free speech 
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SOURCE: Wall Street Journal
4/7/2021
When Will Liberals Reclaim Free Speech?
by Jonathan Zimmerman
"When speech can be suppressed, the people with the least power are likely to lose the most. That’s why every great tribune of social justice in American history—including Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony and Martin Luther King Jr. —was also a zealous advocate for free speech."
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SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
3/18/2021
When Academic Bullies Claim the Mantle of Free Speech
by Jennifer Ruth
It's past time to look at controversies over "woke" campus culture by considering the frequency with which faculty harassment follows from the exposure of alleged left-wing excess in the outrage-driven news media.
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SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
3/8/2021
A New Group Promises to Protect Professors’ Free Speech
Princeton's Robert George hopes that the new organization Academic Freedom Alliance can influence university administrators to resist online outrage campaigns from the right and left and protect the right of scholars to speak freely on controversial subjects.
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SOURCE: The New Republic
2/19/2021
Rush Limbaugh and the Nineties Roots of “Cancel Culture”
by Alex Pareene
Rush Limbaugh's career ended in a siloed media environment where the right occupied its own channels. But it began in a mainstream media that was eager to profit by marketing his brand of down-punching reactionary grievance.
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SOURCE: Washington Post
2/10/2021
The Landmark Klan Free-Speech Case Behind Trump’s Impeachment Defense
Though Trump’s impeachment is not a criminal trial, his lawyers in their legal briefs referenced Brandenburg v. Ohio, arguing that Trump didn’t direct his supporters to attack the Capitol.
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SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
1/11/2021
A Fraught Balancing Act
Questions of free speech and incitement, plus the demonstrable falsity of many claims made by pro-Trump student activist groups, makes for complicated choices for university administrators who may decide on disciplinary actions against students believed to incite violence.
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1/12/2021
Public Speech and Democracy
by Sandra Peart
American leaders have failed to support public speech that sustains disagreement without violence. That culture of speech must be rebuilt for democracy to survive.
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SOURCE: New York Times
10/26/2020
A Teacher, His Killer and the Failure of French Integration
The murder of a French social studies teacher who showed his multiethnic class images offensive to Islam illustrates the dilemma of the French policy of secularism, which is beset on one side by complaints that immigrants do not assimilate and on the other by rising xenophobia and racism.
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SOURCE: KERA
10/21/2020
Collin College Professor’s Tweet About Vice President Sparks Debate Over Academia And Free Speech
“I just wish I had become infamous for a more clever tweet,” Burnett said. “I have plenty of those.”
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SOURCE: American Historical Association
10/20/2020
AHA Issues Letter Defending AHA Member’s Right to Free Speech
"We trust that Collin College will respect and protect Dr. Burnett’s rights under the First Amendment to the US Constitution."--Jim Grossman, AHA Executive Director
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SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
10/19/2020
Educating the Powerful
by Matt Reed
In the wake of a political movement consciously designed to denigrate any expertise outside of making money, calming anxious trustees an uphill battle. But it’s necessary. Anyone with a grasp of history knows that there’s no appeasing a purity movement; one kill simply whets its appetite for the next one.
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SOURCE: Foreign Policy
8/31/2020
Voltaire Spread Darkness, Not Enlightenment. France Should Stop Worshipping Him.
by Nabila Ramdani
Nabila Ramdani argues that the French Enlightenment thinker's abstract defenses of free speech and inquiry should not overshadow the concrete content of what he said and wrote, which included historically influential racist and antisemitic bigotry cloaked in the language of reason and science.
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SOURCE: Chattanooga Times-Free Press
9/2/2020
Dalton State Professor Takes Heat for Tweets; College Doesn't Plan Discipline
A Dalton State (GA) history professor regrets his word choice in a series of tweets that was publicized by an anonymous user who sought disciplinary action by the college. Seth Weitz insists that he teaches history in the classroom, which involves challenging beliefs held by many of his students.
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SOURCE: Reason
8/6/2020
Tulane Canceled a Talk by the Author of an Acclaimed Anti-Racism Book After Students Said the Event Was 'Violent'
Reason columnist Robby Soave questions why a speaker whose books renounce family and community histories of white supremacy would spark outrage by antiracist student activists.
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8/2/2020
Free Speech and Civic Virtue between "Fake News" and "Wokeness"
by Campbell F. Scribner
Left critics of the recent "Harper's Magazine" open letter on free speech and open debate make some claims that are narrowly meritorious. But they don't address the value of speech as a way of building the collective citizenship necessary for democracy. In this respect, the signers are correct.
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4/5/2020
US v. Sineneng-Smith Echoes the Fugitive Slave Act
by Alan J. Singer
A Supreme Court decision in United States v. Sineneng-Smith that broadens the authority of the federal government to suppress the rights of advocates for undocumented immigrants could divide the nation irreparably.
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SOURCE: New York Times
3/18/2020
Amazon Bans, Then Reinstates, Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’
The retailer is trying to do two contradictory things: Ban hate literature but allow free speech.
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SOURCE: The Third Narrative Blog
12/14/19
Trump's Executive Order, Jewish Identity, and Free Speech
The prevailing notion that Jews are basically followers of a religion does not adequately define most Jews, who are either not religious or only marginally so.
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SOURCE: CNN
8/28/19
Bret Stephens launches a foolish Twitter war
by David M. Perry
Being called a bedbug just isn't a big deal. Writing to a provost about the actions of an academic on Twitter, which Stephens said he did because "managers should be aware" how "their people...interact in the world," is the big deal.
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8/25/19
Lessons from Our Republican Ancestors on Free Speech
by Forrest A. Nabors
If truly wicked ideas permeate our country, the best way to quell their pernicious influence is to refute them in debate and trust in the judgement of observing citizens.
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