Cautious Optimism Was The Keynote at a Congressional Forum on Campus Free Speech

By Sean Paige

Alumni Free Speech Alliance

December 12, 2024


When North Carolina Congressman Greg Murphy convened the first Campus Free Speech Roundtable on Capitol Hill four years ago, few outside of the hearing room probably noticed. The issue seemed so “back burner,” the cause so hopeless, and the prospects of meaningful change so remote that attendees probably wondered whether it would be the first and last such congressional hearing.


But a lot has changed in four years.


This year’s panelists — including 4 with ties to the Alumni Free Speech Alliance, or AFSA — voiced guarded optimism that their efforts to steer the ship away from the rocks were seeing results. And the lawmakers who launched the effort — most notably Murphy, Education & the Workforce Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R-NC), and Utah Republican Rep. Burgess Owens — surely must have felt some measure of vindication, seeing that these formerly “back burner” issues are now squarely front and center in Congress and high priority agenda items for an incoming Trump administration.


That doesn’t mean participants were brimming with bravado and confidence. All who work on higher education reform understand that the crisis is real, the problems are deeply rooted, and small victories can be short-lived if constant and consistent efforts aren’t applied. But notes of cautious optimism could be heard as representatives of the Alumni Free Speech Alliance, Young America's Foundation, Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, American Council of Trustees and Alumni, and Speech First spoke and fielded questions.


"Free speech on campuses across the country has been under attack for decades," Murphy told participants. "Progressive political ideologues have infiltrated and overtaken college administrations and faculties. Rampant anti-Semitism and egregious DEI programs have replaced the principles of civility, freedom of expression, and equality on which institutions of higher education were founded. Students, in record numbers, self-censor in classrooms. Faculty force their own political ideologies on students. Administrators abuse their position of authority to push a political agenda. Congress plays a role in oversight of public universities and must protect students' First Amendment rights. I appreciate the ongoing commitment of groups who fight for free speech so that we ensure our nation's colleges remain robust learning environments that cultivate tolerant, well-rounded individuals capable of contributing to our dynamic society."


ASFA’s affiliation with four of those who spoke is an impressive measure of the momentum and visibility the movement has gained in just 3 years. Our grassroots network has grown to nearly 30 chapters, stretching from coast to coast. Our active and engaged alumni are proving to be a potent force for constructive change at the schools where our groups exist — and more are on the way.


AFSA affiliates who spoke and fielded questions were (pictured below, left to right) Princetonians for Free Speech Co-Founder and Executive Committee Member Edward Yingling, AFSA Chairman and Jefferson Council Board of Advisors Member Tom Neale, Davidsonians for Freedom of Thought and Discourse Chairman John Craig, and Davidsonians for Freedom of Thought and Discourse Executive Director Kenny Xu.


The Roundtable can be replayed here in its entirety. (Please note that the opening statements begin at the 18-minute mark.)


The opening statements of AFSA participants are below.

JOHN CRAIG REMARKS FOR DECEMBER 11, 2024 ,CONGRESSIONAL FREE SPEECH ROUNDTABLE.
Good morning,
My name is John Craig, and I am the chairman of Davidsonians for Freedom of Thought & Discourse. Thank you, Congressman Murphy, for chairing this important annual Roundtable, and to the other members of Congress present. Also, thanks to Congressman Murphy for his strong support of our work to promote freedom of expression and viewpoint diversity at our shared alma mater Davidson College.
Let me say upfront that we are making some progress in the struggle for campus free speech & viewpoint diversity.
At Davidson, we achieved adoption of a Commitment to Freedom of Expression Statement and have rallied students to form the student Free Speech Alliance and rebirth the Young Americans for Freedom and Libertarians chapters. And just two weeks ago, the students brought supply-side economist Art Laffer to campus—something that would have been unheard of even a year ago!
In the wake of last year’s Congressional Hearings post-October 7th , leadership changes occurred at Harvard, Penn, and Cornell.
Harvard’s interim president has just endorsed the recommendations of the Harvard Working Group on Open Inquiry and Constructive Dialogue, which, among other things calls for a required course for new undergraduates on constructive disagreement and review of policies for investigating alleged violations of discrimination, bullying, and harassment.
And misguided and ineffective DEI programs in the corporate world and in some universities are being dismantled.
So, to some degree, the campus free speech movement is currently riding a wave.
But make no mistake about it, the forces for one-sided ideological intolerance and speech control on many American campuses are entrenched and are using every tool at their disposal to maintain the status quo and combat us freedom fighters.
This is why, in the possibly narrow window of opportunity before us, we need the Federal government to use every instrument possible to support freedom of expression and viewpoint diversity. We need help especially in tackling the Critical Race Theory/oppressed vs. oppressor mentality that underpins DEI programs and many courses.
The most important tool, of course, is the power of the purse. So, I suggest that Congress rid all NIH, NEA, NEH, etc. grant applications of DEI requirements.
Make federal grants for research and teaching contingent on the absence of DEI loyalty oaths — obvious screening devices—in faculty recruitment and promotion documents.
Mandate that institutions receiving federal funds publish on their websites all course syllabi.
The biggest money, of course, is in the Federal Student Loan Program, whose thorough reform will be a big undertaking. But certainly the recent loan forgiveness excesses should be scrapped, and I hope that some way can be found to make universities and colleges liable for substantial portions of defaulted loans.
I emphasize the urgency of reforms like these. We out in the field need every ounce of support that Congress can provide. We saw this time last year how powerful Congressional hearings can be in shining light on the fault lines in US higher ed. We need more such hearings, and our hats are off to you members of Congress for the courage and leadership you are demonstrating in this battle for the American mind.
Thank you.

The Opening Statement of Davidsonians for Free Thought and Open Discourse Executive Director Kenny Xu


A dental school student formerly enrolled at Columbia University School of Dentistry tells me that one of the first questions he was told to ask a pregnant mother dealing with pelvic pain was whether she wanted to keep the baby.


An NC State transfer student at the Poole College of Management reports to me that the first two weeks of her business school experience was spent listening to seminars on DEI and SDGs, which stands for “Sustainable Development Goals,” instead of the basics of business such as how to make a proposal and how to receive funding for your idea.


If not reflected in policy, the academic experience for a young conservative student is full of slights, subtle degradations, and the constant threat of harassment. As a result, nationally, the free speech of conservative and other politically nonconforming students is impaired. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) nationally compiled and found that about 70 percent of students nationwide (out of a sample size of over 30,000) state that they feel uncomfortable sharing a disagreeing view with a professor in class.


The American Association of Medical Colleges, which helps state medical boards evaluate and license physician schools, put out a release of 72 criteria based on Critical Race Theory-related social justice tenets for schools to follow in order to be deemed accreditation-worthy. Such acts caused prestigious medical schools like UNC Medical Schools to issue large-scale social advocacy platforms that ultimately proved needlessly distracting and even discriminatory to their future doctors’ medical education.


The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prevents discrimination according to race, sex, sexual orientation, religion, and a whole host of other factors. It’s time to add political orientation to that list.

The whole purpose of American education is to teach people to be empathetic creatures capable of seeing multiple viewpoints and sides. If that is not the purpose of diversity, then diversity has no purpose. Today’s higher education system, with its relentless liberal/progressive orientation and disregard for indulging alternative viewpoints, is the opposite of that. Tolerance, it now is obvious, it only for the tolerated.


DEI statements in hiring, mandatory DEI trainings, and surveillance of “harassment” complaints through anonymous reporting agencies are now used to discriminate against conservative students for simply stating and defending their beliefs. This creates reticence among conservative students to pursue their academic and career goals, leading to a dearth of those students in essential fields like education and healthcare, which require continuing education. This, of course, leads to the one-sided political bureaucracy that we all know and hate.


The only way to stop the march of higher ed against conservative students is to aggressively promote intellectual diversity and protect conservative students who speak out. There needs to be at every public college in America a contingent of the school that aggressively and openly defends the right of ideologically nonconforming students to speak. Whether that is an actual school or a part of the administration, it must be given broad leeway to call out, for lack of better word, “higher education B.S” where they see it. Stocking universities with such people must be a new civil service mandate at the new Trump administration.


I believe as much as anybody in people’s ability to speak and reason freely. What I don’t believe in is using one’s powers of speech to exercise raw power over others and making people conform to your ideologies and beliefs. America is a nation built on the capacity to see that other perspectives exist. President Trump, you must take the lead and ensure that the presence of those who believe in you and your education agenda is felt in the places that most hate conservatives. You must ferociously and tirelessly enforce all civil rights protections to apply to conservative students as well as any other student.



Cautious Optimism Was the Keynote at a Capitol Forum on Campus Free Speech

Davidson College Republican and Davidson College Libertarian Presidents: We stand for free speech at Davidson

March 19, 2025
By Gabriel Russ-Nachamie ’27 and Stephen Walker ’26 The Davidsonian March 19, 2025 Davidson’s public commitment to free expression is admirable, but recent anti-speech actions by the College contradict its guarantees to students and set dangerous pro-censorship precedents. This paradox threatens to stifle the open discourse we as a community all grow and benefit from. For context, a 2021 press release announcing Davidson’s commitment to freedom of expression states the College intends “to build a culture where everyone can participate and be heard” and acknowledges that “freedom of expression can’t exist when some people are barred from the conversation” solely on account of allegations that their speech is seen as wrong or offensive. Davidson’s pledge in the free expression statement itself commits the College to upholding protections of student expression for all because “Dissenting voices cannot and should not be censored.” Recent actions against the College Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) chapter and its president, Cynthia Huang ‘25, threaten to undo these efforts in ways harmful to each and every one of us. In a letter published by YAF’s Davidson chapter, the College accused Huang of “Harassment” for publishing political content online and distributing pamphlets that “allegedly includes misinformation” promoting “Islamophobia” and “Transphobia” that made students report feeling “threatened and unsafe on campus.” Davidson offered to “resolve” the matter by forcing Huang to either admit responsibility for the alleged violation and agree to an “Accountability Plan” demanding action to avoid further sanction or a “Code of Responsibility Council Hearing,” which is reserved for actions constituting “serious prohibited conduct in a single incident or a persistent pattern of less severe prohibited conduct,” according to Davidson’s student handbook. The content that triggered this response was political material responding to ideas and policies the YAF chapter disagreed with. It is wrong to classify disagreement as harassment simply because the disagreement “offended” students. The content in question was meant to spark discourse surrounding certain political policies and ideologies. According to Davidson’s own standards, this content should be protected speech. The content that Huang faces potential sanctions for did not explicitly or implicitly promote any action against specific people or groups on account of their identities. For example, the pamphlet from YAF notes the link between Islamic fundamentalist theology and Hamas. However, this is not “Islamophobic” but a historical and scholarly argument about justifications of violence that rely upon religious interpretations. In fact, Hamas is an acronym that stands for the “Islamic Resistance Movement” and the group uses Islamic theology to justify their actions. Discussing the impact of religion on violence, whether it be Christianity, Judaism, or Islam, is protected speech and not bigotry. The club did not in any way target students and the material was freely available for anyone to engage with or ignore. Serious political disagreement on issues always has and will continue to offend individuals who dislike competing opinions. However, a small group of students being “offended” never justifies institutional backlash against political speech. We are not the only individuals or groups concerned about this restriction on speech. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a nonpartisan national organization dedicated to protecting free speech for all Americans, recently sent a letter to President Doug Hicks ‘90. FIRE urged Davidson to drop the charges against the YAF chapter and change its policies to align with the Chicago Principles of free speech, commonly known as the Chicago Statement which Davidson has allegedly committed to upholding. Adjudicative bodies should not base their decisions purely on perceptions motivated by personal feelings and biases. These actions by the college against YAF risk violating Davidson’s commitment to ensuring free speech and robust debate among students. No threats or harassment against students were included in YAF’s content, and anybody who does not like what they have to say is not being forced to engage with their content in any way. The only discernible motivation for going forward with sanctions is that YAF is a political minority that has questioned political orthodoxies in a way that is upsetting to others. The College’s Commitment to Freedom of Expression was made to protect this type of conduct. The Commitment directly states, “Davidson College’s fundamental commitment is to the principle that debate, discussion, and deliberation may not be suppressed because the ideas put forth are thought by some or even most members of the college community to be offensive or unwise.” Sanctioning YAF for political arguments violates our rights as students and has dangerous implications. The aforementioned press release announcing Davidson’s commitment identifies “self-censorship” as a problem for Davidson and a motivator for its creation of the Commitment to Freedom of Expression statement. When students see that the only person who has spoken out against the majority in a political debate is facing sanctions because others did not like the content that student shared, said administrative action sends a message that dissent is unacceptable. This potentially triggers more self-censorship among all those who may disagree with this and countless other political ideas. As the presidents of the Davidson College Republicans and the Davidson College Libertarians, we stand for the free speech rights of all Davidson students. As a leading liberal arts school receiving taxpayer dollars, Davidson has publicly committed itself to upholding free speech rights for students and faculty. We call on the College to uphold its proclaimed principles and reject punishing students and political clubs for speech that some might disagree with or find offensive. We call on the College administration to change the Code of Responsibility to align with the Chicago Statement, as FIRE argued is crucial for Davidson in its letter to President Hicks. Finally, we firmly reject the anti-intellectual, adolescent mindset that has motivated the support for YAF’s censorship. Unwillingness to coexist with peers you may disagree with is unbecoming of students at such a prestigious institution like Davidson. You can’t take away your peers’ rights just because people’s feelings are hurt. Gabriel Russ-Nachamie ‘27 is an economics and mathematics double major from Lincolnton, NC and can be reached for comment at garussnachamie@davidson.edu. Stephen Walker ‘26 is a political science and English double major from Philadelphia, PA and can be reached for comment at stwalker@davidson.edu. https://thedavidsonian.news/1063/perspectives/davidson-college-republican-and-davidson-college-libertarian-presidents-we-stand-for-free-speech-at-david son/

Jeff Bezos Note to the Washington Post

February 26, 2025
"I shared this note with the Washington Post team this morning:"

Former Governor Weighs In on the Future of DEI at Davidson

February 26, 2025
By James (Jim) Martin '57 The Davidsonian February 26, 2025 As a loyal alumnus, I love Davidson College. There are few things here that I don’t love. Perhaps you feel the same, for similar or different reasons. While privileged to teach chemistry here for twelve years, I got into politics as a Mecklenburg County Commissioner. For five decades since retiring from the faculty to become a member of the US Congress, I followed Davidson mostly in passive ways. My annual giving was modest until I was in a position to increase my donation and deliver a significant gift from Duke Energy while on its Board. This and generous friends endowed Professor Malcolm Campbell’s multidisciplinary Genomics Program and a chair in chemistry honored to support Professor Erland Stevens. While Governor of North Carolina, I received an honorary degree and spoke at graduation. All this is a self-aggrandizing way to say I’m part of Davidson College and fully committed to helping it become the best it can be. This was tested when our Trustees decided that the President and the majority of Trustees need no longer be Christian. I joined eleven other former Trustees in a statement objecting to what we believed would undermine Davidson’s tradition and Statement of Purpose. This angered some alumni, especially recent graduates. You might be amused at how many defended the change simply by denouncing us as “old white men.” This trifling trifecta of accursed identity was true, but ignored thoughtful reasoning. This drew me to an even smaller, unofficial group of concerned alumni, Davidsonians for Freedom of Thought and Discourse ( www.dftdunite.org ). Since 2018, its founders had petitioned Davidson College to adopt the Chicago Principles on Freedom of Expression. Pleading from a conservative viewpoint, they got little respect. Even with support from hundreds of alumni representing a wider range of interests, ages and viewpoints, DFTD continued to be disregarded. In 2021, President Carol Quillen heeded a similar appeal from several faculty members, whose interests weren’t aligned with ours. She appointed me to a group of six chaired by Professor Issac Bailey to compose a Davidson vision for academic freedom of expression reflecting Davidson’s commitment to ideals of diversity. The resulting document containing every element of the Chicago Principles was deferred until the arrival of new President Doug Hicks. With his calm inspiration, earnest discussions among faculty won growing acceptance. In early 2023, “Davidson’s Commitment to Freedom of Expression” was affirmed by a nearly unanimous vote. DFTD found ways to support greater diversity of viewpoints on campus. A student chapter of Free Speech Alliance was founded and DFTD was pleased to provide funding for their and others’ invited speakers. This led individual students to entrust us with suspected violations of their academic freedom. Most alarmingly, we heard about several dozen academic courses with syllabi requiring students to confess themselves “oppressors,” repent and atone . . . religious conditions irrelevant to the subject matter. Ironically, DEI is Latin for “gods.” We learned from other students about an astonishing “mandatory” order that all Davidson athletes attend a one-sided, provocative documentary entitled, “I’m not Racist…am I?” Its message? If you are white, you are racist. If you’re non-white, you can’t be racist. Melanin matters. While we don’t object to anyone studying such controversial notions, we protested the coercive way highly partisan objectives were imposed as a condition for participating. After several months with no assurance that our concerns were taken seriously, we reported this to our subscribers. Our purpose was to bring about a remedy, not punish or accuse any individual as was making national headlines at other schools. We figured some may have felt they were doing what was expected of them. One of us mentioned this campus issue in an interview on Fox News. This exploded into far wider circulation than we had foreseen or intended. Faculty and administration were flooded with vile communications from hundreds of anonymous individuals. At the time, this threatened to damage the reputation of Davidson College as well as DFTD, likely among opposing factions. I see no consequent injury against the College today, and DFTD’s standing has become more respected or tolerated even among some who dispute us. We made a point to welcome Dr. Chloe Poston as DEI Vice President at Davidson. She listened to our encouragement to explore ways to reform those abuses. Was it fair, in the cause of including diversity, to blame students for past discriminatory practices for which they bore no personal responsibility? We were pleased to discover, not long after the fall term began, that every course whose syllabus had defamed students as “oppressors” had dropped the insulting indoctrination. To us, this was good news, reflecting a less divisive and more welcoming attitude on campus. We commend those among faculty, administration, and students whose thoughtful contributions led to these corrections. Other reforms may need attention. Do any departments still require DEI allegiance in ways that filter out conservative scholars? Do students or faculty still feel intimidated to self-censor their thoughts and questions? Will Davidson adopt institutional neutrality for ideological controversies? There’s now the question whether Davidson‘s more welcoming, less doctrinaire approach to inclusion of a wider diversity of attributes, cultures and viewpoints will survive the national backlash against DEI. The federal government has declared a campaign to eradicate any trace of it. Among our DFTD membership we’ve learned to respect divergent views among friends, but I can tell you there is division over this. Some are convinced the same old divisive malpractices will simply be continued behind new titles, concealing the enforcement of identity politics. Others trust that Davidson’s new approach can be a positive model for others. Davidson can demonstrate a standard of healthier assurance that every student, without regard to their culture, religion, attitude, politics or appearance, will be genuinely welcomed and encouraged to grow intellectually, socially and spiritually. Large universities with massive DEI staffing must choose to fold or fight. If Davidson can restore diversity’s original ideals without the partisan excesses, other elite colleges might choose to defend this more sensible approach. The Davidsonian 2/26/25 by Davidsonian - Issuu
Show More