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
City Journal
Goodbye, MIT
As the university increasingly caves to “wokeness,” two alumni explain why they are withdrawing their financial support.
Wall Street Journal
How ‘Diversity’ Turned Tyrannical
What began as an effort to hire more minorities has turned into a demand for ideological engagement.
By Lawrence Krauss
Alumni speak out against college cancel culture on 'Fox & Friends': Free speech defenders 'outnumbered'
Alumni speak out against college cancel culture on 'Fox & Friends': Free speech defenders 'outnumbered'
As many as 80% of students censor their beliefs according to a FIRE survey
Alumni Unite For Freedom Of Speech
Many left-of-center professors now realize that they too can be brutally canceled by the mob.
New York Times
Last November, Dorian Abbot, a geophysicist at the University of Chicago, posted a series of slide presentations on YouTube making a case against the use of group identity as a primary criterion in selection processes. He was immediately targeted for cancellation.
When Davidson College senior Maya Pillai was asked about her greatest college memory, the first-generation immigrant answered, “I don’t have one.”
In an August 2020 interview with the Charlotte Observer, Pillai, the president of Davidson’s chapter of College Republicans, described her alienating college experience.
The Charlotte Observer
Maya Pillai is doing her best to show support for the president, though in this instance and on this topic, it’s proving to be a bit of a challenge. “Are there comments that President Trump makes that can be interpreted as racist?” asks the 21-year-old president of the Davidson College Republicans club. “Yes.” She points first, without needing to hesitate to think about it, to his repeated references to COVID-19 as “the Chinese virus”; then to his tolerance — at a July 2019 rally in Greenville, N.C. — of the “send her back” chant directed at Somali-born Muslim U.S. Rep.
The Federalist
Administrators providing collegiate athletes the platform to speak out on important issues has transformed athletics into a system of coercive speech.
James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal
At Davidson College, the frog finally realized that it’s being slowly cooked alive.
As the theory goes, if you put a frog into boiling water, it will immediately jump out, but if you put it in lukewarm water and gradually raise the heat, it will not realize what is happening until it’s too late. The parable is often used to describe a social phenomenon by which an initially unpopular agenda can be made successful through gradual and subtle manipulation of opinions and language, without the populace being aware of what is happening.