What’s Killing Academic Freedom & Free Speech?
Hint: DEI is part of the problem
Last week, at San Francisco State University, collegiate women’s athlete Riley Gaines became the latest speaker to be targeted by social justice efforts to moderate free speech on college campuses. During an appearance around the propriety of ‘trans-athletes’ in women’s sports, protestors greeted the accomplished University of Kentucky swimmer with a shout down about ‘bigotry’ and accusations of her being an opponent to ‘human rights.’
Notably, Gaines had previously risen to prominence because of her prowess as a freestyle swimmer and her public revelations around the NCAA’s heavy-handed processes to install biological male Lia Thomas onto the University of Pennsylvania women’s swim team.
Coincidentally, during another on-campus speech, Trump-appointed 5th Circuit Judge Kyle Duncan recently faced a public shaming by Stanford law students.
But these free speech issues are not confined to California!
Indeed, resolving the tensions between social responsibility and academic freedom is a challenge facing colleges and universities at large. But rather than being equipped to solve the problem, free speech absolutists and advocates for diversity, equity, inclusion (DEI) cling to a battle between rigid ideologies and, thus, academic…
