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January 05, 2012 11:48:57 PM by
Harvey Silverglate
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.
December 02, 2011 2:33:13 AM by
Harvey Silverglate
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.
May 22, 2011 10:51:03 PM by
Harvey Silverglate
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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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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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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