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January 05, 2011 11:25:00 PM by
Harvey Silverglate
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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October 11, 2010 11:08:48 PM by
Harvey Silverglate
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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June 29, 2010 10:11:09 PM by
Harvey Silverglate
 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 13th 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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April 16, 2010 12:33:17 AM by
Harvey Silverglate
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.
March 25, 2010 12:20:30 AM by
Harvey Silverglate
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.
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