GOVERNMENTS ARE INSTITUTED AMONG MEN, DERIVING THEIR JUST POWERS FROM THE CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED: When you obviously can’t rely on the process we use to determine the consent of the governed anymore, what does that say about our obligations to temporal authority? Just some of my thinking this Sunday, after reading Roger Kimball’s article that Ed posted earlier.

FEDERAL COURT SHOOTS DOWN PENNSYLVANIA BAR’S NEW ‘DISCRIMINATION’ RULE: As with so many such efforts, this one just happened to restrict protected speech. Weird how that keeps happening, huh?

Ultimately, the Court is swayed by the chilling effect that the Amendments will have on Plaintiff, and other Pennsylvania attorneys, if they go into effect. Rule 8.4(g)’s language, “by words . . . manifest bias or prejudice,” are a palpable presence in the Amendments and will hang over Pennsylvania attorneys like the sword of Damocles. This language will continuously threaten the speaker to selfcensor and constantly mind what the speaker says and how the speaker says it or the full apparatus and resources of the Commonwealth may be engaged to come swooping in to conduct an investigation. (Page 22 of PDF)

Disclosure: the plaintiff is my FIRE colleague Zach Greenberg, represented in his personal capacity by the Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute, as FIRE’s mission is restricted to higher ed.

A FIRST AMENDMENT PROBLEM WITH THE “STABLE” CRYPTOCURRENCY ACT? To be honest, I read this whole thing as just an entering wedge for a banking industry takeover of cryptocurrency. But this provision struck me as being questionable from a free speech perspective:

(2) USE OF THE TERM ‘DOLLAR’.—A person offering or providing a product or service with respect to a stablecoin may not use the term ‘dollar’ or ‘dollars’ to refer to stablecoin balances unless such reference is pre-approved by either the Comptroller of the Currency or the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.

“Refer to?” I’m no finance expert, but if this means that a crypto exchange or wallet program can’t say that an unlicensed stablecoin balance that’s worth 50 dollars is worth 50 dollars, that strikes me as both dumb and potentially unconstitutional. It’s one thing to ban calling something that’s not a dollar (a stablecoin) a dollar, but if something is truthfully worth 50 dollars, I don’t think the government can prevent someone from saying so.

Possible workaround: Coinbase, Binance, etc. just label stablecoin balances as worth “50 bucks” or “50 smackeroos” or whatever, making this pointless.

IF IT MOVES, REGULATE IT: Apparently “stablecoins” (cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, but pegged to the dollar) threaten minorities? All anything like this will do is drive innovation offshore, as it’s hard to think of anything less bound by borders than cryptocurrency.

(BTW, if you like news about law/policy affecting crypto, feel free to let me know in the comments – lots of interesting stuff in that whole area these days.)

NASDAQ TO REQUIRE ALL CORPORATE BOARDS TO HAVE ONE WOMAN, ONE MINORITY: As an Arab (well, half, but that’s good enough to count) let me be the first to say I volunteer for your highly paid phoney-baloney job, Mr. Corporate Bigshot! Heck, I’ll do it for half of what you’re paying whatever Biden, Clinton, or Bush you have in there now.

U. OF MARYLAND PUBLIC POLICY SCHOOL REQUIRES “STOLEN LAND” ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ON SYLLABI: Aside from the obvious free speech and academic freedom problems with this and other provisions, if you are telling everyone you are in possession of stolen land (or stolen anything else), there’s only one moral option: give it back. Not doing so suggests that you’re either a sociopath or a liar. Which one is it, Maryland?

RUNNING AN “ELECTION” ON CLOSED-SOURCE VENEZUELAN VOTING SOFTWARE: That voting machine software in America is not open source and auditable is such a preposterously obvious security and hacking risk that the only reasonable conclusion is that it’s meant to be insecure and hackable. There is no commercial value in closed source voting software (it’s the machines themselves they’re selling; as software goes, it is trivial and nobody wants weird innovations or updates) unless part of the value proposition is that the vote can be rigged. The media and politicians can gaslight us all they want on this, but something this “stupid” doesn’t happen accidentally, even today and with our incompetent ruling class.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE – LEGAL EDITION UPDATE: “Following the [Obama-era] Gainful Employment regulations, Gillen divides law schools into three categories: pass (where the typical graduate’s debt payments are no higher than 8.6 percent of earnings), probation (between 8.6 percent and 12.8 percent) and fail (more than 12.8 percent of earnings)… 73 percent of the schools for which Gillen was able to get data (168 schools) fail.” Yeesh.

REGARDLESS OF HOW THE ELECTION TURNS OUT, ACADEMIC FREEDOM WILL STILL BE AN ISSUE. Take a break from breathless election coverage and check out this review of academic freedom hero Don Downs’ new book, Free Speech and Liberal Education: A Plea for Intellectual Diversity and Tolerance. In a tantrum-throwing world, the adults are still out there; you just have to look for them.

CHECK OUT GLENN GREENWALD’S FINAL INTERCEPT PIECE. It discussed “Mighty Ira,” a new documentary from FIRE about the man who led the ACLU through the brickbats it got for defending the Nazis’ right to speak in Skokie, and why he did it. Read Greenwald’s column before it gets memory-holed, and consider watching the doc too. (It’s available for streaming lots of places, including free on Amazon Prime.)

RACIAL SEGREGATION IN LEWIS & CLARK COLLEGE ORIENTATION: Mandatory segregation. Not self-segregation, not voluntary segregation. It’s incredible that they thought this was OK, and when I say that, I mean it is literally not credible that they would believe that. Which brings up the question: what else are they doing that we don’t know about?

DRAIN THE SWAMP, KANSAS EDITION: Haskell Indian Nations University president threatens its student newspaper’s editor for asking questions, not treating administration with “highest respect.” What does this have to do with the swamp, you ask? The federal government runs this university.

‘HATE GROUP’ STUDENTS FOR LIFE REJECTED BY U. OF NORTHERN IOWA STUDENT GOV’T. Says one senator: “This is a hate group. This is hate speech. This is hateful rhetoric that is infringing on the human rights of healthcare.”

ST. JOHN’S TO ACADEMIC FREEDOM (AND CITY): DROP DEAD. After investigating Prof. Richard Taylor for a history question vaguely having to do with slavery, St. John’s, located in Queens, has now told other history profs they can’t even invite him be a guest speaker on the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Taylor was a 9/11 first responder, spending 700 hours at Ground Zero, including digging through the rubble for bodies, and has spoken on it before. No shame at St. John’s, I guess.

ST. JOHN’S INVESTIGATING HISTORIAN FOR DOING HISTORY BECAUSE HISTORY HAS SLAVERY IN IT: Not exaggerating, sadly. (Nobody tell “St.” John’s about the history parts in the Bible, they are gonna freak out.) You can let St. John’s, which promises academic freedom, know how you feel at the link, too.

PROFESSORS JOHN MCWHORTER AND KEITH WHITTINGTON JOIN FIRE’S BOARD.

LIVE WEBINAR ON FIRE’S COLLEGE FREE SPEECH RANKINGS: I’ll be co-hosting this today at 1pm ET, if you are interested – hit the link to register.

GOOD GRIEF! ‘PEANUTS’-BASED PLAY WITH MATURE THEMES CENSORED BY IOWA COLLEGE: I guess good old-fashioned art censorship never goes out of fashion on a college campus.

RANKED: THE TOP COLLEGES FOR FREE SPEECH ON CAMPUS, ACCORDING TO STUDENTS: Glenn beat me to this (BTW, Tennessee is #11 overall, Go Vols), which is unforgivable since I helped put them together, but this is a HUGE DEAL. 20,000 students surveyed on 55 campuses, with statistically significant samples on all of them. For 17 years people have asked me “so really, where should I send my kid if I care about free speech on campus?” Finally, there’s an objective answer! The top 5:

1. The University of Chicago (no surprise there!)
2. Kansas State University (the sleeper hit)
3. Texas A&M University (ranked best by conservatives, not so well for liberals)
4. University of California, Los Angeles (this one surprised me; I guess I credit Eugene Volokh)
5. Arizona State University (these guys have been getting serious about free speech for a while now)

Bottom 5 shameful dungeon of disgrace:

51. Syracuse University (this is the college I have always told people to avoid if they like free speech)
52. Dartmouth College (alums have cult-like devotion to this school, which is not returned by the administration)
53. Louisiana State University (threw out a female prof for using occasional profanity with grad students, ludicrously calling it “sexual harassment.” Stay far away.)
54. University of Texas – Austin (dedicated to messing with Texas for decades now)
55. DePauw University (ranked #52 by liberals and #55 by conservatives, has somehow created an equal-opportunity nightmare of censorship in rural Indiana)

SYR-ACCUSE UNIVERSITY IS A DISASTER: Joke about “Wuhan Flu” and get suspended from teaching. Seriously, Syracuse is just so very bad on free speech that its School of Communications has to be the most ironic piece of architecture in the known world.

DON’T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU READ: A Trump-supporting App State prof describes how an inadvertently warped story about an “anti-conservative survey” in his class went viral.

How much better off would we be, as a society, if people DIDN’T just immediately believe everything they read? Geez.

THIS WOULD LITERALLY BE ILLEGAL: A petition demands that (the public) Florida International University “impose further disciplinary actions for use of racial slurs” on “three non-black FIU softball players using the n-word.” (They were singing along with a rap song.)  More than 750 signatures as of now. Maybe every single signer doesn’t know that this would be illegal. More likely, though, this is just cancel culture feeling its oats – who needs law when you have power? Plus a bonus implication that your rights are determined by your skin color.

CENSORING A PICTURE’S THOUSAND WORDS: Colleges are not dealing well with the fact that everyone has a camera and the ability to share photos. Especially when the photo involves a legal firearm, but that’s hardly the only time…

“DOING THE INNER WORK OF ANTI-RACISM“: Teaching about anti-racism in a state university Intro to Communications class is one thing. Telling students they have to do “inner work” on their beliefs as college classwork sounds a lot more like thought reform than education. Maybe this isn’t what it looks like, but if you can’t make a grammar school kid say the Pledge of Allegiance during World War II, there’s no way a professor can mandate psychological therapy for his or her adult students.

THE EMPEROR’S NEW CLOTHES AND INDEPENDENT THOUGHT: FIRE’s latest video sneaks some psychological science into a cartoon, so that everyone can understand a fable that’s badly needed in these days when our own emperors are so naked. My 9 and 11 year olds liked and mostly got it – it’s a good one to share with your kids and grandkids.