No Triggers: The Empire Strikes Back - Part 2

We noted on Friday that there seems to be push-back developing in higher ed, and maybe in the New York Times, regarding speech limitations. The "saga" - as the poster image says - seems to be continuing.* Excerpts from a column by David French in the NY Times: 

...Let’s take Stanford University, for example. In the days and weeks since law students shouted down and disrupted a speech by a federal judge, the center has taken a stand. The dean of Stanford Law School, Jenny Martinez, penned a powerful, 10-page memorandum that mandated a half-day of instruction on free speech and legal norms, [and] reaffirmed the school’s dedication to the Stanford Statement on Academic Freedom...

Then there’s Cornell University. In March, the school’s undergraduate student assembly unanimously approved a resolution calling for trigger warnings in syllabuses to warn students of “graphic traumatic content” in course content. Cornell’s president, Martha E. Pollack, promptly vetoed it...

The faculty at Harvard University is also stepping up. In an opinion essay in The Boston Globe, Harvard’s Steven Pinker and Bertha Madras announced the creation of the Council on Academic Freedom, a coalition of 50 faculty members and several other Harvard employees “devoted to free inquiry, intellectual diversity and civil discourse.” ...

Vanderbilt University will announce the expansion of the American branch of the Future of Free Speech Project, an initiative run by the Danish think tank Justitia, which will include an international focus on free expression...

And we cannot forget the University of Chicago. Since 2014, it’s arguably been the single most influential academic institution in the United States supporting academic freedom. Its statement on free speech declares the “university’s fundamental commitment is to the principle that debate or deliberation may not be suppressed because the ideas put forth are thought by some or even by most members of the university community to be offensive, unwise, immoral or wrongheaded.” A version of the Chicago statement has been adopted by almost 100 colleges, universities and state university systems, including Princeton University, Johns Hopkins University and the North Carolina and Wisconsin state university systems...

Full column at https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/16/opinion/free-speech-campus-universities-promising-news.html.

At least some of this interest in speech and academic freedom seems to be a reaction of university leadership to political antipathy towards higher ed that has developed in some states and more general skepticism about the value of college degrees.

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*http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2023/04/no-triggers-empire-strikes-back.html.