During the past year appearances by controversial speakers on college campuses have led to a string of tense, sometimes violent, incidents. As students return to school, administrators will again face the challenge of protecting freedom of speech while ensuring safety for their students, staff and faculty. We offer this checklist to help them prepare for the [...]
Controversies over freedom of speech on college campuses have existed as long as there have been college campuses. But the specific issues vary with each generation. That is the first line of Erwin Chemerinsky’s new book, “Free Speech on Campus,” written with Howard Gillman. Mr. Chemerinsky is not only one of the foremost legal [...]
This measure would urge all private and public universities in California, to the extent that they have not adopted free speech statements consistent with the principles articulated by the Chancellor of the University of California at Irvine, and the Free Expression Statement formally adopted by the University of Chicago, to consider such statements as [...]
Free Speech on Campus by Dean Chemerinsky On Monday, April 10, 2017, constitutional scholar and former Dean of UCI Law School, Erwin Chemerinsky, gave a presentation about Free Speech during a Student Life and Leadership Conference. Additional information and resources can be found on the Office of the Dean of Students website. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YuvOWeZRMY&feature=youtu.be [...]
Recent events at the University of California, Berkeley reflect the enormous difficulties that campuses can face when trying to ensure freedom of speech while, at the same time, meeting their duty to ensure an inclusive learning environment and to protect everyone’s safety. Many, including President Donald Trump, spoke out about these events, but with apparently [...]
Across the nation we are witnessing a rise in white nationalism: At a gathering in a Washington, D.C., hotel, audience members gave a Nazi salute; swastikas are popping up on public buildings; cyber hate and cyberbullying are surging. The F.B.I. reports a 6% increase in hate crimes in 2016 over the previous year, fueled [...]
Two weeks ago the Senate passed, by unanimous consent, the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act, an unquestionably well-intentioned attempt to protect Jewish students on campus. Unfortunately the bill runs afoul of the First Amendment. If passed by the House and signed into law, it would encourage the Education Department to further punish constitutionally protected free speech [...]
And Campus for All combines extensive reporting and thorough analysis of all sides of recent debates, as well as three case studies informed by exclusive interviews with protagonists in some of the most pitched campus battles in recent years: skirmishes over free speech and issues of race at Yale, confrontations surrounding activism on the Israeli-Palestinian [...]
Although it is foolhardy to generalize about a generation of college students, their understanding and attitude about freedom of speech was strikingly different from what we, two baby-boomers, expected when we began teaching a course on free speech on college campuses to 15 freshmen at the University of California, Irvine. In the course we [...]
Teaching a freshman seminar on freedom of speech on college campuses has made us aware of the urgent need to educate the current generation of students about the importance of the 1st Amendment. From the beginning of our course, we were surprised by the often unanimous willingness of our students to support efforts to [...]