Category: Free Speech Issues

Fresno State Completes Review of Professor Randa Jarrar; No Disciplinary Action

Photo courtesy Fresno State, Department of English

Dear Campus Community,

I write to provide an update regarding the university’s review of comments made last week by Professor Randa Jarrar, following the passing of former First Lady Barbara Bush. This issue has raised many important questions about the scope of free speech and the extent to which a member of our university community can be held accountable for expressing his or her personal views.

Professor Jarrar’s conduct was insensitive, inappropriate and an embarrassment to the university. I know her comments have angered many in our community and impacted our students. Let me be clear, on campus and whenever we are representing the university, I expect all of us to engage in respectful dialogue.

Immediately following Professor Jarrar’s tweets last Tuesday, we carefully reviewed the facts and consulted with CSU counsel to determine whether we could take disciplinary action. After completing this process, we have concluded that Professor Jarrar did not violate any CSU or university policies and that she was acting in a private capacity and speaking about a public matter on her personal Twitter account. Her comments, although disgraceful, are protected free speech under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Additionally, although Professor Jarrar used tenure to defend her behavior, this private action is an issue of free speech and not related to her job or tenure. Therefore, the university does not have justification to support taking any disciplinary action. Professor Jarrar will remain on leave through the Spring semester, which she had previously requested before this incident. This matter has highlighted some important issues that deserve further consultation with our academic leadership.

Our duty as Americans and as educators is to promote a free exchange of diverse views, even if we disagree with them. At Fresno State, we encourage opinions and ideas to be expressed in a manner that informs, enlightens and educates without being disparaging of others. It makes me proud when I see our students, faculty and staff debate and learn from each other. This is how we boldly educate and empower our students to succeed.

I want to thank all of you for sharing your views and opinions. By doing so, you demonstrate care for our university and commitment to our students’ success.

Sincerely,

Joseph I. Castro, Ph.D., M.P.P.

President

State Universities Must Be Viewpoint Neutral: Oregon Association of Scholars

OREGON ASSOCIATION OF SCHOLARS
“State Universities Must Be Viewpoint Neutral”

12 April 2018

Oregon state universities and colleges must remain neutral with respect to the broad variety of reasonable and civic viewpoints espoused by Oregonians, the Oregon Association of Scholars
said today.

There is an urgent need for state colleges and universities, as well as their private counterparts, to reaffirm the fundamental principle of viewpoint neutrality in higher education in an era when faculty and administration often seek to institutionalize their own viewpoints and suppress others, the Association said.

“Oregon colleges and universities violate the trust that the public has placed in them when they use their authority to promote certain viewpoints and discourage others,” said Dr. Bruce Gilley, President of the Oregon Association of Scholars and a Professor of Political Science at Portland State University.

Gilley was commenting following a spate of events and policy changes at Oregon state colleges and universities during the current academic year that violate viewpoint neutrality. These include:

 University of Oregon’s Faculty Senate passed a motion supporting the student-led disruption and cancellation of an address by the university president in October 2017 on grounds that the faculty supported the political objectives of the students.

 Portland State University administrators organized and promoted a “counter-panel” of female science and engineering faculty in February 2018 to precede a panel organized by other faculty, without university support, featuring the fired Google engineer James Damore.

 Oregon State University initiated mandatory political indoctrination for all undergraduate and graduate students under its “Social Justice Education Initiative.” Students are being taught that Oregon history is nothing but a tale of oppression; that political power should be used to impose “comparable outcomes” for every social identity group; that calling the United States a “melting pot” where “everyone can succeed if they work hard” constitutes an unacceptable example of so-called “micro-aggression”; that criticism of left-wing social justice ideology constitutes prohibited discrimination; and that students  who voted for or support the current U.S. president are part of Oregon’s “white
supremacy or neo-Nazi” movement.

 Public events and speakers at all public universities and colleges in the state continue to be grossly unrepresentative of the viewpoints and perspectives of all Oregonians. For instance, Oregon State University did not sponsor a single event between January and April 2018 reflecting classical liberal or conservative viewpoints, while sponsoring 15 events with a radical left or left-liberal viewpoints, including “The Origins of Today’s Billionaire-Funded Radical Right”, “Stopping Fascism Today”, and “Wages for Housework and #MeToo”, according to a survey of OSU Today listings by the Oregon Association of Scholars.

Both legal and academic principles have insisted that universities should not be partisan institutions, both because they receive public funds and extensive subsidies and because their mission requires wide freedoms for a diversity of viewpoints. “To perform its mission in the
society, a university must sustain an extraordinary environment of freedom of inquiry and maintain its independence from political fashions, passions, and pressures,” noted the University
of Chicago’s seminal 1967 Kalven Committee on the role of the university in political issues.

More recently, the former Provost of Stanford University, John Etchemendy, told the university’s trustees in 2017: “The university is not a megaphone to amplify this or that political view, and when it does it violates a core mission. Universities must remain open forums for contentious debate, and they cannot do so while officially espousing one side of that debate.”

While it is normally the role of faculty to uphold academic freedom and maintain viewpoint neutrality, it is often the faculty who prompt their institutions to take sides politically, the Oregon Association of Scholars said.

“Oregon legislators should take action to strengthen accountability at public colleges and universities for upholding viewpoint neutrality and to protect students from mandatory political indoctrination and abuse,” Gilley said.

www.oregonscholars.org and www.nas.org

So To Speak Free Speech Podcast is Worth a Listen

So to Speak: The Free Speech Podcast takes an uncensored look at the world of free expression through personal stories and candid conversations.

New episodes post every other Thursday.

So to Speak The Free Speech Podcast

Sample Episode:

Mar 08, 2018

Former Evergreen State College Professor Bret Weinstein describes himself as a “professor in exile.” The evolutionary biologist left Evergreen last September in the fallout from the controversy surrounding the school’s planned Day of Absence programming.

Weinstein’s objection to the programming led fifty students to disrupt his class and demand his resignation. The backlash became so intense that Evergreen’s chief of police told him she could not protect him from protesters. As a result, he had to hold his biology course in a public park.

On this episode of So to Speak, we speak with Weinstein about his experience and the state of free speech and inquiry in higher education and beyond.

The mission of FIRE is to defend and sustain individual rights at America’s colleges and universities. These rights include freedom of speech, legal equality, due process, religious liberty, and sanctity of conscience—the essential qualities of individual liberty and dignity. FIRE’s core mission is to protect the unprotected and to educate the public and communities of concerned Americans about the threats to these rights on our campuses and about the means to preserve them.

FIRE was founded in 1999 by University of Pennsylvania professor Alan Charles Kors and Boston civil liberties attorney Harvey Silverglate after the overwhelming response to their 1998 book The Shadow University: The Betrayal Of Liberty On America’s Campuses.

Check it out!

Florida becomes ninth state to ban restrictive campus free speech zones

Florida’s Old Capitol building in Tallahassee, courtesy FIRE.

By  March 12, 2018

  • Florida State, University of West Florida, Florida Atlantic, and other schools must change speech policies

TALLAHASSEE, Mar. 12, 2018 — Yesterday, Florida Gov. Rick Scott signed into law SB 4, a broad higher education bill, which was amended to include free speech protections at the state’s public colleges and universities.

The new law prohibits Florida public colleges and universities from quarantining student expression into small, misleadingly labeled “free speech zones.” The campus free speech provisions are based on the CAFE Act model legislation from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.

“Students at public colleges and universities in Florida should not have their free speech quarantined by overly restrictive policies,” said FIRE Legislative and Policy Director Joe Cohn. “Now that Florida’s Campus Free Expression Act is law, these egregious policies of censorship must be rescinded immediately.”

The bipartisan CAFE provision of the bill was sponsored by Reps. Chuck Clemons, Sr., Bob Rommel, and John Cortes, and Sen. Dennis Baxley, among others. SB 4 passed the Florida House of Representatives by a vote of 84-28 and the Florida Senate by a vote of 33-5. The law also provides a right to bring a lawsuit in state court against a public institution of higher education if the institution violates the expressive rights guaranteed by the bill.

Examples of Florida policies that must be revised now that the CAFE Act has been enacted include Florida State University’s policy that limits the distribution of literature to a small stretch of campus, Florida Atlantic University’s policy that requires students to submit materials to the Office of Student Development and Activities for approval before they can be displayed or distributed, and the University of West Florida’s policy that restricts speech to one area of campus and problematically declares, “The University does not contain any traditional public forum areas.”

“Thanks to this legislation, students at Florida’s colleges and universities can much more freely exercise their constitutional right to free speech,” said FIRE Executive Director Robert Shibley. “We’re hopeful that Congress will follow this example and act to uphold the First Amendment rights of America’s students.”

Other states with similar legislation:

Virginia, Missouri, Arizona, Kentucky, Colorado, Utah, North Carolina and Tennessee have also passed legislation banning public colleges and universities from relegating student expression to free speech zones. In addition, last month, United States Sen. Orrin Hatch introduced the federal Free Right to Expression in Education Act, which would prohibit public colleges and universities across the country from maintaining those restrictive zones.

Orrin Hatch Introduces Bill to Protect Free Speech on College Campuses

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to defending liberty, freedom of speech, due process, academic freedom, legal equality, and freedom of conscience on America’s college campuses.

The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure

A new book  authored by by First Amendment Expert Greg Lukianoff  and Social Psychologist Jonathan Haidt  is set to be released July 17, 2018.

A timely investigation into the new “safety culture” on campus and the dangers it poses to free speech, mental health, education, and ultimately democracy

The generation now coming of age has been taught three Great Untruths: their feelings are always right; they should avoid pain and discomfort; and they should look for faults in others and not themselves. These three Great Untruths are part of a larger philosophy that sees young people as fragile creatures who must be protected and supervised by adults. But despite the good intentions of the adults who impart them, the Great Untruths are harming kids by teaching them the opposite of ancient wisdom and the opposite of modern psychological findings on grit, growth, and antifragility.  The result is rising rates of depression and anxiety, along with endless stories of college campuses torn apart by moralistic divisions and mutual recriminations.

This is a book about how we got here. First Amendment expert Greg Lukianoff and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt take us on a tour of the social trends stretching back to the 1980s that have produced the confusion and conflict on campus today, including the loss of unsupervised play time and the birth of social media, all during a time of rising political polarization.

This is a book about how to fix the mess. The culture of “safety” and its intolerance of opposing viewpoints has left many young people anxious and unprepared for adult life, with devastating consequences for them, for their parents, for the companies that will soon hire them, and for a democracy that is already pushed to the brink of violence over its growing political divisions. Lukianoff and Haidt offer a comprehensive set of reforms that will strengthen young people and institutions, allowing us all to reap the benefits of diversity, including viewpoint diversity.

This is a book for anyone who is confused by what’s happening on college campuses today, or has children, or is concerned about the growing inability of Americans to live and work and cooperate across party lines.

About the Authors

Heather MacDonald + Steve Simpson + Dave Rubin Ask: Are We Killing Free Speech?

Livestream available on Dave Rubin’s Youtube Channel begins at 8 pm PST

Berkeley, Calif. — On Thursday, March 8, Heather Mac Donald, Dave Rubin and Steve Simpson will appear at the Hearst Field Annex at UC Berkeley to discuss this critical question. Journalists are encouraged to attend. https://www.facebook.com/events/1763255417040811/

Instances of students using force to silence non-conformist speakers have become commonplace on college campuses. In the last year there have been numerous violent disruptions of speakers’ appearances at universities, including Middlebury, Claremont McKenna and UC Berkeley itself, effectively stifling the public voicing of alternative viewpoints.

“The free speech crisis on college campuses threatens the very possibility of a peaceful, civil society,” says American political commentator, essayist, attorney and journalist Heather Mac Donald, “But that crisis is an outgrowth of an even more dangerous problem: the cultivation of a victim mentality in an ever-growing number of individuals and identity-based groups.”

Steve Simpson, director of Legal Studies at the Ayn Rand Institute, emphasizes that “the purpose of the right to free speech is to protect our right to think for ourselves and to communicate with others, which are two of the pillars of a modern, free society.”

This event, hosted by Berkeley College Republicans and the Ayn Rand Institute will be a lightning rod for those intolerant of politically incorrect voices and promises to be controversial.

Ayn Rand once said that “a gun is not an argument.” “The reverse is also true—” wrote Simpson recently in The Hill, “an argument is not a gun. If we forget the difference, we will end up with guns settling our disputes, rather than arguments.”

Steve Simpson is a constitutional lawyer and director of Legal Studies at the Ayn Rand Institute. He is the editor of Defending Free Speech (ARI Press, 2016).

Heather Mac Donald is the Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

Dave Rubin is an American political commentator, satirist, and talk show host. He is the creator and host of the political talk show The Rubin Report.

About ARI

The Ayn Rand Institute is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation that promotes the works and philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. The Institute fosters a growing awareness, understanding and acceptance of Ayn Rand’s philosophy, Objectivism, to create a culture whose guiding principles are reason, rational self-interest, individualism and laissez-faire capitalism—a culture in which individuals are free to pursue their own happiness.

Milo’s Phoenix Event Cancelled AGAIN Amid Rumored Death Threat, Venue Problems & Antifa Action

Courtesy Milo Yiannopoulos, Facebook.

The event, originally scheduled for February 24, had to be rescheduled due to coordinated efforts by Phoenix’s Antifa Group. So… the event was set to go off without difficulty on Friday, March 2, 2018.

Here is info on the first cancellation:

Milo Reschedules Phoenix Event; Claims Antifa Violence a Factor; Antifa Responds

Then, on March 1, Milo made an announcement on his Facebook page stating there were credible death threats. He later revised the post to say the venue may have been behind the cancellation. Here are the two posts from Milo himself:

URGENT NOTICE TO PHOENIX TICKET-HOLDERS

Scottsdale Police informed the promoter and venue for Friday night’s sold-out event “A Night With Milo” this evening that a credible death threat against my person has been received. A credible death threat is one that is “real and immediate,” not conjectural or hypothetical.

Ordinarily, this would suggest that someone with knowledge of our secret venue and the time I would be speaking provided the police with detailed information about his or her intention to take my life and the police were convinced that this person had the means to do so and intended to carry out the threat. Credible death threats are relatively rare, compared to the usual volume of threats received by any public figure.

Consequently, the police have forbidden us from proceeding with this event. We have no recourse when police make a ruling of that sort — and we would not want to place my guests at risk of violent encounters — so we have no option but to refund ticket holders and reschedule the event for later in 2018.

I’m furious that these violent left-wing tactics are being allowed to dictate the terms and limits of debate in America, supposedly the land of the First Amendment. The police will not provide further information about the specifics of the threat, nor whether any arrests have been made. I apologize to ticket-holders. I’d picked a really cute outfit and everything. But truly free speech in America is reserved for the political Left.

— MILO

URGENT ADDENDUM TO PREVIOUS STATEMENT ABOUT PHOENIX EVENT

The wording of this announcement has been agreed with Scottsdale Police Department.

“We were informed today by the venue for my sold-out event, A Night With Milo, that Scottsdale Police Department had received a credible threat against me and were insisting that Friday’s event should be cancelled. It appears that this was not the case, and that events space operator The Venue Scottsdale deliberately deceived us in an attempt to breach our contract with them without consequence.

“When a detective from Scottsdale Police Department called the venue’s manager, based in Las Vegas, at around noon local time today, to check details about the event, a female employee responded: “The event has been cancelled because Milo is controversial.” We understand that vendors were told the event was cancelled around two hours later.

“Shockingly, The Venue then called Milo Inc this afternoon and claimed, falsely, that Scottsdale police had identified a credible threat, and claimed, falsely, that the police were insisting the event should be shut down. Multiple conversations with the officers at Scottsdale Police Department, who have been very generous with their time today, have established that these claims were not true.

“Milo Inc apologizes the officers at Scottsdale Police Department for earlier public inaccuracies, and we will be pursuing the venue aggressively for financial remedy for this malicious deception. The Milo Inc employee responsible for making our earlier reports public without checking with Scottsdale Police Department has been terminated.

“We apologize to ticket holders too — because the primary victims of The Venue’s deception was our sold-out audience. We are particularly disgusted by their behavior given that at least one ticket-holder was a member of the Armed Forces who had taken five days’ leave to attend the event from some distance away.

“We ask ticket-holders not to contact the police further on this matter.”

========

Refunds are being offered and for now, Milo has no plans to try and speak in Phoenix anytime soon. The Antifa group did seem to celebrate and tip off Las Vegas Antifa (Milo’s next stop) to get to work:

Milo Reschedules Phoenix Event; Claims Antifa Violence a Factor; Antifa Responds

Courtesy Milo Yiannopoulos, Facebook:

My nearly sold out Phoenix event has been moved to Friday, March 2nd.

Here’s why:
The company hired to run production has pulled out due to threats of violence, and the new company simply wants the time to properly ensure everyone’s safety.

There are absolutely no venue issues and this event WILL NOT be cancelled. All purchased tickets and upgrades will be honored. If you haven’t purchased your tickets yet – GET ON IT, because like all my other live events, this will sell out in advance!

Buy Tickets – http://anightwithmilo.com/event/A-Night-With-MILO
RSVP – http://facebook.com/events/1051668664974320/

Email nightwithmilo@gmail.com for any further questions!

Phoenix’s Antifa group responds on Twitter, claiming this is the third time they have shut Milo down:

‘Too controversial’: Polk State College rejects professor’s anti-Trump artwork

Detail from “Death of Innocence” by Serhat Tanyolacar

“Tanyolacar submitted a piece titled “Death of Innocence,” which depicts several poets and writers juxtaposed with a number of pictures of President Donald Trump and other political figures engaging in sexual activity.”

By  February 20, 2018

LAKELAND, Fla., Feb. 20, 2018 — Free expression on campus isn’t childproofed — except at Polk State College, where part-time faculty member Serhat Tanyolacar’s artwork was rejected from a faculty art exhibition for being “too controversial.”

In early January, Polk State encouraged all faculty members in its arts program, including Tanyolacar, to submit artwork to a faculty exhibition scheduled to begin on Feb. 12. Tanyolacar submitted a piece titled “Death of Innocence,” which depicts several poets and writers juxtaposed with a number of pictures of President Donald Trump and other political figures engaging in sexual activity. Tanyolacar said the art is intended to highlight “moral corruption and moral dichotomy” and provoke debate.

In response to his submission, Polk State Program Coordinator Nancy Lozell informed Tanyolacar on Feb. 6 that his artwork would not be displayed. “After review by the gallery committee and the gallery administrator it was agreed upon that your piece Death of Innocence should not be displayed,” Lozell wrote, because the college “offers classes and volunteer opportunities to our collegiate charter high schools and other high schools in Polk county and we feel that that particular piece would be too controversial to display at this time.”

Serhat Tanyolacar
Death of Innocence (2017)
Suite of four relief engraving prints (unique edition)
96×48 inches

———————

This is a color version of the work (not the version to appear in the exhibit) which shows in better detail the controversial content. This is courtesy Serhat Tanyolacar’s official artist’s Facebook page.

FIRE and the National Coalition Against Censorship wrote to Polk State President Angela Garcia Falconetti on Feb. 14, asking the college to reassess Tanyolacar’s submitted artwork in a viewpoint-neutral manner.

“Members of the Polk State campus are not children, and they should not be treated as such,” said FIRE Senior Program Officer Sarah McLaughlin. “By sanitizing its campus to shield high school students from ‘controversial’ material in a faculty art exhibition, Polk State harms members of the college community by needlessly childproofing their campus, and high school students by underestimating their ability to cope with contentious or provocative artwork.”

In a Feb. 16 meeting, Tanyolacar discussed “Death of Innocence” with Falconetti, Interim Vice President of Academic Affairs Donald Painter, Jr., and Professor of Art Holly Scoggins. The administrators offered shifting justifications for the rejection of the piece, but again made clear that its “controversial” nature played a part in the decision. They reaffirmed that the faculty art exhibition — which opened on Feb. 12 — would not display “Death of Innocence.”

“For ‘Death of Innocence,’ my gallery display strategy is to engage dialogues with both the audience who appreciate the controversial imagery and the audience who may be offended by it,” Tanyolacar said. “No artwork should be barred from being exposed to the general audience in any academic institution. As educators and artists we must accept that our students cannot be protected or disconnected from the ideological controversies by the institutionalized moral authority. In fact, controversial artworks are essential to the intellectual growth of our students, and displaying them should be encouraged by both the administration and the faculty.”

This is not Tanyolacar’s first campus art controversy. As a visiting assistant professor at the University of Iowa in 2014, Tanyolacar attempted to spark a debate about racial issues in the United States by placing a piece of public art consisting of newspaper clippings about racial violence printed on a Ku Klux Klan-style robe and hood in an open, outdoor area of campus and engaging with viewers about it. In response to student complaints, UI officials required Tanyolacar to remove the artwork, prompting FIRE and NCAC to call on the university to restate its commitment to freedom of expression.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to defending liberty, freedom of speech, due process, academic freedom, legal equality, and freedom of conscience on America’s college campuses.

The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC), founded in 1974, is an alliance of 56 national nonprofit organizations, including literary, artistic, religious, educational, professional, labor, and civil liberties groups dedicated to promoting the right to free speech. More information on its nationwide work combating censorship can be found at ncac.org.

Due Process: FIRE-backed lawsuit challenging Dept of Education’s unlawful Title IX mandate voluntarily withdrawn

By  February 21, 2018

WASHINGTON, Feb. 21, 2018 — Today, attorneys representing the U.S. Department of Education joined with attorneys for plaintiffs John Doe and Oklahoma Wesleyan University to ask a federal court to dismiss a lawsuit challenging the now-withdrawn mandate that colleges and universities use the low “preponderance of the evidence” standard of proof in all sexual misconduct cases. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education sponsored the June 2016 lawsuit as part of its mission to restore due process to our nation’s campuses.

John Doe and Oklahoma Wesleyan charged that the preponderance mandate did not undergo public notice and comment as required by the federal Administrative Procedure Act and was therefore unlawful.

The joint dismissal stipulation states that the Department of Education “will not rely on the withdrawn documents in its enforcement of Title IX.” It also includes the September withdrawal letter from Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Candice Jackson, which explained that the mandate in the 2011 “Dear Colleague” letter from the Department of Education “led to the deprivation of rights for many students — both accused students denied fair process and victims denied an adequate resolution of their complaints.”

“Due process is in crisis on our nation’s college campuses, and with unwise and intrusive policies like those in the 2011 ‘Dear Colleague’ letter, the federal government had pushed colleges and universities to make the problem even worse,” said FIRE Executive Director Robert Shibley. “With the preponderance mandate — and now this lawsuit — out of the way, we look forward to working with all parties to ensure that the important fight to combat sexual misconduct on campus is not tainted by due process abuses.”

Justin Dillon and Christopher Muha of KaiserDillon PLLC represented the two plaintiffs: John Doe (a pseudonym), a former student at the University of Virginia School of Law punished under the low preponderance standard, and Oklahoma Wesleyan University, which did not wish to be forced to use the preponderance standard in its own campus proceedings.

“When we filed this case in 2016, we were prepared for a long fight to force the federal government to follow the law,” said Dillon. “I’m very gratified to see that the current administration, after reviewing our lawsuit, decided to do just that and withdraw the previous administration’s unlawful mandate.”

“Fairness and justice with regard to both society and our students have always been foundational principles of Oklahoma Wesleyan University,” said Everett Piper, president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University. “I know that many institutions opposed this unlawful exercise of federal power, but feared risking the ire of a powerful government agency. I am very glad that Oklahoma Wesleyan was able to take a stand on behalf of our fellow institutions of higher education as well as our nation’s students.”

The case is Doe v. Jackson et al. (originally Doe v. Lhamon et al.), 1:16-cv-01158-RC, and was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on June 16, 2016.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to defending liberty, freedom of speech, due process, academic freedom, legal equality, and freedom of conscience on America’s college campuses.