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Ben-Porath, Sigal R. (2023). Cancel Wars: How Universities Can Foster Free Speech, Promote Inclusion, and Renew Democracy. University of Chicago Press College campuses have become flashpoints of the current culture war and, consequently, much ink has been spilled over the relationship between universities and the cultivation or coddling of young American minds. Philosopher Sigal R. Ben-Porath takes head-on arguments that infantilize students who speak out against violent and racist discourse on campus or rehash interpretations of the First Amendment. Ben-Porath sets out to demonstrate the role of the university in American society and, specifically, how it can model free speech in ways that promote democratic ideals. In "Cancel Wars," she argues that the escalating struggles over "cancel culture," "safe spaces," and free speech on campus are a manifestation of broader democratic erosion in the United States. At the same time, she takes a nuanced approach to the legitimate claims of harm put forward by those who are targeted by hate speech. Ben-Porath's focus on the boundaries of acceptable speech (and… [Direct]

(2020). Free Speech on Campus. Blueprint for Reform. James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal University students are America's future leaders in business, science, politics, philanthropy, and education. It is essential that universities provide for them an environment where the pursuit of truth and open inquiry are uninhibited. They must be exposed to differing ideas, engage in civil debate, and learn to appreciate America's tradition of respect for free expression and peaceful dissent. The pursuit of truth requires that all spaces are open for conversation, that the quest for knowledge is unbridled, and the path to truth is free from the hurdles of speech codes and restrictive policies. Over the last decade, the campus intellectual climate has deteriorated. Free speech issues are at the forefront of campus politics, with threats to free speech increasing worldwide. Public universities and colleges are bound by first amendment protections of free speech and many private institutions make bold promises of unfettered free expression. This report recommends that states or… [PDF]

Vivian, Bradford (2022). Campus Misinformation: The Real Threat to Free Speech in American Higher Education. Oxford University Press If we listen to the politicians and pundits, college campuses have become fiercely ideological spaces where students unthinkingly endorse a liberal orthodoxy and forcibly silence anyone who dares to disagree. These commentators lament the demise of free speech and academic freedom. But what is "really" happening on college campuses? "Campus Misinformation" shows how misinformation about colleges and universities has proliferated in recent years, with potentially dangerous results. Popular but highly misleading claims about a so-called free speech crisis and a lack of intellectual diversity on college campuses emerged in the mid-2010s and continue to shape public discourse about higher education across party lines. Such disingenuous claims impede constructive deliberation about higher learning while normalizing suspect ideas about First Amendment freedoms and democratic participation. Taking a non-partisan approach, Bradford Vivian argues that reporting on campus… [Direct]

Clark, Larika; Watkins, Nancy (2023). Ur Dad Is My Gardener: Antiracist Conversations for Educational Leaders. Journal of Cases in Educational Leadership, v26 n4 p10-28. Racism, social media, and free speech collide on a high school campus when a student creates an offensive poster that a classmate posts on social media. This case describes a school administrator's conversations and actions with students, teachers, and the community addressing bigotry, race, and free speech on campus. The scenario is presented from the perspective of a school leader leading a campus through an incident of offensive speech aimed at a rival high school and posted on social media. This case focuses on educators' responses to the issues presented through critical conversations and an intergroup dialogue protocol. The case elicits questions about hate speech, antiracist conversations, and accountability…. [Direct]

Karimi, Sirvan (2021). Balancing Inclusion and Diversity with Upholding Free Speech Rights in Canadian Universities: Challenging but Feasible. International Journal of Higher Education, v10 n6 p193-201. The tension emanated from deeply polarized socio-cultural values has found its way into the Canadian university campuses. In their endeavour to strike a balance between promoting diversity, inclusion and respecting free speech, the Canadian higher educational institutions have encountered formidable challenges. Central to the contention revolving around the free speech debate is an assertion that institutional pressures for consolidating a culture of political correctness is believed to have the potential to curtail and stifle freedom of expression which has in turn triggered governmental intervention in certain Canadian provinces. The lack of a proper balance between the quest for promoting inclusion, diversity and free speech can in the long run undermine the socially vital mission of universities, and hence corroding the public trust in the higher educational institutions. Obviously, there is no single solution that can function as panacea to surmount these pressing demands faced… [PDF]

Duran, Antonio; Duran-Leftin, Adam Z. (2021). A Narrative Examination of Early-Career Student Affairs Professionals' Sensemaking about Free Speech Events. Journal of College Student Development, v62 n6 p658-674 Nov-Dec. Using a constructivist narrative inquiry approach, this manuscript examined the stories of 10 early-career student affairs professionals to understand how they made sense of their experiences of free speech events at public higher education institutions. Each professional participated in three semi-structured interviews to provide insight on their roles and responsibilities relative to free speech events. Findings highlighted four main characteristics of early-career professionals' sensemaking: (a) referencing educational experiences, (b) wrestling with identity, (c) keeping in mind contexts, and (d) incorporating lessons from supervisors and mentors. As a result of their sensemaking, participants viewed themselves as advocates and bridge-builders for free speech events. However, potential negative ramifications, primarily the loss of employment, tempered the desire to actualize these roles. Implications for research and practice are offered…. [Direct]

Connor, Thomas (2019). Free Speech at UNC 2019: Annual Report on Free Speech and Institutional Neutrality in the UNC System. James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal In 2017, the North Carolina legislature passed House Bill 527 (now State Law 2017-196) in order to foster free, open inquiry in the state's colleges and universities. One of the provisions ordered the University of North Carolina (UNC) system Board of Governors to produce an annual report on two major categories of intellectual freedom: free speech and institutional neutrality. This report is the Martin Center's own analysis of free speech and institutional neutrality on the UNC system's 16 campuses. The report examines universities' choices for summer reading assignments and commencement speakers, whether they make public statements on controversial topics like climate change and diversity, the content of freshman orientation sessions, and universities' mission statements. It also records any barriers to student and faculty speech as well as any known disruptions or incidents that curtailed free speech in the past year. To complete this report, the Martin Center consulted schools'… [PDF]

Nossel, Suzanne (2020). Daring to Speak, to Listen, and to Protest without Silencing. American Educator, v44 n3 p28-30 Fall. The case in favor of free speech goes above and beyond the rationale for filtrating government encroachments on expression. It also involves affirmative steps to make sure all individuals and groups have the means and opportunity to be heard. If free speech matters, one needs to ask not only whether the government is respecting it, but whether individuals feel able to exercise it in daily life. The nature of the societal advantages of free speech help explain why it is not enough to define free speech simply as the right to be shielded from government interference. To unleash both the individual and the collective benefits of free speech requires the creation of an enabling environment for a broad array of speech and a public discourse open to all. This article addresses speaking out on campus, free speech protections, and ways to protest without silencing and why it is important. [This article is an excerpt from the author's book, "Dare to Speak: Defending Free Speech for… [PDF]

Amelia Lynn King-Kostelac (2020). "Am I Free to Speak, Here?" Student Perceptions of Free Speech and Belonging. ProQuest LLC, Ph.D. Dissertation, The University of Texas at San Antonio. This qualitative case study utilizes a nested research design, including both survey and interview data, and a campus ecology framework to analyze students' perceptions of free speech and sense of belonging at a single institution in South Central Texas. The recent conflict on campuses surrounding free speech is indicative of deep tension surrounding how to create an inclusive campus community in which all students can feel safe, validated and thrive. This study contributes to understanding how students navigate free speech rights, and the degree to which students perceive these rights as being distributed equitably to different student demographics. Findings indicate that, while students have positive factors contributing to sense of belonging, broader social tensions surround free speech and hate speech create tensions impacting how and whether students choose to engage in free speech activities on campus. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission… [Direct]

Stoughton, Corey (2019). Free Speech and Censorship on Campus. Occasional Paper 21. Higher Education Policy Institute In this report, Corey Stoughton, the Advocacy Director of the human rights organisation Liberty, looks at the issue through history, international experience and recent legal changes. She notes that asking disempowered people to accept a total right to free speech is expecting them to put down a tool of resistance. She also claims the biggest threat to free speech on campus actually comes from the Government's Prevent programme. The paper ends with a clarion call in favour of free speech. Compromising the principles of free speech on campus is a mistake because it often makes the relevant message stronger and tends to prove counterproductive to the cause of equality…. [PDF]

B√©rub√©, Michael; Ruth, Jennifer (2022). It's Not Free Speech: Race, Democracy, and the Future of Academic Freedom. Johns Hopkins University Press The protests of summer 2020, which were ignited by the murder of George Floyd, led to long-overdue reassessments of the legacy of racism and white supremacy in both American academe and cultural life more generally. But while universities have been willing to rename some buildings and schools or grapple with their role in the slave trade, no one has yet asked the most uncomfortable question: Does academic freedom extend to racist professors? "It's Not Free Speech" considers the ideal of academic freedom in the wake of the activism inspired by outrageous police brutality, white supremacy, and the #MeToo movement. Arguing that academic freedom must be rigorously distinguished from freedom of speech, Michael B√©rub√© and Jennifer Ruth take aim at explicit defenses of colonialism and theories of white supremacy–theories that have no intellectual legitimacy whatsoever. Approaching this question from two angles–one, the question of when a professor's intramural or extramural… [Direct]

Malcolm, Finlay (2021). Silencing and Freedom of Speech in UK Higher Education. British Educational Research Journal, v47 n3 p520-538 Jun. Freedom of speech in universities is currently an issue of widespread concern and debate. Recent empirical findings in the UK shed some light on whether speech is unduly restricted in the university, but it suffers from two limitations. First, the results appear contradictory. Some studies show that the issue of free speech is overblown by media reportage, whilst others track serious concerns about free speech arising from certain university policies. Second, the findings exclude important issues concerning restrictions to speech on campus that fall outside the traditional debate around violations to free speech rights. This is particularly the case when certain voices are excluded from important policy conversations, and in issues around diversifying the curriculum. This article overcomes these two limitations by developing a novel conceptual framework within which to situate current debates concerning speech-related matters in universities. It does so by developing a taxonomy… [Direct]

Devlin, Nora Anne (2023). Pursuant to Professorial Duties. ProQuest LLC, Ph.D. Dissertation, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, School of Graduate Studies. In "Garcetti v. Ceballos" (2006), the Supreme Court of the United States held that public employees are not protected by the First Amendment when they speak pursuant to their official duties. The dissenting justices raised the question of how this precedent might be inappropriately applied to faculty at public colleges and universities. This dissertation builds on over a century of scholarly literature on academic freedom and faculty free speech to review the discursive and legal implications of courts' decisions in faculty free speech cases from 2006-2020. Using a conceptual framework informed by legal scholars Robert Post, J. Peter Byrne, and Judith Areen, this dissertation analyzes the faculty free speech jurisprudence and the conceptualizations of academic freedom that do and do not inform the courts in their decisions. As Areen has noted, how courts deal with faculty speech on matters relating to institutional governance raises important questions about how the courts… [Direct]

Dhingra, Neil (2019). Student Free Speech and Schools as Public Spaces. Educational Theory, v69 n6 p657-673 Dec. Free speech jurisprudence is caught between crediting the First Amendment rights of students when they resemble adults or restricting such rights when students seemingly act as children. In "Morse v. Frederick" (2007), the Supreme Court ruled against Joseph Frederick and his "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" banner because Frederick's speech seemed valueless as an adult act, as it lacked any discernible political value. In this essay, Neil Dhingra uses Hannah Arendt's thought to argue that schools should not be interpreted as political spaces but as social spaces where educational authorities should exercise forbearance as students such as Frederick learn to exercise their free speech rights. In particular, students will practice their First Amendment rights by exposing and exploring the discrepancy between appearance and reality, through dark forms of humor, and in forming different types of friendship, all of which schools are unlikely to be able to manage or interpret…. [Direct]

Leivisk√§, Anniina (2021). A Discourse Theoretical Model for Determining the Limits of Free Speech on Campus. Educational Philosophy and Theory, v53 n11 p1171-1182. Recent controversies concerning freedom of expression on university campuses have raised the question of how the limits of free speech can be determined in a justified way in a pluralistic public space such as the campus. The article addresses this question from the viewpoint of two complementary theoretical perspectives: Rainer Forst's respect conception of toleration, and the discourse theory of democracy developed by J√ºrgen Habermas and Seyla Benhabib. These theories are argued to provide a non-arbitrary, impartial and procedural model for determining the limits of free speech on campus. Deriving primarily from the discourse model, the article suggests that the limits of freedom of expression on campus should be determined by collective deliberative processes involving the affected students. Moreover, it is argued that, instead of prohibiting controversial topics or views, the university administration and teachers should focus on establishing procedural rules of rational… [Direct]