So reports the Johns Hopkins Hub; here's the underlying statement, from the President, Provost, and top deans:

As leaders of Johns Hopkins University, we are often called upon in the face of global, national, or local occurrences to issue public statements on behalf of the institution. These requests are usually grounded in a sense of connection to the values and purpose of our university and our common humanity, and on the occasions when we have issued such statements, we have attempted to choose our topics and words carefully.

In recent years, requests for institutional statements have increased in frequency. The subjects upon which we have been urged to speak have varied widely—human rights violations, acts of discrimination, changes in health regulations, incidents of targeted violence, military conflicts, and natural disasters, among others, have led to calls for a university statement.

Often those seeking such statements want us to identify and condemn the actors whom they regard as principally responsible. In other cases, those seeking statements simply desire an expression of concern or sympathy for the persons directly affected by the incident in question. However, we must recognize that taking institutional positions can interfere with the university's central commitment to free inquiry and obligation to foster a diversity of perspectives within our academic community.

As is the case with many of our peers, we have been weighing the value, appropriateness, and limitations of such institutional statements. We—as university leaders and deans—have arrived at a strong commitment to make institutional statements only in the limited circumstances where an issue is clearly related to a direct, concrete, and demonstrable interest or function of the university. We write today to share our reasoning on this important issue and to clarify and deepen our commitment to a posture of restraint.

To begin, the very idea of an "official" position of the university on a social, scientific, or political issue runs counter to our foundational ethos—articulated most clearly in our Statement of Principles of Academic Freedom—to be a place where competing views are welcomed, challenged, and tested through dialogue and rigorous marshaling of evidence. The university is the site, more than any other institution in our society, where the process of truth-seeking through intense and open contestation is given pride of place. Although institutional statements may feel warranted, consoling, or, at times, even necessary to guide the university through difficult moments, experience has shown that they can be counterproductive, and even at odds with our core mission. These statements can too easily fuel a perception that there are approved or endorsed "institutional" views on political or social issues, which may, in fact, conflict with the views of members of our community. They risk interfering with our truth-seeking function and compromising the ethos and credibility of the institution in the process.

Additionally, institutional statements can be perceived as performative or rote: They can excuse the absence of meaningful action to bring the community together in challenging moments, take up difficult questions, and learn, discuss, and debate together in a mutually respectful and supportive manner. They also can unintentionally model for our students that the only, or best, avenue for engaging with issues is to make public statements, obscuring that there are more effective ways to make change in the world.

Moreover, such statements foster an expectation that the institution will speak on a wide range of topics and a perception that when we decline to do so, it is a signal that the issues or the concerns of affected community members are unworthy of our attention. Why do some domestic or international conflicts or crises command our institutional attention, while others are regarded as less salient?

As the tide of statements has risen across the university, it has become clear that the more statements we publish, the more injurious the slight to members of our community when we decline to issue a statement in response to some other incident. This pattern not only undermines our commitment to inclusivity but also erodes trust in institutional leadership and, as noted earlier, compromises our core mission as a place of open inquiry and diverse perspectives.

For these reasons, we will restrict our communications to the standard we have articulated—limiting our statements to those occasions where an issue is clearly related to a direct, concrete, and demonstrable interest or function of the university. This means that not issuing a statement will be our default in the great majority of cases we are likely to face.

We acknowledge that the line between those issues that implicate a core interest of the university and those where the impact is less direct is not always easily drawn. But the inevitability of hard cases is not an argument against the approach we are adopting, which we believe will address the lion's share of cases that typically confront the university. Against this benchmark, for instance, a decision by government to reduce our permitted scope of activities might well justify a statement, but an event that has occurred internationally or nationally and that has no direct or concrete impact on our capacity to discharge our mission would not.

Critically, this posture of restraint does not mean the university will be unresponsive or unfeeling in the face of controversy or tragedy. Our priority is to respond to the events around us through the channels that are our university's core strength and time-honored calling—creating knowledge, engaging with ideas, and bringing discoveries and care to the world. When an external event affects members of our community, our university's focus will be to engage interested members of our community in educational and community programming that addresses the topic. Where appropriate, the university can offer direct support and engagement for those among us who are affected by the matter.

Further, our commitment as university leaders to embrace a policy of restraint is not meant to signal that members of the community should retreat from the world or the priorities of our institution. Indeed, our faculty, students, and staff engage the communities around us in countless productive ways, and we will continue to encourage our scholars to bring their ideas and expertise to inform the critical issues of the day. With the opening of the Hopkins Bloomberg Center, our capacity to serve as a platform to explore these issues has been magnified. And the university will remain unwavering in its commitment to values and aspirations in areas of strategic importance such as those embodied in foundational documents like the Ten for One and the Second Roadmap on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

Finally, we are eager to engage faculty colleagues in an examination of whether this posture of restraint is appropriate not only for university leaders and deans but also for departments, centers and other units of the university. We will be working with the Johns Hopkins University Council to develop an answer to this question over the course of the fall term and to solicit broad input from the university, including divisional academic advisory boards and senates.

Of course, the dedication to institutional restraint will not apply to any individual faculty member speaking in their own scholarly or personal capacity. Again, the intent of this commitment is to extend the broadest possible scope to the views and expressions of our faculty, bolstering the freedom for them to share their insights and perspectives without being concerned about running counter to an "institutional" stance.

Ours is an extraordinary institution, a place furthered by the courageous interrogation and boundless discovery of our colleagues. The project of the university as an institution is to create the conditions for that exploration, discovery, and engagement, even for controversial or disquieting ideas. Against that overarching and foundational goal, we believe that the policy of restraint to which we are now committing ourselves is timely, principled, and critical for the continuing relevance and mission of our university.

The post "Johns Hopkins University Articulates Restrained Approach to Issuing Public Statements" appeared first on Reason.com.

Seven out of 10 college students say that speech can be just as damaging as physical violence, according to a new survey from the Knight Foundation, a journalism and free speech nonprofit. The survey, which polled more than 1,600 college students, also found that since 2016, college students' faith in the security of free speech rights has declined.

"2024 marks a crisis for free speech on college campuses as international conflicts, like the war in Gaza, and domestic strife come to a head, bringing urgent political and personal issues to center stage," the report states. "With campuses cracking down on protests, political leaders casting a questioning eye on the decisions of university administrators, and emerging technology making disinformation easier and faster to produce, the position of higher education as a forum for open discussion has never been more crucial or imperiled."

The Knight Foundation's survey asked students a wide range of questions on campus free speech and the First Amendment in general. The survey also asked students to identify their race, household income, and political affiliation. 

Sixty percent of students agreed with the statement "the climate at my school or on my campus prevents some people from saying things they believe, because others might find it offensive." The figure is up from 54 percent in 2016, but down from a high of 65 percent in 2021. Additionally, more than 1 in 4 agreed that it was more important for schools to "protect students by prohibiting speech they may find offensive or biased," rather than prioritizing allowing students to hear a wide range of viewpoints, including possibly offensive ones. Students were sharply divided by political opinion on this question, with 70 percent of Republicans, 53 percent of Independents, and 45 percent of Democrats supporting allowing offensive speech.

Why do so many students support censorship? It's not exactly clear, but the rest of the survey offers some clues. For example, 70 percent of students, including 82 percent of Democrats and 59 percent of Republicans, agreed that speech can be just as damaging as physical violence. Forty-four percent reported feeling uncomfortable in college because of "something someone said in reference to your race, ethnicity, religion, gender, or sexual orientation—whether or not it was directed at you," up from 25 percent in 2016. It's not clear, however, whether this increase is due to an uptick in genuinely offensive statements or increasing student intolerance towards mild political disagreements. 

On the bright side, increasing numbers of students opposed instituting policies like restrictive speech codes or providing safe spaces. Since 2017, support for speech codes has declined 23 percentage points, and support for safe spaces declined 15 percentage points. Support for disinviting potentially offensive speakers stayed roughly the same since 2017, declining by just three percentage points, to 25 percent after a brief jump to 42 percent in 2019.

"American society continues to be at a crossroads over how to apply First Amendment rights in the 21st century, particularly on college campuses," the report reads. "That is why it is essential that thought leaders, administrators, professors, and the public listen to the voices of college students as they grapple with issues of free speech in America and on campus."

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On June 15, Harvard's Dean of Social Sciences published an op-ed in the Harvard Crimson arguing that professors could properly be punished for saying things in public that might "incite" outside actors—like alumni and donors—to "intervene in Harvard's affairs." The subtext seemed to be that faculty who spoke out about the leadership of the dean's ally, the former president Claudine Gay, should be punished. This take has proven to be controversial, as co-blogger Jonathan Adler quickly noted.

On June 20, I published a rejoinder to Dean Bobo in the Chronicle of Higher Education. From the piece:

Bobo's views were conventional wisdom among university officials and trustees in 1900. They are shocking in 2024. Shocking, but unfortunately no longer surprising. The Harvard dean's arguments resonate with a growing movement of those who wish to muzzle the faculty. Professors are to be free to speak, so long as they do not say anything that might disturb the powers that be. Those in power may not want the faculty to march to the same tune, but they do all like giving the faculty their marching orders and expecting them not to step out of line.

The 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure, issued jointly by the American Association of University Professors and what was then called the Association of American Colleges, established the now widely adopted rules regarding faculty speech. It specifies that when professors "speak or write as citizens, they should be free from institutional censorship or discipline." The statement does suggest that professors have some "special obligations" when speaking in public, though the AAUP has long urged that those be treated as suggestive rather than obligatory. Even so, the statement merely urged professors to "be accurate" and "exercise appropriate restraint." They "should remember that the public may judge their profession and their institution by their utterances," and thus they should avoid embarrassing themselves in public by being rude or ignorant. But there was no suggestion that they should avoid airing the university's dirty laundry.

Harvard's own free-expression policy, first adopted in the Vietnam era, is if anything even more emphatic about the need for officials to tolerate dissent and critique. It notes that "reasoned dissent plays a particularly vital part" in the university's existence and that all members of the university community have the right to "advocate and publicize opinion by print, sign, and voice." Dissenters are not to obstruct "the essential processes of the university" or interfere "with the ability of members of the university to perform their normal activities," but they are free to "press for action" and "constructive change" by organizing, advocating, and persuading. Bobo's ideas about where the limits of faculty speech are to be found are plainly at odds with both AAUP principles and common university policies, not to mention First Amendment principles that would bind officials at state universities.

You can read the whole thing here (behind a paywall).

The post What are the Limits on Faculty Speech? appeared first on Reason.com.

From the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) (assembled from the Twitter thread, with some nonsubstantive modifications):

USC has just dismissed charges against a professor who was filmed telling a group of protesters last fall, "Hamas are murderers. That's all they are. Every one should be killed, and I hope they all are."

Following the on-campus exchange last November, students launched an online petition and filed formal complaints calling for Prof. John Strauss's termination, accusing him of discrimination, harassment, and fostering an unsafe environment. USC spent 7 months "investigating" the <2-minute exchange caught on film and finally determined Strauss did not engage in discrimination or harassment, and his conduct did not create a hostile environment.

USC's policies promise to protect faculty speech from institutional censorship or discipline — even when others disagree or feel offended. But for Prof. Strauss, voicing his opinion got him a 1mo. campus ban and a 7mo. investigation. While we're thrilled to learn Prof. Strauss won't face additional sanctions for his speech, it's important to remember that a 7-month investigation based on clearly protected political speech is enough to chill speech for both Strauss and the larger USC community.

Colleges and universities must strive to be places of free inquiry, open dialogue, and rigorous debate. When Strauss directly engaged with protesters sharing a message he disagreed with, he was embodying — not undermining — that goal.

For more details on the underlying incident, see this post.

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On Tuesday, Harvard officials announced that the university would adopt a formal stance of ideological neutrality on political events and other controversial issues. The decision comes after months of tumultuous campus protests over the war between Israel and Hamas.

Earlier this month, a faculty-led working group published a report that strongly recommended adopting a neutral stance on topics that do not directly concern the university itself.

"The university has a responsibility to speak out to protect and promote its core function. Its leaders must communicate the value of the university's central activities. They must defend the university's autonomy and academic freedom when threatened," the report stated. "The university and its leaders should not, however, issue official statements about public matters that do not directly affect the university's core function."

The report hinted at what is likely the prevailing reason behind Harvard's push toward neutrality—the immense pressure faced by school officials to weigh in on Hamas' October 7 attack against Israel, and the ongoing war in Gaza. The report noted how, if officials make statements about one topic unrelated to the university's core function, the school opens itself up to demands it comment on every other controversy.

"If the university and its leaders become accustomed to issuing official statements about matters beyond the core function of the university, they will inevitably come under intense pressure to do so from multiple, competing sides on nearly every imaginable issue of the day," said the report. "This is the reality of contemporary public life in an era of social media and political polarization."

Survey results released last week by The Harvard Crimson indicate widespread faculty support for neutrality. The survey found that more than 70 percent of Arts and Sciences faculty supported a shift to formal neutrality and more than half reported feeling "somewhat negatively" or "negatively" about "the current state of academic freedom at Harvard"

The announcement was met with widespread praise from free expression advocates.

"For better or worse, what Harvard does, others follow," Angel Eduardo, senior writer and editor at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, wrote on Tuesday. "The principles outlined in the Institutional Voice Working Group's report don't just bode well for Harvard's future on free speech and academic freedom—they may also signal a significant sea change in colleges across the country."

On Wednesday, Syracuse University also announced that it would adopt the recommendations of a similar working group and take an official neutral stance.

"We embrace the guiding principle that the remedy for speech that some may find hurtful, offensive, or even hateful is not the disruption, obstruction, or suppression of the free speech of others, but rather more speech," a statement from the university reads. "Except under the most extraordinary circumstances and with the sole purpose of protecting its mission of discovery, improvement, and dissemination of knowledge, the University does not make institutional statements or pronouncements on current controversies."

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From FIRE's letter sent yesterday to the University of Wisconsin (you can see the citations here); I generally trust FIRE's factual summaries, but if there is any error in the below, I'll of course be very glad to correct it:

FIRE is deeply concerned that UW-Madison has suspended two registered student organizations—Anticolonial Scientists and Mecha de UW Madison—amid criticism of chalk messages some group members allegedly wrote at an off-campus event earlier this month. Some of the messages expressed support for terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas's Al-Qassam Brigades, and advocated the use of violence against Israelis and Zionists in the Middle East.

The student groups are currently under interim suspensions, pending investigation, with UW stating that, because "[s]ome chalkings endorsed violence, supported terrorist organizations and/or contained antisemitic comments," they could qualify as prohibited discriminatory harassment under the university's RSO Code of Conduct. But that conclusion cannot constitutionally stand. The off-campus chalk messages constitute political speech wholly protected by the First Amendment, which requires UW, as a public institution, to respect the groups' expressive and associational rights—even if some, many, or most people dislike their message.

There is, more specifically, no First Amendment exception that would remove protection from speech simply because it is deemed "anti-Semitic" or otherwise bigoted based on race or religion. Regardless of the viewpoint expressed, the rule is the same: Government officials cannot circumscribe expression on the basis that others find the ideas offensive or hateful.

This is particularly true at public colleges, where "conflict is not unknown," and "dissent is expected and, accordingly, so is at least some disharmony." The First Amendment instead "embraces such heated exchange[s] of views."

The Supreme Court has long recognized the public's interest "in having free and unhindered debate on matters of public importance" as "the core value of the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment." And there is simply no question that chalking support for any participants in the Israel/Hamas war—the reverberations of which have been felt globally for many months—constitutes expression on a matter of public concern, which is defined broadly as speech "relating to any matter of political, social, or other concern to the community."

Nor is there evidence (despite UW's suggestion) that the students' political messages, written in chalk at a farmers' market nearly a mile from campus, would approach the legal bars for either material support for terrorism or discriminatory harassment—even if those same words had been written on UW's own sidewalks.

The Supreme Court defines discriminatory harassment in the educational context as only those statements which are unwelcome, discriminatory on the basis of protected status, and "so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive that it can be said to deprive the victim[] of access to the educational opportunities or benefits provided by the school." The U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights has likewise clarified that discriminatory harassment "must include something beyond the mere expression of views, words, symbols, or thoughts that some person finds offensive."

Current events do not change this analysis. Earlier this month, OCR reiterated that "offensiveness of a particular expression as perceived by some students, standing alone, is not a legally sufficient basis to establish a hostile environment under Title VI," and that "[n]othing in Title VI or regulations implementing it requires or authorizes a school to restrict any rights otherwise protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution." OCR's letter also emphasized that campuses have options for addressing the impact of hostile speech that avoid offending the First Amendment, including by offering a variety of support services to affected students.

UW's own discriminatory harassment policies and RSO rules reflect these appropriate limits on its ability to punish core political speech, with the RSO rules clearly stating they "will not be used to impose discipline for the lawful expression of ideas" and that "[t]he right of all students to seek knowledge, debate, and freely express their ideas is fully recognized by the University." This is surely because, as you know, free expression is a "longstanding priority" at UW-Madison, which has a dedicated mission and a values statement focused on "Free Expression at UW-Madison." That statement describes "the need for the free exchange of ideas through open dialogue, free inquiry, and healthy and robust debate," as "inherent" to the university's educational mission, "captured by our now-famous language about the importance of 'that fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone truth can be found.'"

Student organizations play an important role in the healthy speech ecosystem that UW's mission and values seek to foster. In turn, the First Amendment protects these groups' expressive and associational rights, fostering their ability to organize around causes and to attempt to influence our institutions, communities, and country. Nor can universities subject the speech of students in RSOs to additional, viewpoint-based scrutiny.

Instead, student groups' speech rights are broad, and they extend to expressing philosophical support for the use of force or violence. As the Supreme Court has held: "What is a threat must be distinguished from what is constitutionally protected speech," including "political hyperbole," given our country's "profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open."

Government actors may prohibit non-expressive conduct intended to provide material support, like property or services, to designated foreign terrorist organizations.   But the First Amendment's protection of robust debate prohibits government actors from limiting mere expressive activity or rhetorical support for such groups. That is so even where the net effect of the advocacy is to sway public opinion.

Despite what may be good intentions, UW does its community no service by censoring these controversial messages. Like many universities, UW is a community of people with sharply divergent views on a wide variety of issues. To the extent the chalked messages have informed UW students, faculty, and staff members of the presence of individuals with these views on campus, this should be seen as an opportunity for those who disagree either to engage with them in good faith—or, if they wish, to avoid such engagement. Censoring them will do nothing to change their minds, and will deny all parties the opportunity to learn from one another.

The First Amendment, and UW's longstanding commitment to its attendant norms, are most relevant on campus at precisely the moments like these, when social and political unrest triggers high emotions, deep divisions, and the temptation to turn to censorship. When a university departs from its core principles at these key moments and resorts to silencing views it deems odious, it sends the message that the university has subordinated both the rights of its students and its mission of liberal education to the political demands of the day.

We therefore urge you in the strongest possible terms, in this difficult season for campus discourse, to stand by the university's legal and moral obligations to respect students' core expressive freedoms. This requires promptly reinstating the Anticolonial Scientists and Mecha de UW Madison student organizations, and publicly disavowing any ongoing investigation into their clearly protected political speech.

Given the urgent nature of this matter, we request a substantive response to our inquiry no later than close of business Thursday, May 23, 2024.

The legal analysis sounds quite right to me. Note that, even if the government could forbid chalking in various places (and it's not clear whether it can, at least as to public sidewalks), it can't specially punish chalking that conveys particular views, including advocacy of foreign terrorist organizations and support for violence in foreign conflicts.

The post Apparent Suspension of Student Groups at Wisconsin for Pro-Hamas Chalking appeared first on Reason.com.

Across the nation, college administrators are cracking down on pro-Palestenian speech. In Texas, police violently broke up peaceful protests, and one college even reportedly told students that they couldn't use the phrases "Israel," "Zionism," or chant in Arabic. At Brandeis University, police shut down a pro-Palestine protest because its president said it had "devolved into the invocation of hate speech."

While progressives have tended to support campus censorship efforts in recent years, an article in Vox by writer Eric Levitz argues that the left should embrace free speech—and that its push to censor speech in the name of inclusion and social justice was misguided. 

"Should students concerned with social justice rethink their previous skepticism of free speech norms, for the sake of better protecting radical dissent? I think the answer is yes." wrote Levitz. "There is reason to believe that progressives would be better equipped to resist the present crackdown on pro-Palestinian advocacy had social justice activists not previously popularized an expansive conception of harmful speech."

Levitz's article also argues that rejecting censorship could lead the left to find more allies when their ideas are on the chopping block.

"In a world where right-of-center intellectuals had more cause for believing that their defense of leftists' free expression would be reciprocated," Levitz wrote, "it seems plausible that opposition to the Antisemitism Awareness Act might be a bit more widespread and its prospects for clearing the Senate somewhat dimmer."

While Levitz's piece is refreshing, its support for free speech isn't about adopting a new appreciation for the principles of free expression, regardless of political viewpoint. It's about adopting the best policies to protect left-wing ideas.

Save several paragraphs reminding progressives that debate is necessary for finding the truth and that "the more insulated any ideological orthodoxy is from critique, the more vulnerable it will be to persistent errors," Levitz's argument is pragmatic in nature. He spends most of the piece—correctly—arguing that if progressives had been willing to take a stand against censorship of right-wing beliefs, the current norms allowing for the censorship of pro-Palestine activists would not have been set in place. 

However, if your reason to defend speech is purely practical and self-interested, it becomes much easier to indulge in exceptions to your free speech principles. Surely, allowing the censorship of the most offensive, unproductive viewpoints couldn't be used to justify the suppression of your own, much better, ideas, right?

Levitz even hints at such exceptions. "If adopting a permissive attitude toward campus speech entailed significant costs to progressive causes, then doing so might be unwise," he wrote, later adding, "Defending free speech and standing up for the disempowered may sometimes be competing objectives."

When your defense of free speech comes from a core, universal principle, calls for censorship are unthinkable. This is why, for example, it's so frustrating to see Levitz group the First Amendment nonprofit the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) with a long list of "conservatives" who have spoken out against censorship of pro-Palestinian activism. 

FIRE—and everyone else smeared as "conservative" for standing up against censorship—doesn't begrudgingly defend left-wing speech so that right-wing speech will stay protected—they're a nonpartisan organization that defends First Amendment rights because they believe fiercely in the importance of free speech.

Perhaps the biggest flaw is that Levitz's piece still doesn't make the core realization that there can be true, principled, defenders of free speech—those who truly think a nation with more ideas and more voices, even offensive ones, is better than one with fewer. Instead, he sees speech protections as a kind of truce, a decision from both the left and right to leave each other alone so they can both best further their political goals.

We would have a better, more functional world if more people—left or right—were willing to passionately defend the free speech rights of those with whom they disagree. However, getting to that world requires that people let go of the idea that censorship is ever a good idea, not merely that it's impractical. 

The post <i>Vox</i> Wants Progressives To Support Free Speech for the Wrong Reasons appeared first on Reason.com.

Remember when Republicans were against using the tax cops to go after political opponents? Well, they seem to have changed their minds.

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R–Ky.) has made no secret of his desire to use finance laws against left-leaning activists. A few months ago, he complained that the IRS was going too easy on progressive nonprofits. Now he's found another angle of attack: insinuating that these organizations are part of an anti-Israel conspiracy.

Comer and House Education Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R–N.C.) are "investigating the sources of funding and financing for groups who are organizing, leading, and participating in pro-Hamas, antisemitic, anti-Israel, and anti-American protests" on college campuses, they announced in a Tuesday letter.

"This investigation relates both to malign influence on college campuses and to the national security implications of such influence on faculty and student organizations," Comer and Foxx wrote.

Foxx objected when the shoe was on the other foot. In 2013, it was revealed that the IRS had been placing extra scrutiny on nonprofits whose paperwork included terms such as tea party and patriot. Foxx wrote an op-ed criticizing the "outrageous" demands for information that IRS investigators had made.

"The problem at the IRS is with more than the search terms it used. Whether conservative or liberal, targeting Americans is wrong," she stated. "The deeper problem is that government's taxing arm ever came to consider itself the arbiter of what constitutes legitimate free speech in the first place."

Asked about Foxx's earlier statements, her spokesman Alex Ives wrote to Reason that "what you are positing amounts to false equivalencies on many levels." He stated that Foxx was seeking to "ensure groups do not have financial ties to designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations," without citing specific examples.

"Do groups on campuses have a right to free speech? Of course," Ives said. "Do they have a right to have their ties to foreign financiers connected to terror organizations to go unscrutinized? Of course not."

The letter from Foxx and Comer demands that the Department of the Treasury provide all Suspicious Activity Reports, or bulletins on potential tax evasion and money laundering, for 20 different organizations. The list includes Students for Justice in Palestine and its sponsor, the WESPAC Foundation. It also names off-campus Muslim and Palestinian-American groups, Jewish peace movements, and many organizations that are not primarily focused on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"This is part of a broader effort to demonize parts of the tax-exempt sector that a part of the Republican Party views as a key target in the war on woke," says Lara Friedman, president of the nonprofit Foundation for Middle East Peace, which has been tracking Congress' stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. "If you make this about supposedly fighting antisemitism, you bring parts of the Democratic Party with you."

Many of the groups listed are big names in progressive philanthropy: George Soros' Open Society Foundations, the Pritzker family's Libra Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The Rockefeller organization gave several hundreds of thousands of dollars to Jewish Voice for Peace; another Jewish group for Palestinian rights called IfNotNow; the Adalah Justice Project, a Palestinian-American rights group; and Palestine Legal, a legal aid service for pro-Palestinian advocates in America.

"The RBF has had no direct involvement in the campus protests nor have we earmarked funds for them," Rockefeller Brothers Fund spokeswoman Sarah Edkins said in a statement last week. "Some RBF grantees have provided training, messaging, and/or legal support to student protest leaders. The Fund does not direct the activities of any grantee organizations."

Edkins added that the fund "respects Israel's right to exist and supports the right to self-determination for both the Israeli and Palestinian peoples."

The Open Society Foundations also gave several hundreds of thousands of dollars to Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow, according to Rolling Stone. The grant-making network told Politico that it "has funded a broad spectrum of US groups that have advocated for the rights of Palestinians and Israelis and for peaceful resolution to the conflict in Israel."

It's not clear why the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Libra Foundation wound up on the list. Last week, Politico named them as supporters of pro-Palestinian protests, because of their donations to the Tides Foundation, a clearinghouse for progressive groups that funds Jewish Voice for Peace, IfNotNow, Adalah, and Palestine Legal. But the Gates and Libra donations were earmarked for other causes.

Jewish Voice for Peace says that the congressional letter is "inaccurate, dangerous and a desperate attempt by right-wing legislators to criminalize public protest. These legislators are falsely and libelously smearing tens of thousands of students as antisemitic, simply because they are protesting the use of their tuition dollars in the massacres of Palestinian families."

Two of the groups listed in the letter, American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) and the Council on American-Islamic Relations, also offered statements to Reason. The Libra Foundation declined to comment, and the Gates Foundation pointed to its comments to Politico. None of the other groups responded to emails asking for comment.

"AMP looks forward to demonstrating in any jurisdiction that it operates wholly within the laws of the United States, compliant with all laws and regulations governing U.S. nonprofit entities," the organization's attorney Christina Jump says. "AMP operates completely within the United States, raises funds completely within the United States, and utilizes those donations completely within the United States to support its mission of educating American Muslims and the American public on the rich history and culture of Palestine."

Edward Ahmed Mitchell, deputy director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, says that the letter "reads like a bad impersonation of Joseph McCarthy. Instead of advancing the goals of a foreign government by pursuing witch hunts against the American people, Rep. Foxx, Rep. Comer and other genocide-enablers in Congress should focus on washing the blood of over 30,000 slaughtered Palestinian civilians off their hands."

Republicans are not the only ones trying to bring the U.S. tax code into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In New York, some Democrats are trying to strip away nonprofit status from organizations that operate in Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories. New York–based nonprofits have raised money to buy drones for settler militias and to maintain a military academy in a West Bank settlement.

The House Ways and Means Committee held a hearing in November 2023 on the "nexus" between campus protests and "terror financing." Soon after, the House passed a bill allowing the secretary of the treasury to shut down nonprofits based on vague insinuations of terrorist support. Last week, 15 Republican senators called on the IRS to revoke the nonprofit status of any organization that supported Students for Justice in Palestine.

Friedman, the Foundation for Middle East Peace president, believes that the congressional letter is more likely to have a "chilling effect" on nonprofits than to turn up any real evidence of illegal activity.

"It's partly a fishing expedition," she says. "And by lodging an accusation, they hope to paint a picture in the mind of the public."

The post Congressional Republicans Launch 'Fishing Expedition' Against Progressive, Jewish, and Palestinian Nonprofits appeared first on Reason.com.

The statement:

Dear members of the MIT community,

At my direction, very early this morning, the encampment on Kresge lawn was cleared. The individuals present in the encampment at the time were given four separate warnings, in person, that they should depart or face arrest. The 10 who remained did not resist arrest and were peacefully escorted from the encampment by MIT police officers and taken off campus for booking.

I write now because this is an unprecedented situation for our community, and you deserve a clear explanation of how we arrived at this moment.

But let me start by emphasizing that, as president, my responsibility is to the whole community: to make sure that the campus is physically safe and functioning for everyone, that our shared spaces and resources are available for everyone, and that everyone feels free to express their views and do the work they came here to do. As you will see, in numerous ways, the presence of the encampment increasingly made it impossible to meet all these obligations.

A timeline of key events

Here's a quick timeline, familiar from my past notes to you:

• The encampment began on Sunday, April 21, in violation of clear Institute guidelines well known to the student organizers. It slowly grew. Though it was peaceful, its presence generated controversy, including persistent calls from some of you that we shut it down. While we asked the students repeatedly to leave the site, we chose for a time not to interfere, in part out of respect for the Institute's foundational principles of free expression.
• Last Friday, May 3, we were able to contain a significant rally and counter demonstration through a very extensive coordinated effort, including with the City of Cambridge, which shut down Mass. Avenue. Among other measures, we set up high temporary fencing around the encampment to help maintain separation between the groups. This event drew several hundred people from outside MIT in support of each side.
• On Monday, May 6, judging that we could not sustain the extraordinary level of effort required to keep the encampment and the campus community safe, we directed the encamped students to leave the site voluntarily or face clear disciplinary consequences. Some left. Some stayed inside, while others chose to step just outside the camp and protest. Some chose to invite to the encampment large numbers of individuals from outside MIT, including dozens of minors, who arrived in response to social media posts.
  Late that afternoon, aided by people from outside MIT, many of the encampment students breached and forcibly knocked down the safety fencing and demolished most of it, on their way to reestablishing the camp. In that moment, the peaceful nature of the encampment shifted. Disciplinary measures were not sufficient to end it nor to deter students from quickly reestablishing it.
• Wednesday, May 8, was marked by a series of escalating provocations. In the morning, pro-Palestinian supporters physically blocked the entrance and exit to the Stata Center garage though they eventually dispersed. Later, after taking down Israeli and American flags that had been hung by counter protestors, some individuals defaced Israeli flags with red handprints, in the presence of Israeli students and faculty. Several pro-Israel supporters then entered the camp to confront and shout at the protestors. Throughout, the opposing groups grew in numbers. With so many opposing individuals in close quarters, tensions ran very high. The day ended with more suspensions – and a rally by the pro-Palestinian students.
• Thursday, May 9, pro-Palestinian students again blocked the mouth of the Stata garage, preventing community members from entering and exiting to go about their business, and requiring that Vassar Street be shut down. This time, they refused directions from the police to leave and allow passage of cars. Their action therefore resulted in nine arrests.

Sustained effort to reach a resolution through dialogue

As we all, know, the current conflict on campus stretches far beyond MIT. From the beginning, we have watched with great concern what has happened on other campuses. We have been determined to avoid violence, and I have been strongly opposed to using the threat of arrest to resolve a situation that should be mediated by discourse.

We tried every path we could to find a way out through dialogue. In various combinations, senior administrative leaders and faculty officers met with the protesters many times over almost two weeks. This sustained team effort benefited from the involvement of at least a dozen faculty members and alumni who have been supporting and advising the protestors, and, in the final stages, a professional mediator who was meeting with the students.

Reaching a solution hinged on our ability to meet the students' primary demand, which we could not do in a well-principled way that respected the academic freedom of our faculty. Yet though all of us working with the students were hopeful, the students would not yield on their original demand, and negotiation did not succeed.

Irresolvable tensions, and a tipping point

And thus we arrived at this morning's police action – our last resort.

For members of our community who may remember or even have participated in past protests, at MIT or elsewhere: This situation is fundamentally different. Why? Because this is not one group in conflict with the administration. It is two groups in conflict, in part through us, with each other.

The encampment had become a symbol for both sides. For those supporting the pro-Palestinian cause, it symbolized a moral commitment that trumped all other considerations, because of the immense suffering in Gaza. For the pro-Israel side, the encampment – at the center of the campus where they are trying to receive an education and conduct research – delivered a constant assertion, through its signs and chants, that those who believe that Israel has a right to exist are unwelcome at MIT.

As a result, the encampment became a flashpoint. MIT sits at the center of a major metropolitan area that features a large population of college-aged students. Our campus is easy to reach and wide open.

The escalation of the last few days, involving outside threats from individuals and groups from both sides, has been a tipping point. It was not heading in a direction anyone could call peaceful. And the cost and disruption for the community overall made the situation increasingly untenable. We did not believe we could responsibly allow the encampment to persist.

The actions we've taken, gradually stepped up over time, have been commensurate with the risk we are in a position to see. We did not take this step suddenly. We offered warnings. We telegraphed clearly what was coming. At each point, the students made their own choices. And finally, choosing among several bad options, we chose the path we followed this morning – where each student again had a choice. I do not expect everyone to agree with our reasoning or our decision, but I hope it helps to see how we got there.

Finally: Our actions today had nothing to do with the specific viewpoints of the students in the encampment. We acted in response to their actions. There are countless highly effective ways for all of us to express ourselves that neither disrupt the functioning of the Institute nor create a magnet for external protestors. As the ad hoc Committee on Academic Freedom and Campus Expression recently observed, "while freedom of expression protects the ability of community members to express their views about the current situation in the Middle East, it does not protect the continued use of a shared Institute resource in violation of long-established rules."

[*  *  *]

Our community includes people who lost friends and family to the brutal terror attack of October 7, and people with friends and family currently in mortal danger in Rafah. It includes individuals whose families have struggled for years under the strictures imposed on Gaza, and at least one faculty member – an alumnus who has made his home at MIT for more than 70 years – who lost his whole family to the Holocaust. And of course, MIT includes people who hold a spectrum of views beyond those expressed by the encampment and by its fiercest opponents.

We all have a stake in this community. And we all have an interest in being treated with decency and respect for our humanity. That interest comes with a responsibility to offer each other the same consideration. We must find a way to work through this situation together; I pledge to work on that with anyone who will join me.

I have no illusions that today's action will bring an end to the conflict here, as the war continues to rage in the Middle East. But I had no choice but to remove such a high-risk flashpoint at the very center of our campus.

I can't speak to the accuracy or completeness of the facts, and one can disagree on the details; for instance, I think such encampments, which violate school rules, should be removed immediately. Still, the general analysis strikes me as quite reasonable.

The post MIT President's Statement on Removal of Encampment appeared first on Reason.com.

This is specific to Princeton in its context, but I thought my new op-ed would be of broader interest given the encampments across the country and the many activists on and off campus who are insisting that universities must come to the table to meet their "demands" and must not punish or arrest students who violate university rules and criminal laws.

From my op-ed in The Daily Princetonian:

Rules and laws exist for a reason, even on a university campus. Sometimes it might be necessary to engage in civil disobedience or even take direct action to try to stop the machinery of injustice. But taking such actions have consequences, and the mere fact that some wish to take those actions does not mean that anyone else must conclude that their actions were either laudable or justified or should be either encouraged or rewarded. When members of the campus community engage in conduct that violates the rules that allow the many diverse people on campus to coordinate their varied interests and activities, they are properly subject to disciplinary action. When protesters move from trying to persuade to trying to compel compliance with their demands, the correct response is simply to tell them "no" and to take what steps are necessary to restore the proper functioning of the University.

Read the whole thing here.

My first, and I presume my last, op-ed in the Princeton student newspaper.

The post Must Universities Negotiate with Protesters? appeared first on Reason.com.

What should colleges do about pro-Palestinian encampments?

College students across America are camping out to demand their universities divest all investments with Israeli-linked companies that they claim profit from the occupation and oppression of Palestine. It's gone on for weeks, and even administrators at schools known as bastions of progressive activism are finally getting fed up. Harvard's president is threatening "involuntary leave" for protesters. Columbia announced on Monday that it canceled its main commencement ceremony for safety reasons. The University of Southern California has, too.

UCLA called in the cops to clear its encampment, and police have arrested more than 2,100 protesters across all U.S. campuses since April, according to the Associated Press.

Congress has continued to interrogate Ivy League presidents, and a bill to explicitly define antisemitism for civil rights law enforcement purposes just passed the House with overwhelming support last week.

Joining us today to talk about the protests, the backlash, and what it all means for free speech on campus and the wider world is Nico Perrino, executive vice president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), and host of the free speech podcast So to Speak.

Watch the full conversation on Reason's YouTube channel or the Just Asking Questions podcast feed on Apple, Spotify, or your preferred podcatcher.

Sources referenced in this conversation:

1. Full Text of the Antisemitism Awareness Act
2. International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's definition of antisemitism.
3. Columbia students define "divest"
4. Harvard President Garber Breaks Silence on Encampment, Threatens 'Involuntary Leave' for Protesters
5. Columbia cancels commencement amid campus protests
6. Map: Where College Protesters Have Been Arrested or Detained
7. Polling 1,200 college students on Encampments
8. What Americans think about recent pro-Palestinian campus protests | YouGov
9. Americans' Views of Both Israel, Palestinian Authority Down
10. Majority in US Say Israel's Reasons for Fighting Hamas Are Valid | Pew Research Center
11. Letter from judges saying they won't hire Columbia grads as clerks

Timestamps:

• 00:00 Introduction
• 01:33 Free Speech on Campus: A Conversation with Nico Perrino
• 02:13 The Historical Context of Campus Protests and Free Speech Debates
• 07:28 The Legal and Social Implications of Campus Encampments
• 31:38 The Role of Civil Disobedience in Campus Activism
• 38:31 Evaluating the Effectiveness of Campus Protests Through Polling Data
• 43:07 Congressional Involvement in Campus Free Speech Issues
• 50:48 The Anti-Semitism Awareness Act of 2023: A New Legal Battleground
• 54:56 The Complexities of Free Speech and Political Expression on Campus
• 59:17 Navigating the Tensions of Privacy and Free Speech
• 01:03:42 The Role of Public Shaming and Cancel Culture in Free Speech Debates
• 01:20:03 Nico Wants You To Ask Yourself This Question About Censorship
• 01:23:58 Just Ask Us Questions: A Libertarian's Evolving Stance on Immigration

• Producer: John Osterhoudt

The post Nico Perrino: When Does Protesting Become a Crime? appeared first on Reason.com.

Just circulated:

Our community is in deep pain. We are reeling from days of violence and division. And we hope with all our hearts that we can return to a place where our students, faculty and staff feel safe and, one day, connected again.

Our approach to the encampment that was established on Royce Quad last week has been guided by several equally important principles: the need to support the safety and wellbeing of Bruins, the need to support the free expression rights of our community, and the need to minimize disruption to our teaching and learning mission.

The events of the past several days, and especially the terrifying attack on our students, faculty and staff on Tuesday night, have challenged our efforts to live up to these principles and taken an immense toll on our community.

We approached the encampment with the goal of maximizing our community members' ability to make their voices heard on an urgent global issue. We had allowed it to remain in place so long as it did not jeopardize Bruins' safety or harm our ability to carry out our mission.

But while many of the protesters at the encampment remained peaceful, ultimately, the site became a focal point for serious violence as well as a huge disruption to our campus.

Several days of violent clashes between demonstrators and counter-demonstrators put too many Bruins in harm's way and created an environment that was completely unsafe for learning. Demonstrators directly interfered with instruction by blocking students' pathways to classrooms. Indirectly, violence related to the encampment led to the closure of academic buildings and the cancellation of classes. And frankly, hostilities were only continuing to escalate.

In the end, the encampment on Royce Quad was both unlawful and a breach of policy. It led to unsafe conditions on our campus and it damaged our ability to carry out our mission. It needed to come to an end.

Over the past several days, we communicated with and made a formal request to meet with demonstration leaders to discuss options for a peaceful and voluntary disbanding of the encampment. Unfortunately, that meeting did not lead to an agreement.

To preserve campus safety and the continuity of our mission, early this morning, we made the decision to direct UCPD and outside law enforcement officers to enter and clear the encampment. Officers followed a plan that had been carefully developed to protect the safety of protesters at the site. Those who remained encamped last night were given several warnings and were offered the opportunity to leave peacefully with their belongings before officers entered the area. Ultimately, about 300 protesters voluntarily left, while more than 200 resisted orders to disperse and were arrested.

UCLA facilities teams are now in the process of taking down structures and cleaning up the quad, and we ask that students, staff and faculty continue to avoid the area.

I want to be clear that we fully support the right of our community members to protest peacefully, and there are longstanding and robust processes in place that allow students, faculty and staff to gather and demonstrate in ways that do not violate the law or our policies. I urge Bruins to take advantage of these many opportunities, which were designed to support advocacy that does not jeopardize community safety or disrupt the functioning of the university.

I also want to recognize the significance of the issues behind the demonstrators' advocacy. The loss of life in Gaza has been truly devastating, and my administration has and will continue to connect with student and faculty leaders advocating for Palestinian rights to engage in discussions that are grounded in listening, learning and mutual respect. Similarly, we will continue to support our Jewish students and employees who are reeling from the trauma of the brutal Oct. 7 attacks and a painful spike in antisemitism worldwide.

We will also continue to investigate the violent incidents of the past several days, especially Tuesday night's horrific attack by a mob of instigators. When physical violence broke out that night, leadership immediately directed our UCPD police chief to call for the support of outside law enforcement, medical teams and the fire department to help us quell the violence. We are carefully examining our security processes that night and I am grateful to President Drake for also calling for an investigation.

The past week has been among the most painful periods our UCLA community has ever experienced. It has fractured our sense of togetherness and frayed our bonds of trust, and will surely leave a scar on the campus. While Counseling & Psychological Services and Staff & Faculty Counseling Center are available to lend support to those in need, I also hope we can support one another through this difficult moment and reaffirm the ties that unite us as a community of learning.

I've been off campus since two weeks ago (the law school, unlike undergrad, is on the semester system, so the last day of my Business Torts class was on the 18th); I've also been out of town the last few days. My knowledge of what's happening at UCLA is thus  sketchy and second-hand. It appears clear that some of the pro-Israel demonstrators tried to (unlawfully) tear down the (unlawfully placed) barricades surrounding the encampment, and people then started physically fighting each other. Some accounts I've seen suggest that the fights were mostly directly initiated by the pro-Israel demonstrators (and not just in the sense that the taking down of the barricades led to foreseeable reactions); others describe basically mutual melees. I'm happy to wait further to see if the picture is made any clearer.

Many sources also report that it took the police hours to intercede to break up the fights, and some suggest that the problem was that the university authorities did not properly instruct the police to intercede more promptly. If that's right, then that strikes me as hard to defend.

Law enforcement, in both sense of the word (the people and the activity), should be present in such situations, proactively and not just in a slow reaction—especially as to violence, but also as to vandalism, illegal taking over of public space (space where all UCLA students should be free to go), and the like. Students should be free to express themselves, on both sides of the conflict, but only consistently with the law and with university rules. To close with a quote from Jesse Singal's Singal-Minded newsletter (and I recommend people read the whole item):

What if widespread disorder is … bad? And should be prevented?

The post UCLA Chancellor's Statement appeared first on Reason.com.

Raucous pro-Palestine protests have taken over college campuses across the country for the past several days. At UCLA, protesters declared areas of campus off-limits to pro-Israel students and blocked them from entering certain spaces, even just to get to class. At night, masked counter-protesters attacked the pro-Palestine encampment, tearing down barricades and shooting fireworks at the protesters.

At the University of Texas at Austin, police brutally dispersed student protesters. Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein was among those arrested at Washington University in St. Louis. Administrators at Brown University persuaded protesters to disband their encampment peacefully after agreeing to discuss their demands for financial divestiture from companies that do business with the Israeli military.

Events at Columbia University came to a head after the authorities finally tired of the occupation of Hamilton Hall. Protesters had smashed the windows of the administrative building, entered it, taken over, held a janitor hostage, and demanded humanitarian aid—not for Gaza, but for themselves. (I.e., they wanted snacks.)

Reporter grills Columbia student after she demands the university help feed protestors occupying Hamilton Hall:

"It seems like you're saying, 'we want to be revolutionaries, we want to take over this building, now would you please bring us some food'." pic.twitter.com/vNczSAM4T1

— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) April 30, 2024

It is easy to make fun of these protesters, many of whom seem to know very little about why they are even protesting. And some of their antics deserve not just mockery, but condemnation: Statements in support of terrorist violence and exhortations for "Zionists" to be killed "or worse" are contemptible, as are tactics that involve preventing other students from moving about campus and pursuing their education.

But critics of the campus left should not lose sight of the much greater threat, which is that campus authority figures, members of law enforcement, and even national legislators will act in a manner that gravely threatens the free speech rights of everyone. Indeed, in response to the protests, identity-obsessed busybodies are already working overtime to criminalize protests on the grounds that offensive speech is a threat to the safety of Jewish students.

Safe Space Reprise

These are not new arguments; for years, university bureaucrats have subtly chipped away at their institutions' stated protections for free speech by invoking dubious safety concerns. You might remember the concept of the safe space: A very real notion, frequently invoked by progressive student activists, that being forced to confront speech with which they disagree is a form of physical violence.

In my first book, Panic Attack: Young Radicals in the Age of Trump, I traveled to college campuses and interviewed activists. What I learned was that for a variety of reasons—their upbringing, their ideology, their social circles—they did not want free and unfettered debate. They thought that outside speakers, professors, and even other students should be silenced for expressing nonprogressive views. In fact, they viewed the university administration's role as that of a parent, shielding them from painful speech. Administrators were all too happy to comply, and school after school took steps to shield their most unreasonable students from emotional vulnerability. Not all of these efforts are explicitly contrary to free speech principles, even though they were universally silly: In 2016, for instance, the University of Pennsylvania created a safe space so that students spooked by former President Donald Trump's rise to the presidency could take time to breathe, play with coloring books, and pet some puppies. Duke University's 2016-era safe space—a production of the campus's diversity, equity, and inclusion bureaucracy—included the presence of a social worker.

More perniciously, hundreds of campuses created bias incident reporting systems, whereby students were instructed to call the campus authorities—in some cases, the literal cops—if they overheard anyone say something that could offend another person on the basis of a protected class, such as race, gender, sexuality, or ability status. At Colby College, someone filed a bias incident report when they overheard the phrase "on the other hand," with no explanation given, though I gather the ever-vigilant person worried that a one-handed person might take offense.

These developments on campuses produced widespread mockery from many Democrats as well as Republicans. Aside from a minority of extremely difficult young people, and the administrators who coddle them, most people do not think the university's job is to protect students from having their feelings hurt.

Enter Congress

Unfortunately, many elected officials are hypocrites, and during a perceived crisis—like the one unfolding on college campuses right now—they are all too eager to pass bad laws. Case in point: On Wednesday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Antisemitism Awareness Act by a margin of 320–91. This bill empowers the Education Department to take action against educational institutions that do not sufficiently combat antisemitic speech on campus. It also defines antisemitism incredibly broadly; Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.), who voted against the bill, pointed out on X that political statements about Israel would be effectively criminalized if the bill became law.

Do you agree with all of these examples of antisemitism? Should people in America be prosecuted for saying these things in all contexts? I think not. This is a poorly conceived unconstitutional bill and I will vote no. pic.twitter.com/L3AI5MCFGw

— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) May 1, 2024

Some of the statements deemed impermissible antisemitism include "denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination" with respect to a Jewish state and "applying a double standard" to the state of Israel. It should go without saying, but the First Amendment robustly protects the right to disagree with the political project of Israel. This bill is obviously unconstitutional, and moreover, a clear violation of the idea that college students don't need protection from uncomfortable speech. Universities must protect their campuses from violence and harassment, whether motivated by antisemitism, some other political animus, or any other cause. It's the action that should count, not the content of the belief.

The collective national media are obsessed with campus protests, and understandably so—the spectacle of disproportionately elite, privileged young people resorting to histrionics is frequently amusing to general audiences. People should feel free to mock them, but let's not forget that Congress is using them as a pretext to grant vast new powers to federal bureaucrats, with the explicit goal of enshrining into law a new right not to be offended: one giant safe space.

This Week on Free Media

Reason's Emma Camp and I mocked Drew Barrymore's cringeworthy interview with Vice President Kamala "Momala" Harris, surveyed media coverage of the campus protests, criticized the Biden campaign's youth outreach strategy, and argued about RFK Jr.'s appeal.

Worth Watching

Famed satire website The Onion was recently acquired by Ben Collins, a former disinformation beat reporter for NBC News. (Regular readers will know Collins and I have clashed before.)

That said, I have to give him props for his plan to revive The Onion's TV department. I am particularly eager to the see return of Today Now, the site's mock morning show. The entire archive is available here; the humor has only become more relevant for me over time, now that I, too, host a morning show. It's hard to pick a favorite, but here's one.

The post The Antisemitism Awareness Act Will Make It Illegal To Criticize Israel on Campus appeared first on Reason.com.

Who has better crazies? Last night, California law enforcement moved in to start clearing the pro-Palestine encampment of protesters at UCLA.

Not to be outdone by the New Yorkers over at Columbia, which had its own night of arrests just a day prior, the college students at UCLA sprayed cops with fire extinguishers and barricaded themselves with plywood. (They literally built a wall and instituted checkpoints, the irony of which does not seem to register.)

Counter-protesters tried to pull the plywood down. They shot fireworks into the encampment. They reportedly sprayed mace. Violence on both sides ensued:

Dueling groups of pro-Palestinian protesters and pro-Israel counterprotesters clashed Wednesday at UCLA, breaking out in fistfights, tearing down encampment barricades and using objects to beat one another. https://t.co/eLTOkdLARP pic.twitter.com/rlM40wLHDx

— CBS News (@CBSNews) May 2, 2024

So last night, the school sent law enforcement in to attempt to stop the violence and clear the tent city. Video emerged of police using stun grenades. A little before publication time, at least one California Highway Patrol (CHP) officer shot something toward the protesters in the encampment, which was met with shouts of "Don't shoot!" and "We're just students!" (The CHP said officers are loaded with nonlethal tools like flash-bang devices. The officers also held off for roughly six hours after issuing orders for protesters to disband; they have only just recently begun moving in and attempting arrests.)

"More than 1,300 protesters have been taken into custody on U.S. campuses over the past two weeks," reported The New York Times. "Arrests were made on Wednesday at the University of Texas at Dallas, Dartmouth College in New Hampshire and Tulane University in New Orleans, among other places."

The questions of what type of speech ought to be permitted are fairly thorny here. Restrictions on speech should, of course, be content-neutral. Public and private universities have different obligations. Protests surely run afoul of university policies when they disrupt university operations:

Campus operations will be limited tomorrow and Friday. Please continue to avoid campus and the Royce Quad area. Per Academic Senate guidance on instruction, all in-person classes are authorized and required to pivot to remote tomorrow and Friday. https://t.co/MNiqJ7bu67

— UCLA (@UCLA) May 2, 2024

And protests that devolve into vandalism and violence—as many have—ought to be treated differently than mere speech. One could make the case that encampments, housing peaceful protesters, are civil disobedience, but part of what makes civil disobedience work is being willing to stoically incur harsh consequences for your actions. Universities are well within their rights to clear tent cities from their campuses, but perhaps protesters who believe in their cause would be better served by simply taking the arrest and proving to the interested public that they are willing to sacrifice for this cause.

Absent that, the UCLA protesters—who have likened the waving of bananas near their encampment (since someone has an allergy) to Israeli settlers waving machine guns, and prevented students from attending class—deserve little respect.

Relevance allergies: Yesterday, the Libertarian Party (L.P.) announced a huge convention get: Former President Donald Trump will be speaking, and you can even buy merch in preparation for the big event (never mind the fact that the man already had four years during which he could have pardoned Julian Assange or Ross Ulbricht, yet chose not to). It says it also invited President Joe Biden and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to speak, but to my mind it's not exactly shocking that Biden ignored the invite.

The Libertarian Party is selling Trump-themed merch ahead of a speech by Donald Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee, at the Libertarian National Convention. https://t.co/S0zelJMszJ https://t.co/msMmma51o2 pic.twitter.com/vN9T0napjF

— Zach Weissmueller (@TheAbridgedZach) May 1, 2024

"I know there are some libertarians who have a severe allergy to relevance, but it is an undeniably great thing that Trump is speaking at the Libertarian Party National Convention," wrote comedian Dave Smith on X. "It will generate more attention on our party and the issues that we care about, than we've ever had."

Perhaps you're sitting there wondering why the L.P.—which, at this convention, will be nominating its own presidential candidate (contenders include Chase Oliver, Mike ter Maat, and Michael Rectenwald)—would want to host the former president and presumptive nominee for another party. To answer these questions, I called up L.P. Communications Director Brian McWilliams.

All publicity = good publicity? The media attention "is going to be more than we have ever experienced," says McWilliams. "Do you think libertarians will be happy about it?" I asked, to a firm yes from him: "This gives us an opportunity to get Donald Trump up there, to make him answer questions from our philosophical base." When I asked who would be moderating—who will be doing the pushing back, and making sure Trump doesn't turn this into a bloviating stump speech—he said he did not yet know, but possibly the L.P. chair, Angela McArdle.

"RFK [Jr.] was flirting with [the L.P.] because we are a growing bloc. Trump's seeing that," says McWilliams. "Growing bloc via what metric?" I asked. "I think we now are getting to a point where we're representing more Americans," he continued, to which I pressed: "Do we have data that reflects that?"

"We don't have data that reflects that as far as party registration or affiliation," responded McWilliams. "I'm basically speaking from the point of what we're seeing from a cultural perspective." Following the Reno Reset in 2022, at which point the Mises Caucus—essentially, mostly anarcho-capitalist edgelords who spend a lot of time online—took over the party, libertarians have widely criticized the nouveau L.P. for its dropping membership and struggles with fundraising.

As for the merch, McWilliams says "it was basically an internal miscommunication as far as timing…some version of merch might be made available, I can't say if it's going to be that exact variety." And, there's still "a question of whether or not we want to be selling merch for Donald Trump that's affiliated with the Libertarian Party or not."

"This was something that somebody clearly spent time and resources on," I noted, to which he admitted that "without a doubt there was internal thought given to creating the merchandise, you know, that there's no denying that….[But] this was not something that I wanted to go out the same exact day the same exact time." All of this struck me as wishy-washy, like they were caught in something that looked bad, and want to save face.

Awfully close? McArdle released a meandering 17-minute video chalking up a lot of the rollout awkwardness to internal incompetence.

"The founders of this party were hardcore radicals. They were anarchists. They hated the government. Many of our members are anarchists; we want total abolition of the federal government. And when we see someone else [Donald Trump] get potentially kicked off the ballot for, you know, not agreeing with the election results, complaining about the federal government, and so on and so forth, that looks awfully close to some of the views we have about the legitimacy of the federal government."

Well then! So maybe this isn't an L.P. endorsement of Trump, but boy could you be forgiven for thinking they fancy him and are willing to excuse some of his more election-subverting actions.

Scenes from New York: It's now confirmed, both by Columbia's president and by Mayor Eric Adams, that "individuals not affiliated with the university" were the ones leading the Hamilton Hall break-in and barricade that got shut down by NYPD yesterday. "Approximately 300 people were arrested," and they do not know the breakdown yet of outside agitators vs. students.

QUICK HITS

• Bill Ackman, a major Harvard donor who was one of the top voices calling for former President Claudine Gay to step down following her insufficient handling of antisemitism on campus, has seemingly decided to take his dollars elsewhere:

William. pic.twitter.com/tdkHbzSIfK

— Katie Herzog (@kittypurrzog) May 1, 2024

• "NO bagels" needed at the UCLA pro-Palestine encampment. (Too Jewish-coded? Are they coming for lox next? SMH, I knew I didn't like these kids.)
• "Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell kept hopes alive for an interest-rate cut this year while acknowledging that a burst of inflation has reduced policymakers' confidence that price pressures are ebbing," reported Bloomberg. Jerome, you big tease!
• Everything you ever wanted to know about regional skating cultures and the Atlanta scene.
• "Lack of ammunition is forcing the outnumbered Ukrainian soldiers to pull back, one village after another, including three surrendered Sunday, as intense fighting roils the countryside surrounding Avdiivka nearly three months after the strategic city fell to Russia," reported the Associated Press. "Facing an outcry after Avdiivka's fall, Ukraine is rushing to build concrete-fortified trenches, foxholes, firing positions and other barricades on the front lines. But relentless Russian shelling, lack of equipment and crippling bureaucracy plague construction across the vast 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front, even as a new Russian offensive looms."
• How to stay fit on the moon.

The post L.A. Beats NYC? appeared first on Reason.com.

Released Monday by OSU President Ted Carter; I'm not up on the factual details, but I agree that such encampments can and should be forbidden under content-neutral time, place, and manner rules, and those rules should be enforced:

Listening to the feedback from our community over the last several days, I want to set the record straight regarding the events that took place on the South Oval on April 25.

I value and welcome free speech. I have spoken to this since the day I arrived here at Ohio State. As many of you know, I wore the cloth of our nation for 38 years to support and defend these rights. What occurred on our campus on April 25 was not about limiting free speech. It was an intentional violation of university space rules that exist so that teaching, learning, research, service and patient care can occur on our campuses without interruption.

As a public university, demonstrations, protests and disagreement regularly occur on our campus — so much so that we have trained staff and public safety professionals on-site for student demonstrations for safety and to support everyone's right to engage in these activities. Sadly, in recent days, I have watched significant safety issues be created by encampments on other campuses across our nation. These situations have caused in-person learning and commencement ceremonies to be canceled. Ohio State's campus will not be overtaken in this manner.

We have been abundantly clear in a multitude of communications that Ohio State has and will enforce the law and university policy, which is what we did on April 25. I most recently stated this in a campus message on April 22. Dr. Shivers again reinforced this and the rules that apply to Finals Week in a message to all students on April 23.

The university's long-standing space rules are content neutral and are enforced uniformly. Thursday's actions were taken because those involved in creating the encampment on the South Oval were in violation of these rules and had been notified of this beginning at 4:30 a.m. when the first encampment was attempted, and continuing repeatedly throughout the day. During and after the attempted encampment on Thursday morning, students asked our demonstration staff pointed questions about the space rules and received answers, confirming they were aware of the rules.

Despite these warnings and clear information about the rules, student organizations and outside entities promoted both the morning and the 5 p.m. activities as "encampments," and the university consistently informed the groups that this is prohibited and would not be permitted. At approximately 5:30 p.m., a group of more than 300, many of whom were not students, faculty or staff at Ohio State, crossed College Road to the South Oval and set up an encampment. Over the next five hours, the group proceeded to establish and build upon the encampment, while being repeatedly warned that this was prohibited. The Ohio State University Police Division was the lead agency, and after numerous warnings, the university made the decision to begin arrests. At approximately 10 p.m., law enforcement began the process of arresting and charging individuals with criminal trespass for knowingly violating university policy and police orders.

Encampments are not allowed on campus regardless of the reason for them. They create the need for around-the-clock safety and security resources, which takes these resources away from the rest of our community. They also create undue pressure on proximate buildings, in this case the Ohio Union, for restrooms and personal hygiene. During Finals Week, the Ohio Union is not only a study space for students, but it is also an exam location, including for students with disabilities. In this case, with the intent of creating an ongoing, 24/7 activity, the encampment also created a disturbance to our residential community in Baker Hall.

I acknowledge that even with additional facts about the incident and the timeline of events, some will continue to disagree with the actions taken. I accept that criticism and will always listen to others' concerns. In short, I take my responsibilities very seriously and am accountable for outcomes. Arrests are not an action that I or any member of the administration take lightly. I have stated since the first day I was announced as president that safety will not be compromised.

Additional details surrounding the facts of what occurred on April 25 are available on the university's Key Issues webpage and I encourage you to read them. But I wanted you to hear directly from me that Thursday's actions were not about the content of anyone's speech. They do not mean we are limiting individuals' right to gather and demonstrate. They do mean that Ohio State will continue to uniformly enforce our space rules as well as take the actions that support the safety and security of our community as a whole.

I also want to recognize and thank the many members of our community who have been committed to teaching, learning, listening to and supporting one another as well as peacefully exercising their First Amendment rights on our campus over these past months. This is what I know our Buckeye community is capable of, even — and especially — when it is most difficult.

The post Ohio State University President's Statement on Clearing of Protest Encampments appeared first on Reason.com.

Sent out yesterday:

This post provides an update from Stanford University about the encampment recently set up on Stanford's White Plaza. It follows the message sent to students by the president and provost last Friday, April 26. Additional updates will be posted to this page as needed.

Stanford welcomes and encourages the peaceful expression of free speech by members of our Stanford community. Students have been pursuing many opportunities to do so over the course of this year, in a variety of ways. Among other options, student groups are welcome to engage in advocacy on White Plaza in a manner consistent with campus policies. There is a process for registering to do so, in order to allow for equitable access to this space by members of our community.

Alongside its support for the peaceful expression of free speech, the university has viewpoint-neutral time, place, and manner policies. Among these are policies regarding the use of White Plaza, prohibiting overnight camping, and prohibiting the disruption of classes and university events.

With respect to the encampment on White Plaza, the university is continuing to submit names of students who are violating campus policies to the Office of Community Standards (OCS) for disciplinary proceedings. This is being done in a viewpoint-neutral manner and based on evidence of students' conduct in violation of university policy. Students who are involved will have the opportunity to provide a defense to OCS.

Stanford also is concerned about the involvement of non-student outsiders in these activities on our campus. We continue to remind visitors that their participation in activities that violate university policy may subject them to criminal and/or civil liability.

We have received many expressions of concern about a photo circulating on social media of an individual on White Plaza who appeared to be wearing a green headband similar to those worn by members of Hamas. We find this deeply disturbing, as Hamas is designated a terrorist organization by the United States government. We have not been able to identify the individual but have forwarded the photo to the FBI.

As it has throughout the last months, Stanford is working to manage these issues in a deliberate manner that supports the safety of our students and of our campus community. As our students work toward the completion of their studies this spring quarter, and many look forward to graduation in June, we intend to continue working to support peaceful expression, to support the rules that govern our campus, and to support a safe environment for all.

Friday's message also links to the policies that "prohibit disruptions of classes and university events" and "prohibit[] overnight camping," and adds:

These policies are important to supporting the academic and scholarly activities on campus and to supporting the safety of our community. As we have previously explained, tents and overnight camping pose multiple safety challenges, including the need for 24-hour security since the physical layout of our campus makes it easily accessible to outsiders, some of whom may come with bad intentions. The tents themselves can also pose safety hazards, as was discussed in winter quarter. Students were reminded of these policies in a message earlier this week. We encourage the daytime use of White Plaza for free expression as long as the conduct is consistent with university policies, which require reservations for groups and only allow tables and not overnight tents or other materials.

Private universities in California, such as Stanford, are governed by the Leonard Law, a California statute that provides, in relevant part,

No private postsecondary educational institution shall make or enforce a rule subjecting a student to disciplinary sanctions solely on the basis of conduct that is speech or other communication that, when engaged in outside the campus or facility of a private postsecondary institution, is protected from governmental restriction by the First Amendment ….

But content-neutral time, place, and manner speech restrictions—including prohibitions on overnight camping in public parks and restrictions on speech that disrupts educational institutions—are permissible "outside the campus," and thus would be allowed on campus as well; and the statute itself (in a part that doesn't appear in the California Education Code, but remains part of the law) expressly acknowledges this:

The Legislature finds and declares the following: … Free speech rights, both on and off campus, are subject to reasonable time, place, and manner regulations.

(To be permissible, the policies likely have to be not just "viewpoint-neutral," but content-neutral, so that content-based distinctions based on subject matter, use of profanity, and the like are generally unconstitutional even if they are viewpoint-neutral. But it sounds like the relevant Stanford policies are indeed content-neutral.)

Note that wearing a green headband as a sign of support for Hamas would remain constitutionally protected speech (as would wearing a swastika or the like); punishing a student for doing so would be based on content and indeed on viewpoint, and would thus generally not be allowed under the Leonard Law. Of course, being an actual member of Hamas is a federal crime, since Hamas is indeed a designated foreign terrorist organization, and joining such an organization constitutes criminal provision of material support to the organization.

I'm skeptical that simply wearing the headband is much of a basis for the FBI to investigate, but I don't think there's a First Amendment (or state law) problem with such an investigation; the government can (at least under the First Amendment) investigate someone based on constitutionally protected speech, even if the person can't be prosecuted based just on that speech.

The post Stanford Message to Students About Protests appeared first on Reason.com.

Which side were you on in the allergy wars? Over at UCLA, the pro-Palestine protesters have reached peak Angeleno zoomer by figuring out how to be victimized by bananas.

According to Twitter user Linda Mamoun (with video footage to back it up): "There was a protestor in the liberated zone…with a potentially fatal banana allergy. Counterprotestors invaded the encampment and saw all the no bananas warnings. The next day they came back waving bananas like settlers waving machine guns & smeared bananas everywhere."

Yes, just like settlers!

Meanwhile, over on the East Coast, the Columbia protesters have decided that actually they are the ones who need "humanitarian aid."

"They're obligated to provide food to students who pay for a meal plan here," said one spokesperson-protester. "Do you want students to die of dehydration and starvation or get severely ill, even if they disagree with you? If the answer is no, then you should allow basic—I mean, it's crazy to say it because we're on an Ivy League campus, but this is like basic humanitarian aid we're asking for."

The protester appears to be referring to the fact that the university has limited meal-hall access and that the protesters were occupying and barricading Hamilton Hall, wanting assurances that the college would not stop deliveries of food from entering.

Crackdown: Now, it's effectively a non-issue: Dozens of protesters were arrested last night as New York Police Department officers entered the building at around 9:30 p.m., called in by President Minouche Shafik. "We regret that protesters have chosen to escalate the situation through their actions," wrote Shafik in a statement. "After the university learned overnight that Hamilton Hall had been occupied, vandalized and blockaded, we were left with no choice."

Shafik also noted, interestingly, that "the group that broke into and occupied the building is led by individuals who are not affiliated with the university."

Meanwhile, police cracked down on other protests across the country—like one at Washington University in St. Louis—sometimes using what looks like excessive force. In St. Louis, reports emerged of police beating up a professor from Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, named Steve Tamari; Tamari reportedly suffered injuries including a broken hand and ribs.

It's very difficult to sort out all the different threads of this loose campus movement, along with the very different responses from university administrators and local law enforcement. For anyone inclined to forget: speech should be given a wide berth (even that which is ugly and offensive). Campus speech restrictions—to the extent that they ought to be permitted at all—should be content-neutral, a quite legitimate case can be made that tent cities are not permitted by university policies, but nobody should cheer agents of the state exerting more force than is absolutely necessary to break it all up.

Updates from the actual war zone: Hostage negotiations between Israel and Hamas keep breaking down.

The U.S. is trying to hastily broker yet another deal as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made sounds indicating that the military will invade Rafah, an area in southern Gaza where some 1 million Palestinians—plus an unknown quantity of Hamas terrorists, in the thousands—are sheltering.

But mediators—Americans, Egyptians, and Qataris—"worry that Hamas appears willing to sacrifice even more Palestinian civilians," according to The New York Times. "[Hamas] officials believe that the deaths in Gaza erode support for Israel around the world." As a result, they're not willing to do very much to prevent an invasion of Rafah and are also resistant to more hostage-for-prisoners deals, including one offered by Israel that would have been imbalanced in Hamas' favor.

Hamas has rejected previous offers, claiming that they cannot meet Israel's demand for 40 living hostages who are female, sick, or elderly, leading many to speculate that Hamas has killed more of the hostages than previously thought. "Throughout the months of negotiations since the last ceasefire Israel has repeatedly asked for a list of the hostages and their conditions," reports CNN. "Hamas has argued that it needs a break in the fighting to be able to track and gather down the hostages, the same argument it made in November before a week-long pause that broke down after Hamas failed to deliver more hostages."

Of the roughly 250 hostages taken on October 7, some 129 are still being held by Hamas, with 33 of those believed to be dead.

One of the Hamas leaders, Yahya Sinwar, appears to be at least responsible in part for the sinking of deals. He has reportedly been negotiating while surrounded by 15 hostages, whom he uses as human shields to prevent Israel from taking him out. (I wonder if he's banana-vulnerable; have we tried that yet?)

Demands for a ceasefire from pro-Palestine activists in the U.S. are fine and good, but they look hollow when it's Hamas that's refusing to agree to a ceasefire or a plan to return the hostages.

Scenes from New York: A meta take that's pretty much spot-on (though that one guy's crop top is beautiful, at least in his own imagination).

More than anything, these people are boring, and artless, and ignorant. They are a total repudiation of everything beautiful about humanity, which I think is what's most irritating of all. The specific cause - which changes seemingly by the month - is in actuality irrelevant https://t.co/EkJtaRW739

— pjeffa (????,????) (@jeff82874662) May 1, 2024

QUICK HITS

• "Since 2019, prices for many types of consumer purchases in the U.S. have shot up," reports The Atlantic's Amanda Mull. "On average, goods cost nearly 20 percent more than they did before the pandemic."
• A good point, raised by Just Asking Questions guest Peter Moskos:

Crime. People, it's about crime. There's tons of cheap housing in American cities. Virtually free to buy. But you won't live here because of crime. Not race. Crime. (Well crime and schools.) Reduce crime in cities and double affordable housing. Quadruple in some. https://t.co/IWJPdrttqE pic.twitter.com/A2zmxNF2nl

— Peter Moskos (@PeterMoskos) May 1, 2024

• Elon Musk went to China to try to convince regulators to approve his self-driving cars.
• "Changpeng Zhao, the billionaire founder of the giant cryptocurrency exchange Binance, was sentenced on Tuesday to four months in prison, a much lighter penalty than other crypto executives have faced since the industry imploded in 2022," reports The New York Times.
• Good observation:

Europe is falling behind the USA in effectively every area of technology

SpaceX completely killed the EU launch ecosystem etc

The one area EU is keeping up?

Biotech…

Because even though they try to regulate innovation to death… at least in biotech the US does the same ????

— delian (@zebulgar) April 30, 2024

The post Weaponized Bananas appeared first on Reason.com.

This column was written before police entered Columbia University's Hamilton Hall

One challenge of free speech advocacy is holding the line even when the speech in question is vile. Then you must make distinctions between acceptable forms of expression and those that violate the rights of others. That's why it's important to have clear, firm principles applied equally to all points of view. In the absence of clarity, you find yourself making things up as you go along—like too many institutions of higher learning at a moment of campus unrest.

Muddled Boundaries for Expression

"Early this morning, a group of protestors occupied Hamilton Hall on the Morningside campus," Columbia University advises. "In light of the protest activity on campus, members of the University community who can avoid coming to the Morningside campus today (Tuesday, April 30) should do so."

The school subsequently locked down the campus. That was two weeks after over 100 protesters were arrested at an encampment on campus grounds and days after administrators then muddled boundaries by vowing not to summon police again to handle demonstrations against Israel's response to the October 7 attack by Hamas. The protests frequently feature antisemitic language, sometimes turn violent, and passed the point of violating Columbia's rules and control over its own property weeks ago.

Columbia has done a poor job of defining what is and isn't acceptable. Without firm guidelines, the protests have lingered and spread to other institutions. Some are dealing with the protests better than others—particularly those that respect speech rights but also make clear where the line is drawn.

Free Speech With Respect for Others

"Against the backdrop of the war in Gaza, college administrators are confronting a flurry of student activity on campus that includes peaceful protest and lawful self-expression, punctuated at times by bursts of severe disruption and even isolated acts of violence," notes the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), which consistently calls for respect for expression and regard for the equal liberty of others. "Separating First Amendment-protected speech from illegal conduct in these situations can present challenges, but it's not an impossible task."

The key is setting expectations ahead of time. That's true at public universities bound by the First Amendment and at private schools educating students to function in a society where people disagree.

"Whenever you have protests, universities will define the time, manner and way in which it's done," Daniel Diermeier, Chancellor of Vanderbilt University, told NPR last week. "So for example, you're not allowed to disrupt classes, and you're not – you know, injuring a security guard and forcing your way into a closed building is not an expression of free speech."

When Vanderbilt students did exactly that in March, police ejected them within a day. Three were expelled and about two dozen others received lesser discipline. They were punished not for their message—others criticized Israel without consequence—but for occupying property and attacking a guard. There's a distinction between the two that must be maintained if institutions are to simultaneously preserve speech rights while forestalling chaos.

"To provide clarity—and to ensure freedom of expression—universities must adopt free speech principles and enforce them consistently," emphasizes FIRE. "Harmful, hateful, and offensive speech" is protected by the First Amendment, the organization points out. That includes expression directed at specific groups, like the antisemitic slogans sometimes encountered at recent protests.

That said, FIRE adds that "a campus where unprotected conduct and expression—such as violence, true threats and intimidation, incitement, and discriminatory harassment—go unaddressed is a campus where faculty and students will be afraid to speak."

A Difficult Balancing Act

Yes, that is a balancing act. It's one that leaves room for criticism of both Columbia's paralysis over its campus encampment as well as the crackdown by public colleges in Texas on demonstrations that may be offensive but are peaceful and conducted within constitutional boundaries.

In March, Texas Governor Greg Abbott directed state institutions "to address the sharp rise in antisemitic speech and acts on university campuses and establish appropriate punishments, including expulsion from the institution." That impermissibly targets speech protected by the First Amendment.

A better take is found in the Chicago Principles developed in 2014 at the University of Chicago and adopted elsewhere with varying degrees of consistency. The principles embrace freedom of expression and state that "it is not the proper role of the University to attempt to shield individuals from ideas and opinions they find unwelcome, disagreeable, or even deeply offensive," but also that "the University may restrict expression that violates the law, that falsely defames a specific individual, that constitutes a genuine threat or harassment, that unjustifiably invades substantial privacy or confidentiality interests, or that is otherwise directly incompatible with the functioning of the University."

In response to recent protests at the University of Chicago, within hours administrators reaffirmed the school's commitment to free expression. They also reminded participants that the encampment "clearly violates policies" and reserved the right to take "disciplinary action" over disruptions of campus life.

In FIRE's free speech rankings of 248 universities, the University of Chicago ranks "above average" at 13, while Columbia is "below average" at 214.

Self-Inflicted Wounds

Columbia's low score represents not wholesale suppression of all expression, but years of selective tolerance of some points of view and crackdowns on others. That's been a feature of life at many Ivy League and other elite institutions, where those with the "right" ideas have grown accustomed to doing what they please while muzzling opponents. That likely contributed to the current unfortunate moment of confusion over where boundaries lie, if anywhere.

For those concerned over the need to tolerate vile speech, even within limits, it is worth knowing that trumpeting offensiveness to the world may carry its own penalty.

"33% of those making hiring decisions said they are less likely to hire Ivy League graduates today than five years ago," Forbes's Emma Whitford reports of a survey of employers intended to measure the impact of campus chaos. "Only 7% said they were more likely to hire them."

We all have a right to voice our views—peacefully. But we can't make people like them.

The post For Peaceful Campus Protests, Colleges Need Free Speech Principles appeared first on Reason.com.

This week, the University of Southern California (USC) announced that the college's valedictorian, Asna Tabassum, would be barred from speaking at commencement. The school cited concerns that Tabassum, who had recently come under fire for an anti-Israel social media post, would create safety concerns.

USC announced that Tabassum had been selected as the school's valedictorian on April 4, after choosing her from among over 100 students with a GPA of 3.9 or higher.

But less than two weeks later, the school announced that Tabassum would not be allowed to speak at commencement, following complaints from several USC student groups over Tabassum's social media postings. Namely, many cited a link in Tabassum's Instagram bio that calls Zionism a "racist settler-colonial ideology that advocates for a jewish ethnostate built on palestinian land" and calls for "the complete abolishment of the state of israel."

"Unfortunately, over the past several days, discussion relating to the selection of our valedictorian has taken on an alarming tenor," Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Andrew Guzman wrote in a letter to USC students and faculty. "The intensity of feelings, fueled by both social media and the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, has grown to include many voices outside of USC and has escalated to the point of creating substantial risks relating to security and disruption at commencement."

Rather than directly citing the political content of Tabassum's speech, USC officials made nebulous claims that her speech might imperil student safety.

"While this is disappointing, tradition must give way to safety," wrote Guzman. "This decision is not only necessary to maintain the safety of our campus and students, but is consistent with the fundamental legal obligation—including the expectations of federal regulators—that universities act to protect students and keep our campus community safe."

Ironically, Guzman argued that the decision had nothing to do with free expression concerns. "To be clear: this decision has nothing to do with freedom of speech," he wrote. "There is no free-speech entitlement to speak at a commencement. The issue here is how best to maintain campus security and safety, period."

However, Guzman is hardly convincing. 

"Implicit in the idea of a campus committed to robust expressive rights is that administrators won't censor their students just because they have controversial views," wrote Alex Morey, an attorney for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). "Here, USC should have been palms up about any genuine security threats, with administrators first doing everything in their power to provide adequate security for the event so it could proceed. Canceling it should be a last resort."

While it's easy to view this censorship as reflective of USC taking a side in the Israel-Hamas war, the reality is much more mundane. USC, like many colleges, is primarily concerned with avoiding controversy at all costs—not with taking a side in a complex political debate. For example, just last year, the school banned a Jewish professor from campus after he was filmed calling Hamas "murderers" and calling protesting students "ignorant"—though the sanctions against him were eventually reversed under pressure.

The cancellation of Tabassum's speech presents a clear example of just how risk-averse university administrations tend to be. When controversy arises—either from the left or right—the prevailing response is censorship, rather than a principled stand for free expression.

The post USC Cancels Valedictorian's Speech Over Bogus 'Safety Concerns' appeared first on Reason.com.

Dear XXX,

Congratulations on earning a place in Stanford University's Class of 2028! This is a moment to celebrate the hard work and determination that have brought you to this moment, and also to reflect on the next stage of your education. Amid all the challenging and polarizing issues being discussed in the world right now, you may be wondering what kind of intellectual community you would be joining at Stanford. And we think this is important to address directly.

Stanford strives to provide its students with a liberal education, which means one that broadens your mind and horizons by exposing you to different fields of study and different ways of thinking. A rigorous liberal education depends on questioning your assumptions and seeing if they hold up. As a member of the Stanford community, you will quickly learn that freedom of thought, inquiry, and expression are core values at Stanford. They animate our central missions of teaching and research. Stanford is also a place that values diversity in its broadest sense – which includes diversity of thought.

This means that every member of the Stanford community is accepted and valued for their unique characteristics and ideals. It is precisely the distinct attributes each community member brings to Stanford that, when openly and constructively shared, create a vibrant educational environment where the search for truth is advanced.

Our Founding Grant commits the University to "teach the blessings of liberty regulated by law, and … the great principles of government as derived from the inalienable rights of man to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." The "blessings of liberty" are a middle point between mere license (doing whatever you want) and conformity (doing what others want you to do). Liberty to think and say what you believe involves taking responsibility as well. It requires recognizing the freedom and rights of others and helping to create the conditions that make everyone's freedom possible here on campus and in our broader society.

Freedom of expression does not include the right to threaten or harass others and prevent them from engaging as equal participants in campus life. But the freedom of expression necessary for fulfilling the mission of a university – and for a democracy – does require allowing speech that some may find offensive or wrong. Many of humanity's greatest advances have come from ideas that offended conventional wisdom and seemed heretical at first. In a university, the remedy for ideas that you think are wrong is not to seek to silence them but to counter them with better ideas, evidence, and arguments.

As a part of your education you should expect, and indeed welcome, disagreement. You will undoubtedly encounter and hear ideas that are contrary to your beliefs and values. Stanford culture will expect and demand that when you face disagreements that you respond with respect for the humanity of those you disagree with, and with an open and curious mind. We aim for an environment where we are tough on ideas, but generous and respectful to one another. Being exposed to the very different views of others will invariably broaden your outlook and may transform some of your beliefs—or at least change your understanding of what they mean and how to defend them.

Your education at Stanford is designed to prepare you for life as a citizen of the communities in which you live. Whether it is your dormitory, your town, or your workplace, and regardless of what career path you eventually choose, you should have the skills to critically and constructively engage with those who are different from you.

Guided by the principles outlined above, we are delighted to welcome you and your unique perspective into this culture of free thought, inquiry, and expression. We hope you'll seriously embrace the extraordinary opportunities available here.

Sincerely,

/s/ Richard Saller, President, and Jenny S. Martinez, Provost

The post Letter from Stanford President and Provost to Incoming Stanford Students appeared first on Reason.com.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (Alex Morey) discusses the incident; I also commented on it yesterday morning on AirTalk (with Larry Mantle) on an L.A. radio station yesterday; for more about the material that the valedictorian had apparently posted online, see this Daily Mail (James Gordon) story. An excerpt from the FIRE piece:

The University of Southern California on Monday canceled a planned commencement speech by class valedictorian Asna Tabassum following criticism of Tabassum's online commentary about Israel.

In an email to the campus community, USC Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Andrew T. Guzman said canceling the speech was "necessary to maintain the safety of our campus and students" due to "substantial risks relating to security and disruption at commencement."

But with no sense that USC actually received any threats or took any steps to secure the event short of canceling it, this instead looks like a calculated move to quiet the critics — without creating new ones by overtly censoring the student or yanking her valedictorian status.

Of course, no student has the right to be valedictorian. At USC, it's an academic honor USC can give out as the institution sees fit. But once USC has selected a student for this honor, canceling her speech based on criticism of her viewpoint definitely implicates the campus speech climate in important ways.

USC is a private university that makes First Amendment-like free speech promises. It's also bound by California's Leonard Law, which requires private, secular colleges and universities to give their students the same expressive rights enjoyed by students at the state's public colleges.

Implicit in the idea of a campus committed to robust expressive rights is that administrators won't censor their students just because they have controversial views.

Here, USC should have been palms up about any genuine security threats, with administrators first doing everything in their power to provide adequate security for the event so it could proceed. Canceling it should be a last resort. And they should avoid at all costs ultimately doing what they've done here: capitulating to a heckler's veto….

I should note that the Leonard Law likely doesn't extend to this situation, because it only generally forbids private universities from "subjecting a student to disciplinary sanctions" based on constitutionally protected speech. I doubt that disinviting a student from giving a speech as part of a university-organized event qualifies as "disciplinary sanctions." But I agree that this was likely a bad decision on USC's part, largely for the reasons that FIRE mentions.

To elaborate on the heckler's veto point, behavior that gets rewarded gets repeated: If all it takes to cancel an event is that "discussion relating to [the event] has taken on an alarming tenor," that just encourages people with all sorts of views on all sorts of issues to try to shut down speakers simply by producing more "alarming" chatter. And if there really were such serious threats that USC felt it had to shut down the event despite this risk, then USC should have at least expressly said that there were such serious threats, and stressed that it had called in law enforcement so that the threateners could be caught and punished.

The post "USC Canceling Valedictorian's Commencement Speech Looks Like Calculated Censorship" appeared first on Reason.com.

Earlier this week, protestors at the University of California, Berkeley, violently shut down an event organized by a Jewish student group, which featured Israeli attorney Ran Bar-Yoshafat. Protestors organized by the student group Bears for Palestine prevented students from entering the building where the talk was supposed to take place, chanted "Long live the intifada," and broke glass doors.

Several students who attempted to attend the event claim they were physically assaulted by the protestors. One attendee claims she was grabbed by the neck and another says he was spit on.

"It was an extremely frightening experience," Berkeley student Veda Keyvanfar told Fox News on Wednesday. "The door to the venue was ripped out of my hand by a mob of protesters and my hand was injured in the process…we are allowed as students to host any type of speaker, and to attend any event we want to, we are not in the wrong at all."

The disruption wasn't simply a protest that got out of hand—it was a pre-planned attempt to prevent the event from going forward. An Instagram post from Bears for Palestine about the event said "We are 'combatting the lies' by SHUTTING IT DOWN," adding that Bar-Yoshafat "is a genocide denier, and we will not allow for this event to go on."

The event was canceled after university officials determined that they couldn't guarantee student safety "given the size of the crowd and the threat of violence," according to a university statement. Students attending the event had to be escorted out the back of the building. According to the Associated Press, the local police department received multiple calls over the event, and a university spokesperson confirmed that the school was opening a criminal investigation into students' behavior.

So far, the Berkeley administration has taken a strong stance against the students who disrupted Monday's event. 

"We deeply respect the right to protest as intrinsic to the values of a democracy and an institution of higher education," reads a Tuesday statement from Chancellor Carol Christ and Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Benjamin Hermalin. "Yet, we cannot ignore protest activity that interferes with the rights of others to hear and/or express perspectives of their choosing. We cannot allow the use or threat of force to violate the First Amendment rights of a speaker, no matter how much we might disagree with their views."

Videos of the protestors have received significant social media attention, leading to calls to expel or discipline students who engaged in the disruption.

"Everyone has a right to due process. But violent rioters have no place at any institution devoted to the fearless pursuit of truth. Certainly not at Berkeley, home of the Free Speech Movement," Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) President Greg Lukianoff and FIRE senior writer Angel Eduardo wrote in a recent column in The Free Press."Violence is not extreme speech, but the antithesis of speech—and the antithesis of what higher education is supposed to be all about."

Lukianoff and Eduardo are right—if you care about securing university students' free speech rights, punishing disruptive and violent protestors is absolutely necessary. While students have the right to peacefully protest an event, preventing individuals from hearing a speaker, damaging a building, and physically assaulting attendees obviously crosses a line into unprotected conduct. 

The only way to prevent speaker disruptions is for administrators to take a clear stand against them, and punish those responsible. When universities crack down on disruptive or violent protest tactics, they set a precedent, and send a clear message to student activists who are planning on protesting an event: that disruptive, speech-quashing conduct won't be tolerated.

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From Magistrate Judge J. Boone Baxter's Report and Recommendation in Greig v. Texas A&M Univ. Texarkana, adopted Thursday by District Judge Rodney Gilstrap (E.D. Tex.):

Plaintiff Carl Greig … alleges he is a fifty-eight year old white male who worked for TAMUT as the Assistant Vice President of Student Affairs for approximately twenty-five years. According to Plaintiff, part of his job duties included investigating student complaints about other students' violations of TAMUT's Code of Conduct and other offensive behavior. Plaintiff alleges he received favorable reviews until July 2022 and had never been discipled or told that his job performance fell below acceptable standards prior to July 2022. Plaintiff alleges he was discriminated against on the basis of race based on a single incident where he investigated, but did not discipline, a student who used a negative racial epithet. Specifically, Plaintiff alleges as follows:

In August of 2021, a student ("Student 1") filed a written complaint with [Plaintiff's] office complaining that another student ("Student 2") had used the word "Nigga" in her presence while on a trip to the mall several months earlier (Spring 2021). At the time the offensive word was used, the students were good friends and Student 1 did not complain that she was offended by Student 2's statement. The students' friendship deteriorated after the Spring of 2021 and then had a series of interpersonal problems including, but not limited to, Student 1 complaining to [Plaintiff] about Student 2's offensive statement and Student 2 claiming that Student 1 had threatened to "beat her ass."

[Plaintiff] knew of the students' long history of interpersonal conflict. [Plaintiff] conducted a thorough investigation into Student 1's complaint. [Plaintiff] conducted research regarding Student 2's First Amendment rights and sought guidance from the System General Counsel and the TAMU System Title IX Coordinator on how to respond to Student 1's complaint. Based on advice he received from both legal counsel and the TAMU System Title IX Coordinator and [Plaintiff's] own research, [Plaintiff] decided that punishing Student 2 would violate her First Amendment rights and that she had not violated the Student Code of Conduct in effect at that time. [Plaintiff] counselled Student 2 on three separate occasions about how offensive the word she used was and advised her not to use the word again.

Student 1 was dissatisfied that [Plaintiff] had not removed Student 2 from her position on Student Government and in a sorority and elevated her complaint to the President who assigned the investigation to the Human Resources Department that had no authority over or involvement with student complaints. The Human Resources Director conducted her own investigation into Student 2's statement and ultimately did not punish Student 2.

Plaintiff alleges TAMUT began reducing his job duties following the Human Resource Director's investigation; removed Plaintiff from investigating any student complaint that involved race and from any involvement in any Title IX case; and cancelled, without explanation, an open position for which Plaintiff had selected a candidate. Plaintiff further alleges as follows:

In the aftermath of [Plaintiff's] decision not to discipline Student 2, Defendant held a "Town Meeting," open to students and faculty. At the Town Meeting, a faculty member demanded that [Plaintiff] be replaced by a person of color. Defendant's President attended the Town Hall and did not reject the faculty member's demand. In November 2021, [Plaintiff's] supervisor, the Vice President of Student Affairs, advised him that he should consider looking for a new job because Defendant intended to blame [Plaintiff] for all race-related issues after his failure to punish Student 2. [Plaintiff's] supervisor also said [Plaintiff] made the right decision not to punish Student 2.

According to Plaintiff, shortly thereafter, Plaintiff's supervisor resigned, and TAMUT replaced Plaintiff's supervisor with an interim Vice President. Plaintiff alleges that in March of 2022, the interim Vice President began to criticize Plaintiff's job performance and alleged performance deficiencies, including incidents from several years prior and a list of complaints from students and employees; Plaintiff responded to the interim Vice President's allegations, after which time TAMUT never addressed the allegations with Plaintiff.

According to Plaintiff, in July of 2022, for the first time in his twenty-five years' of employment, Plaintiff received a "not meeting expectations" rating on his yearly evaluation and was told by the interim Vice President that the students wanted someone younger in Plaintiff's position and that he felt Plaintiff could not relate to people of color. Plaintiff alleges he was given no guidance or goals to follow to improve his allegedly deficient performance and instead was told in August of 2022 that he must resign or be terminated. Upon information and belief, Plaintiff was replaced by an African-American female who is several years younger than Plaintiff.

Plaintiff sued for race discrimination, and the court concluded the case could go forward:

Plaintiff has sufficiently alleged that an adverse employment action was taken against him because of his race. Plaintiff has provided dates and details leading to his termination. Specifically, Plaintiff has alleged two times when either a supervisor or a faculty member suggested Plaintiff should be replaced by a person of color or could not relate to students of color.

TAMUT argues Plaintiff's allegations are purely conclusory and inadequate to "raise a right to relief above the speculative level." According to TAMUT, the alleged statements from Plaintiff's prior supervisor, while "suggestively conspiratorial," provide "no support for Plaintiff's claim that an adverse employment action was taken against him on the basis of race." TAMUT Motion at 5 (stating the supervisor is both unidentified and "by Plaintiff's own admission had left university employment months before Plaintiff's termination, which occurred in August 2022"). Regarding the alleged statement from the Interim Vice President of Student Affairs informing Plaintiff that students at TAMUT felt Plaintiff could not connect to people of color, TAMUT argues this "statement alone would readily be understood as a communication of a serious performance issue, given Plaintiff was responsible for investigating student complaints relating to race and such investigations necessarily involve a degree of interpersonal skill." TAMUT argues generalized feedback regarding Plaintiff's interpersonal skills from the student body or employees cannot be said to provide support for Plaintiff's claim that he was subject to adverse employment actions because of his race but rather shows the opposite: that the student body, and apparently one faculty member, felt Plaintiff's job performance was unsatisfactory, and communicated that to Plaintiff's interim supervisor….

At this stage of the proceeding, a plaintiff need only plausibly allege facts going to the ultimate elements of the claim to survive a motion to dismiss. The Court finds Plaintiff has alleged sufficient facts, interpreted in the light most favorable to him, regarding whether an adverse employment action was taken against him because of his protected status and "nudged [his] claims across the line from conceivable to plausible." …

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Claudine Gay resigned as president of Harvard University in January, following numerous allegations that she plagiarized passages in her published works. But in some corners of the media, the fact that she committed plagiarism mattered much less than the fact that it was conservative writers who caught her.

Aaron Sibarium, a reporter at the right-leaning news website The Washington Free Beacon, performed the lion's share of the digging. Christopher Brunet, a conservative writer; Christopher Rufo, a conservative writer and activist; and Phillip Magness, a libertarian economic historian, also made important contributions. Their allegations were very serious, and what they found led many commentators—including Harvard students—to conclude that she should be held accountable. Even The Harvard Crimson's editorial board, writing in support of Gay, nevertheless acknowledged that she had committed plagiarism and that the university's investigation had been inadequate.

Gay's defenders said the charges against her lacked importance and that she was guilty of mere sloppiness—failing to sufficiently paraphrase the passages she had copied. This position became less tenable after subsequent reporting from Sibarium revealed that she had in fact committed traditional plagiarism as well: copying passages from other scholars without citing them.

The next course of action was to shoot the messengers. Since many of the people accusing Gay of committing plagiarism were conservative, their motivations were deemed political and thus dismissible. New York Times columnist Charles Blow described the campaign against Gay as "a project of displacement and defilement meant to reverse progress and shame the proponents of that progress."

Gay's defenders had a point, at least, in noting that conservatives had first set their sights on the president of Harvard after her disastrous testimony before the House of Representatives concerning antisemitism on campus. When Gay ultimately stepped aside, her resignation letter leaned into this explanation while merely nodding at the plagiarism accusations.

"It has been distressing to have doubt cast on my commitments to confronting hate and to upholding scholarly rigor—two bedrock values that are fundamental to who I am—and frightening to be subjected to personal attacks and threats fueled by racial animus," she wrote.

Gay is a more sympathetic figure when the hearing is considered in isolation. While her explanations of Harvard's speech policies in the face of relentless grilling by Republican political figures seemed tin-eared, it is in fact true that such policies are context-dependent; calls for political violence are not necessarily violations of Harvard's policies unless they are directed at specific individuals. She should not have lost her job for articulating that.

Yet Gay is no free speech hero. She may have defended provocative political speech at the House hearing, but her brief tenure at Harvard has not been marked by a dramatic return to free speech principles. In 2023, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression ranked Harvard dead last on its college free speech list. Indeed, one might conclude that in order to restore free speech at Harvard, different leadership is sorely needed.

In any case, the plagiarism allegations had teeth. Reporters discovered numerous instances of Gay lazily copying other scholars' exact passages without naming them. The political ideology of some of her accusers should make no difference; Gay must be held to the same standards as other professors and students. As one member of Harvard College's Honor Council wrote in an editorial for The Harvard Crimson days before her resignation, "There is one standard for me and my peers and another, much lower standard for our University's president."

When Harvard's governing board picks the next president, it should look for someone who both abides by principles of academic integrity and vows to improve the college's free speech standing.

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