JUSTICE DELAYED IS JUSTICE DENIED. Turns out the anticipated Title IX regulations that would bring crazy, futuristic innovations like “a hearing” and “notice of the charges against you” to college students accused of sexual infractions were delayed by… an orchestrated delay campaign! But you don’t have to take my word for it – take the word of Tulane’s Title IX coordinator, on video at the link.

(Oh yeah, and now they are demanding the regulations be delayed due to coronavirus, because of course they are.)

SANITY ATTACKS UVA LAW; NATIONAL GUARD STUDENT MAY REMAIN AT SCHOOL: Looks like UVA went with Glenn’s “less losing rather than more” option.

EDUCATION DEPARTMENT NEEDS TO ISSUE ITS TITLE IX FIX ASAP: Colleges have had 16 months to analyze the planned Title IX reforms and, outrageously, are now trying to stall their final release by citing the coronavirus. Guess what: it doesn’t take more than 16 months to figure out how to write things like “innocent until proven guilty” into your policies, which more than 70% have still failed to do.

NYU MUZZLING FACULTY ON FRONT LINES OF CORONAVIRUS FIGHT: Delays in communication during a pandemic can cost lives, whatever the intent. That’s one of the main lessons people should already have learned from this pandemic. There is zero reason for our own universities and academic hospitals to make this mistake as well.

CALL FOR PROPOSALS FOR FIRE’S FALL CONFERENCE: Are you a faculty member, of any discipline, with an idea for a paper on academic freedom in your area or elsewhere? Then please submit a proposal for FIRE’s conference at the University of Chicago this fall. Academic freedom needs your support! (Plus, there’s an honorarium.)

CORONAVIRUS PROBABLY ISN’T HELPING: George Leef reviews The Breakdown of Higher Education, just out from Roger Kimball’s Encounter Books.

HOUSE COVID-19 BILL MAY THREATEN FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS. Disturbing analysis from the Institute for Free Speech. The bill reads: “[a]ny corporation that receives Federal aid related to COVID-19 shall, until the date on which all such Federal aid is repaid by the corporation to the Federal Government… not carry out any Federal lobbying activities.” Unless the 1400-page bill has some exception in it somewhere else, this would include not just widget-makers but advocacy groups (disclosure: potentially including my employer, FIRE) that might end up receiving some kind of unemployment, payroll, etc. subsidies, unconstitutionally preventing them from contacting legislators at all.

FREE SPEECH AT FRESHMAN ORIENTATION: When coronavirus fades, the problems on our campuses will remain. That’s why FIRE and NYU’s First Amendment Watch have teamed up to offer six freshman orientation modules that aim to teach students about how free speech works on campus as soon as they get there. Will campuses adopt it? I think people might be surprised at how many administrators would like a way out of the educational dead-end of constant misunderstanding and outrage guaranteed to repeatedly embarrass their schools. There’s a better way!

MARVEL LAUNCHES NEW HEROES, INCLUDING “SAFESPACE” and “SNOWFLAKE.”  Appears to be real, as it’s on Marvel’s website too.

THEY’VE BEEN WORKIN’ ON THE RAILROAD… But there’s nothing the courts can do about this case at the University of Denver, says the Tenth Circuit, ruling it not a Title IX violation. Railroad is the court’s word, not mine: “[A]n accumulation of irregularities all disfavoring the respondent becomes deeply troubling because benign, stochastic explanations for the errors become implausible. Instead, it looks more like a railroading.” People want schools sued for stuff like this, but it’s important to realize that lawsuits simply can’t and won’t fix the problem of unaccountable and irresponsible college administrators.

WHY CAN’T WE TRUST THE CHINESE ON CORONAVIRUS? NO FREE SPEECH. No doubt many of the same people who would agree that we can’t trust what the Chinese Communist Party has to say on COVID-19 would also be happy to see speech here in America silenced, though maybe on other topics. In this preview entry for his upcoming blog, FIRE president Greg Lukianoff offers a longish read on why “the marketplace of ideas” isn’t the whole show when it comes to freedom of speech — it’s also about knowing the way the world actually is.

WHO SAYS BERKELEY PROFS ARE OUT OF TOUCH? This physics prof is ready for SHTF teaching with backup plans for his backup plans. Though as a ham operator myself, I do want to note that digital modes like Olivia and JS8Call are very robust and much more accessible than CW as long as you have a computer.

A COLLEGE FINALLY GETS WHAT IT DESERVES: In Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s case, that’s a Lifetime Censorship Award from FIRE. I mean that literally (not Joe Biden literally, literally literally) – FIRE traveled to RPI and handed a trophy to them, a process that somehow necessitated the presence of a dozen campus police, because what doesn’t these days?

BUT MY 501(C)3 STATUS! Every campaign cycle, students get told that they can’t campaign on campus because it will put the college at some kind of risk. (It won’t.) Today FIRE sent this advisory to every presidential campaign telling them to look out for this, but we could use your help making sure other campaigns know this as well. If you know someone who works on a campaign, from director on down to college student, please consider shooting them a link so they know what to look out for!

FEELIN’ THE BERN IN NEVADA: So at what point does the political establishment realize that it’s not a coincidence that the most popular figures in each of the major parties are the ones the establishment most obviously can’t stand, and start making some adjustments?

“HE HAD PLEADED GUILTY TO SIX NON-CRIMES.” Reading about President Trump’s pardon of Michael Milken today, I was reminded of this passage from Three Felonies a Day by Harvey Silverglate, who, when he wasn’t founding FIRE, had (and still has) a “normal” job as a criminal defense lawyer. Possibly related: Rudy Giuliani, who backed Milken’s pardon, was also Milken’s prosecutor.

PADDLING CONTROVERSY GETS INDIANA U. “SEXFEST” CANCELED: Yep, it’s what you think, and yep, there’s (fairly underwhelming) video.

People often wonder why free speech organizations like FIRE spend time defending unpopular or fringe expression. This case is a great example of why. IU Provost Lauren Robel, who ordered an unnecessary “investigation” into the paddling demonstration, last made the news less than 3 months ago when she publicly condemned Professor Eric Rasmusen for tweeting things deemed insufficiently pro-woman. That the same person is behind both efforts is no coincidence. When a government bureaucrat takes on the job of regulating the expression of adults, nobody is safe.

FAILING UPWARDS: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute made FIRE’s Top 10 Worst Colleges for Free Speech list for a lot of reasons, several involving wacky misadventures in policing (like claiming students could not hand out flyers because of “eminent domain“). So, of course, there’s now a bill in the New York State Senate that would upgrade RPI public safety officers to “real” police, for reasons that I can only assume are super-awesome and not at all part of the administration grabbing even more power.

ROMNEY ANNOUNCES HE IS VOTING TO CONVICT. That is a pretty substantial gift to the Democrats, no matter how you look at it.

HOW THE HOUSE LOST THE WITNESSES ALONG WITH THE IMPEACHMENT: Prof. Jonathan Turley writes, “[t]he case against the president could only have become stronger” if the House had taken more time to develop a stronger record, and complains that “[n]one of the explanations offered by House Democrats [for not doing this] make any logical sense.” Yes, sometimes what seem like bad decisions really are nonsensical — but sometimes it turns out that you just didn’t understand the decision-makers’ real goals, or their assessment of the risks. Given the high stakes and the people involved, which is more likely here?

THE TEN WORST COLLEGES FOR FREE SPEECH, 2020 EDITION: Harvard’s on it. So is Portland State. Is your school? Plus a lifetime censorship award!

MORE GOOD NEWS FROM THE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT? This isn’t the big-deal final Title IX regulation (yet), but proposed new grant requirements could be a boon to student free speech and free association rights all the same. Of course, caution is always recommended — it’s a government regulation, after all!

WOW, THAT’S QUITE A COINCIDENCE: “The New York Times published an eerie opinion piece on Thursday that used a potential attack on Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani as a hypothetical scenario hours before the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ elite Quds Force was actually killed in remarkably similar fashion… ‘Is there an individual in an unfriendly country who cannot be apprehended? What if the former commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, Qassem Soleimani, visits Baghdad for a meeting and you know the address? The temptations to use hypersonic missiles will be many,’ Simon wrote.”

YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE SNIDE TO BE A COLLEGE ADMINISTRATOR, BUT IT HELPS. Holy Cross Dean of Students Michele C. Murray, on a talk by WSJ’s Heather Mac Donald: “The subtext of her talk was that discrimination no longer exists, or at least that we should not be bothered by it. Our students understood her message, even dressed as it was in Frederick Douglass quotes and references to ‘Faust’ and the virtues of the Western canon.” The students to whom she refers left en masse 15 minutes into Mac Donald’s talk. For this combination of mind-reading and anti-intellectualism, students and parents pay $69,810 a year.

USA TODAY: ONLY 63% OF AMERICANS WOULD MISS FREE SPEECH IF IT WERE TAKEN AWAY. I blame Twitter. But these numbers seem weirdly low generally: “nearly half would miss freedom of expression (46%) and the right to equal justice (45%).”