FIRE’S 10 WORST UNIVERSITIES FOR FREE SPEECH (2016): This week FIRE revealed our annual list of the 10 worst colleges and universities for free speech in the nation. Tragically, competition was stiff this year. Check out the whole list, but I wanted to reprint one case where readers can still fight back and make a difference. The blowup over Wesleyan University’s student newspaper, The Wesleyan Argus, was the first round in the often anti-free speech student activism that went on to dominate the headlines last fall. Whether you are a tweeter or a donor, let Wesleyan know that you think its so-called “commitment to the free exchange of ideas and pursuit of knowledge” is empty when it suppresses open discussion, especially from its own student press:

Wesleyan University

It’s been a rough year for the student press, and at few institutions has that been more evident than at Wesleyan University. Wesleyan was plunged into controversy last fall after its main student newspaper, The Wesleyan Argus, published a student column critical of the Black Lives Matter movement. Students mobilized in opposition to the column’s publication, circulating a petition calling for Wesleyan’s student government to defund the Argus unless specific demands were met. Among the petitioners’ plans to get its demands met was a movement to support “recycling” the Argus — another way of saying they would round up and destroy copies of the newspaper if their demands went unmet. Indeed, the Argus reported that several hundred copies of the paper were stolen in the midst of the controversy.

Wesleyan’s student government then took up the issue, voting last fall to approve a dangerous resolution that could turn free speech at Wesleyan on its head. Under the new resolution, which may take effect this fall, the Argus could see $17,000 in funding — more than half its budget — revoked and reallocated to other student publications. Worse, the proposal would allocate funding in significant part based on a popular vote of the whole student body, an open invitation to viewpoint discrimination if ever there was one. If Wesleyan doesn’t wise up to the dangerous flaws in the new funding scheme, an already chilled atmosphere for free speech will turn truly frosty.

INSOMNIA THEATER (AUDIO EDITION!): Today’s post features the podcast interview I did with the Cato Institute this week on “The Drive for Campus Speech Codes,” in which I explain how the Department of Education is the “secret engine” behind some of the wackier cases of campus censorship. The interview concludes my recent Cato Unbound debate, where University of Chicago Law School Professor Eric Posner, George Washington University Law School Professor Catherine J. Ross, and I each took turns writing essays on the topic of free speech on campus.

As you can see from our back-and-forth, Ross and I agreed on quite a bit, while Posner and I disagreed on most things. I actually started to get the impression that he wasn’t even reading my essays—just the titles, and basing his responses on that. See for yourselves and check out the entire debate over at Cato Unbound—curious to know what you think.

INSOMNIA THEATER (INTERNATIONAL CENSORSHIP EDITION): This week’s video features my interview of Index on Censorship CEO Jodie Ginsberg, which I conducted while I was visiting London in 2015. In addition to giving an insightful overview of the state of free expression and censorship efforts across the globe, Jodie covers a variety of other topics, including her former work as a journalist and the political power of music and comedy. Watch the full video below, and make sure to also check out the Index on Censorship.

CHECK OUT THE NEW BOOK Academic Freedom in an Age of Conformity: Confronting the Fear of Knowledge about threats to free speech on campus in the UK and beyond. And for a behind the scenes look at it, here is my interview with the author, Joanna Williams:

“CAMPUS FREE SPEECH HAS BEEN IN TROUBLE FOR A LONG TIME”: I’m pleased to announce that the Cato Institute has just released my new essay as the lead essay in its January 2016 issue of Cato Unbound.

Here’s a little info about Cato Unbound, in case you aren’t familiar with it:

Each month, Cato Unbound will present an essay on a big-picture topic by an important thinker. The ideas in that essay will then be tested by the comments and criticism of equally eminent thinkers, each of whom will respond to the month’s lead essay and then to one another. The idea is to create a hub for wide-ranging, open-ended conversation, where ideas will be advanced, challenged, and refined in public view.

My essay gives a brief overview of the history of campus free speech over the last few decades and examines the recent cases of speech suppression on college campuses that have captured the media’s attention. It is live now on Cato Unbound’s website.

Replies from law professors Eric Posner and Catherine J. Ross are to come, and discussion will follow through the end of the month.

THE YEAR CAMPUS FREE SPEECH STOLE THE SPOTLIGHT: As 2015 comes to a close, we at FIRE are taking the time to look back on a year in which free speech issues on campus exploded on the national scene:

Protests roiled more than 75 college campuses, congressional leaders debated students’ civil liberties on multiple occasions, and newsmakers ranging from Jerry Seinfeld to President Obama felt compelled to chime in on the state of free speech at America’s colleges and universities.

You can read more about these events (and many others) in FIRE’s “2015 Year in Review for Student and Faculty Rights on Campus” over at The Torch.

INSOMNIA THEATER (CHRISTMAS EDITION): In case you didn’t see it yet in The Wall Street Journal or in George Will’s recent column in The Washington Post, FIRE recently released its 2016 Spotlight on Speech Codes report, just in time for the holidays. The biggest news is that for the first time in FIRE’s history, the number of schools maintaining red light speech codes has fallen below 50%, to 49.3%. That’s down from 75% eight years ago. Moreover, not only have the red light numbers gone down, the number of green light schools have gone up, from eight institutions (2%) in 2007 to 22 institutions (5%) this year.

To give you a better visual of our progress, FIRE’s talented media team along with our speech codes expert, Samantha Harris, put together this terrific, short video.

https://youtu.be/fCJujctqJeY

But despite this progress, 49% of schools is 49% too many, and between the federal government and student demands for speech codes, 2016 is likely to be a big year in the fight for free speech on campus.

INSOMNIA THEATER (WE CAN’T LIVE ON LOVE EDITION): This week’s video highlights all the great work FIRE has been doing this year, and why you should take Glenn’s advice (thanks, Glenn!) and donate to FIRE.

As we say in the video, it’s been quite a year for FIRE. We’ve seen the percentage of schools with ‘red light’ speech policies fall below the 50 percent mark for the first time, continued our 100% litigation success rate, and scored a high profile cover story for The Atlantic, to name just a few highlights.

But we’ve also faced a lot of struggles too. Between increasing student illiberalism and overreach from the Department of Education, the fight for free speech on campus is far from over.

The fight is bigger than I’ve ever seen, so FIRE needs your help now more than ever.

DON’T WORRY, CORNELL IS HERE TO TEACH YOU HOW TO BE “INCLUSIVE” WITH YOUR “HOLIDAY DECORATIONS”: Just in time for the holidays, Cornell University’s Department of Environmental Health & Safety recently issued “guidelines” about holiday decorations.

Among its list of decorations “that are NOT Consistent with Either University Assembly Guidelines or the University’s Commitment to Diversity and Inclusiveness”: a bizarre variety of Christian and Jewish symbols, including “crosses” and the “Star of David,” as well as secular “holiday” items, including mistletoe and “stars at the top of trees.”

So Cornell, would you mind explaining how a Star of David is either offensive to your university’s values, or a “holiday decoration” for that matter?

Read more about it over at The Torch.

PRIVATE COLLEGES: ‘WHERE FREE SPEECH IS LEAST FREE IN AMERICA’: I encourage everyone to check out this new article by George Leef about the growing threats to free speech on private college campuses. In addition to deftly summarizing what is expected of private campuses in regard to protecting free speech, Leef describes one of the most recent examples of blatant administrative censorship: Colorado College student Thaddeus Pryor’s suspension for making a six word joke on Yik Yak.

You can read Leef’s article over at Forbes.com, and read more about Colorado College’s war on Yik Yak comments over at FIRE’s news blog.

INSOMNIA THEATER (STUDENT PRESS EDITION): Recent high-profile threats to student press—including banishment of student reporters from public events and reductions in funding for student newspapers for publishing content like this op-ed—illustrate that it is more important than ever for student journalists to know their rights. That’s why this week’s Insomnia Theater features FIRE’s new video designed to do just that.

In the video, FIRE’s Azhar Majeed gives basic explanations about the rights student journalists hold on campus, such as the differences between student press freedoms at public and private universities. The video also features several recent cases in which FIRE defended the rights of student journalists around the country.

Check out the video below and make sure to share it with anyone you think may be interested, whether it’s student journalists, journalism professors, or even your old alma mater’s student newspaper! You can learn more about student press rights on FIRE’s website.

A LOSS FOR YALE: “Yale lecturer whose email ignited a debate about racism has decided not to teach there in the future.” via Business Insider.

Erika Christakis, the faculty member at the center of a racially charged debate at Yale, has decided not to teach at the Ivy League school going forward. “I will not be teaching at Yale in the future,” she told Business Insider in an email Thursday.

Christakis’ decision came after weeks of backlash against the lecturer and administrator over an email she sent to students suggesting that Yale shouldn’t tell them not to wear offensive Halloween costumes.

That backlash included an open letter criticising her signed by hundreds of members of the Yale community.

Recently, 49 faculty members wrote their own open letter defending Christakis against allegations of racism.

FIRE has been following this case since the very beginning. As I wrote in The Washington Post: “If either professor steps down now or in the coming months, it must be understood to represent Yale’s glaring failure to live up to its own glowing promises to protect and honor freedom of speech on campus.”

More on this on Monday.

‘HUNTING GROUND’ FILMMAKERS CLAIM HARVARD LAW PROFS’ CRITICISM CREATES A ‘HOSTILE CLIMATE’: Last month, a group of Harvard Law School professors issued a press release denouncing the film The Hunting Ground as being misleading. Now the filmmakers are claiming that the professors’ criticism may constitute actionable sex discrimination in violation of Title IX. Check out what FIRE’s Samantha Harris has to say about this claim in her new article.

FREE SPEECH IS NO ‘DIVERSION’: If you’re looking for a weekend #longread, check out this piece by FIRE Executive Director Robert Shibley taking on attempts to dismiss the free speech issues arising out of the current campus protests.

DEPT OF ED SHOULD ACKNOWLEDGE THE PROBLEM WITH AFFIRMATIVE CONSENT POLICIES:  Last week FIRE wrote to the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) and requested that OCR ask colleges and universities not to use “affirmative consent” standards that violate the due process rights of students accused of sexual assault.

Affirmative consent policies are generally overbroad, vague, and unfairly shift the burden of proof to the accused. And how would an innocent student demonstrate he or she received affirmative consent? As Assemblywoman Bonnie Lowenthal, co-author of California’s campus affirmative consent law, said: “Your guess is as good as mine.”

You can read FIRE’s letter over on our website and learn more about the letter over at The Torch.

Also be sure to watch students struggle to define what affirmative consent even means in this video:

NOT ALL COLLEGES ARE TRYING TO LIMIT FREE EXPRESSION: Chapman University has recently taken several impressive steps to prove its commitment to free speech on campus. First, it developed and ratified a statement on free speech modeled after the University of Chicago’s free expression policy statement. Then, last weekend, Chancellor Daniele C. Struppa wrote a fantastic piece in The Orange County Register on the meaning of free expression and the recent efforts on college campuses to censor offensive speech. You can read more about the Chapman statement and Struppa’s article over at The Torch.

INSOMNIA THEATER (FIREFLY EDITION): I hope you all had a very happy Thanksgiving! As a celebration of the holidays, today’s post features a fun blast from the past: legendary author Neil Gaiman takes a look at an absurd case at the University of Wisconsin – Stout that combined two of my passions—freedom of speech and the beloved, yet short-lived sci-fi series Firefly.

Back in 2011, UW-Stout tried to censor the posters Professor James Miller had put on his office door, including one featuring a quote from Firefly. Stout stood by its actions until FIRE’s advocacy campaign on Miller’s behalf inspired Gaiman, along with Firefly actors Nathan Fillion and Adam Baldwin, to take to Twitter to encourage their millions of followers to contact the university with their support of free speech.

You can check out the video below, as well as my write-up of the whole Stout-Firefly debacle over at The Huffington Post.

DARTMOUTH REFUSES TO STOP RESTRICTING SPEECH, LOSES ‘GREEN LIGHT’ SPEECH CODE RATING: I am sad to report that after failing to heed FIRE’s warnings that its “Bias Incident Reporting” protocol impermissibly threatens free speech on campus, Dartmouth College has lost the “green light” speech code policy rating it has held since 2005. For those of you who are unfamiliar with FIRE’s policy rating system (a “green light” is our highest rating), check out our website.

As FIRE’s Samantha Harris said today in The Torch:

Examples of bias incidents, according to Dartmouth’s Office of Pluralism and Leadership, include “telling jokes” and “stereotyping.” This policy is inconsistent with Dartmouth’s claim to be an institution that “prizes and defends the right of free speech.” If every joke or provocative remark about politics, religion, or culture is potentially subject to a formal investigation, Dartmouth students are not truly free to speak their minds.

You can read more about why Dartmouth has been downgraded over at FIRE’s website, and if you want to share your thoughts on this with Dartmouth directly, you can reach out to the school on Twitter, Facebook, or via email.

INSOMNIA THEATER (ACADEMIC FREEDOM EDITION) – This week’s post features a video of University of Chicago law professor and interim dean Geoffrey Stone discussing his role in the crafting of the University of Chicago’s terrific statement on freedom of expression.

The events at the University of Missouri, Yale, Amherst, and so many other institutions over the past few weeks show just how important it is for schools to adopt a statement affirming their support for robust speech protections for faculty and students. The Chicago statement guarantees “all members of the University community the broadest possible latitude to speak, write, listen, challenge, and learn,” and makes clear 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.”

FIRE endorsed the statement back in January and has written hundreds of faculty members, students, and student journalists at institutions nationwide encouraging them to do the same. Since then, the editorial boards of USA TODAY and the New York Daily News have both endorsed the statement. And now colleges and universities are beginning to follow suit— Princeton University, Purdue University, Johns Hopkins University, American University, and Winston-Salem State University have all either endorsed the Chicago statement or embraced similar sets of principles.

You can learn more about the Chicago statement from Geoffrey Stone in the video below, and you can sign on to the statement yourself over at FIRE’s website.

UNIVERSITY OF OREGON’S STUDENT GOVERNMENT DISCRIMINATES AGAINST STUDENT GROUP HOLDING PRO-GUN RIGHTS EVENT- Wednesday night, the University of Oregon’s student government, the Associated Students of the University of Oregon (ASUO), refused to fund a poker night event hosted by UO’s chapter of Young Americans for Liberty (YAL) amid concerns the event’s pro-gun message and prizes “would make students feel uncomfortable.” This is the second time ASUO has denied funding for the event.

The funding YAL requested was intended to cover the cost of pizza and rental fees— YAL promised that no ASUO money would go toward covering the event’s prizes, which would include three firearms donated by local gun dealers. Additionally, YAL pledged that the winners would receive the firearms off campus and in accordance with state and federal law.

As Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) Senior Program Officer Ari Cohn said in our recent press release:

ASUO’s budget is subsidized by mandatory fees paid by students … As a result, ASUO must distribute its funds in a viewpoint-neutral manner. ASUO has clearly failed to adhere to this obligation. Since ASUO is an agent of a public university, the University of Oregon administration is legally and morally required to intervene to rectify the First Amendment violations perpetrated by ASUO.

You can read the full press release over at FIRE’s website. You can also join FIRE in writing to University of Oregon President Michael H. Schill to demand that expressive activity on UO’s campus not be subject to viewpoint-based discrimination, either by university administrators or by ASUO in executing its delegated authority to distribute student activity fees.

INSOMNIA THEATER (COMEDY DOC EDITION): This week’s post features an exclusive clip from Can We Take a Joke? a FIRE-supported feature documentary about the threats outrage culture poses to comedy and free speech. Considering everything that has been going on this week at Yale and the University of Missouri, it’s very fitting that on Friday, Can We Take a Joke? made its world premiere at DOC NYC, America’s largest documentary film festival. There will be an additional screening of the film tomorrow, Monday, November 16.

Can We Take a Joke?, directed by Ted Balaker, is narrated by Christina Pazsitsky and features interviews with comedians including Gilbert Gottfried, Penn Jillette, Lisa Lampanelli, Adam Carolla, and Heather McDonald, as well as free speech experts and advocates like Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Jonathan Rauch and First Amendment attorneys Bob Corn-Revere and Ron Collins.

If you weren’t able to make it to the film’s premiere, don’t worry— stay tuned for more news about the film by visiting the film’s Facebook page, following its Twitter account, and signing up for email updates at its website.

 And, in the meantime, you can check out this exclusive video outtake from the film on IndieWire’s website.

WAPO: ‘ON THE FRONT LINES OF THE FIGHT FOR FREE SPEECH AT YALE’: Glenn has written a lot about what has been going on at Yale over the past week.

By wild coincidence, I was on the ground at Yale last week when the campus erupted— I even managed to stumble into my own free speech controversy. In today’s Washington Post, I talk about what I witnessed while on campus. What’s been going on at Yale can be wild and hard to even keep up with, but I wanted to leave readers with a reminder of the most important point:

[T]he focus should remain on defending Erika and Nicholas Christakis’s free speech rights. In today’s campus climate, when professors find themselves on the “wrong” side of the culture war, even those with tenure can find their jobs in jeopardy.

I have seen time and again university administrations press faculty to resign for their controversial expression. The university usually tries to make the resignation look like it was the professor’s own decision. If this were to happen at Yale, it would be a chilling warning to future faculty and students that if you even mildly question the prevailing orthodoxy on campus, you will have hell to pay.

Yale students, alumni, and members of the public must demand that the Christakises face no threat of punishment, and if either professor steps down now or in the coming months, it must be understood to represent Yale’s glaring failure to live up to its own glowing promises to protect and honor freedom of speech on campus.

You can read my full op-ed over at The Washington Post, as well as a summary of last Thursday’s events over at FIRE’s website.

INSOMNIA THEATER (SILVERGLATE EDITION): This week our beloved co-founder of FIRE, Harvey Silverglate, decided to step down from his position as chairman of FIRE’s Board of Directors. Harvey served as chairman for ten years and will remain an active board member. I encourage everyone to read Harvey’s official comments on the founding of FIRE, his ten years as Chairman, and what his future holds.

On a personal note, Harvey is the man who found me post-law school and brought me to FIRE. He has been a mentor and friend to me ever since, and I am deeply honored to know him.

This week’s video features Harvey discussing the importance of free speech and academic freedom, as well as Harvard’s deception when it comes to academic freedom.

INSOMNIA THEATER (AFFIRMATIVE CONSENT EDITION): This summer New York became the second state to pass an affirmative consent—or, as I like to call it, “prove yourself innocent”—law, which requires college students to demonstrate that they received “clear permission” to engage in “sexual activity.” We at FIRE were curious how many students were aware of the new law and understood its implications, so we sent FIRE’s Shelby Emmett to New York University in New York City to ask the students themselves.

What Shelby found during her visit to the Big Apple, however, were more questions. Students were very confused about many of the key elements of the ambiguous law, such as what constitutes a “sexual act,” what demonstrates consent, the law’s requirements when one or both parties have been drinking, and, most importantly, how you would prove you got consent after the sexual encounter had already occurred.

Some of the students were not only confused, but also worried about the law. As one student said, “That’s what scares the sh*t out of me. Because if anything happens, if someone says I did anything or something is misconstrued, I’m automatically the villain, I’m automatically the bad guy, and it’s up to me to prove that I’m not—which is interesting, because in America it’s supposed to be innocent until proven guilty.”

You can read more about Shelby’s interviews over at FIRE’s website and watch the video below:

NEW SURVEY REVEALS ALARMING STUDENT ATTITUDES ABOUT FREE SPEECH—Yale University’s William F. Buckley, Jr. Program recently released a national survey measuring U.S. college students’ attitudes towards free speech on campus. The results were, ahem, troubling. It’s almost as if liberty is something these students are… unlearning.

Here are just a few of the highlights (lowlights?) from the survey:

• Nearly one third (32 percent) of students could not identify the First Amendment as the constitutional amendment that deals with free speech. 33 percent of those who correctly identified the First Amendment said that the First Amendment does not protect hate speech.

• More than half (51 percent) of students are in favor of their college or university having speech codes to regulate speech for students and faculty.

• 72 percent of students said they support disciplinary action against “any student or faculty member on campus who uses language that is considered racist, sexist, homophobic or otherwise offensive.”

In less awful news, 95 percent of the students surveyed said that free speech is important to them. However, as I have long predicted and discussed, when you ask Americans if they like free speech, they nearly always say “yes.” But when you get into the nitty gritty details about what kind of speech warrants protection, you discover that some folks (especially college students) are more in the “I love free speech, but…” camp. And I fear the list of exceptions is growing larger by the day.

You can check out more from the survey over at FIRE’s website and look through the full results on McLaughlin & Associates’ website.