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.

OK, IT’S PROBABLY TIME TO PANIC. Some European maniacs have decided to design a font that automatically censors your speech by replacing politically incorrect words with their approved newspeak, because there’s absolutely no way that could blow up in everyone’s face. You can try it on their website – they even give you “permission” to say naughty things, saying “this one time, it’s OK.” Oh, thank you so much, my liege. Do these people have no self-awareness at all?

Finland, your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could they didn’t stop to think if they should!

WESTERN CAROLINA U. AND THE CANCEL CULTURE SCRIPT: The story of how Western Carolina threw 5 students to the social media mob is such a perfect distillation of how cancel culture works that it’s practically the Platonic ideal of cancel culture. So I’m dissecting it, piece by piece. This is part 2 of an ongoing series – part 1 is here (and linked in the article).

SOMEONE SHOULD PUT SOME MONEY INTO THIS: It’s time to start a new university. Seriously, campuses can be had right now, cheap!

‘SAVING HIGHER ED FROM CANCEL CULTURE‘: Tomorrow night at 8 p.m. Eastern, please join Legal Insurrection‘s Prof. Bill Jacobson of Cornell, DePaul Prof. Jason Hill, Princeton Prof. Joshua Katz, and me for a live, free discussion on cancel culture and higher ed, with opportunities for questions from the audience – register here. Should be a great one, as all three of them are cancel culture “survivors.” (Not me – nobody has been dumb enough to try to cancel a FIRE employee recently.)

STUDENT CLEARED OF CHARGES FOR HAVING ZOOM BACKGROUND OF PRESIDENT TRUMP: Proving again that students can win these battles, but they have to be willing to fight. (And another headline for Glenn’s “Crazy Years” scrapbook.)

U. OF CENTRAL FLORIDA GOES MEDIEVAL ON PROFESSOR: Holding a 9-hour, 2-part inquisition into a professor’s in-class speech, complete with anonymous and ill-defined accusations, because of the below tweet.

HAPPY TITLE IX DAY! Words I thought I would never write, but it is good news in Title IX-land today, as the new federal regulations, which protect free speech and due process for students, go into effect.

SWING AND A MISS: NY federal court rejects New York State and City’s effort to stop new Title IX free speech and due process protections in their tracks by denying a preliminary injunction. But opponents have filed 4 lawsuits (2 of them with your money), so we’re not out of the woods yet. The new protections go into effect Friday if courts don’t stop them.