Dive Brief:
- Concerns and coverage of free speech issues on college campuses have gained prominence in the past year, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced last week that the federal government would intervene in cases where it believed free speech was threatened, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. The first targeted case involves a student who alleges he was not allowed to promote his faith on the campus of Georgia Gwinnett College.
- The student was told he was only allowed to preach in one of the "free-speech zones" instituted on campus, and was told he would have to submit any material he planned to disseminate prior to his preaching. The college is claiming the lawsuit the student filed should be thrown out, as new campus rules remove the need to register in such zones.
- Sessions has accused college and university campuses as becoming "echo chambers" and "a shelter for fragile egos," though Geoffrey R. Stone, a law professor at the University of Chicago, questions the Justice Department's interest, saying there's no indication that federal government will not "pick and choose" particular cases that suit their own ideology.
Dive Insight:
Issues concerning free speech have become politically potent on the state and federal levels. A chief issue for higher ed administrators on public campuses has been whether they will be able to retain their autonomy in the face of legislative pressure. Some bills have floated the possibility of mandated disciplinary actions for individuals who are determined to have "violated" someone's First Amendment rights.
It is more important than ever for higher ed administrators to ensure they have solid relationships with state (and federal) legislators on both sides of the aisle. College leaders need to be able to approach lawmakers on good faith so they can illustrate the potentially problematic effects free speech legislation could have on a campus without it devolving into the partisan diatribes and debates that so often color discussions on the issue. This is particularly true in cases like Wisconsin's legislature, where state lawmakers floated tying funding decisions for the state's public university system to potentially controversial (and politically partisan) mandates. Such actions could have a chilling effect on classroom instruction and university administrations, so school leaders must make sure they can call on Republican and Democratic lawmakers alike without the veneer of partisan politics.