INSOMNIA THEATER (COLLEGE SPORTS EDITION): Earlier this week at Texas A&M University, two college sports heavyweights, ESPN’s Jay Bilas and NCAA VP Oliver Luck, debated the proposition “College athletes should be allowed to be paid” to kick off FIRE’s new program, FIRE Debates. Throughout the school year, FIRE Debates will continue to bring leading figures to colleges and universities for Oxford-style debates on controversial topics relevant to students. We hope the program will remind students that free inquiry and open discussion not only play a central role in both education and democracy, but are also healthy, productive, and even fun. Check out the video of the full debate below and take a look at our upcoming FIRE Debates!

INSOMNIA THEATER (PREMIERE EDITION!): Earlier this week I posted about the upcoming world premiere of Can We Take a Joke?, a FIRE-supported feature documentary about the threats outrage culture poses to comedy and free speech. The film will premiere at DOC NYC, America’s largest documentary film festival, on November 13 at NYC’s IFC Center, with an additional screening on Monday, November 16.

Can We Take a Joke? 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.

I hope you can make it to the premiere—you can purchase tickets on DOC NYC’s website! But in the meantime, if you want to know more, check out this exclusive video outtake from Penn Jillette’s interview for the film:

NEW FILM ‘CAN WE TAKE A JOKE?’ TO MAKE WORLD PREMIERE AT NYC DOCUMENTARY FESTIVAL – I am psyched to announce that Can We Take a Joke?, a FIRE-supported feature documentary about the threats outrage culture poses to comedy and free speech, will be premiering next month at DOC NYC, America’s largest documentary film festival. The world premiere will take place on Nov. 13 at NYC’s IFC Center, with an additional screening on Monday, Nov. 16. As FIRE announced:

In Can We Take A Joke?, comedians Gilbert Gottfried, Penn Jillette, Lisa Lampanelli, Jim Norton, Adam Carolla, Heather McDonald, Karith Foster, and more come together with narrator Christina Pazsitzky to explore what happens when comedy, censorship, and outrage culture collide. […]

Also featured in the film are So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed author Jon Ronson, free speech expert and Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Jonathan Rauch, and First Amendment attorneys Bob Corn-Revere and Ron Collins, who together in 2003 successfully petitioned the governor of New York to posthumously pardon Lenny Bruce of his 1964 New York state obscenity conviction.

Can We Take A Joke? is directed by Ted Balaker of Korchula Productions in partnership with the DKT Liberty Project and in association with Reason TV. To learn more about Can We Take a Joke?, visit the film’s Facebook page, follow its Twitter account, and sign up for email updates at its website. And, to purchase tickets to the premiere, visit DOC NYC’s website.

I hope you can be there! It’s going to be a fun night.

INSOMNIA THEATER (DIRE STRAITS EDITION): This week’s post features my recent interview with Ginni Thomas, columnist for The Daily Caller and wife of Justice Clarence Thomas. Ginni and I discuss how “The international situation for free speech is dire,” covering everything from blasphemy laws to the new wave of campus political correctness that Jonathan Haidt and I examine in our article “The Coddling of the American Mind.” Check out the video below or over at The Daily Caller.

INSOMNIA THEATER (DEPT. OF ED​. EDITION) – ​ICYMI, last week I posted a video of Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) challenging Department of Education (ED) Deputy Assistant Secretary Amy McIntosh about past statements made by Catherine Lhamon, the assistant secretary for ED’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR). Lhamon had testified that she expected colleges and universities to comply fully with OCR’s Title IX guidance, despite the fact that federal guidance is not binding. Huh?

McIntosh quickly backtracked from Lhamon’s comments, telling Alexander that “guidance that the Department issues does not have the force of law.” Then, in another congressional hearing just a week after this exchange, a second ED official, Under Secretary Ted Mitchell, also admitted that ED’s guidance “does not hold the force of law.”

I can tell you that after working on campuses for 15 years, I can’t think of one college that actually believes that following any ED ukase is optional, and I can’t believe that ED (which has power over federal funding of universities!) really believes that either.

This week FIRE’s Joe Cohn explained just how OCR’s actions both overstep its authority, violate the Administrative Procedure Act, and intimidate institutions into complying with its “non-binding” guidance.

You can watch the back-and-forth between Alexander and McIntosh in the video below or, for the hardcore issue fans, there’s also the full video of the hearing on the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs’ website.

SUPPORT FREE SPEECH ON CAMPUS BY SIGNING ON TO THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO STATEMENT – Today, FIRE is launching a national campaign asking colleges and universities to adopt the free speech statement produced by the Committee on Freedom of Expression at the University of Chicago earlier this year. The announcement comes after the Sunday Washington Post published an op-ed by FIRE’s Will Creeley and Geoffrey Stone, the current Dean of the University of Chicago Law School and one of the authors of the statement, urging universities to protect academic freedom and free speech:

Backed by a strong commitment to freedom of expression and academic freedom, faculty could challenge one another, their students and the public to consider new possibilities, without fear of reprisal. Students would no longer face punishment for exercising their right to speak out freely about the issues most important to them. Instead of learning that voicing one’s opinions invites silencing, students would be taught that spirited debate is a vital necessity for the advancement of knowledge. And they would be taught that the proper response to ideas they oppose is not censorship, but argument on the merits. That, after all, is what a university is for.

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.”

If you want your alma mater to endorse the free speech statement, I encourage you to sign FIRE’s pledge and write to your alma maters or local institutions. And make sure to check out Geoffrey Stone and Will Creeley’s Sunday Washington Post op-ed.

INSOMNIA THEATER (JARED POLIS EDITION): As devoted readers know, both Glenn and I posted a little while back about Colorado Rep. Jared Polis’ so-called “apology” for suggesting that college students accused of sexual assault should be expelled even if they are innocent.

Since then, Polis’ halfhearted mea culpa has only continued to generate criticism for its defense of dangerous ideas about students’ rights to due process. The Daily Camera, Polis’ hometown newspaper, published several responses to his apology, even devoting a whole page of its September 19 print edition to the topic.

FIRE’s Joe Cohn wrote his own retort in The Daily Camera, arguing that “By insisting that college administrators adjudicate serious felonies, Polis doubles down on a failed policy that threatens students nationwide.” And if you haven’t seen it already, or if you just want to reassure your memory that “someone really said that,” please watch the video of Polis’ now-infamous remarks and share with a friend.

You can see the full hearing on the Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Training’s YouTube channel.

SEN. ALEXANDER GRILLS DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION ABOUT POWER GRAB – In a congressional hearing on Wednesday, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) challenged Department of Education Deputy Assistant Secretary Amy McIntosh about past statements made by her colleague Catherine Lhamon, the assistant secretary for the Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR). Lhamon had claimed that colleges and universities were expected to comply with OCR’s Title IX guidance, despite the fact that federal guidance is not binding.

FIRE has been saying for years that a lot of what OCR does violates the Administrative Procedure Act. We applaud Senator Alexander for challenging OCR’s abuse of power. You can watch the back-and-forth between Senator Alexander and Deputy Assistant Secretary McIntosh in the video below and the video of the full hearing on the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs’ website.

INSOMNIA THEATER (IT’S ALL GREEK TO ME EDITION): In 2013, Utah’s Dixie State University refused to recognize a local campus sorority because it used Greek letters in its name. Despite repeated efforts by students and FIRE, Dixie State continued to defend this unconstitutional policy, earning itself a spot on FIRE’s 2013 list of “The 10 Worst Colleges for Free Speech.” As best as we can tell, the policy is still in place.

But the news coming out of Dixie State isn’t all bad. This week, Dixie State agreed to settle a First Amendment lawsuit filed by three students after the school refused to approve flyers promoting the students’ Young Americans for Liberty (YAL) group. As part of the settlement, Dixie State agreed to revise the policies targeted by the lawsuit to meet First Amendment standards, to provide training to administrators about the new policies, and to pay $50,000 in damages and attorney’s fees. As the Greeks might say: “Nike!”

REP. POLIS: ‘SORRY I’M NOT SORRY’ FOR BELITTLING STUDENT DUE PROCESS RIGHTS – Glenn posted this morning about Colorado Rep. Jared Polis’ so-called “apology” for suggesting that college students accused of sexual assault should be expelled even if they are innocent.

Although FIRE appreciates his “apology,” we found that Polis’ Daily Camera mea culpa misses the mark since he continues to defend misguided principles about how to best handle campus sexual assault allegations. FIRE has published a response explaining why these allegations should be dealt with by law enforcement. This opinion is not only shared by the vast majority of the American public, but also leading victim-advocacy groups and some of Polis’ fellow congressional Democrats.

You can check out FIRE’s full response to Polis’ statement over at The Torch. You can also watch the video of Polis’ now-infamous remarks in the video below or over at the Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Training’s YouTube channel, which has the full hearing.

INSOMNIA THEATER (BACK TO SCHOOL EDITION!): BRAINWASHING PROGRAM AT THE UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE—This week’s edition takes us back to 2007, when the University of Delaware’s Office of Residence Life used mandatory activities to coerce students into changing their thoughts, values, attitudes, beliefs, and habits to conform to a specific university-approved social, environmental, and political agenda. After FIRE waged a campaign calling attention to the Orwellian curriculum, the university terminated the program, effective immediately. Since that initial victory, however, there have been continued attempts to reinstate the coercive elements of the program. This video explains the program’s invasive thought-reform activities; the horrified reactions of students, faculty, and the press; and FIRE’s response.

If you want to learn more, you can also check out this award-winning article by Adam Kissel. The program was so bad I even devoted nearly an entire chapter to it in my book Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate.

GUILTY UNTIL PROVEN INNOCENT: REP. POLIS O.K. WITH EXPELLING INNOCENT STUDENTS [VIDEO]. As Glenn mentioned earlier today, Congress held a hearing yesterday on “Preventing and Responding to Sexual Assault on College Campuses.” FIRE’s Legislative and Policy Director, Joe Cohn, testified about the importance of preserving the due process rights of accused students during investigations of campus sexual assault.

During an exchange with Joe, Representative Jared Polis (D-CO) suggested that the “preponderance of the evidence” standard—which requires only that fact-finders be 50.01 percent certain in order to find an accused student guilty—may be too high of a bar for campus sexual assault cases. Though Glenn already posted this quote, it bears repeating: “If there are 10 people who have been accused, and under a reasonable likelihood standard maybe one or two did it, it seems better to get rid of all 10 people.” [Emphasis added.]

So I guess Sir Blackstone had it wrong with his formulation that “It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.” It seems the new logic is “better kick ten out rather than that one (or maybe two) run free.”

What’s funny about all this is FIRE’s radical position is that we’d like to see rapists go to jail, not prey on girls at the community college down the road or at the local bar. But, yes, you should be pretty sure they are actually guilty.

You can watch this exchange in the video below, and check out FIRE’s coverage over at The Torch.

INSOMNIA THEATER (LABOR DAY EDITION)! Filmmaker Ted Balaker is coming out with an awesome and important new film called Can We Take a Joke? this fall. The documentary will feature brand new interviews with top comedians, including Gilbert Gottfried, Penn Jillette, Jim Norton, Lisa Lampanelli, Adam Carolla, Heather McDonald, and Karith Foster. It will also include interviews with authors Jon Ronson and Jonathan Rauch, as well as free speech specialists like Ron Collins, Bob Corn-Revere, and me.

My organization, FIRE, has been working with Ted on this project from the very beginning. In order to support free speech, satire, parody, and comedy on campus, we just launched a new fundraising campaign. Under this new campaign we will support the right to be funny on campus (and the right not to be punished when you fall flat), produce a lengthy video of our interview with comedian Penn Jillette about the essentiality of free speech and comedy, and, at risk of protests and disinvitations, plan screenings of Can We Take a Joke? on campuses next spring.

Look out for more news about the documentary in the next few months. In the meantime, sign up for the film’s email list at its website, follow the Twitter account, “like” the Facebook page, and check out the interview Ted did with Reason’s Nick Gillespie to learn more about the film:

INSOMNIA THEATER: PENN STATE PROFESSOR SUPPRESSES STUDENT ARTWORK ON TERRORISM, CALLING IT “RACIST” – Tonight I’d like to share a FIRE video from several years ago that tells the story of artist and former Penn State grad student Joshua Stulman whose Portraits of Terror art exhibit, which satirized radical Islamic terrorism, was censored by his professor and school administrators. While this decision was reversed by the school’s president, Stulman’s work was never displayed at Penn State. Later on, Stulman made plans to showcase his work at Gratz College in Philadelphia, however the event was canceled for fear of a terrorist attack against the institution.

This strain of censorship is not new. At the time of the release of this video I wrote an extensive blog about the many cases we’d already seen of students getting in trouble for being critical of radical Islam, or even of Hezbollah and Hamas. All these years later, the risks are greater than ever. You can even expect people who rely on free speech, like cartoonist Gary Trudeau, to take the murder of other cartoonists as an opportunity to chastise those of us who believe free speech means nothing without the right to offend.

DOES FREE SPEECH OFFEND YOU? This is the topic I explore in my new video for Prager University, in which I discuss the threats freedom of speech faces worldwide, including European governmental censorship, campus speech codes, as well as newer challenges posed by trigger warnings and the policing of microaggressions. I also cover these topics in more detail in my short book Freedom From Speech and “The Coddling of the American Mind,” the article I co-wrote with Jonathan Haidt for The Atlantic.

INSOMNIA THEATRE (PSYCHOLOGY EDITION): LUKIANOFF AND HAIDT ON ‘THE CODDLING OF THE AMERICAN MIND’ – As some of you might have seen, best-selling author and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and I co-wrote the cover story of the September issue of The Atlantic. The article, “The Coddling of the American Mind,” examines the latest manifestation of PC culture on college campuses and how it may be harming students’ mental health. The Atlantic has received a lot of reader feedback on the piece and is sharing some of its favorite reader comments (next week they will posting our responses to some of the criticisms). You can check out some of the highlights from those comments here. And, if you haven’t seen it already, here is a video of Haidt and me discussing the article as well as some personal reflections on what led us to write the piece.

INSOMNIA THEATRE RETURNS! “IS THE FEAR OF BEING OFFENSIVE KILLING FREE SPEECH?” — I had the pleasure of sitting down with spiked! editor-at-large and self-proclaimed propagandist Mick Hume while I was in the U.K. in July. We talked about all-things free speech, from the growing tendency in the U.K. to ban offensive speech to European blasphemy laws to his new book, Trigger Warning: Is the Fear of Being Offensive Killing Free Speech?. If Mick’s name looks familiar, it may be because of his great piece in Friday’s Wall Street Journal, “Even Speech We Hate Should Be Free.” Check out the video, the op-ed, and his new book!

SETTING ‘THE NEW YORKER’ STRAIGHT ON FREE SPEECH: You may remember me posting earlier this month about a recent article in The New Yorker by Kelefa Sanneh called “The Hell You Say” and its dismissive, yet poorly-researched handling of free speech (and us “speech nuts”). Well, I, along with some other staff members at FIRE, have carefully compiled “A Dozen Things ‘The New Yorker’ Gets Wrong about Free Speech (And Why It Matters)” to set the record straight. Why is critiquing this one magazine article important, you might ask? As I say in my response in today’s Huffington Post:

First of all, in a time when people seem increasingly comfortable with book banning, blasphemy laws, hate speech laws, and amending the Constitution to limit the First Amendment, it’s important to take every opportunity we can to correct common misconceptions and explain some of the basics of the deep and profound philosophy behind free speech and the wisdom inherent in First Amendment law. Second, it’s important to take on the growing tide of critics, including authors and even journalists, who rely on freedom of speech but want to dismiss it as something unsophisticated or even dangerous. Whether from Eric Posner, Gary Trudeau, or Noah Feldman, there is a push to dismiss freedom of speech that seems to lionize the fact that other countries limit it. Every single one of these critics should sit down and read Flemming Rose’s book on international censorship, The Tyranny of Silence, before assuming that “enlightened censorship” is either justified or working out well for anyone.

FREE SPEECH ON CAMPUS FOR PHILLY! Temple University and Drexel University, why can’t you be more like the University of Pennsylvania and drop your speech codes? FIRE’s Azhar Majeed and Drexel alum Max Levy call out both universities over at The Philadelphia Inquirer.

THE DEMISE OF COMEDY ON COLLEGE CAMPUSES: Caitlin Flanagan has a great new article in The Atlantic about how today’s college students want their comedy “100 percent risk-free” so that it does “not trigger or upset or mildly trouble a single student.” FIRE actually has a comedy coming out soon about this very topic called Can We Take a Joke?— check it out and like it on Facebook.

I​,​ too​,​ have a forthcoming feature article in The Atlantic that I co-authored with best selling author and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt. ​W​e take a unique perspective on free speech on campus, examining ​it through the lens of psychology. Keep an eye out for the article in the September issue of The Atlantic​. I’ll be sure to let readers know when it is posted to the website next week. ​

3 THINGS I LEARNED FROM THE NEW YORKER ABOUT FREE SPEECH: In an article published in the latest issue of The New Yorker, “The Hell You Say,” I learned:

1) “For many modern free-speech advocates, the First Amendment is irrelevant.” That’s news to me! The First Amendment sure seemed to help in this case settled less than two weeks ago for nearly a million dollars that the author didn’t seem to know about.

2) “Speech nuts, like gun nuts, have amassed plenty of arguments”—which I guess means we “speech nuts” are wrong? Because, what, we have a lot of arguments for free speech? How does that work, again? Interesting thinking from a journalist who relies on free speech for his living.

3) Since the ’90s, “restrictive campus speech codes have been widely repealed.” Wow, that’s an interesting and totally false claim. I guess the author missed the ten lawsuits brought by my organization in just the last year and half? Or that 55% of universities maintain wildly unconstitutional codes? Did he miss that Cal Poly Pomona settled with an animal rights activist less than two weeks ago after not only trying to restrict him to a tiny free speech zone, but also making him wear a speech badge even within that free speech quarantine?

Do the writers at The New Yorker not have access to Google?

HOLDING COLLEGE CENSORS ACCOUNTABLE: George Leef from the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy has an excellent piece in Forbes about FIRE’s recent victory in the Hayden Barnes case and the importance of holding college administrators accountable for violating student and faculty rights. Check out Leef’s article here.

A FREE SPEECH VICTORY EIGHT YEARS IN THE MAKING: $900,000 settlement points the way to making campus censors pay for unconstitutional abuses.

If individual administrators had to worry for even a second that they might be held personally liable for violating students’ clearly established constitutional rights, you can guarantee one thing: Incidents of abuses of student free speech and due process rights would plummet. As I explained last year in my announcement of FIRE’s Stand Up for Speech Litigation Project, many administrators choose to overreact to speech because they feel that there is no downside for doing so, whereas there is a host of potential consequences for failing to act, including harassment lawsuits, tort lawsuits, and investigations by the Department of Education. However, administrators’ fear of personal liability would likely often outweigh their fear of these other consequences, making them think twice before violating student and faculty rights. But insurance and university policies undermine this potentially elegant solution.

No, free speech does not end when it touches something that offends you, and you have no equivalent right to silence those who are insensitive to your feelings.

No, you have no right to feel safe.

You have no constitutional right. You have no moral right. You have no right at all.  You have a right not to be physically harmed, but your feelings, just like everyone else’s, are fair game for bruising.  No one says you have to suffer in silence. Don’t like how your Columbia professor uses classic literature that “triggers” your unsafe feelz? Go to Dartmouth. Don’t like how other people on the internets call you stupid? Don’t be stupid. Or turn off the computer. Or only click on links to cute kitteh pics.