In January 2023, Harvard Magazine asked the nominated Harvard Board of Overseer candidates about the most important challenges facing Harvard. FAIR HA+ has reviewed the unedited responses and compiled a short summary of the candidates’ views related to issues surrounding free speech. Most concerning—freedom of expression and academic freedom proliferate higher ed news and are a significant concern for members of the Harvard community, yet aren’t mentioned by the candidates.

Harvard Law Today

AFA has grown to nearly 700 faculty members since 2011, including 11 from HLS. HLT interviews HLS Professors Janet Halley, chair of AFA’s Academic Committee, and Jeannie Suk Gersen ’02, member of AFA’s Legal Advisory Council, about why they think academic freedom is under threat and what they hope to do about it. “It’s about protecting the pursuit of knowledge, and fostering an atmosphere at colleges and universities in which ideas can be followed without fear that you’ll be punished.”

Wall Street Journal

The WSJ Editorial Board takes aim at Yale’s non-democratic governance process, and doesn’t let Harvard off the hook for a smilar offense. “It seems the wealthier American universities get…the less open they are to different voices. At a time when it’s become fashionable to cast any political disagreement as a ‘threat to democracy,’ some of the institutions that trumpet democracy the loudest don’t mind undermining it in their own governance.”

Salient (Harvard student publication)

In a biting piece, the student-authors show how the attempt to colonize foreign language with Western gender ideology is on the march through the pronoun wars (“not even prepositions will feel safe”), starting off in a first lesson in a Harvard Portuguese class dedicated to gender-neutral pronouns in which words new to the language are introduced. “As usual, the English-speaking world doesn’t need to invent something—be it gunpowder, opium, or gender dysphoria—to become its most successful exporter.”

Wall Street Journal

A Stanford student seen reading Mein Kampf was reported through the school’s ‘Protected Identity Harm’ system. Until the incident, faculty were unaware the system existed, with one stunned professor likening it to McCarthyism. Another said the system “reminded him of the way citizens were encouraged to inform on one another by governments in the Soviet Union, East Germany and China.” Harvard is among schools with a reporting system, and many of these systems are now facing legal challenges.

Crimson

An HMS committee voted to integrate climate change into the school’s curriculum. “The new climate change curriculum will examine the impact of climate change on health and health inequality, applications of these impacts to clinical care, and the role of physicians and health institutions in arriving at climate solutions.”

Tablet

Jacobs provides an excellent exposé on the takeover of universities by activists and how it happened. The 60s radicals settled down in campuses, shaping those who then infiltrated every aspect of society. “We are witnessing the invasion of the public square by the campus, an intrusion of academic terms and sensibilities that has leaped the ivy-covered walls aided by social media.”

Wall Street Journal | Event Video / Audio

Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Duncan provides a firsthand account of his “struggle session” with Stanford Law School students. “The most disturbing aspect of this shameful debacle is what it says about the state of legal education. Stanford is an elite law school. The protesters showed not the foggiest grasp of the basic concepts of legal discourse: That one must meet reason with reason, not power. That jeering contempt is the opposite of persuasion. That the law protects the speaker from the mob, not the mob from the speaker.”

Tablet

Sailer describes how DEI principles are “meant to sound like a promise to provide welcome and opportunity to all on campus,” yet instead represent “controversial political and social views.” In order to advance in their careers, academics “must demonstrate fealty to vague and ever-expanding DEI demands and to the people who enforce them. Failing to comply, or expressing doubt or concern, means risking career ruin.”

Compact

A must-read, firsthand account of where DEI orthodoxy leads. Vincent Lloyd, a black professor who “like others on the left…had been dismissive of criticisms of the current discourse on race in the United States,” finds himself the victim of Chinese Cultural Revolution-style attacks and banishment.

Times Higher Ed | Economist

Harvard alum Samuel Abrams (AM 07 PHD 10) writes that required diversity statements “are in conflict with the fundamental values that should govern university life: intellectual freedom and epistemic humility. They compel faculty to affirm contested views on matters of public debate or to embed specific ideological perspectives in their academic activities.” Separately, in an Economist podcast, FAIR Advisor Jonathan Haidt, HKS Fellow Kenneth Roth, and Erwin Chemerinsky discuss the question, “Are diversity statements a threat to academic freedom?”

Heterodox STEM

A dire warning—time is running out for America. The author traces the importance of America’s mathematical and scientific progress and strength to its success in war and escape from global totalitarianism. Now, a new totalitarianism from within is threatening STEM programs at a time when America, and the free world, may soon be facing existential threats. “If China overtakes America, their rule will not be benign, and the hopes and dreams of mankind will be subordinated to the Chinese Communist Party.”

Washington Post

An important piece by an anesthesiologist on California’s mandated implicit bias training in continuing medical education. “The malignant false assumption that Black people are inherently inferior intellectually has been traded in for the malignant false assumption that White people are inherently racist…That is the basic message conveyed by implicit bias training… [and] is harmful both to physicians and patients.”

The Free Press

The Free Press covers the attack on psychologist Jordan Peterson for his views. This “is not a message to Peterson, but a message to other would-be dissenters: Comply with our politics, or risk losing your livelihood…” Yet this isn’t the most chilling part. They have “pathologized dissent…[making] political disagreement into an illness. There is a long history here… the Soviet Union, among other authoritarian regimes, used mental illness as grounds for marginalizing countless voices.”

Spiked

Actor Idris Elba breaks the accepted narrative. As Inaya Folarin Iman of Spiked explains, “Idris Elba…said he no longer calls himself a ‘black actor’ because the label puts him in a ‘box.’ … Predictably, Elba’s comments have sparked horror among the usual identitarian suspects … If you want to make the colour of your skin the defining feature of your personality and life, then go for it. Just don’t pretend that it’s ‘progressive’ – and don’t try to impose such a racially divisive outlook on everyone else.”

The Free Press

Testimonials exposing what’s happening across the arts. “Artists nationwide say they’re being put to an ideological litmus test. ‘It felt like somebody holding a gun to my head saying: your integrity or your life’s work.’” From not posting a black square on social media during the BLM protests to resisting racial segregation efforts, artists are punished. “The arts were becoming a tool of an ideology,” one artist explains of his experience. “It felt like something sacred was being violated by crossing politics and art—almost like crossing church and state.”

Newsweek

Actor and veteran Alex Miller pushes back against changing the race of characters. “I simply object to using the race of an actor as a sign and standard for what constitutes progress. It's an insult to my community—both to the long-fought struggle for representation and to the recent successes on that front… Making a white character Black is not progress. It's pandering.”

Banished

An anthropology professor pens a letter in the Macalester College newspaper after an Iranian artist’s exhibit is “paused” by the university due to claimed harm. “When people at Macalester are offended by a graphite drawing that depicts a partially nude woman in a niqāb, what is being caused is not pain, but offense. In a free country, no one has the right to be exempt from being offended. Giving offense is a necessary byproduct of the freedom of speech and foundational to the existence of a free society.”

The Glenn Show

A conversation with FAIR Advisor Glenn Loury and Harvard professor Michael Sandel, known for his Justice course and writings, including his recent book, The Tyranny of Merit. Sandel points to the “meritocratic hubris of elites” including “elites in the world of finance, in the world of academia, in the world of the media, in journalism, the Manhattan elite. .. the neoliberal globalization project of the center-right and center-left…a certain meritocratic hubris among the elites who said, ‘The winners deserve their winning.’”

Executive Order

On February 16th, the President of the U.S. issued an Executive Order to advance racial equity through the federal government with a goal to ensure equal outcomes. Following the lead of DEI officers and departments at universities, the federal government will now mandate equity enforcement through agencies nationally with a goal “to advance an ambitious, whole-of-government approach to racial equity…and to continuously embed equity into all aspects of Federal decision-making.”

New York Times

Jesse Singal writes that “the specific type of diversity training that is currently in vogue — mandatory training that blames dominant groups for D.E.I. problems — may well have a net negative effect on the outcomes managers claim to care about… And they’re generating exactly the sort of backlash that research predicts.”

by Yeonmi Park

“The North Korean defector, human rights advocate, and bestselling author of In Order to Live sounds the alarm on the culture wars, identity politics, and authoritarian tendencies tearing America apart…the bestselling author and human rights activist reminds us of the fragility of freedom, and what we must do to preserve it.”

By FAIR Advisor Tim Urban (AB 04)

FAIR Advisor and Harvard Alum Tim Urban (AB04) releases a self-help book for the entire society. “The book introduces a new framework for thinking about our complex political environment. With dozens of new terms and concepts and 303 drawings, it’s a toolbox for understanding our societies, our group dynamics, and our own minds.”