Various Sources

Chaired by the Harvard Corporation’s senior fellow Penny Pritzker (‘81), the presidential search committee has been announced and the process is underway. On behalf of the search committee, Pritzker sent a letter asking for members of the Harvard community to provide their input, explaining that responses “will be an essential means for the search committee to develop an increasingly robust and nuanced picture of Harvard, its current trajectory, and its future aspirations.”

Crimson

The Crimson covers the proposed Title IX regulations, including “mixed reviews from higher education experts.” Most notably, Title IX attorney Miltenberg warns that the regulations will only “further erode the ability of an accused to fairly and equitably defend themselves from allegations that are often life altering.” HLS professor emeritus Elizabeth Bartholet “raised similar concerns that the proposal would diminish the rights of the accused.”

Chronicle of Higher Ed

PEN America CEO and Harvard alum, Suzanne Nossel (AB 91, JD 96), explains that “Professors with unpopular views are being punished for unrelated infractions. That’s terrifying… Proxy reprisals are familiar to those who study free speech worldwide. Authoritarians use them to imperil not just academic appointments but fundamental freedoms…reprisals for expression muzzle not only an individual speaker, but all others who might contemplate saying something unorthodox.”

Joseph Manson

A tenured professor in the UCLA Anthropology Department explains why he’s retiring—”the Woke takeover of higher education has ruined academic life… U.S. higher education is morally and intellectually corrupt, beyond the possibility of self-repair...” He goes on to recount the “public torment and humiliation of one of my colleagues” by “practitioners of ‘critical’ (i.e. far-left postmodernist) anthropology.”

GW Law Alumni Open Letter

In an open letter, George Washington Law School alumni express disdain for Supreme Court Justice Thomas’ “acts, omissions and opinions,” including “brazen political influence at the expense of sound legal reasoning” and ask GW Law to terminate Justice Thomas’ position as a GW Law professor. Alumni who sign commit to withholding their financial contributions to GW Law until Justice Thomas is fired.

Chronicle of Higher Ed

A University of Chicago professor of classics and history is the latest voice raising alarms around the firing of tenured Princeton professor Joshua Katz, arguing that it portends the death of tenure and academic freedom. “Tenure ends when the president of the university ‘personally’ finds you not to have exercised your right to free speech ‘responsibly.’”

Quillette

Harvard professor/alum and FAIR Advisor Steven Pinker (PHD 79) and Harvard alumnus and FIRE co-founder Harvey Silverglate (LLB 67) transcribe an “uncannily prescient” lecture given by Carl Sagan. “Sagan spoke prophetically of the irrationality that plagued public discourse…and the threats to free speech and democracy… Most importantly, he highlighted the virtues common to science and civil liberties that are needed to deal with these challenges: freedom of speech, skepticism, constraints on authority, openness to opposing arguments, and an acknowledgment of one’s own fallibility.”

Quillette

“It's a serious problem when payment processors like @PayPal become political. If this happened to a biologist…for calmly arguing for the reality of biological sex, it can happen to anyone.” In this piece, Colin Wright documents his removal from Etsy and PayPal—”And the kicker is that PayPal evidently has no intention of giving me back my own funds anytime soon.”

Unherd

In this excellent piece, Tomiwa Owolade argues that efforts to “decolonize” curriculum are patronizing. It is “based on the assumption that black students resonate most with poetry written by black poets. That is nonsense… Race is not the only thing that defines the life and experiences of a person; I used to think only avowed racists believed it does…This is not inclusion; it is division.”

Conversations with Coleman

In this episode, Coleman Hughes and Winston Marshall discuss Winston's time with Mumford & Sons, the influence of Jordan Peterson on Winston’s thinking and songwriting, cancel culture in the music industry in Hollywood, reparations for slavery, the differences between America and the UK, and much more.

FAIR Substack

Documentary filmmaker Meg Smaker has teamed up with FAIR in the Arts to defend freedom of expression after attempted cancelations of her Sundance-featured film, Jihad Rehab, “the story of several former Guantanamo Bay detainees as they navigate their lives at the world’s first rehabilitation center for Islamist extremists.” As FAIR documents, “Much of the initial criticism of the film centered on it being directed by a ‘white’ non-Muslim woman.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali Podcast

An excellent conversation with FAIR Advisors Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Kmele Foster. They discuss family, discrimination, and individualism. They talk about the significant influence of Milton Friedman on Foster’s thinking and political activism—most notably, Friedman’s book, Capitalism and Freedom. They discuss the vital importance of dignity and self-worth as well as the American experiment and how America gave rise to the global abolitionist movement. They also discuss whether we have forgotten what a positive male role model looks like, and the importance of such role models.

Honestly

Bari Weiss and former CIA director and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo engage in a wide-ranging conversation. Their discussion about China’s influence on American universities is of most interest as a bipartisan issue inextricable from concerns around academic freedom and foreign influence. “Our colleges and universities are deeply dependent on the Chinese Communist Party,” Pompeo says. “They have enormous influence because of the resources they’re providing.”

Four decades after Thomas Sowell organized the Black Alternatives Conference (later known as “The Fairmont Conference”), Glenn Loury, Jason Riley, Ian Rowe and Shelby Steele organized a conference to explore alternative solutions to the economic and social advancement of black Americans. Speakers and panelists included numerous FAIR advisors, Harvard professor Roland Fryer, and other thought leaders. The inspirational calls for courage and change give new urgency to the work ahead.

NBC Think

An insightful read for those who want to understand how the racist attacks against Clarence Thomas only serve to validate his beliefs. “The reactions… [are] a clear vindication of Black nationalists’ longstanding suspicion that…many self-described ‘allies’ are themselves deeply racist and simply use the Black cause as a convenient vehicle for shoring up their own power and influence.”

City Journal

Wai Wah Chin argues that “inflated grades and lowered standards, often in the name of ‘equity,’ are destroying educational excellence from kindergarten through college.”

New York Times

FAIR Advisor John McWhorter recommends “three books about the Black experience… Each enriches (or will) an understanding of our moment and our ongoing discussions about race in America.” Two of the three have Harvard affiliations—The Oxford Dictionary of African American English, edited by Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., and Agency by FAIR Advisor and Harvard alum Ian Rowe (MBA ‘93). The third is American Skin: Pop Culture, Big Business and the End of White America by journalist Leon Wynter.

LA Review of Books

In this long-form piece, Stephen Rohde reviews The Mind of the Censor and the Eye of the Beholder: The First Amendment and the Censor’s Dilemma by Robert Corn-Revere, a book that covers the lives and work of American advocates of censorship. “Corn-Revere ends…[by] expressing genuine concern that today one of the most serious threats of censorship is not coming from conservative bluenoses but from progressive academics, whom he sees as part of a new anti-free-speech movement.”