Banished

After the Hamline debacle, a take-down of the orthodoxy that academic freedom and DEI are compatible (dogma promulgated by the 82-page 2018 Harvard Inclusion and Belonging report). “When institutions proclaim that academic freedom and inclusion coexist in a kind of synergistic harmony, they are trafficking in PR-driven wishful thinking… Instead, we should turn to the wise words… “Education should not be intended to make people comfortable, it is meant to make them think.”

NY Post

Former Secretary of Education DeVos writes on the potential strings attached and national security implications of Chinese donations to American Universities. “China, like many of our global adversaries, is attempting nothing short of espionage via America’s colleges and universities — buying its way into influencing teaching, stealing our intellectual property and manipulating US foreign policy.”

The following are higher ed-related articles of interest from January 2023.

Wall Street Journal

In a 12-0 vote, UNC’s Board of Trustees votes to establish a school dedicated to free expression. “UNC plans to create a discrete program with its own dean and at least 20 new professors to build a syllabus free from ideological enforcers. Students will be able to choose the new classes to fulfill university core requirements. Those who aren’t interested can stay in the existing courses.”

City Journal

The new Ralston College in Savannah is for students “looking for a real education: serious reading of serious books, with teachers who know their stuff and care, and in fellowship with other seekers of truth, beauty, and the good life.”

Heterodox Academy

Heterodox Academy launches a Campus Community Network to further the organization’s mission of promoting open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and constructive disagreement, aiming “to change campus culture and institutional practices by empowering members to promote HxA values.” 23 HxA Campus Communities make up the inaugural cohort in universities across the US and Canada, including MIT, UC Berkeley, McGill University, Johns Hopkins, UNC, UVA and others.

Stanford Daily

Stanford’s newspaper recaps the “harmful language” debacle. In December ‘22, it was revealed that the Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative, an effort co-sponsored by the Stanford CIO Council and the People of Color in Technology (POC-IT) affinity group, published a guide to harmful language “with the intent of identifying and suggesting alternatives to discriminatory terms used in IT.” The list “was met with widespread backlash…with criticism kicking into high gear after the Wall Street Journal published an article signed by its editorial board ridiculing entries in the list such as ‘American,’ ‘master’ and ‘blind study.’”

NYT

The NYT piece made a wider audience of the Hamline University Story. What unfolded was “a national controversy, which pitted advocates of academic liberty and free speech against Muslims who believe that showing the image of Prophet Muhammad is always sacrilegious.”

Tablet

Jacobs provides an excellent expose´ on the takeover of universities by activists and how it happened. The 60s radicals settled down in campuses, shaping those who then infiltrated every aspect of society. “We are witnessing the invasion of the public square by the campus, an intrusion of academic terms and sensibilities that has leaped the ivy-covered walls aided by social media.”

Chronicle of Higher Ed

Jonathan Zimmerman exposes a quiet truth within American higher ed—fear of (and even working with) the Chinese government when it comes to stifling, harassing and reporting Chinese students who criticize China. “The harassment of Chinese students [who speak out against China] violates the most basic principles at the heart of our academic mission: debate, dialogue, and the open exchange of ideas. But so far as I know, no major college leader has expressed their support for the students’ speech rights or condemned Chinese state agents for menacing them.”

Higher ed-related articles of interest from December 2022 (to date). Those of most interest are detailed in individual postings.*

Wall Street Journal

As an ABA vote moves toward ending the LSAT requirement, the WSJ Editorial Board explains that “The ABA decision is best understood as an attempt to get ahead of a possible Supreme Court decision against the use of racial preferences in school admissions…The irony is that giving up the LSAT is likely to harm students from less privileged backgrounds.”

Heterodox STEM

The witch hunts continue, this time exposed by a Venezuelan student at American University. It’s everything we know and fear from totalitarian regimes—black lists, bullying, attacks and punishment for “heterodox” views. The parallels with the Chinese Cultural Revolution would only escape those who haven’t studied it.

College Fix | Declaration

More 1,000 professors have already signed an open letter that “calls on universities and professors to adopt and implement the ‘Chicago Trifecta’”— the Chicago Principles (free speech), the Kalven report (institutional neutrality), and the Shils report (merit-based evaluations for hiring/promotion). We encourage Harvard professors and all academics who agree with the letter to sign and share with peers. “Historically, censorship has supported monstrous regimes and their ideologies,” the letter warns. “True justice and freedom cannot exist without each other.” The letter also calls on faculty to join organizations in support of the letter’s principles, including FAIR.

FIRE

FIRE has launched a new website to support alumni free speech advocates, including a page dedicated to empowering alumni advocates, a school directory with campus speech code ratings, free speech rankings, relevant news, cases, and more, plus a directory of organizations, including Harvard Alumni for Free Speech ( we encourage our members to subscribe)!

A collection of higher ed-related articles of interest from November 2022.

Wall Street Journal

Direct admissions allow colleges to send offers to students based just on GPAs or a few other criteria. “The aim with direct admissions, participants say, is to make the process less cumbersome, show low-income and first-generation students that college is within reach, and funnel more prospects toward institutions desperate to meet enrollment goals…”

The Hill

The authors raise alarms about the lack of debate around DEI’s infiltration into every major institution. “With rapidity and stealth, diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) ideology has come to replace the classical liberal values of merit, fairness and equality (MFE)” … it’s a “revolution” accomplished “with almost no debate” that risks “a new era of institutionalized McCarthyism.”

The Stanford Academic Freedom Conference was held in November ‘22 with a goal “to identify ways to restore academic freedom, open inquiry, and freedom of speech and expression on campus and in the larger culture and restore the open debate required for new knowledge to flourish.” FAIR advisors Steven Pinker, Niall Ferguson and Douglas Murray spoke along with Harvard alum Dorian Abbot and other well known academics.

City Journal

Writing under a pseudonym, a professor warns peers against the corruption of putting activism above truth. “The problem arises when, in an academic role, a non-truth-oriented motivation transforms into a non-truth-oriented intention… when the desire to make the world…turns into a desire to say what will advance the cause rather than what one knows to be true.” Put simply, “One cannot be simultaneously an activist and a professor.”