FORMER SLAVE FREDERICK DOUGLASS, 1860: “To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.”

CHAPEL HILL PROF AT UNC-GREENSBORO CONFERENCE, 2019: “The very idea of freedom, postulated in universalist terms in the 19th century, and serving as the ontological structure for the First Amendment, doesn’t allow the black.”

You kind of have to read the description of this conference to believe it.

THE NEW REGULATIONS REINING IN TITLE IX ABUSES CAN’T COME OUT SOON ENOUGH: Another professor gets sideswiped by his university’s Kafkaesque Title IX regime: “In effect, a public college’s administrators coached a disgruntled student on how to make a bogus Title IX claim and how to make it look legitimate.”

THE ARREST OF UCONN STUDENTS FOR USING A RACIAL SLUR IS CLEARLY UNCONSTITUTIONAL. As will be any action that UConn, a state institution, takes against them. These unlawful abuses need to stop, now, and people and organizations need to stop excusing them, or we’re all next.

“YOU HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO REVERSE COURSE. WE URGE YOU TO TAKE IT.” Five members of Congress, led by Sens. Wyden and Rubio, give some sound advice to the CEO of Activision-Blizzard over kowtowing to the Chinese Communist Party. I get that China has lots of money, but I suspect that buys them a lot less pull with voters and consumers than many in government and business seem to think.

IS YOUR HALLOWEEN COSTUME AN “ACT OF INTOLERANCE?” At Furman University in South Carolina, it might well be, which is why Furman has been awarded FIRE’s Speech Code of the Month for October 2019.

WORLD OF WARCRAFT DEVELOPER BLIZZARD “BANS GAMER, RESCINDS MONEY, ON HONG KONG PROTEST SUPPORT.” I guess they agreed with NY Times/New Yorker writer Andrew Marantz that “Free Speech is Killing Us.” Or they’re just big NBA fans.

One wonders how much of this goes unreported.

CAN DIVERSITY AND EXCELLENCE COEXIST ON CAMPUS? Harvard computer science professor (and former Harvard College dean) Harry Lewis, who has been a real champion of freedom of association on that increasingly benighted campus, reviews former Yale Law dean Anthony Kronman’s book The Assault on American Excellence.

AT U. OF IOWA, “UNIVERSITY OFFICIALS HELD ‘PERSONALLY LIABLE’ FOR DISCRIMINATION AGAINST CHRISTIAN STUDENT GROUP.” More of this needs to happen. There has to be some cost to college officials who just flat-out ignore the law when it comes to disfavored groups on campus. Those denied “qualified immunity,” a doctrine that effectively gives public college administrators a blank check to abuse nearly any and all student rights, include Vice President for Student Life Melissa Shivers, Associate Dean of Student Organizations William Nelson, and Coordinator for Student Organization Development Andrew Kutcher. It takes serious work to lose this immunity, so whenever a college administrator does so, it’s worth sitting up to take notice.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Penn Law student government holds a “town hall” featuring Dean Ted Ruger to discuss “the Amy Wax situation.” (The “Amy Wax situation” is that law professor Amy Wax has expressed unpopular-at-Penn beliefs on race and immigration.) Yet somehow, local expert on Amy Wax-ian beliefs Amy Wax was not invited or even told about the event. Classy.

WESTERN ILLINOIS’ WALKING DEAD: 16 years after its supposed elimination, WIU’s “zombie free speech zone” still hobbles along. As one victim of the undead menace put it, “I was four when this policy was supposedly eliminated, but the unconstitutional free speech zone somehow still lives on.”

ANOTHER CAMPUS FREE SPEECH LAWSUIT: “Some people get in trouble for smoking weed, but at Jones College, I got in trouble just for trying to talk about it.”

WALMART ENDING HANDGUN AND “SHORT-BARREL RIFLE” AMMO SALES: I confess I never thought of .223 and 5.56mm as “short-barrel rifle” ammunition, as some of those suckers are pretty long. Real winner here has to be Mosin Nagant owners. Walmart: for all your 7.62x54R ammo needs!

A SOLID WIN FOR ACADEMIC FREEDOM: New School prof charged with racial harassment for using the “n-word” in class while discussing author James Baldwin has charges dropped just days after FIRE took the case public. This business of treating certain words as though their mere utterance, regardless of context, has some kind of mysterious and unstoppable power, is not reasonable. It’s purely magical thinking, and has no place at a university.

‘SILENCED STAGES’ ON CAMPUS: It’s not just your imagination. George Leef reports on a new book out from Prof. George LaNoue: “Based on his study of 97 colleges and 28 law schools during the 2014-2015 academic year… [f]or most students in American higher education, the opportunity to hear on-campus debates about important public policy issues does not exist.”

I HAD HEARD LAW SCHOOL WAS UNFRIENDLY: Might you be just “taking up space” in a discussion if your identity is insufficiently “minoritized?” Is “minoritized” even a word? Find out during orientation at University of South Dakota Law School!

“RUSSIA TELLS GOOGLE NOT TO ADVERTISE ‘ILLEGAL’ EVENTS AFTER ELECTION PROTESTS:” This is why you don’t get into the business of political censorship. Once you start, there’s no way out. Google should have known better.

NEW SCHOOL PROF IN HOT WATER FOR QUOTING JAMES BALDWIN: Legitimate academic discussion of use of the n-word is repeatedly being silenced. But don’t worry – students can always have reasonable and informed discussions about it online, right? Right?

THE CAMPUS DUE PROCESS DISASTER IS HEADED YOUR WAY: The ABA is voting next week on whether to recommend that every state pass laws criminalizing failure to get “affirmative consent” for sex. When your actual sex life becomes a Dave Chapelle skit, you know who to thank.

AN OPENING FOR YALE ALUMS TO BRING SANITY BACK TO OLD ELI: Georgetown law prof, FIRE board member, and Heterodox Academy co-founder Nicholas Quinn Rosenkranz needs 4,266 Yale alumni signatures to get on the trustee ballot. Yalies should sign up and spread the word — qualifications for meaningful reform don’t get better than this.

ARKANSAS VS. TENURE: And not a way that anyone who cares about higher ed would call beneficial. “Collegiality” requirements are too often just a euphemistic way of saying “this guy is spouting beliefs I don’t like.” Dissent from the party line is rarely considered collegial.

HARVARD STUDY BACKS UP COMMON SENSE ON TRIGGER WARNINGS: Worst part (in my opinion): “a preregistered test found that trigger warnings increased survivor’s view of their trauma as integral to their identity (this is known as ‘event centrality’).” Exactly as a normal person would suspect.

AGAINST CONSERVATIVE PESSIMISM ABOUT FREE SPEECH ON CAMPUS: Think campuses are unrecoverable? FIRE President Greg Lukianoff says you’re wrong, and lays out some simple steps colleges could take to turn the tide.

BIG STATE, BIG MISTAKE: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has been signing a lot of bills into law that are good news for fans of limited government (like re-legalizing lemonade stands), but he made a big mistake signing these campus sexual harassment bills. In Texas, not only is sexual harassment now officially up to the most sensitive person on campus (no “reasonable person” requirement), but if you are a professor who doesn’t report this defective form of “harassment” to the campus Title IX apparatchiks, you can actually go to jail (Class B misdemeanor, up to 180 days in the slammer). Texas can, and must, do a lot better, because this just enshrined unconstitutional speech codes into state law.

TERMINATED HARVARD FACULTY DEAN WHO REPRESENTED WEINSTEIN SPEAKS OUT: Harvard prof and well-known attorney Ronald Sullivan, who (along with his wife) was defenestrated as faculty dean of Harvard’s Winthrop House after students complained that his decision to represent Harvey Weinstein made them “unsafe,” has released a video making it clear that Harvard has betrayed both its and America’s principles and that he’s not done with this situation. Harvard administrators have provided their own explanation, as per usual.

ARE WE A BAD INFLUENCE ON WORLD HIGHER ED, OR VICE VERSA? As a pro-America chauvinist when it comes to law and philosophy, I generally see Europe, Canada, etc. as a bad influence on our commercial republic of yeoman farmers. But when it comes to clamping down on academic freedom in higher ed, the influence really looks to be going the other way.