FIRE

Harvard's PR Machine and the Cherokees

webmaster@harveysilverglate.com (Harvey Silverglate) — Mon, 07 May 2012 20:38:50 GMT

Elizabeth Warren has been taking quite a bit of flak for recent revelations that she allowed Harvard to claim her as a “minority hire” during her time at Harvard Law School . The claim struck many as dishonest: Warren appears to be Caucasian, and not a Cherokee Indian, and one would expect that she experienced very little racial discrimination as a child growing up.

But while Warren has been suffering from political jibes, most commentators have not reflected their ire at Harvard University , the institution which had initially made the dubious claim that Warren did not rebut. On MindingTheCampus.com, I argue that the absurd, indeed trivial, claim about Warren ’s ancestry makes perfect sense when one considers the nature of Harvard University today: a highly corporatized PR machine, focused more on burnishing its brand and its image as a “diverse” and “multicultural” institution, rather than on disseminating truth. The university’s role in creating the “diversity” myth surely adds a layer of irony to Harvard’s institutional – indeed, corporate – motto: VERITAS.

You can find the piece by clicking here:

Manhattan Institute Q&A Podcast Available

webmaster@harveysilverglate.com (Harvey Silverglate) — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 17:43:58 GMT

On March 28, I attended a forum at the Manhattan Institute with KC Johnson where we discussed the dismal state of free speech and due process rights on America's campuses. The Institute has just posted the audio of the Q&A session that followed our talks. You can find a link to the podcasts after the jump.

Boston College, the Belfast Project and the Academy of Betrayal

webmaster@harveysilverglate.com (Harvey Silverglate) — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 19:31:48 GMT

Last week I co-wrote, with my research assistant Daniel Schwartz, a blog post for the Huffington Post about the legal battles surrounding Boston College's Belfast Project. The Belfast Project, a groundbreaking oral history undertaking conducted by former IRA member Anthony McIntyre and journalist Ed Maloney, was meant to chronicle "The Troubles" in Northern Ireland. They conducted ground-level interviews with key players from both sides, seeking candid and open records of the fighting in exchange for the promise that the testimonies would be confidential until death.

But now that the Police Service of Northern Ireland has decided to reopen a 40-year-old cold murder case, the British government has subpoenaed the Belfast Project's records for use in the investigation. In our blog post, we discuss BC's lackluster legal defense of academic freedom and the unconscionable dereliction of its duty to defend its scholars' First Amendment rights.

Rutgers Conviction Goes Too Far

webmaster@harveysilverglate.com (Harvey Silverglate) — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 18:04:53 GMT

The New Jersey Star Ledger has a piece out today in which Paul Mulshine discusses the recent conviction of Dharun Ravi. Ravi shared a Rutgers dorm room with Tyler Clementi, a gay student who later committed suicide, and faced charges stemming from his setting up a camera to spy on Clementi. In comments I made for the article, I suggest that while Clementi's privacy rights were clearly violated by Ravi's camera setup, the New Jersey legislature's attempt to create new hate crime and anti-harassment laws in response to the Rutgers case is an overreaction that violates the principle of equal application of the law. This case should have been a matter of a fundamental violation of privacy rights. Instead, the New Jersey legislature and Rutgers administrators are fighting an ideological battle to make political correctness the law of the land.

Censorship at Harvard Comes as No Surprise

webmaster@harveysilverglate.com (Harvey Silverglate) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:34:29 GMT

On July 16^th of last year, Subramanian Swamy, a longtime summer session professor of Economics at Harvard University, wrote a scathing op-ed in an Indian newspaper advocating radical political changes in response to the Mumbai terrorist attacks three days previous. While many members of the Harvard community were upset by Swamy’s suggestions—which included the replacing of Muslim holy sites with Hindu ones, and the denial of voting rights to those who do not concede India’s Hindu heritage—Harvard’s administration at first stood by their economics professor in the name of academic freedom. But the faculty found another way to get rid of ideas they deemed unacceptable; in an unprecedented maneuver, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences re-labeled Swamy’s speech “incitement” and voted last month to strip his course from the Summer School catalogue, a de-facto firing. The maneuver – to de-list a course from the catalogue as a way of effectively firing (without formally firing – a power that the faculty does not possess) a politically incorrect faculty member – is worthy of Machiavelli, but unworthy of a liberal arts institution of higher learning.

As a graduate of Harvard Law School and as someone who taught a course there in the mid-1980s just before the current censorial atmosphere took root, I wrote this piece with considerable sadness. On Forbes.com, I argue that the Harvard faculty’s move should come as no surprise, but rather fits into a decades-long and unfortunate pattern of censorship at the university.

Greg Lukianoff in the Washington Post: Clear Campus Rules Needed on Harassment

webmaster@harveysilverglate.com (Harvey Silverglate) — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 19:48:57 GMT

I started the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education because of a trend I began to detect in the 1980’s; initially often well-meaning attempts to make campuses more welcoming were leading to a watering-down of free speech and academic freedom at our universities. “Political correctness”—the convention that makes equivocation and dishonesty de rigeur for a “polite” and “comfortable” environment—became the norm.

Today, Greg Lukianoff, the President of FIRE, published an op-ed in the Washington Post. In his piece, he describes the history of university infringements on freedom of speech, and points to the growing use of spurious and at times outlandish claims of “harassment” to censor students. Lukianoff calls for far clearer, and more just, campus harassment rules, in order to provide an environment of real academic discourse and inquiry.

Will Harvard Stop Trying to Impose Orthodoxies?

webmaster@harveysilverglate.com (Harvey Silverglate) — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 17:06:44 GMT

I have great respect (and concern) for college students. As I told one Boston Herald reporter not too long ago, “Never declare war on the young, They’ll outlast you, they’ll outthink you, they’ll outdo you.” To the Herald I was commenting about the government’s attempt to get the identity of anonymous “Occupy tweeters,” but I could just as easily have been castigating college administrators. Too often the administration and faculty attempt to foist an orthodoxy or ideology onto their youthful charges; sometimes they are successful, but often, the students are able to stand up and educate their elders on the importance of freedom of speech and individual conscience.

In my piece on Mindingthecampus.com, I compliment a recent Harvard Crimson editorial that stands up to administrators and faculty all too eager to proclaim Harvard’s solidarity with a political movement. The Crimson staff was able to see the slippery slope inherent in a university’s proposed institutional support for a political cause; the students had a clarity of vision their elders, including their teachers, so often lack. But in the piece I also describe ways in which the Crimson editorial board has been far from perfect in its recent defense of free speech. Harvard’s constant assault on student freedom of speech and conscience—please see my research assistant Daniel Schwartz’s latest article here, published by FIRE in their academic journal “The Lantern,” for a longer explication—has taken a toll. Even the Crimson, a formerly uniformly reliable bulwark against administrative overreach, has during recent times acquiesced to the politically correct pressures exerted by faculty and administration. One hopes that freedom of speech and thought can be restored to our campuses before administrators and professors complete the task of brainwashing their young charges.

'Major' free speech flap at Suffolk Law

webmaster@harveysilverglate.com (Harvey Silverglate) — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 22:33:13 GMT

On Veterans Day this year, Suffolk University Law professor Michael Avery generated controversy with an e-mail to fellow faculty members criticizing a care-packages-for-the-troops drive at the law school. Avery’s words upset many in the community, including an adjunct faculty member currently serving in Afghanistan, Major Robert Roughsedge. Maj. Roughsedge was so incensed by the comments—and especially by Suffolk’s refusal to fire and/or censure Avery for them—that he resigned. Maj. Roughsedge won considerable editorial support for his position.

In our column, an excerpt of which is after the jump, Daniel Schwartz and I argue that Major Roughsedge’s critique and resignation—far from a reasonable response to professor Avery’s e-mail—represented something we see far too often in academia, albeit more often on the speech-intolerant Left: the attempt to punish while failing to engage uncomfortable speech. Instead of debating with Professor Avery, Major Roughsedge accused Avery of spewing “hate speech,” and then Roughsedge quit the academy when Avery wasn’t fired.

Caleb Warner's Story Continues to Inspire

webmaster@harveysilverglate.com (Harvey Silverglate) — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 20:10:21 GMT

Caleb Warner may not be returning back to school this year, but he has been inspiring people to speak out against the guidelines for prosecuting sexual assault on college campuses.

On July 15th I published an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal about Caleb, a University of North Dakota student accused of sexual assault. Caleb was kicked out of school and the local police swore out an arrest warrant; not for him, but for his accuser. Utilizing the same evidence that led to his expulsion from school, the police determined that Caleb was not guilty, and that his accuser had filed a false police report. Even though police felt there was clearly insufficient evidence to bring charges (much less convict), the school was perfectly comfortable bringing him in front of a disciplinary board and expelling him. They were so comfortable, in fact, that even after Caleb's accuser left town following the warrant for her arrest, the school still did not agree to rehear his case.

But after a summer of bad press, along with intensive lobbying by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), the University of North Dakota vacated all of Caleb's charges, including his expulsion. While he has said he is unlikely to return to the University of North Dakota, he now has a clean record, and can move on with his life.

Caleb's story has also inspired a number of other people who are concerned about due process on campus.

Pledging Allegiance

webmaster@harveysilverglate.com (Harvey Silverglate) — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 17:33:35 GMT

Two "pledging" controversies have come to the fore in the Boston area in the past couple of weeks. A Brookline group, led by my longtime friend Marty Rosenthal, has sought to move the Pledge of Allegiance out of the public school classroom. Across the river, the Harvard Freshman Dean asked incoming first year students to sign onto a pledge proclaiming such values as civility, kindness, and inclusiveness, to be on a par with academic achievement.

WSJ: Yes Means Yes—Except on Campus

webmaster@harveysilverglate.com (Harvey Silverglate) — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 18:14:23 GMT

As those who read my first book, The Shadow University: The Betrayal of Liberty on America’s Campuses, already know, despite their reputation as places of free inquiry, personal liberty, and supportive community, college campuses have become increasingly repressive and bureaucratic institutions. Nowhere has this trend been more evident of late than in the realm of sexual assault and harassment, where unprecedented government intervention into the personal lives of students has produced alarming and irrational results.

2011 Muzzle Awards: Another year of crushing free spirits at our colleges and universities

webmaster@harveysilverglate.com (Harvey Silverglate) — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 18:26:53 GMT

Every year, around July 4th, Dan Kennedy and I collaborate on the Boston Phoenix’s annual “Muzzle Awards,” recognizing those people and organizations that have done the most in the prior 12 months to further the cause of censorship. Kennedy selects the “winners” of the award out in the world at large, and I focus on academic institutions and people who are responsible for censorship in the world of higher education (notwithstanding, of course, that old quaint notion of “academic freedom”).

This year, Wesleyan University and Yale College have each earned a Muzzle (Yale is on the list for the second year in a row), while repression at Widener School of Law has earned the Wilmington, Delaware institution a dubious Double Muzzle. And UMass-Amherst, for proposing a Draconian change to its student code, gets a Muzzle warning. What were the other infractions on student liberty? Find out, here.

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Boston Globe letter: Higher Education’s Administrator Overload

webmaster@harveysilverglate.com (Harvey Silverglate) — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 19:12:35 GMT

While in recent weeks the Boston Globe has penned a number of stories about the rising costs of higher education, the articles ignore one of the most significant factors behind the inflation of tuition: the massive student-life bureaucracy taking over the institutions. In a letter to the editor published today, I write how these bureaucracies not only siphon off money better used for education, but they also fuel the increasingly disturbing tyranny exerted over the daily lives, and beliefs, of students.

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What Yale's President Should Have Said about the Frat Boys

webmaster@harveysilverglate.com (Harvey Silverglate) — Mon, 23 May 2011 18:51:03 GMT

No one can deny that Yale University is in a difficult position. In late March, the Department of Education began investigating the New Haven campus for allegedly maintaining a sexually hostile environment. Last month, Yale enacted changes to lower the standard of proof in sexual assault cases, and last week, College Dean Mary Miller announced that a fraternity would be banned for five years, a result of an incident last fall in which pledges shouted sexually-graphic chants. Yale, under pressure from Washington, is by all appearances capitulating. It didn’t have to. On Minding the Campus, my research assistant Kyle Smeallie and I explain how Yale President Richard Levin could have stood tall, on behalf of educators and liberal arts institutions (and their students) everywhere, in the face of Washington’s unwelcome—and ultimately destructive—intrusion.

"What Yale's President Should Have Said about the Frat Boys," Minding the Campus (May 23, 2011)

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Liability Reigns Supreme at the Corporate University

webmaster@harveysilverglate.com (Harvey Silverglate) — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 19:43:37 GMT

Campus administrators, alas, have become true believers in the mantra of "risk management." But in guarding against every potential exposure to threats of litigation, no matter how specious, university lawyers and administrators squeeze important elements out of academic life and learning, as well as moral and educational principles, from the collegiate experience. Enter the Department of Education's "Dear Colleague" letter sent nationwide earlier this month, which mandates changes in how universities should investigate instances of sexual harassment--including those that involve student speech.

Now, at the intersection of protected speech and so-called verbal "harassment," administrators have all the more incentive to favor the latter at the expense of the former, I write on Forbes.com. Rather than fight these incursions into the academic enterprise, we can count on academic leaders and administrators, and their lawyers, to fold. The days of principled stands by academic leaders appear to have ended because of those leaders' modern-day obsession with making every student's college experience pleasant.

"Liability Reigns Supreme at the Corporate University," Forbes.com (April 22, 2011)

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Forbes.com: Bullying Free Speech

webmaster@harveysilverglate.com (Harvey Silverglate) — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 19:25:00 GMT

On Forbes.com, I take on the renewed effort by federal lawmakers to ratchet-up anti-harassment measures on campus. As FIRE has learned in its decade of experience, charges of "harassment" are already easily the most abused tool to punish speech on campus. Even if well-intentioned (and, alas, much of the ruination of today's liberal arts institutions of higher education have resulted from initially good intentions), this proposal, with restrictions that are redundant and broad, will doubtless serve to further impede student discourse.

"Bullying Free Speech," Forbes.com (January 6, 2011)

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Eliminating Free Thoughts in the Name of False Safety

webmaster@harveysilverglate.com (Harvey Silverglate) — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 19:08:48 GMT

Administrators at the University of Rhode Island, in an attempt to make their campus more "welcoming" and "safe," recently agreed to implement "sensitivity training" in response to a student protest that centered on campus GLBT issues. A closer look at the events preceding the protest makes clear that the accommodations do more harm than good. As I explain on Minding the Campus, not only do they disrespect the intelligence, maturity and backbone of GLBT students at URI, but they fail to prepare students for the real world where the sometimes-unpleasantness of a free society is, thankfully, protected by the First Amendment.

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2010 Muzzle Awards: Harvard and Yale once again lead the way...for academic censorship

webmaster@harveysilverglate.com (Harvey Silverglate) — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 18:11:09 GMT

As we prepare to celebrate our nation’s independence, the Boston Phoenix spotlights those who have honored our founding freedoms in the breach with the annual Muzzle Awards, the 13^th installment in this award-winning series. My friend and sometimes colleague Dan Kennedy, Northeastern University professor and Media Nation blogger (and tireless soldier in the war for press freedoms as well as quality journalism), serves up his unbecoming accolades to New England power-brokers who, over the past year, have abused their authority in suppressing free speech and personal liberties, including Sgt. James Crowley of the Cambridge Police Department, former Newton Mayor David Cohen, and the MBTA, to name a few.

Accompanying Kennedy's Muzzle Awards is my collegiate sidebar, a window into repression on, of all places, college and university campuses, where censorship remains (sadly and outrageously) a reality both much practiced but also much denied. This year’s edition focuses, interestingly, on Harvard and Yale Universities, New England Ivy League schools that should know better but that have helped pave the censorial frontiers of the corporatized academy, while employing public-relations armies to perpetuate the aura of the liberal-arts sensibility.

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WSJ: Free Association and the First Amendment

webmaster@harveysilverglate.com (Harvey Silverglate) — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 20:33:17 GMT

This Monday, the Supreme Court will hear argument in an important free association case, Christian Legal Society v. Martinez. The case involves an evangelical Christian student group that, while accepting all students at its functions, requires leaders and voting members to sign a Statement of Faith. In today's Wall Street Journal, I explain why this is a core area of protected First Amendment expressive association, rather than, as some claim, invidious discrimination. If the Supreme Court decides that public colleges may deny religious groups the same rights as any other group on campus, the result will be less, not more, genuine campus diversity.

This is a case not widely understood by lawyers, judges, college administrators, media commentators and reporters, and many others. I hope that you will give it a careful reading and recognize why The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), whose amicus brief I signed as FIRE's counsel-of-record, has weighed-in on the side of the Christian Legal Society rather than on the side of the public law school that has, in fact, discriminated against the CLS on account of its following its religious briefs. It is a case that turns a commonly understood (or mis-understood, as the case may be) notion of "inclusion" on its head.

Read the op-ed on the Wall Street Journal website here; after the jump, view a PDF of the print edition in your browser.

Ford Hall Forum honors FIRE with First Amendment Award

webmaster@harveysilverglate.com (Harvey Silverglate) — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 20:20:30 GMT

For the past 29 years, the Ford Hall Forum's Louis P. and Evelyn Smith First Amendment Award has honored individuals or organizations that demonstrate extraordinary commitment to promoting and facilitating the thoughtful exercise of our right to freedom of expression. I could not be more proud to report that this year the Forum has chosen FIRE to receive this prestigious award.

Video of the award ceremony is after the jump. Many thanks to the Ford Hall Forum for bestowing this honor upon FIRE.

How Corrupted Language Moved from Campus to the Real World

webmaster@harveysilverglate.com (Harvey Silverglate) — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 20:19:14 GMT

Over the past dozen years, my main areas of law practice have resulted in two books: The Shadow University (co-authored with Alan Charles Kors), which discusses the deprivations of liberty and related absurdities on American campuses, and Three Felonies a Day, which recounts how vague statutes have made everyone a potential target of federal prosecutors. What connects these seemingly disparate phenomena? As I explain in this Minding the Campus blog entry, "the respective cultures of the college campus and of the federal government have each thrived on the notion that language is meant not to express one's true thoughts, intentions and expectations, but, instead, to cover them up." Rules and regulations-both on campus and in the real world have been expressed in language that no one can really understand. As a result, students and citizens have, with increasing frequency, inadvertently run afoul of the rules and have suffered for it.

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