‘You say you want a Revolution, well …’

Posted on May 1, 2025 by Joe Weber

If they’re going to change the world, universities need to do more

Liberty Leading the People by Eugène Delacroix, 1830. Source: DiPLO

A couple weeks ago, New York Times columnist David Brooks called for something akin to a revolution.

“It’s time for a comprehensive national civic uprising,” he wrote in a piece headlined “What’s Happening is Not Normal. America Needs an Uprising That Is Not Normal.” He argued: “It’s time for Americans in universities, law, business, nonprofits and the scientific community, and civil servants and beyond to form one coordinated mass movement. Trump is about power. The only way he’s going to be stopped is if he’s confronted by some movement that possesses rival power.”

Are we beginning to see the rise of such a rival power or, more properly, rival powers? Glimmers are emerging in some universities that are uniting to fight federal funding cuts and other actions President Donald J. Trump has taken to shatter what he sees as “woke” culture.

But, so far, the efforts seem oddly timid. Either university administrators fear being too out front in hopes they can avoid Trump’s vindictiveness or they think — mistakenly — that they can weather the gathering storm.

Rutgers profs David Salas-de la Cruz, left, and Paul Boxer

Showing less fear, a pair of Rutgers professors — chemist David Salas-de la Cruz and psychologist Paul Boxer — in March drafted a “mutual defense compact.” They proposed bringing together the 18 schools in the Big Ten athletic and academic conference in resistance to Trump.

This compact would commit the schools to provide “meaningful” cash for a defense fund aimed at supporting any member “under direct political or legal infringement.” It would provide legal counsel, governance experts, and public affairs offices “to coordinate a unified and vigorous response” that could include countersuit actions, strategic public communication, amicus briefs and expert testimony, legislative advocacy and coalition-building.

Quickly following suit, faculty senates at more than a dozen of the schools endorsed the idea. Encouragingly, they include those groups at Rutgers, one of my alma maters, and my prior employer, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

The resolution passed at Rutgers called on the university’s president, Jonathan Holloway, to “take a leading role in convening a summit of Big Ten academic and legal leadership” to start the compact.

But Holloway has demurred. While he supported the “ethos” of the resolution, he did not formally endorse it, noting that he is stepping down at the end of the academic year, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education. “I’m a president walking out the door in two months,” he said in a senate meeting. “Presidents going out the door have no lobbying power with their peers.”

Instead, Holloway encouraged faculty senators to “work with their colleagues in other university senates and shared-governance councils, whether in the Big Ten or beyond, to further test their thinking, understand what may or may not be possible, and identify the local constraints and freedoms that define the actions of peer institutions,” according to a spokeswoman.

Mealy-mouthed? PR-speak for “no way can we do this”?

Already, a spokesman for Ohio State told The Washington Post that “it is not legally permissible for the university to participate in a common defense fund.” Other administrators have not taken up the idea publicly, including representatives for leaders at Indiana and Nebraska who did not respond The Chronicle’s request for comment.

Perhaps it’s no wonder that the top university officials may hope a duck-and-cover strategy will serve them better. But that is likely only because they haven’t yet had to fight, as Harvard has. Recall that Harvard has brought suit against the administration for freezing billions in federal grants.

Some Harvard professors have even pledged to donate 10 percent of their salaries this year to support the university’s fight. “If we as a faculty are asking the University administration to resist the Trump administration’s attacks on academic freedom, we should also be willing to share in the financial sacrifice that will be necessary,” Harvard Kennedy School professor Dani Rodrik told The Harvard Crimson.

So far, all but one of the Big Ten schools have been spared the sort of attacks Trump had lobbed at Ivy League schools. The exception, Northwestern, lost $790 million.

But Trump’s wrath – and his social engineering – may be unavoidable. Nine of the Big Ten schools have gotten a letter from the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights warning of “potential enforcement actions” if they failed “to protect Jewish students on campus, including uninterrupted access to campus facilities and educational opportunities,” according to The Post.

Of course, the claim of fighting antisemitism is little more than a ruse, an excuse to undertake a far-reaching remake of higher education. Yes, antisemitism is a real issue — especially at Harvard and my other alma mater, Columbia — and needs to be rooted out. But, for Trump, it’s just a pretext.

As for other schools that have stayed clear of the president’s broad-gauge volleys, it is just a matter of time before they are hauled into the fight, like it or not.

Take note that the hit list of Project 2025 – the right-wing blueprint that Trump is following, despite disavowing it during the campaign – has a hefty array of education targets.

The agenda includes so-far incomplete measures such as capping support for indirect research at universities, authorizing states to act as accreditors or setting up alternatives to current accrediting bodies, terminating the public service loan forgiveness program, banning critical race theory and eliminating PLUS loans, among other things. Here is a handy tracker on how the Project’s efforts are proceeding.

As Ms. reports, only one-third of the Project’s efforts have been completed, so much more remains for the balance of Trump’s term.

And perish the thought that any shreds of diversity efforts could remain unscathed on campus. Schools could be prosecuted on civil rights grounds for that, including programming aimed at putting first-generation students on the same footing as others. The administration is investigating at least 45 schools in an effort to end “racial preferences and stereotypes.”

“Big Ten institutions haven’t been in the crosshairs, but they can read the writing on the wall,” Jonathan Fansmith, senior vice president for the American Council on Education, told The Post. For many college presidents he represents, the prevailing thought now is: “Trying to keep a low profile won’t stop the attacks.”

Yet he said he also suspects they would be wary to sign on to the compact without knowing exactly what it would require.

Only administrators, not faculty senates, can commit their institutions to the united front.

The Rutgers university senate supported the Big Ten compact with its vote on March 28. Organizers there plan a teach-in next week and May Day protests in support of the compact, journalism professor Todd Wolfson told The Washington Post. He expects a protracted fight with administrators over the summer.

“We have had to lead and they have followed us,” Wolfson said. “Now we will demand they actually put resources into defending our campuses.”

Wolfson also serves as president of the American Association of University Professors. The AAUP is a union with chapters at more than 500 schools, including several in the Big Ten. It was among the first groups to sue the Trump administration over federal cuts to higher education funding.

Separately, about 10 Ivies and elite schools have put together what The Wall Street Journal called a private collective to fight deep cuts already mandated against them.

Perhaps because their schools already are being scorched by Trump, individual trustees and presidents are involved in the collective. The newspaper reported that participants have discussed red lines they won’t cross in negotiations with the White House. One such red line, for instance, is relinquishing academic independence, including autonomy over admissions, hiring, and what they teach and how it is taught.

The group has gamed out how to respond to demands presented by the Trump administration, which has frozen or canceled billions in research funding at schools it says haven’t effectively combated antisemitism on their campuses.

So far, Trump’s minions have been successful in picking off universities and law firms by attacking them one by one. So it’s not surprising that they are fretting about unification efforts, according to a source cited by the Journal. Within the past two months, the task force warned the leadership of at least one school not to cooperate with other schools to defend against the task force demands, one source told the paper.

Additionally, the American Association of Colleges and Universities has come out with a statement condemning what it called “unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American colleges and universities.” The petition was signed by more than 500 higher-education leaders nationwide.

“We speak with one voice against the unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education,” the statement said.

Speaking, of course, isn’t enough. As Harvard has done, taking the fights to court – the last redoubt, given the supine Congress – will be essential.

Brooks’s “uprising” has a long way to go, but Trump is certain to give timid administrators plenty of reason to man the barricades.

When taking aim at the king …

Posted on April 15, 2025 by Joe Weber

Trump has a fight on his hands, at lasT

Omar Little, portrayed by the late Michael K. Williams, source: Fandom

The wonderful character Omar Little, appearing in the eighth episode of “The Wire,” offers a memorable line: “Ayo, lesson here, Bey. You come at the king, you best not miss.”

That line, now 23 years old, resonates anew as Harvard has decided to fight back against the would-be monarch now soiling the White House. It applies, too, to a group of other schools – including Brown University, Princeton University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, California Institute of Technology and the University of Illinois — that have brought suit against Trump’s Department of Energy.

All are attacking the vindictive federal overreach Trump is using to withhold funds in his effort to reshape higher education policies. Together, the moves could embolden more institutions, such as law firms and Columbia University, perhaps including some that the president has already bullied into acquiescence of various sorts.

“This is of momentous, momentous significance,” J. Michael Luttig, a prominent former federal appeals court judge revered by many conservatives, told The New York Times. “This should be the turning point in the president’s rampage against American institutions.”

But they also had better win. Their opponent is a wily master of the judicial system who has shown that 34 felony convictions, among other legal humiliations, are not enough to defeat him. Just look at how – so far, at least – Trump has spit on an order by nothing less than a unanimous Supreme Court to return wrongly deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia from an El Salvador prison.

Along with showing an astonishingly callous indifference to a jailed man’s plight, Trump seems to believe that all and sundry should bow to his will, no matter how wrongheaded it is. The president is similarly indifferent to the damaging effects his battle with universities are having on medical and scientific research.

Already, Trump is upping the ante in his battle with Harvard. In the wake of Harvard President Alan Garber’s defiance, federal officials froze $2.2 billion in multiyear grants and canceled a $60 million contract, along with the president threatening to remove the university’s tax-exempt status. The administration had put nearly $9 billion in funding at risk when Garber refused to bow to its demands for extensive policy changes and oversight.

“The University will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights,” Garber wrote in a message to the Harvard community. He added: “No government — regardless of which party is in power — should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.”

As The Harvard Gazette reported, Garber’s message was a response to a letter sent late Friday by the Trump administration outlining demands that Harvard would have to satisfy to maintain its funding relationship with the federal government. These demands included “audits” of academic programs and departments, along with the viewpoints of students, faculty, and staff, and changes to the University’s governance structure and hiring practices.

Garber’s defiance stood in stark contrast to Columbia’s genuflection to Trump. So far, Columbia’s obeisance has not led to a restoration of the $400 million Trump cut. That, together with Harvard’s stance, may have prompted Columbia’s new acting president, Claire Shipman, to push back in a new message to the university community after her predecessor, Dr. Katrina Armstrong, had bowed to Trump’s demand and then quit.

Claire Shipman, source: Columbia Spectator

“To be clear, our institution may decide at any point, on its own, to make difficult decisions that are in Columbia’s best interests,” journalist and writer Shipman wrote. “Where the government – or any stakeholder – has legitimate interest in critical issues for our healthy functioning, we will listen and respond. But we would reject heavy-handed orchestration from the government that could potentially damage our institution and undermine useful reforms that serve the best interests of our students and community. We would reject any agreement in which the government dictates what we teach, research, or who we hire. And yes, to put minds at ease, though we seek to continue constructive dialogue with the government, we would reject any agreement that would require us to relinquish our independence and autonomy as an educational institution.”

Separately, the handful of top schools that brought suit against Trump’s Department of Energy are fighting a policy change that would reduce the amount of indirect support that federal grants provide. As Reuters reported, the DOE announced that it would cut more than $400 million in annual spending by setting an across-the-board 15 percent reimbursement rate for indirect costs of research.

Many of the universities involved in the lawsuit have negotiated far higher “indirect” rates than the 15 percent proposed by DOE policy. The National Institutes of Health announced a similar cut and was also sued. A federal judge has issued an order blocking the Trump administration from proceeding with those cuts, while the lawsuit against NIH proceeds.

In the case of the indirect research support, the administration offers the specious argument that the cut would bring “greater transparency and efficiency” to federal government spending. In the case of the broader university reforms Trump is seeking, he and his minions have veiled their moves behind the claim of fighting antisemitism on the campuses.

The president’s broad list of demands to Harvard, however, gives the lie to the latter claim. He has demanded an end to diversity, equity and inclusion programs, for instance, along with eliminating any hiring preferences based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin, along with gutting any such preferences in student admissions. He has demanded audits to assure “viewpoint diversity” at the school without defining that.

Steven Pinker, a Harvard psychologist who is also a president of the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard, told The New York Times that it was “truly Orwellian” and self-contradictory for the government to force viewpoint diversity on the university. He said it would also lead to absurdities.

“Will this government force the economics department to hire Marxists or the psychology department to hire Jungians or, for that matter, for the medical school to hire homeopaths or Native American healers?” he said.

In going up against Trump, the universities, no doubt, will be equipped with the best and brightest. Happily, they will fight a Trump Justice Department and other agencies that have lost their top talents in the president’s government-wide gutting efforts. Just consider that Harvard’s legal team includes William A. Burck and Robert K. Hur.

As the Times reported, Burck is also an outside ethics adviser to the Trump Organization and represented the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP in the deal it recently reached with Trump. And Hur, who worked in the Justice Department in Trump’s first term, was the special counsel who memorably called President Biden “an elderly man with a poor memory.”

They are insiders who understand the man and the system they now are battling.

For his part, Trump is someone whose two years at The University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School were undistinguished at best. “Donald Trump was the dumbest goddamn student I ever had!,” one former prof of his said.

Still, he can work a lot of governmental levers, has a bottomless well of vindictiveness and can’t stand losing. The universities are in a fight for their lives and all of us have much riding on the outcome. They’d best not miss.

Hamas and Columbia — Part 3

Posted on April 25, 2024 by Joe Weber

Should Minouche Shafik keep her job?

Nemat “Minouche” Shafik, source: AFP, via The Forward

Ah, leave it to the politicians to make an already troubling situation worse. House Speaker Mike Johnson and some cronies parachuted into Columbia University the other day to call for University’s President Nemat “Minouche” Shafik’s scalp “if she could not immediately bring order to this chaos.” He even suggested that the National Guard be called onto campus. Earlier, Sens. Tom Cotton and Josh Hawley had called on President Biden to order in the guard.

The pithy response from students to Johnson’s appearance on the Low Steps was blunt: “Mike, you suck,” the crowd chanted.

Of course, Republican politicians in D.C. had already stoked the fires at the school with their grilling of Shafik on April 17, followed soon after by demands that Shafik step down. In an April 22 letter, several GOP politicians led by Rep. Elise Stefanik argued that she must quit because “anarchy has engulfed the campus.”

So, are these politicians being helpful? As they poke, prod, provoke and use inflammatory rhetoric, are they clarifying the underlying ugliness of antisemitism at the university? Are they casting oil on troubled waters or, instead, throwing gasoline on a long-burning fire? And should Shafik resign?

To the first point, the political grandstanding – part of a longstanding GOP attack on higher education and particularly on elite schools – is anything but helpful. As they ensnare university leaders in rhetorical traps (see “it is a context-dependent decision”), they embarrass such officials and feed red meat to their bases. But do they really reveal the sentiments of such university leaders, who struggle to thread the needle between permitting free speech and academic freedom and tolerating unacceptable rhetoric and action?

Shortly before being forced out as president of the University of Pennsylvania, Liz Magill delivered an impassioned speech in which she said: “Our Jewish community is afraid… Our Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian communities feel unseen and unheard. I condemn the death threats and doxing that many at Penn are experiencing based only on their identity, their affiliations, or their views of the suffering in this war … This is a dark and difficult time for the world. And it is a dark and difficult time for Penn.”

Does that better reflect her sentiments than her poor performance in Congress did in December? Her inquisitors, polished in the ways of Washington, had their knives sharpened for her, of course, and they sent their blades home with a vengeance. The academics looked, well, academic in response and it served them poorly.

After she drove out Magill, Stefanik crowed: “One down, two to go.” She referred to former Harvard President Claudine Gay, who was subsequently ousted, mainly in a plagiarism scandal, and to MIT head Sally Kornbluth, who remains on the job. This was all before Shafik testified, of course.

Nominally, the right claims that the administrators must go because they are failing to protect Jewish students. But are such students really their concern? Or is it, rather, the “woke” agenda they’ve been deriding for years, particularly at elite schools? Are they, in fact, demagogues intent on riling up their often-undereducated supporters? Are they merely opportunists?

That brings us to the question of Shafik’s job performance. Should she quit? Many lawmakers, mostly on the right, think so. No doubt, they see the blood in the water and are loving it. From the rightist perspective, Shafik has been too weak and should have crushed the protests. With their calls for a military intervention, one wonders whether they would have applauded the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989.

But Columbia’s faculty, through the school senate, has so far stopped short of demanding Shafik’s resignation. The group could censure her for bringing the NYPD on campus to arrest students, something many find to be an unacceptable intrusion on academic freedom and free speech.

Indeed, it’s for such reasons that some on the left want her out. Former Columbia Spectator executive editor Oren Root, for one, demanded that she leave in an op-ed in the school paper: “She has disgraced the good name of Columbia, caused incalculable nationwide injury to increasingly fragile academic freedoms, and wreaked unjustifiable harm on students and faculty members who are protesting the wanton killing of defenseless men, women, and children—many thousands of children—in Gaza.”

So far, the university’s trustees are siding with Shafik, a most accomplished person whom they hired just in January of 2023 and who took her post on last July 1. “During the search process for this role, President Shafik told us that she would always take a thoughtful approach to resolving conflict, balancing the disparate voices that make up a vibrant campus like Columbia’s, while taking a firm stance against hatred, harassment and discrimination,” the trustees said. “That’s exactly what she’s doing now. We are urgently working with her to help resolve the situation on campus and rebuild the bonds of our community; we encourage everyone who cares about Columbia to join us in that effort.”

For now, I much hope Shafik keeps her post, mainly because feeding the right-wing attack on higher education is far too unsavory. Politicians of whatever stripe, moreover, should not have the right to dictate who can lead a private university (or public ones, for that matter). The trustees should stick to their guns and stick it in the eye of the likes of Speaker Johnson.

But Shafik’s actions in coming days and weeks will really determine her fate. Calling in the NYPD was a mistake, in my view; letting the protest peter out in advance of graduation would have been a smarter course.

But if she can negotiate a peaceful end to the demonstration well in advance of the university’s May 15 graduation, the school will be better served. Disappointingly, the graduation – and those at other schools around the country – will almost certainly be marked by protests. And repulsive as they are, academic freedom permits them.

Rightists rally in Charlottesville, 2017, source: AFP Getty via USAToday

A troubling amount of antisemitism, no doubt, underlays much of those protests. We have seen a rise in that pathology across the country, emboldened years ago by then-President Trump’s disgraceful response to the Charlottesville Nazis. But I suspect students are driven more by revulsion at the bloodshed in Gaza. In that respect, I suggest that the universities have failed in their primary mission – to educate. They have not adequately schooled the young about the horrors of Hamas and the reasons Israel has acted so aggressively.

This academic year will soon end and, indeed, the war in Gaza will eventually end. Will our universities rise to the occasion in the fall to make sure students really understand the issues they are demonstrating about?

Is Free Speech Really Free?

Posted on October 29, 2023 by Joe Weber

Taking stances can cost one a job

As anti-Israel forces on and off campuses continue to protest, some employers are launching counterprotests of their own – firing or refusing to hire those who go public with pro-Palestine stances. The trend reflects an unsettling truism about free speech: it may be anything but “free,” as speakers have to live with the consequences.

Take, for instance, the cases of two global law firms – New York-based Davis, Polk & Wardwell and Chicago-based Winston & Strawn. Davis Polk revoked job offers to three law students at Columbia and Harvard because they were leaders in student organizations that had backed letters blaming Israel for Hamas’s savage Oct. 7 attacks. Similarly, Winston & Strawn revoked an offer to an NYU student, the former president of the school’s University Bar Association, who had written a message to the group, saying “Israel bears full responsibility for this tremendous loss of life.”

Neil Barr, chair and managing partner of Davis Polk, told The New York Times that the firm did not want to employ anyone who endorsed the Hamas atrocities.

“The views expressed in certain of the statements signed by law school student organizations in recent days are in direct contravention of our firm’s value system,” the firm said in a statement. To ensure that “we continue to maintain a supportive and inclusive work environment, the student leaders responsible for signing on to these statements are no longer welcome in our firm.”

Davis Polk noted that in two of the cases, it was considering reversing course and hiring them because they said they had not endorsed the criticism of Israel. The letters blaming Israel for Hamas’s attack did not include individual names. It’s not clear what the law firm knew or didn’t know about the students, other than that they were leaders in the group or groups that backed the statements.

As for the NYU student who lost an offer at Winston & Strawn, that person has doubled down on the criticism of Israel. Ryna Workman, who appeared on ABC defending Palestine and criticizing Israel, was caught on camera covering up posters of Israelis kidnapped by Hamas with pro-Palestine signs. Appallingly, Workman repeatedly ducked questions about whether she – or “they” as Workman prefers – had any empathy for Israeli victims.

Workman was ousted by NYU law school Dean Troy McKenzie as head of the student bar association. Other members of the group had quickly distanced themselves from Workman, saying they mourned “the tremendous loss of human life,” while sidestepping any specific condemnation of Hamas. Subsequently, all members of the association quit, saying they feared for their safety, and the group disbanded.

As many American business leaders remain horrified by the Hamas atrocities, some say they will refuse to hire students who take stances similar to Workman’s. Some major Wall Street investors, including hedge fund chief William Ackman, have called on companies to blacklist members of groups that have taken pro-Hamas stances. Ackman, a Harvard graduate, also demanded that Harvard release the names of such students.

As reported by Forbes, Ackman tweeted that “a number of CEOs” approached him, asking for the student names to ensure “none of us inadvertently hire any of their members.” One CEO, Jonathan Neman of the healthy fast casual chain Sweetgreen, responded to Ackman’s post on X, saying he “would like to know so I know never to hire these people,” to which healthcare services company EasyHealth CEO David Duel responded: “Same.”

Still other outfits have canned those who refused to condemn Hamas or backed Palestinians. Artforum fired its top editor, David Velasco, after a call for a ceasefire, signed by thousands of artists, appeared on the publication’s website.

“We support Palestinian liberation and call for an end to the killing and harming of all civilians, an immediate ceasefire, the passage of humanitarian aid into Gaza, and the end of the complicity of our governing bodies in grave human rights violations and war crimes,” the letter said.

As reported by ARTNews, a sister publication, Artforum publishers Danielle McConnell and Kate Koza in a statement wrote, “On Thursday, October 19, an open letter regarding the crisis in the Middle East was shared on Artforum’s website and social platforms without our, or the requisite senior members of the editorial team’s, prior knowledge. This was not consistent with Artforum’s editorial process. Had the appropriate members of the editorial team been consulted, the letter would have been presented as a news item with the relevant context.”

Velasco was fired soon after high-profile dealers, artists, and other signed another letter that referred to “an uninformed letter signed by artists who do not represent the artistic community at large,” ARTNews reported. This new letter, titled “A United Call from the Art World: Advocating for Humanity,” referred to the Hamas attack, but not to Gazans caught up in the warfare.

For his part, Velasco, who had worked at the publication since 2005 and served as editor since 2017, was unrepentant in comments in The New York Times. “I have no regrets,” he told the paper. I’m disappointed that a magazine that has always stood for freedom of speech and the voices of artists has bent to outside pressure.”

As the Times reported, the initial letter was widely condemned, drawing responses by figures in the art world. On WhatsApp, campaigns were organized to dissuade advertisers from working with the magazine.

Similar actions are occurring at other media outlets. The board of the British-based biomedical and life sciences journal eLife fired editor-in-chief Michael Eisen, after he praised The Onion for a satirical post headlined “Dying Gazans Criticized For Not Using Last Words To Condemn Hamas.”

As reported by NBC News, Eisen, who is Jewish and has family in Israel, posted that he had been fired “for retweeting a @TheOnion piece that calls out indifference to the lives of Palestinian civilians,” he wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

“I expressed my opinion, an opinion about the way that American institutions, especially universities, have been kind of not expressing equal concern for the deaths of Palestinians as they have Israelis, which I think is a moral mistake and a political mistake,” Eisen told NBC. “I don’t think that Israeli scientists should feel like the scientific community does not have their backs. The support has been very strong — I thought it was obvious. People don’t always express themselves well in these situations. I wish I made clear how I empathized with them, too.”

Similarly, PhillyVoice.com canned a sports reporter after he tweeted his “solidarity” with Palestine. The Philadelphia 76ers organization tweeted on X: “We stand with the people of Israel and join them in mourning the hundreds of innocent lives lost to terrorism at the hands of Hamas,” along with the hashtag #StandWithIsrael. As The Guardian reported, journalist Jackson Frank, who covered the team, responded: “This post sucks! Solidarity with Palestine always.”

And then there are the doxxing trucks. Operated by the group Accuracy in Media, these mobile billboards have shown up at campuses including Columbia, Harvard and Penn showcasing the faces of members of anti-Israel campus groups. The trucks are emblazoned with legends such as “Harvard’s Leading Antisemites.”

While AIM leader Adam Guillette argues the trucks merely “amplify” information, they have drawn heat as amounting to harassment. The Harvard Hillel Jewish center “strongly condemns any attempt to threaten and intimidate” students who signed the letter, Harvard’s student newspaper the Harvard Crimson reported. And the University of California Berkeley law school dean Erwin Chemerinsky called the truck “despicable,” the New York Times reported. Columbia University president Minouche Shafik issued a statement before the latest truck appeared on the university’s campus, saying some Columbia students “have been victims” of doxxing, calling it a “form of online harassment” that will “not be tolerated,” according to Forbes.

Some demonstrators at Drexel and Penn universities covered their faces and declined to speak publicly, saying they feared being targeted by university officials or losing financial aid, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer. Some noted the doxxing trucks and pointed to a man filming demonstrators on his phone. A Penn alumna at the rally complained, “The surveillance, harassment, and intimidate of these young people is like no other.”

In the academic world, few would dispute that the free exchange of ideas – even noxious ones – should be free of punishment. Students, especially, should be able to speak their views and debate without fear.

However, employers are also free to shun those whose views they find reprehensible. The world off campus is a lot harsher.

As the New York Times reported, in another social media post, hedge fund manager Ackman said he was “100% in support of free speech.” But, he added, “one should be prepared to stand up and be personally accountable for his or her views.”

The marketplace of ideas: who gets in?

Posted on September 7, 2023 by Joe Weber

Interesting developments on the free-speech front in Arizona and Massachusetts

The battle royal over free speech on campuses is climbing a few decibels on both sides of the country, it seems. The fracas at Arizona State University is likely to grow louder in coming weeks with a reprise visit by a couple controversial conservatives. As for the East Coast, Harvard has distinguished itself by placing last in a ranking by a prominent free-speech organization.

Let’s turn to ASU. It has become a showcase of sorts for conservatives who feel aggrieved and abused, as well as for academics who find themselves uncomfortably in the crosshairs of today’s cultural warfare.

Conservative radio host Dennis Prager and Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, who stirred up a hornet’s nest in February when they visited ASU, plan to speak there again on Sept. 27. Their “Health, Wealth & Happiness 2.0” session will be sponsored by a student organization, Turning Point USA at Arizona State University, rather than by an individual college such as Barrett, the honors college that controversially hosted them last time through a now-defunct center.

Conveniently setting the stage for their visit, a university report about the brouhaha over their last visit is expected to be released shortly. That report was demanded by Arizona State Sen. Anthony Kern, who led a hearing into the matter in July. Kern said the legislature’s judiciary committee will take so-far-unspecified action dealing with ASU, depending on the thoroughness of the report.

Kern, who co-chaired the Joint Legislative Ad Hoc Committee on Freedom of Expression at Arizona’s Public Universities, has already telegraphed his feelings that he expects little from ASU that would placate him. “I do not trust the Board of Regents,” Kern said at the July hearing. “I do not trust ASU. I do not trust our universities to teach our kids what needs to be taught.”

For their part, it’s not clear what Prager and Kirk plan to talk about in the coming confab, although the session will also feature at least one state legislator who served on Kern’s ad hoc committee, Austin Smith, who also is a former director of Turning Point USA. That suggests that free speech on campus could take center stage at the session, as well as hoary claims of a leftward tilt among faculty.

Smith had asked the regents to investigate the termination of the director of the T.W. Lewis Center for Personal Development at Barrett. That ex-official, Ann Atkinson, had complained about her firing in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, suggesting that it was in reprisal for her organizing the first Prager-Kirk session. In fact, the funding for her position fell away when donor Thomas W. Lewis pulled his backing, citing what he called “the radical ideology that now apparently dominates the college.”

Shortly before the wintertime Prager-Kirk session, 39 faculty members at the college had written a letter to their dean complaining about the men’s visit, lambasting them as “purveyors of hate who have publicly attacked women, people of color, the LGBTQ community, as well as the institutions of our democracy, including our public institutions of higher education.”

Notably from a free-speech point of view, however, the Barrett faculty members didn’t call for the session to be cancelled. Instead, as some of them wrote in an op-ed in the Arizona Republic, some had slated a teach-in prior to the session called “Defending the Public University.” They maintained that they encouraged students to attend both events and claimed that many students did so. Nor were they party to the Lewis center’s shutdown, the authors said.

While that suggests an openness to free speech, Atkinson has argued that the faculty bullied students into staying away from both the Prager-Kirk talk and the ad hoc committee hearing in July. So far, though, no evidence proving such bullying has emerged (perhaps the university report will illuminate the matter). It may be that students just found the initial talk uninteresting and that, in July, few were on hand for the legislative hearing.

There are some crucial differences between the upcoming Prager-Kirk session and the February one. For one, a student organization is sponsoring the gathering, rather than a college. Thus, while it bears the imprimatur of that student group, it doesn’t need the blessings of a college where most of the faculty find the speakers reprehensible.

Certainly, the men have distinguished themselves as advocates of notions many find toxic. Prager has criticized homosexuality, for instance, writing “I, for one, do not believe that a man’s inability to make love to a woman can be labeled normal. While such a man may be a healthy and fine human being in every other area of life, and quite possibly more kind, industrious, and ethical than many heterosexuals, in this one area he cannot be called normal.” For his part, Kirk has praised Jan. 6, 2021, rioters at the U.S. Capitol as “patriots” whose travel to Washington, D.C., was funded by Turning Point USA, as the Daily Beast reported.

So far, it doesn’t appear as if ASU faculty members plan counterprogramming to rebut likely comments by the pair, which is an interesting approach. Would such programming elevate Prager and Kirk’s status and serve only to legitimize their ideas? One faculty member suggested to me that engaging them in debate would be akin to dignifying a member of the Flat Earth Society by sharing a stage with him or her, even if only to refute the person’s arguments.

Still, the views of Prager and Kirk raise a compelling question for advocates of free speech and those who see universities as places where conflicting ideas ought to be hashed out. When is someone’s speech so far beyond the pale that it doesn’t deserve an airing? And when a school, as opposed to a student group, brings such a person in front of students does that suggest an endorsement (indeed, might it be considered educational malpractice, if there were such a thing)? The challenge in this MAGA era is amplified because a substantial minority of the public share the ideas of such men.

A daughter-in-law of mine who teaches at Princeton frames this as a matter of progress over time. She contends that the line between acceptable ideas and those rightly consigned to history’s dustbin has consistently shifted. There was a time, for instance, when advocates of slavery (indeed slaveholders) could find a forum at universities. Similarly, pro-Nazi speakers and racists were tolerated on campuses. Has the line moved such that it’s left the likes of Prager and Kirk on the wrong side, irrespective of any followings they have in the general public?

Strolling at Harvard, source: the Boston Herald

Now, as to Harvard, the school has been named the worst for free speech among universities reviewed by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. As the New York Post reported, Harvard scored poorly in large part because nine professors and researchers there faced calls to be punished or fired based on what they had said or written. Indeed, seven of them were disciplined.

Moreover, much of the trouble at Harvard has to do with self-censorship — not the type imposed by authority figures. The FIRE rankings rely in large part on surveys of students. And at the Boston school, the Boston Herald reported: “Self-censorship is pervasive across the board, according to the survey. More than a quarter of students (26%) said they censor themselves at least a few times a week in conversations with friends, and 25% said they’re more likely to self-censor now than they were when starting college.”

The atmosphere at the university has grown so troublesome to free-speech advocates there that more than 100 faculty members have joined a new Council on Academic Freedom on campus. Indeed, the debate about whether free discussion is stifled at Harvard has been joined – ironically but appropriately at Harvard.

Harvard Magazine sketched out the arguments last June. In part, it cited an op-ed that founders of the new council wrote in The Boston Globe: “The reason that a truth-seeking institution must sanctify free expression is straightforward,” they wrote. “…The only way that our species has managed to learn and progress is by a process of conjecture and refutation: some people venture ideas, others probe whether they are sound, and in the long run the better ideas prevail.”

This notion, implying that the marketplace of ideas will weed out the intellectual dinosaurs, is a longstanding one, of course. For campuses nationwide, the question today is about who should be permitted into the marketplace and whose ideas deserve only to be shunned.

The Big Picture

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