Trump and Congress Can Help Restore Campus Free Speech Withdraw the Obama Title IX ‘guidance’ and tie federal funds to respect for the First Amendment. By Harvey Silverglate
https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-and-congress-can-help-restore-campus-free-speech-1493583718
Mr. Silverglate, a co-author of “The Shadow University,” is a co-founder and board member of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. Samantha Harris, FIRE’s vice president for policy research, contributed to this article.
The culture of censorship within higher education is now legendary. And although the problem is of long standing, the Obama administration made it worse by giving academic bureaucrats a convenient excuse—“the feds made us do it”—for punishing speech. The Trump administration and Congress could help restore academic freedom, without which higher education cannot flourish.
Campus censorship affects faculty as well as students and guest speakers. And conservatives aren’t the only targets. At Louisiana State University, Teresa Buchanan’s tenure didn’t protect her from dismissal in 2015 for occasionally using vulgar language in her education classes. She did so, she said, to prepare future teachers for the language they would encounter from some students. Administrators ignored a unanimous faculty committee recommendation against termination and a report of the American Association of University Professors that found Ms. Buchanan’s academic freedom was violated.
In a statement to the press, LSU claimed it was following “the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights’ advisements.” That would be a 2013 OCR statement, in a settlement with the University of Montana, that in order to comply with federal antidiscrimination laws, universities must ban “unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature,” including “verbal” conduct—in other words, speech. LSU gave these “advisements” weight because of OCR’s power to withhold federal funding. The Obama administration’s overreach in higher education produced many stories like Ms. Buchanan’s.
The new administration has an opportunity to undo this damage. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos should instruct OCR to rescind its “guidance” undermining the right to free speech and guarantee that universities that receive federal dollars return to their role as centers of inquiry and learning, not censorship and indoctrination. Further, OCR’s practice of setting national standards through “guidance”—without seeking comment from academic institutions and the public—should end. Future regulations should be subject to open debate, as mandated by the Administrative Procedure Act. CONTINUE AT SITE
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