The on-line journal of DFTD reports on free speech and discourse and ideological balance issues at Davidson and serves as a clearing house for reports and articles nationwide illuminating the situation on other campuses, articulating the campus free speech cause, or proposing remedies to address the nationwide threat to free speech and open discourse on higher education campuses. In the interest of an informed and open dialogue, we encourage signed letters to the editor, and will consider, as well, original articles on free speech and ideological balance issues.
Davidson Freedom Roundup
The Wall Street Journal
The dean instructs student hecklers on the First Amendment.
Stanford Law School disgraced itself two weeks ago when its diversity administrator let students heckle and shout down federal Judge Kyle Duncan. The school is now trying to salvage its reputation, and it’s making some progress.
FIRE
Davidson College just took a big step toward building a more speech-friendly campus. Through its new “Commitment to Freedom of Expression,” Davidson promises its whole campus community will have the ability to work and learn without the risk of censorship.
The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal
By approving its own version of a noted free-expression statement, the liberal-arts institution takes a major step in the right direction.
Last week, faculty at Davidson College affirmed their commitment to free expression on campus by approving their own version of the Chicago Principles.
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Students are quick to condemn those who disagree with them. We must equip them to argue better.
Thinking recently about the state of debate on college campuses, I was reminded of “The Eleventh Voyage,” a story in the science-fiction writer Stanislaw Lem’s 1957 collection The Star Diaries. In it, the space adventurer Ijon Tichy is dispatched to a distant planet and charged with infiltrating its colony of human-hating robots. To pass among them, he dons a robot costume.
The Wall Street Journal
As state-run schools push extreme ideologies like CRT and DEI, some lawmakers and governors have begun to push back.
American higher education is in crisis. The rise of diversity, equity and inclusion bureaucracies and a growing intolerance for dissent has spurred political battles for control of campus decision-making in North Carolina, Texas, Florida, and elsewhere. The fights point to a fundamental question: Who “owns” a university?
The Wall Street Journal
Students weigh in on their experiences with diversity, equity and inclusion practices in higher education.
FIRE
FIRE has criticized the ever-increasing bureaucratization of our nation’s colleges for years.
Inside Higher ED
The UNC Chapel Hill board is doing its job—and a good one at that—in proposing a new School of Civic Life and Leadership, Michael Poliakoff writes.
At a time when public confidence in higher education has dropped sharply—14 percentage points in just two years—the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is moving forward with purpose, civility and a can-do attitude.
Wall Street Journa
Wherever this agenda is allowed to take root, free expression and academic integrity are doomed.
The first object of government, James Madison tells us in Federalist 10, is the protection of “the diversity in the faculties of men.” By diversity, Madison meant different opinions to be encouraged to preserve liberty. Equity is an ancient legal concept of justice in particular cases, developed over centuries of English common-law practice.
Real Clear Investigations
Little more than a decade ago, DEI was just another arcane acronym, a clustering of three ideas, each to be weighed and evaluated against other societal values. The terms diversity, equity, and inclusion weren’t yet being used in the singular, as one all-inclusive, non-negotiable moral imperative. Nor had they coalesced into a bureaucratic juggernaut running roughshod over every aspect of national life.
They are now.