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.

ICYMI: Another Student Stopped From Handing Out Constitutions (VIDEO):

Anthony Vizzone just wanted to hand out copies of the Constitution and recruit students for his student organization—the University of Hawaii at Hilo Young Americans for Liberty (YAL). But when he crossed the “imaginary boundaries” of his university’s free speech zone, administrators were there to stop him.

You can see the whole video at FIRE’s website.

BIG ANNOUNCEMENT: NEW DOCUMENTARY ABOUT HOW OUTRAGE CULTURE IS KILLING COMEDY. I am excited to announce that FIRE, the DKT Liberty Project, and director Ted Balaker and Korchula Productions have been working on a feature documentary titled Can We Take a Joke? about how outrage culture, political correctness, and the language police are threatening comedy. The documentary pays particular attention to how students are learning this behavior on college campuses and how, as I argue in the documentary, Lenny Bruce would not survive for a second on the modern college campus. The documentary already features interviews with Adam Carolla, Gilbert Gottfried, Penn Jillette, Jim Norton, Lisa Lampanelli, Heather McDonald, Karith Foster, me, Jon Ronson, Chris Lee, Ron Collins, Bob Corn-Revere, and Jonathan Rauch. Read more about it over at Ricochet.

TEACHING STUDENTS TO FIGHT CAMPUS SPEECH CODES: Despite literally dozens of successful anti-speech codes lawsuits over the years, most colleges that we at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) survey maintain codes that make a mockery of First Amendment standards. But there is something you can do about it. If you know a college student, tell them to attend FIRE’s Student Network conference this summer in Philadelphia, where we teach students how to fight back. Now featuring Radley Balko and Nadine Strossen! Conference is free and includes a travel stipend. Only a week left to apply! https://www.thefire.org/student-network/conference/