Category Archives: Free speech

CNSNews.org: University Bans Humor Quotation From Student’s Door

Officials at Marquette University have ordered a Ph.D. student to remove a quotation critical of the federal government from his office door, because the hallway the door faces is not a “free speech zone.”

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New York Post: SMUG RICH KIDS: White guilt vs. free speech

COLUMBIA University is a place for rich kids – rich kids who agree with each other.
Sure, some come from well-to-do Hispanic families – we’re not all poor Mexicans, you know – and a few are from the black upper middle-class. But at Columbia, being “from Brooklyn” means you grew up in Park Slope. This is why Columbia has problems with free speech.

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Daily Trojan: Columbia Socialists lack respect for free speech

Occasionally an event so astoundingly dumb occurs that one is forced to consider throwing up his hands in disgust and banishing himself to one of those tiny islands off the coast of Maine, far from the torments of civilization.

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Union-Tribune: SDSU asks for stop to e-mails

A San Diego State professor has been using his university computer’s electronic mail account to organize rallies against illegal immigration and correspond with the controversial Minutemen.

The professor, Stuart Hurlbert, said yesterday that he doesn’t plan to stop – despite an official university request to cease and desist.

Hurlbert, who recently retired after 36 years teaching biology, says the university is persecuting him for his ideological beliefs.

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The Wall Street Journal: Too Controversial for Columbia

s a graduate of Columbia College (’87) and the son of a Columbia graduate, I have some perspective on the school and the history of student behavior there. Sadly, nothing has changed in the over 45 years which include my father’s time at Columbia, my time there, and the recent “Minuteman protests.”

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Washington Post: In N.Y., Sparks Fly Over Israel Criticism

Two major American Jewish organizations helped block a prominent New York University historian from speaking at the Polish consulate here last week, saying the academic was too critical of Israel and American Jewry.

The historian, Tony Judt, is Jewish and directs New York University’s Remarque Institute, which promotes the study of Europe. Judt was scheduled to talk Oct. 4 to a nonprofit organization that rents space from the consulate. Judt’s subject was the Israel lobby in the United States, and he planned to argue that this lobby has often stifled honest debate.

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New York Daily News: Columbia University talks the talk …

Even as Columbia University celebrated a faculty member’s Nobel Prize, President Lee Bollinger was hard at work yesterday instructing students about the critical importance of free speech and debate at the world-class institution of higher learning they are privileged to attend.

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The Chronicle: Student Teacher Who Says She Was Flunked for Reporting Class Prayer Reaches Settlement With University

A student teacher who said she was flunked because she had reported class prayers and Bible studies at her assigned public elementary school has reached a settlement with Southeastern Louisiana University and a local school district, the American Civil Liberties Union announced on Tuesday.

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The Chronicle: Evangelist Sues Murray State U. for Right to Preach on the Campus

James G. Gilles, an evangelist who has preached at hundreds of colleges across the country, has sued Murray State University for keeping him from its campus, a short drive from his western Kentucky home.

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The Chronicle Herald: March puts Muhammad cartoons back up

Just like Wile E. Coyote, Halifax’s very own little cartoon controversy refuses to go away, a philosophy professor at Saint Mary’s University, said Thursday he has put cartoons of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad back on his office door because a university committee investigating his actions still hasn’t made a decision.

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The Guardian: Iran Releases Dissident After 4 Months

Iran on Wednesday released liberal intellectual Ramin Jahanbegloo, who was accused of working with the U.S. to overthrow the government, a human rights activist said.

Ramin Jahanbegloo was released from Evin prison after four months of confinement, said Kouhyar Goodarzi, a member of the Student Committee of Human Rights Reporters of Iran.

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Inside Higher Ed: Freer Speech at Georgia Tech

Georgia Institute of Technology has agreed to alter a campus policy that students who sued the institution assert has been used to restrict free speech, as part of an accord to settle part of the students’ lawsuit.

Two officers of the campus’s College Republican group sued Georgia Tech in March, saying that officials at the public institution had impaired the students’ free speech rights by shutting down their “affirmative action” bake sale and by limiting their efforts to protest against “The Vagina Monologues,” among other things. The Alliance Defense Fund, a legal advocacy group that represented the students, argued in its complaint in Sklar v. Clough that Georgia Tech officials had based their actions against the students on the institute’s residence hall policies, which defined a series of “acts of intolerance” that were banned under the policy.

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The Boston Globe: A victory for education

Alfie Kohn isn’t expecting a check in the mail, or a bouquet from the people who run the Massachusetts Department of Education.

Nevertheless, victory was sweet last week for the prolific education author. Superior Court Judge Hiller B. Zobel ruled last week that the DOE violated Kohn’s civil rights by blocking him from speaking at an education conference in 2001.

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Arkansas Democrat-Gazette: UA must pay fees from lawsuit brought by Oklahoma preacher

The University of Arkansas at Fayetteville will have to pay an Oklahoma preacher more than $ 33, 000 in attorneys’ fees for failing to allow him enough time to preach on campus, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.

U. S. District Court Judge Jimm Larry Hendren awarded Gary Bowman $ 33, 120. 21 in attorneys’ fees almost four months after the 8 th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals partially overturned the lower court’s ruling against him.

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New York Post: No free speech for SUNY profs?

August 1, 2006 — SUNY-Fredonia recently denied a promotion to professor Stephen Kershnar explicitly because of his out-of-classroom speech – a violation of his basic free-speech rights.
Famous professors like Paul Krugman and Noam Chomsky regularly make public comments on controversial issues, but those who lack the protection of fame or tenure can risk their careers by saying something that administrators do not like. In Kershnar’s case, he publicly criticized a policy that said students could be in violation of rules “if they fail to remove themselves from situations and/or report the incident to the proper authorities,” observing that this would “turn the student population into a group of snitches.”

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