Thomas Jefferson called an educated public as “the only safe depositories of their own liberty.” If so, a new poll conducted by the University of Pennsylvania suggests that we have a serious problem. The poll made a truly alarming finding that many Americans cannot name a single first amendment right. Penn’s Annenberg Public Policy Center found 37 percent could not name any of the five rights protected by First Amendment and fewer than half (48 percent) could name freedom of speech.
Below is my column on the decision of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to rescind the highly controversial “Dear Colleague letter” of the Obama Administration. The letter, which made sweeping changes to educational policy, was never put through any notice and comment period under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). At the time, schools and faculty objected to the stripping of basic due process protections from our students. However, politicians are now denouncing those who want to restore due process as soft on sexual abuse.
One of those denouncing DeVos is Texas lawyer and adjunct law professor Rob Ranco who said that he would be fine with DeVos being sexually assaulted. Ranco has now resigned from his law firm, the Carson Law Firm, after apologizing for his public statement. Ranco is reportedly an adjunct professor of paralegal studies at Austin Community College.
I have long criticized the erosion of due process rights on our campuses, particularly the unilateral action taken by the Obama Administration.
Here is the column:
We have been discussing the rise of groups on campuses that assert the right not to simply protest but to prevent other students from hearing speakers or participating in events. The latest such incident occurred last week at the University of Virginia where members of a social justice group called UVA Students United disrupted a “cops and robbers”-themed party at a campus fraternity. The group would not allow a party that it claimed made “a joke of systems that kill and brutalize marginalized communities.” Ultimately, the party was canceled.
A couple of faculty members at the Elliott School of International Affairs sent me an email yesterday from their dean, former Ambassador Reuben E. Brigety, II that they found unsettling and unwise. The school has adopted a policy that all panels in the future at the school cannot be composed of a single gender and that “Non-adherence to this policy could result in cancellation of the event.” The policy raises serious questions of academic freedom and the subordination of intellectual content in favor of the diversity policies. No one has suggested that Dean Brigety is likely to impose mandatory quotas and disciplinary actions. He is an experienced diplomat at a nationally respected graduate school, though he has had controversial moments during this tenure as dean. However, there has been no real discussion of the implications of these policies and how they impact the academic mission of universities like George Washington.
Continue reading “GW International School Announces Policy Of Gender Diversity Of Panels”
I will be participating in a panel today on the Supreme Court’s October Term 2017 with a stellar panel of experts at George Washington University. This has the makings of a historic term with issues ranging from President Trump’s travel ban to gerrymandering to religious objections to providing services for same-sex weddings. The panel will speak about possible new cases and possible outcomes in existing cases with many leading Supreme Court journalists and lawyers in attendance.
NASA’s Juno spacecraft completed its seventh flyby of Jupiter and sent more stunning pictures of its raging beauty. The pass on September 1st put the spacecraft within 2,200 miles of the planet.Continue reading “Jupiter In Full Raging Glory: NASA Releases New Photos Of Giant Planet”
Michigan State University is being sued after it refused to rent space on campus for white nationalist Richard Spencer to speak later this month. The rental was requested by Georgia State University student Cameron Padgett for an event on-campus at the Kellogg Hotel & Conference Center.
Miami University in Ohio lost a major case in court after a student appealed his ban from the university after being accused on sexual misconduct. U.S. District Judge Michael Barrett ordered that the anonymous student known as “John Nokes” reinstated and found glaring unfairness in the rules and procedures of the university. As I have previously discussed, the Obama Administration forced many schools to limit due process rights of accused students in sexual misconduct cases.
A Cambridge University student with Pembroke College has become persona non grata after a disgusting display in front of a homeless man. When unemployed crane operator Ryan Davies asked for money, Ronald Coyne burned a £20 note in front of him as a taunt. The video was posted on YouTube and Coyne is now internationally despised.
Continue reading “Cambridge Student Denounced After Taunting Homeless Man By Burning £20 Note”
We have been discussing the disciplining of professors for their statements on social media and the erosion of free speech protections for teachers outside of their schools. As many of you know, I take a robust view of free speech rights and have been critical of the monitoring and punishment of teachers for expressing their political and social views outside of campus. The latest such controversy comes the University of Tampa where visiting assistant professor Kenneth Storey was sacked for tweeting, “I dont believe in instant karma but this kinda feels like it for Texas. Hopefully this will help them realize the GOP doesnt care about them.” Few would defend Storey’s comments which were insensitive and unthinking, but that does not alter the question of where the line is drawn for teachers in speaking publicly about politics or society. (He later apologized.)Continue reading “University of Tampa Fires Professor For Using Hurricane Harvey To Attack GOP”
Below is my column in the Hill newspaper on the Antifa movement and its implications for free speech on our college and university campuses. Yesterday, I shared a videotape from one such protest at GW near the law school a few months ago. My concern is with those faculty members who legitimize the anti-speech foundation for this movement. Yet, the violence at Berkeley has exposed this movement for what it is. This week Nancy Pelosi did criticize Antifa but then later qualified that criticism. She said:
“Look, people are out there heiling Hitler and then you have a group that is antifa — anti-fascist; they’ve been there forever — some people may have infiltrated them. We’ll see. But that is not an equivalence, in my view.”
I fail to see why there is a need to draw distinctions. Antifa is premised on the view that some speech is unworthy to be protected and that preventing people from hearing unworthy views is an act of “community self-defense.” As the column discusses, the distinction between Antifa and its opposing fascists is rather difficult to discern in terms of the effort to intimidate or assault those with opposing views. The threat of Antifa is summed up by the description of one of its most influential academic voices. Dartmouth Professor Mark Bray says that the movement has no interest in co-existence with opposing views and seeks not simply to oppose them but to “end their politics.”
Here is the column: Continue reading ““End Their Politics”: Antifa and the Rejection of Liberal Democratic Values”
This week I wrote a column on how Antifa and related groups are destroying free speech at academic institutions across the country with the help of enabling, sympathetic faculty. I just saw this earlier video from a few months ago of an assault near the law school on our campus. Antifa activists harassed a conservative Rebel filmmaker, Jack Posobiec, and then a young man assaulted him. The man was later identified asSydney Ramsey-LaRee, 24. When GW police intervene, the attacker immediately claims to be the victim in the video below. I was unaware of this earlier assault and wanted to share the video. Fortunately, we have not seen the type of violence at other universities like Berkeley.
Continue reading “Antifa Comes To GW: Filmmaker Assaulted By Protester Near Law School [Updated]”
University of Iowa Assistant Professor Jodi Linley is under fire for an article in a “peer-reviewed academic journal” in which she pledged to expose her students to “their own white ignorance.” She says that she used her “identities as a queer, able-bodied, cisgender woman” to offer a “teaching paradigm” that strips away white privilege. She segregates by race and works toward “interrupting oppression” that occurs in classroom settings. Continue reading “Iowa Professor Under Fire Over Proposal For Exposing Her Students “White Ignorance””
We have been discussing the disciplining of professors for their statements on social media and the concern that there are different standards being applied in such cases. As many of you know, I take a robust view of free speech rights and have been critical of the monitoring and punishment of teachers for expressing their political and social views outside of campus. The latest such controversy comes from Clemson University where Assistant Professor Bart Knijnenburg went on Facebook to call Trump supporters and Republicans generally “racist scum.”
Continue reading “Clemson Professor Under Fire For Calling All Republicans “Racist Scum””