YOUR FINAL DOSE OF INSOMNIA THEATER: FREE SPEECH AND JAZZ – Check out this video of legendary critic and civil libertarian Nat Hentoff on the unique power of the First Amendment and his lifelong love of jazz.

TOMORROW IS THE ONE-YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF FIRE’S STAND UP FOR SPEECH LITIGATION PROJECT: SUFS is an unprecedented national effort to eliminate unconstitutional speech codes from our nation’s public colleges and universities. Check out SUFS’s successful and pending cases here.

CALLING ALL COLLEGE STUDENTS INTERESTED IN PROTECTING FREE SPEECH ON CAMPUS: There is just one week left to register for the 2015 FIRE Student Network Conference, taking place July 24–26 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The event is completely free to attend, and travel stipends are available. Submit your application today!

AND FOR YOUR FINAL DOSE OF INSOMNIA THEATER: HARVEY ON HARVARD’S FREE SPEECH BAIT AND SWITCH – Check out this video of FIRE co-founder Harvey Silverglate’s take on the importance of free speech on campus and Harvard’s deception when it comes to academic freedom.

HOW TITLE IX IS CHILLING CAMPUS SPEECH: Check out FIRE intern and University of Delaware college student Rachael Russell’s article on how her education has been negatively impacted by her school’s concerns about Title IX compliance.

AND FOR TONIGHT’S INSOMNIA THEATER: “KNOWLEDGE STARTS AS OFFENDEDNESS” – Check out this video featuring Brookings Institution senior fellow Jonathan Rauch on “hate speech” and his book Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought.

MUST READ: FIRE Intern James Altschul responds to San Diego State student Anthony Berteaux’s condemnation of Jerry Seinfeld’s recent statement that today’s college students are too politically correct. Altschul and Seinfeld are right: many of today’s students can’t seem to take a joke. In fact, FIRE, the DKT Liberty Project, and director Ted Balaker and Korchula Productions have a forthcoming feature documentary about just this, titled Can We Take a Joke? Be sure to check out the Can We Take a Joke? website, like it on Facebook, and follow it on Twitter.

BORED IN LONDON NEXT WEEK? Catch me across the pond at the Index on Censorship’s debate on academic freedom and summer magazine launch party on Wednesday, and fellow Instapundit guest blogger Virginia Postrel at her talk at the London School of Economics on Thursday.

WHY CAN’T YOU BE MORE LIKE GLENN? Sign on to the Index on Censorship’s open letter on why academic freedom is under threat and needs urgent protection worldwide. Next week I will be traveling to the UK to talk about these global threats to free speech, but it’s important to remember that academic freedom is in trouble here at home in the USA too. Read more here.

COLLEGE DECLARES HAYMARKET RIOT REFERENCE A VIOLENT THREAT TO COLLEGE PRESIDENT: Oakton Community College in Illinois is insisting that a one-sentence “May Day” email referencing the Haymarket Riot sent by a faculty member to several colleagues constituted a “true threat” to the college president. Why?  Because the famous workers’ rally in Chicago “resulted in 11 deaths and more than 70 people injured.” As FIRE’s Ari Cohn noted, “The United States Department of the Interior has designated the Haymarket Martyrs’ Monument a National Historic Landmark. If remembering the Haymarket Riot is a ‘true threat,’ the monument itself would be illegal.”

YOUR NIGHTLY DOSE OF “INSOMNIA THEATER”: ‘MY COLLEGE HAD A PROBLEM WITH A FUNNY SHIRT’– Check out this video about Ohio University student Isaac Smith’s successful lawsuit against OU after the university banned his organization’s t-shirts. Isaac’s lawsuit was another successful installment of FIRE’s ongoing Stand Up For Speech Litigation Project.

CAMPUS SEXUAL ASSAULT AND THE “PROVE YOURSELF INNOCENT” APPROACH: FIRE’s Joe Cohn examines the problems with New York’s “affirmative consent” bill. Supporters call it the “yes means yes” bill, but maybe it’s more accurately called the “prove you are not a rapist” bill. Joe concludes:

In sum, this legislation is an unwelcome development for people who believe in fundamental fairness—one that doubles down on the failed policy of steering sexual assault complaints away from law enforcement and into amateur campus tribunals that are ill-equipped to handle such serious matters. New York’s approach will probably not reduce the prevalence of sexual assault on campus, but it will likely lead to more unjust punishments.

Scott Greenfield ​also blasted the new NY bill over at Simple Justice. His title makes no bones about what he thinks of the law: “Sex At New York’s Colleges Is Screwed.”

BRANDEIS BETRAYS STUDENT RIGHTS: Minding the Campus’s KC Johnson has a great piece about a student’s due process lawsuit against Brandeis; the student charges that he was disciplined under a procedure different from the one that existed when he arrived on campus, while Brandeis defends the procedure as a mere “tweak” to its rules.

STUDENT SUES COLLEGE FOR VIOLATING HER FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHT TO ADVOCATE FOR HER SECOND AMENDMENT RIGHTS: In Texas, of all places! Last month Blinn College student Nicole Sanders filed a First Amendment lawsuit against the public college after being told by an administrator that she would need “special permission” to display a gun rights sign and collect signatures for her student group on campus. The lawsuit, part of FIRE’s Stand Up For Speech Litigation Project, also challenges Blinn’s policy of restricting speech to this absurdly tiny “Free Speech Area.” Learn more about the case here.

ICYMI: ‘Supreme Court to Government: No, ‘Good Intentions’ Don’t Give You a License to Censor Speech’. Good piece by the Institute for Justice’s Evan Bernick.

CAN’T SLEEP? WANT SOME VIDEO INFOTAINMENT? Then check out this FIRE interview with Steven Pinker on taboos, political correctness, and dissent:

HATE SPEECH IS PROTECTED SPEECH: Check out my interview with Fox News’s Megyn Kelly last night on the constitutionality of prosecuting individuals and groups for hate speech. Also be sure to read Popehat’s excellent piece about the media’s use of subtle pro-censorship tropes and rhetorical devices. Read more at The Torch.

ICYMI: EX-CHICAGO STATE ADMIN: I WAS PRESSURED TO FILE FALSE HARASSMENT CLAIM AGAINST FACULTY CRITIC. I know this was revealed back in March, but it never got the attention it deserved. Here is more background on that case. As I’ve been saying since day one, keep your eye on the Chicago State University lawsuit.

“DOES JUSTICE THOMAS BELIEVE IN A RACE-HATE EXCEPTION TO THE FIRST AMENDMENT?” Asks First Amendment scholar and prolific author Ron Collins in his latest edition of First Amendment News.

TODAY’S COLLEGE STUDENTS HAVE AN “EXPECTATION OF CONFIRMATION”: Have college students gone from believing they have a “right not to be offended” to demanding they have a right to have their views confirmed? I explore this idea in my new essay in the newly published The State of the American Mind: 16 Leading Critics on the New Anti-Intellectualism, a collection of essays by a variety of cultural and educational experts edited by Mark Bauerlein and Adam Bellow. The essays are framed by Bauerlein and Bellow’s theories on the root causes of the decline of the American intellect and “the shift away from the self-reliant, well-informed American.” Some of my fellow authors include E. D. Hirsch, Nicholas Eberstadt, Dennis Prager, Daniel Dreisbach, Ilya Somin, Maggie Jackson, and Richard Arum. Read more about it over at Ricochet.

GOING AFTER HATE SPEECH. I’ll be on FOX News’s The Kelly File with Megyn Kelly in about 30 minutes (roughly 9:20 p.m. EDT) to talk about the constitutionality of prosecuting individuals for hate speech. Those of you who have cable can stream it on FOX’s website. You can also join in on Twitter by tweeting with us at @megynkelly and @glukianoff.

SUSETTE KELO’S HISTORIC FIGHT AGAINST THE GOVT’S EMINENT DOMAIN ABUSE COMING TO BIG SCREEN: As Randy mentioned earlier today, June 23 marks the 10th anniversary of the infamous Kelo decision. Fittingly, Ted and Courtney Balaker of Korchula Productions, who you may remember from my post yesterday, are excited to announce that their feature narrative, LITTLE PINK HOUSE, is fully funded and filming is scheduled for September! If you have a second, please show Ted, Courtney, and Susette your support by liking the film on Facebook and signing up for email updates. (Then make sure to do the same, here and here, for CAN WE TAKE A JOKE?, the forthcoming feature documentary about comedians and free speech that stars Adam Carolla, Penn Jillette, Lisa Lampanelli, and many others, including me!)

PRESUMED GUILTY: DUE PROCESS LESSONS OF THE DUKE LACROSSE CASE (VIDEO): One year ago this month, we released a short documentary about the lessons of the Duke Lacrosse case as a potent reminder of the danger of rushing to judgment. I think every student in the country should watch it before heading off to college. (And they should also study our Guide to Due Process and Campus Justice.) Check out the short doc below, which features the inimitable KC Johnson:

NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY’S ACADEMIC FREEDOM PROBLEM (SEX EDITION). After censoring a bioethics journal for over 14 months, Northwestern University now demands its content be reviewed by administrators and public relations officials if it wants to continue publishing. Have they learned nothing from the Laura Kipnis craziness?

FIRE INTERN MAX BLOOM ON “SAFE SPEECH“:

I’m a student at the University of Chicago, and my experience has been that dialogue works well on a small scale. Get the Marxist and the laissez-faire economics student (both of whom who are in full force at the university) in a small room and you’ll get a hell of a debate. But on a larger scale, there’s relatively little interest in debating something like the matter of global Islam or whether slurs should be reclaimed, particularly in public forums. While there are probably many reasons for this, I have heard from a number of students that they feel wary commenting on divisive issues because they worry that other individuals will label their speech personally objectionable or harmful, at which point the speaker knows that she will either have to back down or be ostracized and condemned for harming other students.