March 26, 2012 11:31:48 AM by
Harvey Silverglate
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.
January 05, 2012 9:06:44 AM by
Harvey Silverglate
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.