Report: 9 in 10 American colleges restrict free speech

 

By FIRE December 11, 2018

  • In 11 states, at least half of colleges rated earn FIRE’s worst rating for “clearly and substantially” restricting free speech rights.
  • Almost 800,000 students at top U.S. colleges must find a “free speech zone” to exercise their expressive rights.

PHILADELPHIA, Dec. 11, 2018 — The vast majority of students at America’s top colleges and universities surrender their free speech rights the moment they step onto campus, according to a new report from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.

Released today, Spotlight on Speech Codes 2019: The State of Free Speech on Our Nation’s Campuses analyzes the written policies at 466 of America’s top colleges and universities for their protection of free speech. The report finds that 89.7 percent of American colleges maintain policies that restrict — or too easily could restrict — student and faculty expression. All of the analyzed policies are accessible in FIRE’s Spotlight Database. FIRE rates schools as “red light,” “yellow light,” or “green light” based on how much, if any, speech protected by the First Amendment their policies restrict.

“Most colleges impose burdensome conditions on expression by maintaining policies that restrict students’ free speech rights,” said FIRE Senior Program Officer Laura Beltz, lead author of the study. “Colleges should be a place for open debate and intellectual inquiry, but today, almost all colleges silence expression through policies that are often illiberal and, at public institutions, unconstitutional.” 

More than a quarter of institutions in the report (28.5 percent) received FIRE’s poorest, red light rating for maintaining speech codes that both “clearly and substantially” restrict freedom of speech.

Alarmingly, red light schools still make up at least half of FIRE-rated institutions in the District of Columbia and 11 states: Alaska, Delaware, Idaho, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New Jersey, South Carolina, Vermont, Washington, and Wyoming.

Only 9 percent of institutions (42 schools) do not maintain any policies that compromise student expression, earning FIRE’s highest, green light rating. This total is up from only 2 percent in 2009. Meanwhile, the number of institutions earning a yellow light rating is swelling: from 21 percent in 2009 to 61 percent today. While less restrictive than red light policies, yellow light policies still prohibit or have an impermissible chilling effect on constitutionally protected speech.

“Many states have made incredible strides toward eliminating speech codes — whether that’s through collaboration with FIRE, legislative action, or nudging from peer institutions,” said Beltz. “In other states, too many students are left to fend for themselves to protect their rights against policies that — whether explicitly or covertly — erode student expression.”

Neither public nor private colleges have a monopoly on silencing students and faculty members. Just over 90 percent of public colleges maintain policies that don’t live up to their free speech obligations under the First Amendment.

Private institutions are generally not bound by the First Amendment but are responsible for living up to their institutional commitments to free speech. More than 88 percent of private institutions fall short of those promises. Only 6 percent live up to their pledged speech protections, earning a green light rating. Another 6 percent earn a “warning” rating for promoting other principles, such as religious values, over free speech.

Other findings:

  • Almost 800,000 college students attend an institution that maintains a “free speech zone” policy, through which student demonstrations and other expressive activities are quarantined to small or out-of-the-way areas of campus. Free speech zones have repeatedly been struck down by courts or voluntarily revised as part of lawsuit settlements.
  • For the first time, the percentage of private universities earning FIRE’s worst, red light rating dropped below 50 percent, coming in at 47 percent.
  • More than 50 administrations or faculty bodies have adopted statements in support of free speech modeled after the one adopted by the University of Chicago in January 2015. That’s up 15 from one year ago.

Spotlight on Speech Codes 2019: The State of Free Speech on Our Nation’s Campuses can be read in full on FIRE’s website, along with previous speech code reports since 2006.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to defending and sustaining the individual rights of students and faculty members at America’s colleges and universities. These rights include freedom of speech, freedom of association, due process, legal equality, religious liberty, and sanctity of conscience — the essential qualities of liberty.

 

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!

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.

FIRE names America’s 10 worst colleges for free speech: 2018

PHILADELPHIA, Feb. 12, 2018 — Each year, colleges across the country find dubious ways to silence student and faculty expression. In the last year, administrators became embroiled in litigation for telling a student he couldn’t hand out Spanish-language copies of the U.S. Constitution outside a free speech zone, continued a years-long effort to ban a group from campus due to its political viewpoint, and even investigated a professor for a satirical tweet — eventually driving him to resign.
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has identified America’s 10 worst colleges for free speech, published today with detailed descriptions on FIRE’s website.
This year’s list includes the following institutions, in no particular order:
  • Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (Troy, N.Y.)
  • Drexel University (Philadelphia, Pa.)
  • Harvard University (Cambridge, Mass.)
  • Los Angeles Community College District (Los Angeles, Calif.)
  • Fordham University (New York, N.Y.)
  • Evergreen State College (Olympia, Wash.)
  • Albion College (Albion, Mich.)
  • Northwestern University (Evanston, Ill.)
  • University of California, Berkeley (Berkeley, Calif.)
  • Texas State University (San Marcos, Texas)
The institutions on FIRE’s annual list of worst colleges include one university that threatened the funding and editorial process of its independent student newspaper, another that erected fences around campus to keep peaceful student demonstrators out of sight of donors, and yet another that put a student through a months-long investigation and a four-hour hearing for a joke. (That student is still waiting to learn his fate!)
“College administrators, and sometimes even students, are going to greater and greater lengths to justify muzzling expression on campus,” said FIRE Executive Director Robert Shibley. “This type of censorship makes for a sterile environment where lively debate and discussion can’t thrive. The public deserves to know which colleges will defend free expression — and which ones will go to seemingly any length to silence it.”
For the first time, FIRE also awarded a Lifetime Censorship Award to one university that threatens the free speech rights of its students and faculty so often that it deserves individual infamy: DePaul University.
DePaul earned the 2018 Lifetime Censorship Award in recognition of its decade-long rap sheet of suppressing speech at every turn. From denying recognition to a student organization criticizing marijuana laws, to forcing the DePaul Socialists, Young Americans for Freedom, and College Republicans to pay for security in order to host speakers at their meetings and events, to forbidding a group from using the slogan “Gay Lives Matter,” DePaul has staked out a leadership position in stifling campus expression.
FIRE’s 2018 list includes both public and private institutions. Public colleges and universities are bound by the First Amendment. Private colleges on this list are not required by the Constitution to respect student and faculty speech rights, but explicitly promise to do so.
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.

Neo-Nazis Driven Off CSU Campus After Turning Point USA Event

Courtesy Unicorn Riot:

Fort Collins, CO – On Friday night, Turning Point USA (TPUSA), a right-wing xenophobic student group, held a “Smashing Socialism” speaking event featuring its founder Charlie Kirk, at Colorado State University (CSU). A call to protest the event came from the Northern Colorado Antifa Collective, who has stated they oppose TPUSA because the organization provides “sanctuary” to “dangerously prejudicial sentiments.” The evening ended with police dispersal orders as an amassed crowd of antifascists confronted a small group of neo-Nazis who arrived at the end of the event, driving them off campus.

In the days leading up to TPUSA leader Charlie Kirk’s speech on Friday night, fliers from the national socialist Traditionalist Worker Party (TWP) were found on campus. Various news outlets began to report that TWP members were planning to attend the February 2 event. While CSU president Tony Frank condemned the TWP fliers, TPUSA chapter president Isabel Brown, in statements to the Coloradoan, did not. Brown later backpedaled on her original support by stating that TPUSA condemns white nationalism; TPUSA head Charlie Kirk made statements to this effect during his Friday night speech as well.

The German anti-racist group HateXchange created a fundraising campaign to “adopt a Nazi enabler” and donate on behalf of the Traditionalist Worker Party members planning to attend. Donations from the campaign go to CSU Student Diversity Programs and to Life After Hate, an organization that works to help people leave hate groups.

Hours before the event, local police and EMTs were seen staging with vehicles and shields.

Full story and more photos from Unicorn Riot may be found here:

Neo-Nazis Driven Off CSU Campus After Turning Point USA Event

This tweet from speaker Charlie Kirk after the event denounced violence on both sides:

Justice Department Files Statement of Interest in California College Free Speech Case

Photo: Ben Shapiro was one of the high-profile speakers hosted by YAF this year at UC Berkeley. The event prompted counter-protests, a high level of security, and offers of counseling for students who did not feel safe.
Department of Justice
Office of Public Affairs
Thursday, January 25, 2018

The Department of Justice filed a Statement of Interest in Young America’s Foundation and Berkeley College Republicans v. Janet Napolitano. The plaintiffs, Berkeley College Republicans (BCR) and Young America’s Foundation (YAF), allege that the University of California, Berkeley, enforced a double standard when applied to free speech. BCR alleges that UC Berkeley applied a more rigorous and highly discretionary set of rules to their organization compared to other campus groups, especially with respect to “high-profile” campus speakers.

The plaintiffs filed the lawsuit as a result of excessive hurdles BCR faced in bringing speakers of their choice onto campus. They allege that UC Berkeley’s High Profile Speaker Policy and Major Events Policy violated their rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

In their lawsuit, the plaintiffs allege that Berkeley’s “High-Profile Speaker Policy” granted administrators unfettered discretion to decide which speakers are subject to arduous curfews, prohibitive security costs, or undesirable venues. In one instance, administrators—who had full discretion to determine who constituted a “high-profile speaker”—established a 3:00 pm “curfew” that conflicted with class times.

While the plaintiffs attempted to book speakers under the restrictions of the “High-Profile Speaker Policy,” a former president of Mexico and a former White House adviser were hosted at the University, but University administrators did not apply the High-Profile Speakers Policy to those events.

Berkeley counseling for impact speakers “have on individuals’ sense of safety & belonging”

In filing the Statement of Interest, Associate Attorney General Rachel Brand provided the following statement:

“This Department of Justice will not stand by idly while public universities violate students’ constitutional rights.”

In addition to the statement, Associate Attorney General today penned an op-ed(link is external) on the issue of campus free speech.

This is the third Statement of Interest filed by the Department of Justice in a First Amendment case under Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The first was filed on September 26, 2017 in Uzuegbunam v. Preczewski, and the second was filed on October 24, 2017 in Shaw v. Burke.

Attorney General Sessions reestablished the Department’s commitment to protecting First Amendment rights—especially campus free speech– in a speech at Georgetown Law School in 2017.

Ben Shapiro to Speak at UConn; Intellectual Counter-event to Occur; UConn Bars Public Attendance

UPDATE 1.23.18 UConn has now announced only students can attend. This below article explains that this is not customary–a recent event featuring Anita Hill was free and open to the public:

https://legalinsurrection.com/2018/01/uconn-bars-public-from-ben-shapiro-speech/


How to watch live:

LIVE TONIGHT: Ben Shapiro Kicks Off 2018 Campus Tour

Ben Shapiro is scheduled to speak at UConn this week, hosted by UConn College Republics.

Event Details Courtesy Facebook:

Come listen to Ben Shapiro lecture about contemporary political issues and then answer questions from the crowd. Ben Shapiro is the voice of the young american conservative movement, this is will be a night of intellectual diversity, that the University of Connecticut has ever seen.

For a refresher, Ben at Berkeley and Ben at University of Utah, Salt Lake City sparked enormously emotional reactions, even accusations of fascism and hate.

Ben Shapiro at Universities: Why Are Students Driven to Seek Counseling?

——————

In a departure from other universities who have loudly protested Ben Shapiro, sometimes requiring a large and expensive security presence,  an “intellectual alternative”  event will be held by UConn College Democrats. Titled “Ben Shapiro is Not as Insightful as He Thinks He Is,” the event recognizes the value of free speech and a free exchange of ideas.

Event Details Courtesy Facebook:

The UConn College Democrats are pleased to host Nathan Robinson this Wednesday, January 24th at 7:00 in the Dodd Center. His talk will be named, “Ben Shapiro Is Not As Insightful As he Thinks He Is.” The talk will be followed by a Q&A.

Nathan Robinson is the editor in chief of Current Affairs, a Yale Law graduate, current Ph.D. student at Harvard, a prolific author and a public defender in New Orleans. He has written extensively on conservative thought and Ben Shapiro’s arguments throughout his career.

The UConn College Democrats are dedicated to free speech and scholarship on campus. Nathan will offer an intellectual alternative to Ben Shapiro. He will dissect the arguments used by campus conservatives and demonstrate that behind the big names of people like Ben Shapiro, there is little of substance to their arguments. We want to strike a balance between the desire for a free exchange of ideas and the desire for the ideas presented to be factually accurate, respectful in their presentation, and grounded in public policy and politics, not baiting people into the culture war. This event will be happening at the same time as Ben Shapiro’s talk, as we hope that this will be a better space for true discussion of the tough topics we face here at UConn and as a nation. We seek for this to be an event that confronts these tough topics while taking a stand against Shapiro and the UConn College Republicans’ attempts to divide our campus rather than unite us.

FREE tickets can be acquired the day of the event from 1-6pm at the Student Union ticket booth. A valid UConn ID is required. Please note that there will be bag restrictions for the talk and that security will be present to ensure an orderly event. We are excited to host Nathan and this campus for a wonderful night of discussion.


Kudos to UConn!

 

Films, newspapers, magazines and intranets and other media spread decadent ideologies, cultural poisoning

Photo courtesy KCNA.

North Korea’s Rodong Sinmun Calls for Foiling Ideological and Cultural Poisoning by Imperialism

Date: 20/01/2018 | Source: KCNA.kp (En) | Read original version at source

Pyongyang, January 20 (KCNA) — For all the nations aspiring to independence and opposing imperialism to combat the poisoning of decadent ideologies and culture of every description precisely means a fierce struggle to defend their sovereignty and dignity, says Rodong Sinmun in an article Saturday.

The article goes on:

The imperialists regard the reactionary ideological and cultural poisoning as the most effective way for attaining their aggression and predatory aims with ease.

The degenerate reactionary ideology and the American outlook on value, which were employed as a guide to aggression, play the main role in aggression at present.

The imperialists consider the rising generation as the main target of their corrupt ideological and cultural poisoning.

Through films, newspapers, magazines and intranets and other media which the young people enjoy very much, the imperialists make them corrupt and degenerate and spread illusions about imperialism.

Those young people infected with luxury and enjoyment are reduced to renegades of their countries and stooges of imperialism unwittingly.

North Korean Defector: Return DPRK to State Sponsored Terrorism List

Some countries witnessed regime changes and government falls and the young people took the lead in causing such abnormal situations. That is because they were infected with the imperialist ideological and cultural poisoning.

The struggle in the ideological and cultural field is a war without gunfire. And a wrong struggle results in the worse consequences than the defeat in war.

The bourgeois ideological and cultural poisoning is more dangerous than a formidable enemy coming in attack with guns.

Any hesitation and concession to the ideological confrontation would give way to the bourgeois ideological and cultural poisoning and then it would make mess of the destiny of a nation and country.

The Amazing Kims: Mythology and the Cult of Personality in North Korea

FIRE files lawsuit on behalf of Illinois student detained by police for ‘Shut Down Capitalism’ flyers

Photo: Student Ivette Salazar was detained by campus police for passing out flyers critical of capitalism.

By  January 11, 2018

  • A campus police officer told student Ivette Salazar she has freedom of speech only if Joliet Junior College approves it.

CHICAGO, Jan. 11, 2018 — Joliet Junior College student Ivette Salazar only wanted to do what Americans do every day: exercise her First Amendment right to respond to an opposing viewpoint. For that, campus police detained her, confiscated her political flyers, and told her she has freedom of speech only if JJC gives its approval.

That’s not how the First Amendment works, and that’s why Salazar filed a lawsuit today against JJC. The lawsuit is the latest for the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education’s Million Voices Campaign, which aims to free the voices of one million students by striking down unconstitutional speech codes nationwide.

On Nov. 28, after seeing members of a conservative student group distributing anti-socialism materials on campus, Salazar decided to provide an alternate viewpoint by distributing flyers from the Party for Socialism and Liberation that read “Shut Down Capitalism.” After being reported by campus staff, she was detained by JJC police for approximately 40 minutes, interrogated at the campus police station, and told she could not distribute her flyers because of the “political climate of the country.”

When Salazar asked the officers detaining her about her free speech rights, she said one JJC police officer told her, “If you want to go ahead and post your flyers and burn your crosses, you have to get it approved” by the school. Her flyers were confiscated to ensure that she did not distribute them on campus.
“Debating the merits of economic and governmental systems is core political speech,” said FIRE Director of Litigation Marieke Tuthill Beck-Coon. “Campus police got it backward: The current ‘political climate’ is a reason for more speech, not censorship. If tense political times justified restricting political speech, the First Amendment would be pointless.”
FIRE wrote to JJC President Judy Mitchell on Dec. 4 to demand that the college comply with its legal obligations as a public institution bound by the First Amendment. FIRE did not receive a response to its letter.
“I should be able to express my political beliefs on campus without being detained,” said Salazar. “JCC didn’t just threaten my freedom of speech, but the freedom of speech of every student on that campus. If we can’t have political discussions on a college campus, then where can we have them?”
As part of her lawsuit, Salazar challenges the constitutionality of JJC’s “Free Speech Area” policy. The policy restricts expressive activity to one small, indoor area of campus, requires students to request use of the area five business days in advance, requires students to disclose the purpose of their speech, allows for only two people to use the area at a time, and requires students to remain behind a table. If a student wants to distribute literature while in the area, he or she also has to get the materials approved by administrators ahead of time.
Salazar’s lawsuit also alleges that JJC violated her Fourth Amendment rights by unlawfully detaining her.
Today’s lawsuit was filed in partnership with FIRE Legal Network member and former president of the First Amendment Lawyers Association Wayne Giampietro of Poltrock & Giampietro in Chicago. Giampietro serves as co-counsel with FIRE in the case.
“A public college should be teaching its students the existence and value of the freedoms protected by our federal and state constitutions, not violating those freedoms,” said Giampietro. “The First Amendment protects our most cherished right to speak freely on political matters. It is deplorable that public school employees, paid with our tax money, would detain, interrogate, and seize political materials from a student who is attempting to exercise that right.”
If you are a student who has been censored on campus, FIRE and its Legal Network partners stand ready to protect your First Amendment rights in court. Students interested in submitting their case to FIRE’s Million Voices Campaign may do so through FIRE’s online case submission form. Attorneys interested in joining FIRE’s Legal Network should apply on FIRE’s website.
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.