The University of Miami in Florida recently launched the George P. Hanley Democracy Center with the aim of depolarizing Americans through civil discourse and exporting democracy abroad.
Leonidas Bachas, dean of the university’s College of Arts and Sciences stated that the university’s “proximity to Latin America also places us in an ideal spot to study democracy in the Americas and beyond.”
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Administrators at Washington and Lee University told conservative students to cease campaigning for Glenn Youngkin, the Republican nominee for Virginia governor.
The university’s College Republicans displayed materials supporting Youngkin during a September 12 activities fair, but were told by Director of Student Activities Kelsey Goodwin that they had to remove the materials due to the school’s tax-exempt status.
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Attempts to sanction scholars for their speech, research or teaching practices has skyrocketed since 2015, with about three in four campaigns leading to some form of professional sanction – including termination – according to a new report by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.
Such attacks are “on the rise and are increasingly coming from within academia itself—from other scholars and especially from undergraduate students,” FIRE research fellows Komi German and Sean Stevens state in their report.
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Two public universities responded very differently to recent allegations of unconstitutional “compelled speech.”
Rutgers University’s law school apparently told its student government to ditch a requirement that student organizations host events on critical race theory to be eligible for funding.
The University of Oklahoma, on the other hand, refused to stop requiring faculty and staff, including some graduate students, to complete a diversity training that requires them to say things they don’t necessarily believe.
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The University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC) initially expelled a student for content on her personal social media accounts. Officials claimed that the nuclear pharmacy student, Kimberly Diei (’23), used speech that violated the university’s conduct policies, though Diei has claimed they never informed her of which specific policies she’d violated. Neither of her profiles or any of her content identified Diei as a UT student or mentioned the school in any capacity. Only after Diei obtained legal help did the university reverse her expulsion.
Diei was investigated by the school’s Professional Conduct Committee on two separate occasions based on anonymous complaints. The first investigation occurred during Diei’s first month on campus in September 2019 regarding her Instagram and Twitter accounts in general. Following its review, the committee required Diei to write an apology letter. About a year later, Diei came under investigation again and was expelled for posting several explicit tweets referencing pop culture.
Diei was investigated by the school’s Professional Conduct Committee on two separate occasions, instigated by anonymous complaints from other program students. The first investigation occurred during Diei’s first month on campus, September 2019, regarding her Instagram and Twitter accounts in general; the committee required her to write an apology letter. About a year later, Diei came under investigation again and was expelled for posting several explicit tweets referencing pop culture.
The professor who resigned in 2019 after telling a local news outlet, “I am Antifa” just got a sizeable payout from the college that let him go.
As Campus Reform reported in August, Kirkwood Community College professor Jeff Klinzman posted on his personal social media messages in support of the far-left extremist group Antifa, which President Donald Trump was considering at the time labeling a domestic terror organization. When a local television station contacted Klinzman, he replied, “I affirm I am Antifa,” unleashing nationwide backlash eventually leading to the college making the “decision to remove” him from the classroom.
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