NEW TITLE IX/SEXUAL HARASSMENT REGULATIONS INTRODUCED: And they look pretty good, from FIRE’s perspective. Kudos to the Department of Education for moving to the Supreme Court standard for sexual harassment instead of using one that “just happens” to silence a lot of protected, but unpopular, speech.

COLLEGE HALLOWEEN MADNESS STARTS BEFORE TRICK-OR-TREAT: The fact that the mayor of New York City gets involved in making decisions about who can talk to NYU college classes is itself an indictment of our culture of speech suppression these days.

SLATE ON “THE MORAL BANKRUPTCY OF HATE SPEECH ON GAB.” Insufficient censorship is now “moral bankruptcy.” We’ve seen this before.

WHAT DO COLLEGE CHIEF DIVERSITY OFFICERS ACCOMPLISH? George Leef covers a recent paper that suggests that whatever it is they’re doing, it’s not increasing the number of diverse faculty members. I have met a few of these folks, and they are generally smart, well-intentioned people. Regardless of how you feel about their goals, if this job isn’t working, these folks shouldn’t be wasted on it — and neither should our money.

A NEW EFFORT TO “CHANGE THE TERMS” TO FIGHT ONLINE “HATE”: The Electronic Frontier Foundation has some serious and valid concerns about this effort, saying, “Corporate Speech Police Are Not the Answer to Online Hate.” It’s difficult to think of any question for which “corporate speech police” will be a good answer.

WANNA GO FULL MCCARTHY? DO IT ON YOUR OWN DIME, HARVARD: “The proposed amendment would prevent any ‘institution of higher education that receives funds’ under the Higher Education Act from punishing students for joining any ‘constitutionally protected’ group — whether or not that group is affiliated with the school.” Harvard currently blacklists students for joining officially disfavored off-campus groups, and FIRE sees no reason taxpayers should have to pay for this.

PREVENTING THE RISE OF “FASCISM”: “I can think of no better way of doing this than excising the entire alt-right from YouTube.” Sorry, but that means you’re not thinking. If your response to aggrieved people is to add some entirely legitimate grievances to their list, it’s time to reexamine your strategy.

TIRED OF AD HOMINEM ATTACKS INSTEAD OF ACTUALLY ADDRESSING IDEAS? So is Conor Freidersdorf from the Atlantic, whose comprehensive takedown of a Guardian review of the bestselling book The Coddling of the American Mind on this basis is a sight to behold. (Disclosure: the book’s co-author is my boss.) And in Quillette, FIRE’s Pamela Paresky goes into further detail about how so much of what passes for “reasoning” these days is really the operation of taboo and “moral pollution.” If you’re one of the many people who just can’t stand political discussions these days (I quit posting to Facebook for just that reason), these articles go a long way towards explaining why.

HAVE GUN, WILL…BE FORCED TO JUSTIFY IT TO COLLEGE BUREAUCRATS: Anand Venigalla is a Long Island University student who posted pictures of a trip to Cabela’s on Facebook, prompting LIU to drag him in and grill him about whether he had violent intentions. Take a look at the pics and judge for yourself. From the look of it, King George III might have something to worry about if Venigalla gets his hands on a time machine, but that’s about it. Feel free to drop a (polite) line to LIU letting ’em know how you feel.

HARVARD STUDENTS FILE TITLE IX CLAIMS AGAINST BRETT KAVANAUGH: “It would be pretty terrifying for any survivor or any person to walk into a building on campus and see someone who has been alleged of a very serious crime,” says one student. Title IX, as currently interpreted, has all kinds of issues.

“HARVARD NEEDS A CIVICS LESSON.” Truer words have never been spoken. If Harvard puts you on its “blacklist” for your alleged ties to unsavory groups like, uh, sororities, let us at FIRE know.

GREG LUKIANOFF AND JONATHAN HAIDT’S ‘THE CODDLING OF THE AMERICAN MIND’ OUT TODAY: Their new book is #12 on all of Amazon as I write, with positive comments from everyone from Niall Ferguson to Michael Bloomberg to Cornel West. Pick up a copy, and look out for Greg and Jon on book tour, as they may be coming to a venue near you.

UCSB SEX MISCONDUCT CASE GETS CALIFORNIA REGENTS FOUND IN CONTEMPT OF COURT: UC Santa Barbara apparently thought the law didn’t apply to it. Turns out it did. Were I a California regent, I’d be furious that my subordinates’ lawlessness put my name on the bad side of a contempt proceeding.

PROBLEMS? WHAT PROBLEMS? A former Department of Education employee says “Don’t Believe Betsy DeVos. Title IX Already Has a Fair Process for Students Accused of Sexual Assault.” Just not at any of America’s top 53 universities, apparently.

CAMPUS CENSORSHIP? MOVE ALONG, NOTHING TO SEE HERE: Is there another area of civil rights in which academics will point to hundreds (upon hundreds) of documented incidents and yet happily tell you it’s no big deal because, hey, think of all the people whose rights haven’t been violated?

INFOWARS BANNED BY APPLE, FACEBOOK, YOUTUBE, SPOTIFY, ALL WITHIN 24 HOURS: Lesson one in undermining conspiracy theorists is not doing stuff to them that looks a whole lot like a conspiracy.

DEMANDING REPRESSION: People on social media are flipping out about this Mark Zuckerberg interview, in which he expresses reluctance to blanket-censor Holocaust deniers on Facebook. Do they really want a giant corporation deciding what details of the Holocaust (or any other historical event) are accurate, and punishing those who disagree? That sounds like a nightmare — both for the social media giants and for us.

U. OF KANSAS CAVES, AGREES TO REMOVE FLAG-BASED ART: Seems like a pretty obvious First Amendment violation. It’s odd, isn’t it, how quickly universities tend to give in when the demands are for censorship, but fight tooth and nail against free speech?

VICTORY FOR ACADEMIC FREEDOM IN WISCONSIN: The Wisconsin Supreme Court delivers a fantastic victory for Marquette professor John McAdams, who blogged his criticism of in-class censorship by a grad student instructor and was fired by Marquette despite its promises of academic freedom.

GOADING TWITTER TO SELF-DESTRUCT: It’s hard to read this article by Farhad Manjoo in the New York Times as anything other than an attempt to goad Twitter into shutting down President Trump’s account. This is madness. Not only would this ultimately destroy Twitter, the explosion of both private and government regulation to follow would likely take a large part of Internet freedom with it.

PURDUE PROMISES FREE SPEECH, DELIVERS: It will not punish a professor for a two-year-old post of a 42-year-old picture of herself as a child dressed in blackface, correctly noting that such a post is not harassment.

ONE IS STILL FOR ALL: Panicked by extremism on the right and the left, too many of our thought leaders and institutions are apologizing for, or even turning away from, supporting free speech and the First Amendment. For the Fourth, FIRE wants to unapologetically remind Americans that free speech is, and has to be, for everyone—not just the folks we like.

“THE IGNORANT DO NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO AN AUDIENCE:” It’s possible that this op-ed by philosophy professor Bryan W. Van Norden in today’s New York Times is a parody. If it’s not, we have to assume that he thinks Herbert Marcuse’s infamous essay “Repressive Tolerance” represents a credible authority to which to appeal when discussing free speech, that readers won’t notice that he assumes his own totally unwarranted infallibility while criticizing J.S. Mill for pointing out the problems in doing just that, and that as “a professor of philosophy at Wuhan University” and therefore an employee of the Chinese Communist government, he and those like him would certainly be among those most likely to be denied a platform if the U.S. government had the power to do so.

STUDENTS SEEM TO BELIEVE THIS IS STILL AMERICA: A huge new FIRE survey, conducted by YouGov, indicates overwhelming support among students for due process protections on campus. For example, a whopping 85% seem to believe that they should be presumed innocent until proven guilty (the cheek!), yet a FIRE report on policies at the top 53 schools last year discovered that only 30% of them bothered to guarantee students this extremely basic right in campus proceedings. It might be too much to expect every college to hit Learned Hand levels of jurisprudence, but this Keyrock-level stuff should be plenty achievable.

STATEMENT DRAFTED BY HARVARD’S DEPARTMENT OF CHUTZPAH: Harvard emailed its alumni today (subject line: “Defending Diversity”) warning them that those bringing a lawsuit charging the college with discriminating against Asian Americans will “seek to paint an unfamiliar and inaccurate image of our community,” by making claims that, in Harvard’s opinion, “rely on misleading, selectively presented data taken out of context.” Apparently that’s bad when it happens to Harvard administrators, though not so much when Harvard does it to its own students.