History News Network

With support from the University of Richmond

History News Network puts current events into historical perspective. Subscribe to our newsletter for new perspectives on the ways history continues to resonate in the present. Explore our archive of thousands of original op-eds and curated stories from around the web. Join us to learn more about the past, now.

Source: Washington Monthly

6/1/2021

Race, Free Speech, and the Purge of Campus Blasphemers

by Jonathan Zimmerman

An adjunct literature instructor at St. John's University has fallen victim to an adminstration's desire to make complex teaching challenges – like how to evaluate Twain's use of racial slurs in the context of satire – into simple rules.