Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (Dozens of recent references to cases where courts struck down speech “zones,” or where universities were forced to change their speech zone policies, including University of Cincinnati, Clemson, Dartmouth, Valdosta State, West Florida, Nassau Community College, Texas Tech, Oregon community college, Emory, Indiana University, Emory, Vanderbilt, UNC Greensboro, University of Central Florida, West Virginia University, Appalachian State University… and many, many more).
STUDENT MEDIA AND PRIOR RESTRAINT OF EDITORIAL CONTENT
Hosty v. Carter 412 F.3d 731 (7th Cir. 2005) was an application of the Hazelwood decision to the college press in the Seventh District. The Supreme Court refused cert in 2006, leaving the question of the independence of student publications somewhat up in the air.
Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier 484 U.S. 260 (1988) was the case in which the Supreme Court struck denied that high school students had First Amendment rights.
Rose v. Koch, 1966, was a Minnesota state libel case described in Arnold M. Rose, Libel and Academic Freedom, University of Minnesota Press, 1968. The case was brought, unsuccessfully, by the author who was then a professor at the University of Minnesota and who was falsely labelled a communist by right-wing extremists.
A series of so-called ‘Academic freedom’ bills introduced between 2004 – 2008 to require ideological balancing in universities was not, in effect, a movement to enhance academic freedom. Instead, the idea was to apply a litmus test of ideology to faculty and then determine the appropriate balance of the numbers of faculty within a university, with the apparent intent of dismissing those who did not meet certain ideological criteria. The bills were unworkable in practice and Constitutionally unprincipled.
Trustees should push universities to the right According to Bruce Chapman writing for the Discovery Institute, American universities are dominated by left-wing academics who don’t teach the arguments against global warming or in favor of creationism and neo-Darwinism. Chapman says: “Since the Left now dominates the faculties of almost all universities and the faculties have a domineering attitude towards the Administrations of those schools, outsiders like the American Council of Trustees and Alumni that want to see trustees take up the responsibilities that are legally entrusted to them (that is why they are called “trustees,” right?), must be stonewalled, and then anathematized.”
Organizations engaged in First Amendment and Higher Education issues
Arnold M. Rose, Libel and Academic Freedom, University of Minnesota Press, 1968. Argues that private individuals should not be subject to extremist political harassment. This argument is recognized in the 1973 Gertz v. Welsh case which separates public and private figures and makes libel suits much more difficult to defend when private people (such as lawyers or others) who have avoided the public arena are attacked as public figures.
