her political views.
Wagner is an outspoken social conservative and pro-life advocate. She is a registered Republican and has worked with the National Right to Life Committee and the Family Research Council. In August 2006, she applied for a LAWR position with the University of Iowa School of Law and went through several rounds of selection, including two in-person interviews. At every stage of the process she was highly rated and received positive feedback. However, two separate associate deans relayed concerns to Dean Jones that Wagner's politics might play a role in her hiring. After having been told by one of these associate deans not to mention to her faculty interviewers that she had been offered a tenure-track position by Ave Maria School of Law—which she had been told was regarded as a conservative law school—Wagner shared these concerns. These concerns seemingly proved to be prescient, as Wagner was rejected while candidates with lower objective evaluations and less experience were hired. In each case, Dean Jones went along with the faculty committee's recommendation against offering the job to Wagner, and chose not to hire her.
Wagner filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa back in 2009, alleging that her rejection was due to discrimination based on her political beliefs and activities. She filed suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, which allows people whose constitutional rights have been violated by a government official acting under color of state law to sue the official in his/her personal capacity and not just his/her professional capacity—meaning that the official, and not just the government, will be liable for any damages awarded.
However, Section 1983 contains a built-in mechanism for allowing government officials to do their jobs without the constant fear of lawsuits: a defense known as "qualified immunity." Under the doctrine of qualified immunity, a government official can only be held personally liable for a constitutional violation if the constitutional right in question is "clearly established" enough that a reasonable person in the official's position would have known he or she was violating it. If the court finds that the right in question was not clearly established—even if the right was, in fact, violated—the official is entitled to what is known as qualified immunity. In other words, if the right is so clearly established that a competent official would know of it, protect that right! But if the law is murky, don't worry about being sued. (For more on qualified immunity in the college administrator context, see Azhar's legal scholarship.)
In the original lawsuit, Dean Jones filed for summary judgment, asking the District Court to hold that there was no factual disagreement that a "reasonable dean in her position would have believed that failing to hire Wagner was lawful in light of clearly established law." And, in granting the summary judgment, that is exactly what the District Court did. If there were no factual disagreement here, there would be no reason for the case to go to a jury, and the case would be dismissed.
The Eighth Circuit reversed the District Court's grant of summary judgment, noting that Wagner "has presented sufficient evidence for a fact finder [i.e., a juror] to infer that Dean Jones's repeated decisions not to hire Wagner were in part motivated by Wagner's constitutionally protected First Amendment rights of political belief and association." In other words, the Eighth Circuit hasn't concluded that Wagner's rights were violated; rather, it has found that Wagner demonstrated enough evidence for the case to proceed, thus overruling the lower court's dismissal of the case.
So what evidence did the Eighth Circuit rely on to reach this conclusion? As the Eighth Circuit noted in its opinion, only one out of 50 faculty members at the law school is a registered Republican. Further, Wagner's candidacy garnered the most vocal criticism from Professor Randall Bezanson, who clerked for the late Supreme Court Justice Blackmun in the 1972-73 term when Roe v. Wade was decided. Bezanson has written favorably of Justice Blackmun and Roe v. Wade before, while Wagner "worked with the National Right to Life Committee, which opposes abortion and euthanasia, and the Family Research Council, which advocates for conservative social views." In addition, Bezanson did note that Wagner's politics were "possibly" discussed, although he claims it was only after deciding not to hire her.
In explicitly adopting the burden-shifting analysis found in the Supreme Court's First Amendment retaliation case Mount Healthy City School District v. Doyle, 429 U.S. 274, 287 (1977), the Eighth Circuit held that:
Wagner's claim against Dean Jones is based on Dean Jones's own actions and omissions during the hiring process. Wagner has alleged facts establishing that even though Dean Jones was on notice that Wagner's political beliefs and associations may have impermissibly affected the faculty's hiring recommendation, she still refused to hire Wagner for any position. Accordingly, Dean Jones's position as a supervisor does not shield her from § 1983 liability.
This decision is important for a number of reasons. First, it changes the qualified immunity landscape, indicating that public university administrators may be found personally liable for monetary damages when expressive activity protected by the First Amendment is a "substantial" or "motivating" factor in an adverse employment decision (e.g., a decision to fire or a refusal to hire, promote, or re-hire). In the Eighth Circuit, claims like Wagner's will now increasingly go before juries, who will be charged with determining whether the adverse employment decision would have been the same even without the alleged discrimination. This is a significant development, because—as discussed recently here on The Torch—judges are typically loath to insert themselves into what they perceive as academic decisions and generally grant a great deal of deference to universities' decision-making processes. (Of course, refusing to hire someone because you don't like her politics is hardly an "academic" decision—it's a political one.)
Second, the Eighth Circuit suggests that college administrators may have the responsibility to investigate and mitigate political discrimination in hiring practices, and that that faculty members on hiring committees may also be sued in these cases:
Dean Jones was notified that the "process" may not have been working properly and the faculty may have violated the First Amendment, but she still made her hiring decision based solely on the faculty's suggestions.
This is important, because it suggests that public university administrators and faculty on hiring committees cannot turn a blind eye to political discrimination. The Eighth Circuit here signals that it will not permit violations of First Amendment rights in employment decisions, even if such violations occur in the academic context.
One last tidbit: Professor Bezanson, who the Eighth Circuit identified as the most vocal opponent of Wagner's appointment, is a First Amendment scholar, and has actually written on the subject of government-sponsored speech before. In his article, The Government Speech Forum: Forbes and Finley and Government Speech Selection Judgments, 83 Iowa L.Rev. 953, 990 (Aug. 1998), Bezanson notes:
The intervening thirteen years may have changed his mind, but Professor Bezanson's words hold true today, and, ironically, may indict the professor himself.[G]overnment cannot place certain speech conditions, such as loyalty oaths, on the hiring of a teacher—at least unless the conditions are clearly relevant and necessary to the lawful terms of employment.
For additional reading, there is a good summary of the decision at the FedSoc Blog. Ilya Somin at the Volokh Conspiracy blogged about this case when the lawsuit was filed back in 2009, and the Wall Street Journal covered it then as well.
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| Posted by Andrew Kloster on December 30, 2011, at 2:37 PM
CFN Students Stand Up for Free Speech on Campus in 2011
December 29, 2011
2011 has been one of FIRE's most successful years yet, and the members of FIRE's Campus Freedom Network (CFN)—our coalition of students, faculty, and alumni fighting for individual rights on campus—are no exception. The CFN provides advice and resources to members of college and university communities across the country as they work to change the campus culture from within by fighting for speech code reform, organizing events that bring attention to the problem of censorship on America's campuses, and defending fellow students whose rights have been infringed upon.
One way to measure this culture change is the number of students and faculty who have committed to defending free speech on their campuses, and CFN membership has skyrocketed this year. Thanks in part to a record number of FIRE campus appearances in 2011, more than 700 new students signed up for the CFN, expanding our total network to more than 5,000 students, faculty, and alumni. With membership growing every day, FIRE is reaching more individuals than ever before—individuals who are working hard to make their campuses havens for free speech and fundamental rights.
As we mentioned above, the CFN connects interested students 
with the resources necessary to reform oppressive speech codes on their campuses, including the FIRE Speakers Bureau, our Guides to Student Rights on Campus, and advice on how other students have successfully helped to revise campus speech codes. As a result, our members have penned editorials in their campus newspapers, met with administrators to discuss problematic policies, and encouraged their fellow students to get involved in speech code reform. For example:
- Christe Thompson, a FIRE co-op, wrote here on The Torch earlier this month about her efforts to help revise speech codes at Drexel University this year.
- Nico Perrino, a former FIRE intern and CFN member at Indiana University-Bloomington (IU), has been a staunch defender of student rights at IU. Nico is currently the chair of a student government committee dedicated to reforming IU's speech codes.
- Kenny Tan, another former FIRE intern and CFN member, has started a policy revision campaign at Vanderbilt University. Using resources from the CFN, Kenny has been writing op-eds, meeting with administrators, bringing FIRE speakers to campus, and serving on committees and panels to emphasize the importance of student rights to his peers.
Two CFN members saw their reform efforts come to fruition when Arizona State University (ASU) and James Madison University (JMU) achieved FIRE's coveted "green light" rating this year. Kelly Jemison, a JMU alumna who worked with her campus group, Madison Liberty, to achieve the necessary policy changes, wrote a compelling piece on The Torch about the challenges, setbacks, and ultimate rewards of working towards speech code revision. As she wrote, the struggle for speech code reform is long and arduous, but their reforms at JMU and ASU ensured that thousands of students will enjoy a freer campus environment for years to come and that students at other schools, inspired by their success, will hopefully decide to pursue similar campaigns of their own.
Other CFN members taught fellow students about their rights in 2011 by organizing public events highlighting free speech issues on campus. As we mentioned above, this was a very successful year for the FIRE Speakers Bureau, largely thanks to the many student and faculty CFN members responsible for planning these campus appearances. One outstanding student, Brandon Wasicsko, organized a FIRE speech not just on his own campus (Florida Gulf Coast University), but at five other schools in Florida as well. In total, FIRE speakers made 50 campus and conference appearances in 2011.
"Free speech walls"—events at which a physical wall is erected on campus and covered in paper, and students are invited to write whatever they want—were another popular and effective event for CFN members in 2011. These events, hosted by CFN members like Michelle Fields at Pepperdine University, Andrew Kaluza at University of Texas San Antonio, Karina Zannat at American University, Moriah Costa at Arizona State University and Morgan Freeman at Sam Houston State University (SHSU), brought campus attention to the issue of free speech. Sometimes, the walls themselves sparked controversies: at Pepperdine, an offended student tore down the free speech wall; and at SHSU, the wall was vandalized by a professor with a box cutter. Fortunately, students at both schools were galvanized by these brazen acts of censorship and stood together to denounce the censors.
In addition to our online resources and campus events, the CFN also provides educational opportunities for students each year. FIRE's summer internship program offers a ten-week immersion in free speech at FIRE's Philadelphia office for a handful of undergraduates and law students each year. One of us (Jaclyn) is a former intern herself, and we have both been impressed by what FIRE interns have accomplished in 2011: organizing FIRE speeches, writing op-ed pieces for publication in student and national press, and running reform campaigns on several campuses. For those who cannot commit to a full summer at FIRE, the annual CFN Conference is an opportunity for students to come together with their peers from across the country to learn about campus rights and how to defend them. Many of the students listed above for their accomplishments in 2011 are CFN Conference alums. We are looking forward to announcing the dates and speaker lineup for the 2012 CFN Conference next month.
2011 has truly been a remarkable year for free speech advocacy on America's campuses. We, the CFN staff, want to thank all of the students and faculty who stood up for free speech on their campuses this year. We have been heartened by your dedication and accomplishments, and can't wait to work with you in 2012!
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| Posted by Lyzi Diamond and Jaclyn Hall on December 29, 2011, at 5:18 PM
Marquette University Threatens Academic Freedom with Chilling Investigation of Classroom Speech
December 29, 2011
Over at the blog Marquette Warrior, John McAdams provides a good example of how unwarranted investigations of campus speech can cause a deeply problematic "chilling effect" at a university. Universities must not pursue investigations of protected expression just because someone submits a complaint; as soon as it is clear that the expression in question is protected speech, the inquiry must end, even if there are other factual disputes. Prolonging the investigation tells everyone on campus that the university will pursue charges against you no matter how frivolous or malicious the complaint. The likely result is that people self-censor and keep their mouths shut rather than risk such investigation and a possible punishment.
It seems that Marquette University, where McAdams is a professor, made just such a mistake this month. According to McAdams, his introductory course in American politics discusses alleged media bias and takes an anti-feminist perspective:
Ambiguous sexual encounters, often fueled by alcohol, are defined as "rape" by feminist researchers, but not defined that way by purported victims.
We point out that feminists insist that if a women consents to sex under the influence of alcohol, she has been raped. [...] Often, some guy who hasn't yet learned that, in academia, he's not supposed to question any feminist claim, will raise his hand in our class and ask "suppose the guy has been drinking too? Why didn't she rape him?"
We always respond, sarcastically "you've got to look at this from the feminist point of view. Males are the oppressor class, and women the victim class. So of course the guy is responsible."We typically add "if you wake up in the morning and ask ‘what in the world did I do?' you haven't been raped. If you've been raped you feel violated. If it requires a feminist political activist to explain to you how what happened was rape, you weren't raped."
In response, someone complained using the "Ethics Point" hot line Marquette had set up for people to privately report illegal financial activity (which this classroom discussion certainly was not). The complaint (as reported by McAdams) was that the material in class was "demeaning to rape victims" and that "rape is a serious problem on campus, and thus we [in the course] were engaging in ‘harassment based on gender.'"
Marquette has no basis, consistent with free speech and academic freedom, to punish anyone for making a vigorous argument in class, even if some perceived that argument as "demeaning to rape victims." Nevertheless, Provost John Pauly directed McAdams' department chair to pursue the investigation. McAdams writes:
Faculty have a right to disagree with any political movement - including feminists. And social science faculty have a right to debunk bogus social science statistics. ... [T]he complaint should have been dismissed immediately. Taking the complaint absolutely at face value, we did nothing but disagree with feminist claims about date rape, something clearly protected by the canons of academic freedom.
That's quite right. Marquette, like most private universities, promises students and faculty members that it is the kind of university that supports free speech and academic freedom. Marquette's Student Handbook, for instance, notes:
Yet by pursuing this investigation, Marquette is letting a single student entangle a professor in disciplinary proceedings simply due to protected classroom expression. How many professors at Marquette are now going to steer clear of sensitive topics just to avoid an Ethics Point investigation?It is clearly inevitable, and indeed essential, that the spirit of inquiry and challenge that the university seeks to encourage will produce many conflicts of ideas, opinions and proposals for action.
Marquette has had free speech failings in the past, too, such as when it required a graduate student to remove no less than a humorous Dave Barry quote from his office door: "As Americans we must always remember that we all have a common enemy, an enemy that is dangerous, powerful, and relentless. I refer, of course, to the federal government." At Marquette, this language was deemed so "patently offensive" that it could not be posted on the door. (Here's Dave Barry himself speaking about it in a FIRE video.)
Once again, it seems that Marquette draws the line at offensiveness in a way completely at odds with what academic freedom and free speech should and do permit.
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| Posted by Adam Kissel on December 29, 2011, at 3:35 PM
#1 Reason to Donate to FIRE in 2011
December 29, 2011
In the past two weeks, FIRE has been reviewing our many achievements of 2011 and counting down some of the top reasons to support us this year. You've heard about changes in the legal landscape and media reaction to the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights' April 4 "Dear Colleague" letter, read the two most egregious speech codes we encountered this year, and celebrated a banner year for our defense programs and outreach projects. Not only are such efforts representative of FIRE's work this year, but they are also key examples of our broader mission to change the culture through systematic reform—the #1 reason to support FIRE this year.
Together with our work defending individuals whose liberty has been threatened and educating the public about their rights, FIRE works to reverse the culture of censorship on campus and restore universities to their vital roles as marketplaces of ideas. Our principled defense of free expression, nonpartisan nature, expert staff, and effective voice have made us a unique and powerful force on campus—one that continues to have a real impact with real victories.
FIRE knows that so long as dissent is not allowed on our nation's campuses—or ceases to exist because of the fear of punishment—higher education, and in turn our democracy, are at risk. Whether one's primary concern is diversity of opinion on campus, structural reform, grade inflation, lack of due process, freedom of conscience, or the decline of academic rigor, no real higher education reform can enjoy success if the freedom to dissent is not first protected and the culture on campus transformed.
And so, FIRE is fighting for a collegiate culture that respects and values the First Amendment by working for systematic change. Our educational initiatives and public outreach efforts are key parts of this work, inspiring thousands of students and citizens to learn more about rights on campus and how to defend them. Our defense work guarantees that schools know the risks of censoring speech, and our public awareness project ensures that violations of fundamental rights on campus get the shame they deserve while efforts to restore rights receive praise. Most importantly, FIRE's reputation, knowledge, and efficacy form a foundation that will help us truly transform our campuses.
In the coming year, FIRE plans to use our unique position to advance this systematic reform, and we need your support. As we close out 2011, please consider donating today. Your support can help make FIRE's voice even stronger in the battle over freedom on campus.
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| Posted by Bridget Sweeney on December 29, 2011, at 12:22 PM
Tens of Thousands Watch FIRE's New ‘Firefly' Video
December 28, 2011
Barely a day after its launch, FIRE's new video has already been viewed well over 25,000 times! Thanks to links from io9, Instapundit, Forbes, Hot Air, geekology, Geeks of Doom, reddit, and more, the new video has taken off!
The new video, Don't Mess with Firefly! How SciFi Fans Made a Campus Safe for Free Speech, details FIRE's work in defense of Professor Jim Miller of the University of Wisconsin-Stout. Miller faced censorship and threats of criminal charges from campus officials for his posters celebrating Joss Whedon's acclaimed sci-fi television series Firefly and condemning fascism. The video also features an interview with legendary sci-fi author Neil Gaiman, who alerted his 1.7 million Twitter followers to Professor Miller's unjust ordeal.
FIRE's October 2011 victory in the case received international attention, and our new video is already proving to be a hit of similar proportions. But don't take my word for it-check the video out for yourself, and pass it on.
One last thing: Prizes.org is awarding $500 in prizes to the best tweets about FIRE's Firefly victory. Get the details here. We've received some good entries already, so be sure to submit yours!
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| Posted by William Creeley on December 28, 2011, at 5:14 PM
Reason #2 to Donate to FIRE in 2011
December 28, 2011
Yesterday, we heard from Bridget about some of the individual students and professors FIRE has worked to defend this past year. Here's reason #2 you should support FIRE this holiday season:
FIRE nips college censorship in the bud by educating students about the basic rights afforded to them as Americans. By giving them the power and know-how to embrace the ideals of free speech, due process, and religious liberty, FIRE encourages students to be their own advocates for campus liberty.
Educating students about their constitutional rights is a critical part of FIRE's mission. By arming students with the resources and knowledge to recognize violations of individual liberty, FIRE is empowering a generation of students to fight campus censors and to defend freedom of speech. In 2011, FIRE's commitment to educating campus community members about their freedoms has been very successful—so successful, in fact, that our student outreach program won the Templeton Freedom Award.
FIRE's "Freedom in Academia" essay contest, which is part of our "Know Before You Go" initiative, further contributed to that success by expanding the impact of our student outreach program far outside the college campus. This year was particularly noteworthy, as FIRE received entries from a strong pool of more than 2,500 high school students who took the time to watch two eye-opening FIRE documentaries and author essays about the importance of free speech on college campuses. Thanks to our generous donors, FIRE was able to bolster our promotional efforts for the contest in 2011, which resulted in a 75% increase in essay submissions from last year!
FIRE also helps current college students do what they do best—learn! Thanks to the support of our donors, FIRE has taken our popular series of Guides to Student Rights on Campus to the next level. In 2011, FIRE distributed copies of our Guides at campus lectures, conferences, through the mail, online, and even in college classrooms. We've also been working on a ramped-up version of our Guide to Free Speech on Campus, which will feature new information and contextual scenarios about online speech, as well as a completely new look. (Stay tuned to The Torch for its release in early 2012.) The Guides are a critical part of our educational work, providing students with the background knowledge they need to defend their rights.
FIRE depends on the generosity of our donors to ensure we have the tools necessary to establish a higher education environment where robust student rights are the rule, not the exception. Gifts to FIRE are 100% tax-deductible, so join us in our efforts to spread liberty by making a donation today. Stay tuned to The Torch for Reason #1 to donate to FIRE later this week, and remember, there are only three days left to give to FIRE this year!
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| Posted by Alison Meyer on December 28, 2011, at 4:55 PM
Talking ‘Firefly’ in ‘Daily Caller,’ Greg’s Sci-Fi Roots Show
December 28, 2011
FIRE President Greg Lukianoff is a self-described Firefly "fanboy"—and in a column today for The Daily Caller, he talks about how his love for the sci-fi TV series and his First Amendment advocacy intersected in FIRE's recent win at the University of Wisconsin-Stout:
Check out Greg's whole column here!As I reported back in September, a professor at the University of Wisconsin–Stout, James Miller, was threatened with potential criminal charges just for posting a quote from the beloved but short-lived sci-fi classic Firefly outside his door and, then, for having the temerity to object to the university's heavy-handed treatment of him and the poster.
Now, my organization, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), has come out with a new video explaining this remarkable case, in which I abandon my usual lawyerly suits and ties to reveal my Firefly fanboy self. We are absolutely thrilled that the famous novelist, comic book author, and sci-fi and fantasy legend Neil Gaiman agreed to sit down for an interview about why he thinks this case is ridiculous and why he chose to publicize the professor's shoddy treatment to his 1.6 million Twitter fans.
While the case is funny if only because it is so ridiculous and the university should have known better than to censor a quote from a show whose rabid and diehard fans even have a special name for themselves (we are "Browncoats," by the way), it very nearly was not funny at all. When power-tripping administrators are accusing you of making threats to the entire community, tearing down your posters, and demanding to meet with you in person, your career may be on the line. I am quite sure that if it hadn't been for the combined efforts of FIRE, droves of Firefly fans, and people like Gaiman and Firefly stars Nathan Fillion and Adam Baldwin, this case would've ended very badly for Miller.
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| Posted by William Creeley on December 28, 2011, at 4:27 PM
A Roundup of 2011’s Free Speech Case Law
December 28, 2011
While FIRE has won numerous victories this year in working to protect individual rights on college campuses, 2011 was a mixed year for the defense of students' rights by the courts. Importantly, this year highlighted divergent theories of the First Amendment rights of students off campus. While some courts have held that schools are limited by the First Amendment in what they can regulate off campus, other courts this year held that things students say off campus can have almost unlimited disciplinary consequences on campus. This is a troubling trend, outlined in several cases below.
In June, the United States District Court for the District of Colorado held in Mink v. Knox, 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 59380 (D. Colo. 2011) that a prosecutor who authorized an illegal search of the home of a student was not entitled to qualified immunity and was thus personally liable under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for her unconstitutional actions. We have blogged about the implications of this case here on The Torch, but let's quickly revisit the facts of the case: A student posted a satirical photo of a professor online, never expecting to have his home searched, to have his computer seized, or to spend a week in jail. All of this happened, however, as a result of one overzealous prosecutor. Thankfully, when a government official violates a "clearly established" constitutional right, under § 1983 that official no longer enjoys the protection of Eleventh Amendment immunity, and may be sued in his or her personal capacity and found liable for monetary damages. In this case, the prosecutor should have known better than to violate clearly established First Amendment rights: The United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit held in Mink v. Knox that it is "clearly established in this circuit that speech, such as parody and rhetorical hyperbole, which cannot reasonably be taken as stating actual fact, enjoys the full protection of the First Amendment and therefore cannot constitute the crime of criminal libel for purposes of a probable cause determination." This rights violation ended up costing the prosecutor a cool $425,000.
Also in June, twin victories for student speech were handed down by the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. In the two cases of Layshock v. Hermitage School District, 650 F.3d 205 (3d Cir. 2011) and J.S. v. Blue Mountain School District, 650 F.3d 915 (3d Cir. 2011), each of which involved students who were disciplined for creating satirical MySpace profiles mocking their school principals, the Third Circuit held that schools cannot "reach into a child's home and control his/her actions there to the same extent that it can control that child when he/she participates in school sponsored activities." The school districts have filed a joint petition for certiorari before the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Court has the opportunity here to advise lower courts as to the scope of First Amendment protections for student off-campus speech.
If the Court takes one or both of these cases, the ensuing ruling would likely impact student rights beyond the K-12 level, as lower courts too often fail to recognize the bright-line distinction between rights enjoyed by K-12 students and rights enjoyed by college students. In July, the Minnesota Court of Appeals held in Tatro v. University of Minnesota that a public university could legitimately regulate off-campus speech (in this case, Facebook posts) where such posts fail the test outlined in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, 393 U.S. 503 (1969) by "materially and substantially disrupt[ing] the work and discipline of the university." The court's ruling not only expands the scope of Tinker off-campus (Tinker, on its facts and in its holding, would seem to only permit speech restrictions "in school"), but it applies Tinker to university students (while the language and facts of Tinker only seem applicable to K-12 schooling). We have blogged about Tatro before. The case is currently on appeal to the Minnesota Supreme Court, and FIRE has joined the amici curiae brief of the Student Press Law Center in support of student Amanda Tatro. This case will be one to watch in the coming year.
Also in July, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit issued its opinion in Kowalski v. Berkeley County Schools, 652 F.3d 565 (4th Cir. 2011). We have written about Kowalski before, and, like Tatro, Kowalski demonstrates an expansion of Tinker to off-campus student conduct. In Kowalski, a high school student's MySpace page was found to violate the anti-bullying code of her school. With no factual analysis, the court simply held that "targeted, defamatory" speech causes "actual or nascent" substantial disruption, as does "unpunished misbehavior," because that "can have a snowballing effect." This poor analysis by the Fourth Circuit may give secondary school teachers and administrators carte blanche to regulate speech off campus.
In August, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit decided D.J.M. v. Hannibal Public School District No. 60, 647 F.3d 754 (8th Cir. 2011), once again applying Tinker to regulate off-campus speech. We have previously blogged about this case as well. Student D.J.M. was suspended when another student forwarded instant messages (IMs) to school officials; these IMs were deemed a "true threat" to school security, and thus unprotected by the First Amendment. The court also held that even if the IMs were not true threats, the school could punish the speech as reasonably foreseeable to cause a substantial disruption. Under the rule in D.J.M., if Student B reads something Student A writes on the Internet and Student B acts out, Student A may be punished. This is a dangerous precedent.
Also in August, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit applied last year's controversial Supreme Court decision in Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, 130 S. Ct. 2971 (2010) to the case of Alpha Delta v. Reed, 648 F.3d 790 (9th Cir. 2011). In this troubling, but not unexpected application of Martinez, the Ninth Circuit upheld San Diego State University's denial of official recognition to a Christian fraternity and sorority based upon their violation of SDSU's non-discrimination policy in requiring that their members share their religious beliefs. We at FIRE have previously noted: "[Under Martinez w]e expect devoutly religious groups-especially evangelical Christian groups-and other belief-based groups holding minority or dissenting viewpoints to be confronted with derecognition. Targeted groups will face a terrible choice: Either relinquish control of the group's core message and allow all students, regardless of belief, the opportunity to obtain voting membership and leadership positions, or leave campus." While the precise scope of Martinez is narrow, until the Supreme Court clarifies the issue, universities will continue to trample upon student associational rights.
In October, the Supreme Court denied certiorari in Rock for Life - UMBC v. Hrabowski, 411 Fed. Appx 541 (4th Cir. 2010), avoiding a potentially important issue related to student challenges of sexual harassment policies and other speech codes. The court also ducked the partner case of Lopez v. Candaele, 630 F.3d 775 (9th Cir. 2010) back in May. Under traditional rules of "standing," challenges to university speech codes (even where speech codes are couched as "harassment" codes) are able to be brought by students if the codes might dissuade students from speaking out, "chilling" their First Amendment rights. However, in both of these cases, the respective Courts of Appeals held that the plaintiffs had suffered insufficient injury to allow their cases to go forward, due to the lack of "concrete," speech-chilling action on the part of university administrations. In Lopez, a professor repeatedly referred to a university code of conduct while he attempted to silence a student about the student's stance on marriage. In Hrabowski, a university lawyer mentioned in a meeting related to a proposed anti-abortion poster that students might be "emotionally harassed" by the poster-implying that the university prohibitions on sexual harassment might apply to ban it from campus. The facts of both of these cases demonstrate specific actions by a university that could chill the speech of students, but the appellate courts nevertheless found that the student plaintiffs could not challenge the codes that threatened their right to free speech. These decisions on the issue of standing, therefore, represent a hurdle for students seeking to vindicate their First Amendment rights on campus, and are at odds with the relaxed standing requirements typically found in First Amendment cases.
At the close of 2011, the extent to which universities and K-12 schools can regulate the off-campus speech of their students is still very much unsettled. In 2012, we can look forward to the decision of the Supreme Court as to the certiorari petition in Layshock and Blue Mountain, which might provide some much-needed guidance on the issue. Of course, we'll continue to fight for student rights here at FIRE, and we'll keep you posted on all legal developments.
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| Posted on December 28, 2011, at 2:08 PM
New FIRE Video: How 'Firefly' Fans Saved Free Speech on Campus
December 28, 2011
Yesterday, FIRE released our newest short video, Don't Mess with Firefly: How SciFi Fans Made a Campus Safe for Free Speech. The video, which features an interview with legendary author Neil Gaiman, is a lighthearted look at how the University of Wisconsin-Stout backed down from its censorship of Professor James Miller's posters, one featuring a quote from the science fiction show Firefly, and the other condemning fascism. Stout stood by its actions until FIRE's advocacy campaign on Miller's behalf inspired Gaiman, along with Firefly actors Nathan Fillion and Adam Baldwin, to take to Twitter to encourage their millions of followers to contact the university with their support of free speech.
In celebration of this victory for free speech on campus, which was made possible by the power of free speech in social media, FIRE is working with the new website Prizes.org to offer $500 in prizes for four people who compose the best "tweets" promoting the video. This contest is Prizes.org's Featured Contest of the week. Visit FIRE's contest page on Prizes.org to submit your entry for a chance to win—and please send this along to your friends so they can suggest tweets as well!
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| Posted on December 28, 2011, at 9:47 AM
Speech Codes of the Year: 2011
December 27, 2011
Each month, FIRE singles out a particularly reprehensible campus speech code for our Speech Code of the Month designation. While all of 2011's Speech Codes of the Month flagrantly violated students' and faculty members' right to free expression, two of them were so egregious that they deserve special mention as 2011's Speech Codes of the Year.
- University of Florida. According to the University of Florida's Student Rights and Responsibilities policy, "Organizations or individuals that adversely upset the delicate balance of communal living will be subject to disciplinary action by the University." If there has ever been a textbook example of unconstitutional vagueness, this is it-there is absolutely no way for students to know what this policy actually prohibits, so they can only guess at what speech or expression might lead to discipline. What's more, the policy is painfully paternalistic. Discipline for anyone who upsets the "delicate balance of communal living" among a group of adults? Policies like this one send a powerful message that students are too weak to live with freedom, and that the appropriate response to even the most minor offense is to run to the administration instead of directly confronting and responding to those who give offense by their words or actions. Twenty-year-olds who, instead of enrolling in college, have entered the workforce and rent a house with a group of other people must negotiate the "delicate balance of communal living" without assistance from Big Brother, and twenty-year-old college students are capable of doing so as well.
- California State University–Chico. Students are not the only ones affected by campus speech codes; some codes apply to faculty members as well, compromising their ability to teach controversial or sensitive material without fear of punishment. At CSU-Chico, faculty commit sexual harassment if they "implicitly devalue students for their gender or sexual orientation." According to university policy, examples of this type of harassment include "reinforcement of sexist stereotypes through subtle, often unintentional means," including the use of "stereotypic generalizations." Also prohibited is the "continual use of generic masculine terms such as to refer to people of both sexes or references to both men and women as necessarily heterosexual." As would be expected at a major university, CSU-Chico offers many courses that necessarily involve sensitive issues relating to race, gender, and sexual orientation. Faculty members addressing such topics in the classroom at CSU-Chico risk violating this policy when discussing controversial but wholly germane subjects. And FIRE's concern over such violations is anything but hypothetical: since our inception, we have handled all too many cases involving faculty members who faced discipline for classroom expression that should have been wholly protected by the principles of free speech and academic freedom.
Since FIRE's Speech Code of the Month became a regular feature in June 2005, 31 universities have fully revised the policies that earned them the dubious distinction, including three schools awarded Speech Code of the Month in 2011. We hope that in 2012, more universities–including those named here–will make the changes necessary to give their students and professors the freedom they deserve. Happy holidays, and look for 2012's first Speech Code of the Month in January!
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| Posted by Samantha Harris on December 27, 2011, at 12:30 PM
Reason #3 to Donate to FIRE in 2011
December 27, 2011
When looking back at a year gone by, FIRE often recalls our accomplishments by the numbers, marking a year by each victory won, each speech delivered, or each op-ed published. This year, those accomplishments are certainly worthy of celebratory retrospection. But, in looking back at 2011, it is also important to reflect on the individuals FIRE has defended. After all, FIRE's work is driven by our determination to defend the individual rights of each and every student and faculty member who comes to us for help. In the face of the powerful higher education industry, these individuals are the true monuments of FIRE's mission-and one of the reasons we need your continued support.
Over the next several days, we will count down some of the most compelling reasons to support FIRE. Today, I'd like to offer reason #3:
FIRE is the only organization committed to working diligently to secure the rights of students and professors on an individual basis when their rights are wrongly or unlawfully denied, and our work has helped save the professional careers and academic futures of hundreds.
Over the past twelve years, FIRE has helped countless individuals, and this year was no different. The year started with Syracuse University law student Len Audaer facing expulsion under absurd charges of harassment for his alleged involvement in an anonymous blog satirizing life in law school. When Len came to FIRE for help, we quickly began a public campaign and the school was forced to back down from its unlawful actions. Without FIRE, Len, a smart young man brimming with potential, may well have been expelled from law school and falsely labeled as a harasser.
Unfortunately, students like Len aren't the only targets of university administrators. FIRE also strongly advocates for faculty members whose careers are at risk. For example, this year we continued to defend Professor James Enstrom, who was let go from his job at UCLA after 34 years of service because his research did not align with the "mission" of his department. Enstrom was targeted after he challenged research that the California legislature used to enact regulatory policies governing diesel emissions by pointing out that the lead "scientist" behind the study supporting the new policies had purchased his credentials from a diploma mill. Months later, the battle for Enstrom's future rages on, but FIRE's work has helped ensure that Enstrom has yet to lose his livelihood.
FIRE also came to the defense of Roman Caple, who is a prime example of a student targeted by overzealous administrators for publicly criticizing those in authority. Caple was denied the right to participate in graduation ceremonies at St. Augustine's College in Raleigh, North Carolina because of a single comment he posted on the college's Facebook page criticizing how the school handled its cleanup after a tornado and encouraging students to make informed arguments about the matter. While his family will never have the chance to watch with pride as their son accepts his diploma among his peers, FIRE has done our part to make sure Saint Augustine's College doesn't repeat this disgrace.
These are just a few examples of the brave individuals who have turned to FIRE this year when their academic careers, professional lives, and personal reputations were targeted. They are among the concrete examples of the significance of our mission and the urgency of our work, and we couldn't have helped them without the continued support of our generous donors. As the only nonprofit in the nation dedicated to preserving liberty on campus, FIRE needs your help in 2012. Please consider donating today, and stay tuned to The Torch for more reasons to support FIRE!
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| Posted by Bridget Sweeney on December 27, 2011, at 10:19 AM
OCR's April 4 Letter and Opposition in the National Media
December 26, 2011
As most FIRE supporters probably know, the single event that dominated our advocacy in 2011 was the April 4 "Dear Colleague" letter that the federal Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) sent to virtually every college in the country. The letter, presented as an attempt to address the real problem of sexual assault on campus, promulgated several deeply troubling ways of dealing with the issue, including requiring universities to lower their standard of proof in sexual harassment cases (of which assault is considered a subset) to the lowest possible standard, and imposing something that looks very much like, and shares similar problems with, the judicially forbidden practice of "double jeopardy." All the while, OCR failed to address the havoc that poorly defined and opportunistically applied "harassment codes" have imposed on our campuses.
Indeed, OCR engaged in willful blindness with regard to the free speech issues, given that all you have to do is look at the cases challenging speech codes over the last 30 years to see how abuses campuses abuse "harassment" to justify speech codes and punish speech that is clearly protected. By failing to even mention the First Amendment in its 19-page letter, OCR has opened the door to a revival of the speech code wars of the last 30 years, virtually all of which ended in repeated failure for universities as administrators repeatedly attempted to abuse harassment rationales to punish speech they simply disliked.
Furthermore, OCR's position that sexual harassment and assault are offenses so serious that we don't even need to be all that certain that someone actually committed them goes against the ideals of a country that values the idea of "innocent until proven guilty." As FIRE has repeated over and over again, reducing due process is not the way to increase justice. Finally, it is dangerously misguided and naïve for OCR to place such faith in the proposition that universities are well-suited to the role of policing such complex, often criminal cases. Has news of the scandals that have cropped up this year at universities as different as Penn State, Florida A&M, and Syracuse University—not to mention the debacle of the Duke lacrosse case several years ago—not yet made it across the Beltway?
The April 4 letter represented a dramatic switch in OCR's attitude towards allowing colleges and universities to define their own rules for dealing with sexual and racial discrimination. Previously, in particular in 2003, OCR had taken steps to make sure that harassment would not continue to be abused by campuses as an all-purpose weapon against merely offensive or politically incorrect speech on campus, which it had been since at least the 1980s. (If you check out our FIRE case archive you will see it comes up time and time again.) Also, OCR previously allowed a good deal of freedom to universities in deciding their procedures for dealing with both sexual harassment and assault cases. The April 4 letter was a major reversal on both of these fronts.
In addition to our May 5 response to OCR—which OCR still has yet to answer, over seven months later—we have discussed OCR's Dear Colleague Letter extensively on our website. I certainly recommend that you review the blogs and articles written by FIRE staff explaining the flaws in the April 4 letter, as well as our FAQ. Our extensive coverage addresses the OCR letter and its impact in depth. (For example, as a preliminary matter, it's not even clear that the OCR had the power to impose such sweeping changes.)
Fighting a regulation that, no matter how misguided, claimed as its primary goal the reduction of sexual assault—one of the most vile crimes a person can commit—is not a campaign that is necessarily going to be easily understood or very popular. That is why we are so thankful to have the help and support of so many brilliant and thoughtful writers, commentators, and scholars to explain to the public why the April 4 letter poses so many potential legal, moral, and, of course, practical problems for fairness, justice, and basic rights on campus. The following is an abbreviated list of some of the articles explaining what was wrong with the April 4 letter. As you can see, many come from very different political points of view, some are by FIRE staff (including myself), some are by long time friends of the organization, and some, like FIRE chairman Harvey Silverglate's and Peter Berkowitz's pieces in The Wall Street Journal or our own Samantha Harris' piece in the New York Post reached a very, very large number of readers. I would particularly like to thank Hans Bader for his aggressive and incisive work; he has been on this issue from the very beginning and has pursued it with passion, moral force, and legal clarity.
· Hans Bader, "Education Department shreds presumption of innocence in April 4 letter," The Washington Examiner, April 8, 2011
· Hans Bader, "Education Department undermines accuracy, due process in sexual harassment cases," The Washington Examiner, April 14, 2011
· Peter Berkowitz, "Is Yale University Sexist?," The Wall Street Journal, April 16, 2011
· Wendy Kaminer, "The SaVE Act: Trading Liberty for Security on Campus," The Atlantic, April 25, 2011
· Hans Bader, "Falsely accused teachers and students will be harmed by new Education Department policy," The Washington Examiner, May 16, 2011
· Mona Charen, "The Tyranny of Hurt Feelings," National Review Online, May 20, 2011
· Harvey Silverglate and Kyle Smealie, "What Yale's President Should Have Said about the Frat Boys," Minding The Campus, May 23, 2011
· Greg Lukianoff, "Yale, the Department of Education, and the looming free speech crisis," The Daily Caller, May 24, 2011
· Christina Hoff Sommers, "In Making Campuses Safe for Women, a Travesty of Justice for Men," The Chronicle of Higher Education, June 5, 2011
· Michael Barone, "Feds crack down on campus flirting and sex jokes," The Washington Examiner, June 21, 2011
· Harvey Silverglate, "Yes Means Yes--Except on Campus," The Wall Street Journal, July 15, 2011
· Samantha Harris, "The feds' mad assault on campus sex," New York Post, July 20, 2011
· Peter Wood, "Kudos to the AAUP," The Chronicle of Higher Education, August 4, 2011
· Cynthia Bell, "Rape should be tough to prove," The Philadelphia Inquirer, August 14, 2011
· Caroline May, "American Association of University Professors expresses concern over Dept. of Education's new mandates," The Daily Caller, August 18, 2011
· Peter Berkowitz, "College Rape Accusations and the Presumption of Male Guilt," The Wall Street Journal, August 20, 2011
· Adam Kissel "Standing Up for Due Process on Campus = ‘Sticking Up for Penises Everywhere?,'" The Huffington Post, August 30, 2011
· Robert Smith, "On Sexual Harassment and Title IX," Real Clear Politics, August 30, 2011
· Sandy Hingston, "The New Rules of College Sex," Philadelphia, September 2011
· David Deerson, "More Likely Than Not: The Office of Civil Rights' Encroachment on Due Process," Students for Liberty, September 1, 2011
· Editorial, "OCR guilty of lowering conviction standards," The Delaware County Daily Times, September 1, 2011
· Robert Shibley, "How federal regulations are making college ‘risk management' lawyers rich," The Daily Caller, September 2, 2011
· Stacy Teicher Khadaroo, "Feds warn colleges: handle sexual assault reports properly," The Christian Science Monitor, September 2, 2011
· Hans Bader, "Senate Bill Would Further Undermine Due Process on Campus," OpenMarket.org, October 24, 2011
· Anonymous, "An Open Letter to OCR," Inside Higher Ed, October 28, 2011
· Cathy Young, "The Politics of Campus Sexual Assault," Real Clear Politics, November 6, 2011
· Caroline May, "Sen. Leahy removes potential threat to due process from Violence Against Women Act," The Daily Caller, November 15, 2011
Despite these powerful objections to the April 4 letter, coming from people as politically diverse and well respected as Wendy Kaminer and Michael Barone, OCR has still not even bothered to respond to the concerns FIRE laid out in the open letter we sent back in April. But the issues of free speech, due process, and the rights of the accused cannot be so easily wished away. We will continue to raise awareness about the dangerously flawed new direction OCR has taken, and we will not stop fighting until OCR recognizes that Americans will not long tolerate an institution that shows little understanding of principles as fundamental as "freedom of speech" and "innocent until proven guilty."
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| Posted by Greg Lukianoff on December 26, 2011, at 1:01 PM
Happy Holidays from FIRE
December 24, 2011
As we come to the end of another year, FIRE would like to wish its friends and supporters a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, (or another holiday of your choice!) and all around wonderful holiday season. We're grateful for the generosity and support of our donors and allies. FIRE accomplished more than ever this year, but we also met some new challenges to individual rights on campus. We hope you'll stay with us throughout next year as we continue to work to make the dominant culture on America's campuses one that celebrates our freedom to think rather than one that invents new ways to close students' minds.
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| Posted by Robert Shibley on December 24, 2011, at 11:47 AM
FIRE's Bonilla in 'Daily Caller' on Auburn's Ban on a Ron Paul Poster
December 23, 2011
FIRE's Peter Bonilla has an op-ed in the Daily Caller about Auburn University's choice to engage in viewpoint censorship when it told student Eric Philips that he had to take down the Ron Paul poster in his window while allowing all kinds of other window hangings. This despite its claim that it has a "total ban" (Auburn's words) on window hangings. Peter writes:
One might describe this policy as restrictive and unnecessary, but at least it's fair. Everyone gets silenced equally, right? Yet FIRE has photos (provided by Philips) which convincingly show that Auburn generally made little effort to enforce this policy. And why would it? It's a pointless policy that almost seems intended to annoy students. Hanging signs in dorm room windows is standard fare on college campuses across America.
Head over to the Daily Caller for more
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| Posted by Robert Shibley on December 23, 2011, at 2:50 PM
2011 A Year of Big Wins for FIRE’s Individual Rights Education Program
December 23, 2011
FIRE celebrated several significant victories with our Individual Rights Education Program in 2011. This year saw a number of important university policy changes as well as other positive developments for individual rights on campus.
FIRE’s Individual Rights Education Program (IREP) encompasses our efforts to educate students, faculty, and the public about the abuses of liberty taking place on college campuses across the nation, and to inform them about what they can do to fight back. Working with these constituencies—and in many cases, directly with college administrators themselves—IREP aims to achieve the necessary changes in university speech policies so that these policies are in line with their institutions’ free speech obligations. By making sure that university policymakers have a proper understanding of student and faculty rights, IREP proactively seeks to prevent free speech abuses before they take place, and to thus make our nation’s college campuses freer places for the unbridled exchange of ideas.
Chief among IREP’s successes this year was converting two major universities, Arizona State University and James Madison University, to a “green light” rating in FIRE’s Spotlight database, meaning that they do not currently maintain any policies that imperil free speech.
In February, we announced that Arizona State University (ASU) had joined the “green light” club by eliminating an "Advertising and Posting" policy for student organizations that previously provided that all campus postings "must make reasonable effort to avoid demeaning, sexual or discriminatory portrayal of individuals or groups." Following a letter from FIRE, which pointed out that student groups taking unpopular views on controversial issues could easily run afoul of the policy, ASU reformed the policy to state that campus postings "should be consistent with ASU's policy of discouraging demeaning, sexual or discriminatory portrayal of individuals or groups." (Emphasis added.) By making this policy aspirational in nature, ASU ensured that it had no more speech codes remaining on the books. As a university with a total enrollment of more than 60,000 students, ASU’s conversion to “green light” made it the largest school to go green to date. This was an important victory for FIRE. In fact, we touted the move in a feature in The Huffington Post in May, entitled “The Seven Best Colleges For Free Speech.” ASU rightfully belonged on that list, a fact that was not lost on others.
In September, we were pleased to announce that James Madison University (JMU) had become the latest “green light” institution, joining fellow Virginia schools The College of William & Mary and the University of Virginia. JMU joined these distinguished ranks by revising three different speech codes: a policy prohibiting any speech that might "provoke" a violent reaction, creating the possibility of an impermissible “heckler’s veto”; a policy requiring that peaceful assemblies on campus be registered 48 hours ahead of time, which restricted the right to hold impromptu vigils, protests, and demonstrations; and a policy that made campus postings subject to administrators' interpretation of "good taste" and prohibited any "mention or representation of drugs or alcoholic beverages." This last policy prohibited, for instance, posting fliers advertising a debate on the drinking age or marijuana legalization, despite the clearly protected status of such expression. By working with FIRE to reform each of these policies, JMU commendably achieved a clean slate in terms of its campus speech policies, and became the 15th school in our Spotlight databse to reach a “green light” rating. (To find the full list of “green light” institutions, simply use the “Advanced Search” function in Spotlight and search for all schools with a “green light” rating.) JMU’s policy reforms were well received on its campus, and deservedly so.
It should be noted that neither of these successes would have been possible without the diligence of student activists working in conjunction with FIRE. At ASU, student and Campus Freedom Network (CFN) member Ross Kenyon worked hard to make the policy change happen, writing a letter to the editor in The State Press, ASU’s campus paper, among other efforts. Indeed, back in January, Ross was nominated as a finalist for Students for Liberty’s (SFL’s) “Student of the Year” award for his activism. Likewise, JMU alumna and CFN member Kelly Jemison played a key role in getting her school to a “green light,” working with administrators to make the necessary policy changes and, even after she graduated, making sure that her student group, Madison Liberty, maintained the effort. Kelly shared her insights about the process with students attending our annual CFN conference last summer, and we can only hope that other students are inspired to repeat her efforts on their own campuses.
In addition to the “green light” victories, in 2011 IREP saw nearly two years’ worth of policy drafting and revisions come to fruition at California’s Southwestern College (SWC). SWC infamously suspended three faculty members in 2009 for their presence at a peaceful campus demonstration, pursuant to the school’s unique (shall we say) “free speech patio” policy. While we took SWC to task publicly for its handling of that case, FIRE and the American Civil Liberties Union of San Diego & Imperial Counties also worked with SWC over the intervening two years to draft a policy that would not restrict free speech so severely to a tiny area of campus. After many iterations, a new policy was finally approved in September. SWC’s policy now specifies that the exercise of free speech will be subject "only to the content-neutral regulations necessary to fulfill the mission and obligations of the College District," and that public areas of the campus may be used "without a reservation." Most notably, of course, the revisions mean that free speech at SWC will no longer be limited solely to one patio. While a few problems remain with the policy—which FIRE has noted, prompting us to keep an eye on SWC’s practices toward free speech—the policy reform was certainly an improvement for student and faculty rights at SWC.
Also in September, FIRE and the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) convinced the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) to shelve a proposed electronic communications policy that would have sharply restricted the expressive rights of students and faculty. The controversial policy would have banned, among other things, electronic communications that "interfere with the mission of the University," "uses that violate other existing University and campus policies,” and “political campaigning.” In a joint letter with the AAUP, we warned that these provisions not only restricted a wide swath of protected speech and afforded too much discretion to administrators charged with enforcing them, but that the restriction on “political campaigning” in particular hearkened back to the University of Illinois’ systemwide ban on much political speech and activity just a few short years ago in 2008. Thankfully, UIUC decided to shelve the proposed policy, and to revisit the matter in light of the concerns expressed by FIRE and the AAUP. As we enter the new year, we await a new (and hopefully much improved) draft of the policy.
Speaking of the new year, and of political speech and activity on campus, I would be remiss if I did not mention one of IREP’s projects with potentially much bearing for 2012: our “Policy Statement on Political Activity on Campus 2012.” Released in November, our policy statement summarizes and clarifies the rights of university students and faculty members to engage in political speech and activity at both public and private campuses, and expresses the importance of allowing them to enjoy these rights in the marketplace of ideas. Given the confusion that often exists with respect to student and faculty political speech rights, we hope (as we did when releasing earlier versions of the policy statement in 2004 and 2008) that the statement will inform university administrators of the extent of these rights and clarify some of the questions that often linger in this area. Ultimately, we hope it will help to prevent the type of administrative abuses and restrictions of political activity we have seen too many times before.
As we move into 2012, FIRE hopes that our IREP work continues to make a difference on college and university campuses across the country!
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| Posted by Azhar Majeed on December 23, 2011, at 11:15 AM
KC Johnson Weighs in on 'Keeton' and More at 'Minding the Campus'
December 22, 2011
Over at Minding the Campus, KC Johnson has an excellent piece entitled "Emmer and Keeton-Two Terrible Decisions on Academic Freedom." As the title suggests, the piece is about the cases of Tom Emmer at Hamline University and Jennifer Keeton at Augusta State University.
Of particular note is Johnson's close read of last week's decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in Keeton v. Anderson-Wiley. While the decision upheld a denial of preliminary injunction on an "abuse of discretion" standard—and is thus arguably a procedural decision—the Eleventh Circuit did include some worrying dicta, which Johnson picks up:
[T]he court broadened its findings in two respects. First, the panel repeatedly maintained that ASU could justify its handling of Keeton by citing guidelines of the relevant national accrediting agency. In this instance, the ACA's guidelines (which included such provisions as "counselors must support their clients' welfare, promote their growth, respect their dignity, support their autonomy, and help them pursue their own goals for counseling") were eminently reasonable. But it's not hard to imagine national accrediting organizations adopting highly unreasonable standards: recall the demand of the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) to test all prospective schoolteachers for their "disposition to promote social justice." The implication of Keeton, then, is that (at least in the 11th Circuit) the free speech rights of Education students are now hostage to any future permutation of NCATE's standards.
This highlights an unsettled but important question of law. There are many examples similar to this case: a state government regulates a profession such as law, medicine, counseling, or funeral services, and requires that licenses in that profession only go to graduates of schools accredited by a delegated independent accreditor such as the American Bar Association or NCATE (the latter of whom FIRE took on several years ago in the situation KC mentions). That same state government runs public universities which are subject to those accreditation st, which standards an contain onerous conscience requirements and speech restrictions such as the one Johnson describes.
Since governments cannot restrict the speech rights of students directly with unlawful speech codes, why should they be able to do so through the backdoor, by appealing to "independent" accreditation requirements which the state government itself has sponsored?
You can read Johnson's whole piece over at Minding the Campus
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| Posted by Andrew Kloster on December 22, 2011, at 5:22 PM
Auburn University Bans Ron Paul Banner from Dorm Room Window
December 22, 2011
As we said in today's press release, Auburn University has ordered a Ron Paul for President campaign banner removed from the inside of a dorm room window while allowing students to display numerous other banners, stickers, and flags. Student Eric Philips, who was ordered to remove his sign last month, used his cell phone to gather photographic evidence of the double standard and came to FIRE for help.
"An unreasonable and pointless ban on all window displays is bad enough," said FIRE President Greg Lukianoff. "Yet it's obvious from the photos that Auburn has actually singled out Eric Philips' Ron Paul poster for removal. If Auburn is selectively banning only speech it deems controversial—or worse, political speech it simply doesn't like—freedom of expression is in grave danger at Auburn."
On November 7, Philips was ordered by his residence hall director to take down the Ron Paul sign he had recently placed in his window. Philips did so. In a conversation with student affairs administrator Nick Wiard about the issue on November 18, Wiard cited the newly adopted Auburn Housing and Residence Life policy 1.4.5, which states: "Hanging or displaying items such as flags, banners, decals, or signs out of or obstructing residence hall windows is prohibited."
Philips contacted FIRE, which sent a letter to Auburn President Jay Gogue on December 9, informing him of the unconstitutional double standard apparently in place at Auburn and of the evidence in FIRE's possession. FIRE wrote, "Such selective enforcement and viewpoint-based discrimination is untenable at Auburn, a public university bound by the First Amendment. Auburn must evenly enforce its policies on student expression."
FIRE's letter also reminded President Gogue that during the 2008 election season, the University of Texas at Austin attempted to enforce a similar policy banning all signs in residence hall windows. Two students were ordered to remove campaign signs from their windows or else be blocked from class registration. The resulting uproar led UT-Austin President William Powers Jr. to suspend the rule indefinitely, saying, "I believe that the free expression of ideas is crucial to our educational mission." The University of Alabama also abandoned a ban on window displays in 2003 after students protested the ban by hanging American flags all over a dormitory.
So far, Auburn's response has been disappointing. Auburn Assistant Vice President for Student Affairs Amy Hecht responded to FIRE on December 13, failing to acknowledge that what she called a "total ban" on window displays had been selectively enforced but insisting that Auburn is "committed to the consistent and nondiscriminatory enforcement of this policy."
As other universities have recognized, a total ban on window displays is an unjustifiable and unnecessary restraint on expression. Auburn has given no reason for its "total ban" on such displays, which are a part of campus culture at colleges across America. It's time for Auburn to admit that a ban on expression like this is not only wrong, it's ripe for abuse—and it's being abused.
If you'd like to tell Auburn President Jay Gogue how you feel about Auburn's attitude towards free expression, click on the link below!
TAKE ACTION: Tell President Gogue to respect students' right to free expression today!
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| Posted by Robert Shibley on December 22, 2011, at 4:03 PM
FIRE Speakers Delivered Message of Hope, Vigilance to Students on Campus in 2011
December 22, 2011
2011 marked the busiest year yet for FIRE’s Speakers Bureau. Through the Speakers Bureau program, students and faculty members from across the country can invite FIRE staff members to visit their schools and teach their peers about campus speech rights. This year, our staff spoke about free speech and student rights to university audiences at 50 campus events and student conferences nationwide.
Some speeches, like Greg’s talk at the Claremont Colleges in February, discussed absurd speech codes that are chilling discourse on campus. In conjunction with his speech, one particular code at Claremont-McKenna College—a member of the Claremont Consortium—was named February’s Speech Code of the Month, and it was actually revised this fall!
Other events, like Adam’s visit to Sam Houston State University in October, allowed FIRE to facilitate student discussion in the aftermath of a free speech controversy. You may remember the case at SHSU, where a professor used a box cutter to censor a free speeech wall organized by student groups. Through the Speakers Bureau, Adam was able to visit SHSU just a few weeks after the incident and speak directly with the students who suffered this act of censorship but refused to be silenced.
One of the most exciting FIRE speeches for me this year happened at Constitution High School in Philadelphia, where I had the privilege of meeting 25 students in an AP American Government class. When I showed the class FIRE’s newest video, Silencing U, and talked about our work, many were shocked. These smart and talented students, who could easily name the five rights enumerated in the First Amendment and had already learned about First Amendment cases like Tinker and Cohen,had no idea that such brazen acts of censorship could occur on a university campus. All of them immediately wanted to look up their favorite colleges on FIRE’s site to see if they maintained active speech codes or were involved in past FIRE cases. It was an exciting opportunity to let students know about the potential for campus censorship before they decide where to apply.
From California to Florida and from Massachusetts to Texas, one thing is certain: without the help of our supporters, FIRE’s message could never have reached so many students and faculty in 2011. Please consider donating today to help us expand our campus presence and reach even more student audiences in 2012!
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| Posted by Jaclyn Hall on December 22, 2011, at 12:08 PM
Sam Houston State Social Media Policy One of Most Read Stories of 2011 in 'Chronicle' List
December 21, 2011
Wired Campus, a technology-themed blog of The Chronicle of Higher Education, has published its "10 Most Popular Wired Campus Articles of 2011" list this week. Seventh on the list is an October feature on Sam Houston State University's controversial social media policy, which sparked waves of student protest at SHSU, including a "free speech wall" event begetting its own controversies over free speech at SHSU. Fortunately, SHSU ultimately decided to ditch the proposed policy. The many thousands of reads garnered by Wired Campus' writeup can't have hurt the effort, and we're glad to see that it reached so many people.
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| Posted by Peter Bonilla on December 21, 2011, at 5:15 PM
