Monthly Archives: May 2023

A bill that seeks to address conservatives concerns about what they say is a lack of free speech on college campuses has passed the Ohio Senate. Supporters say the bill will ensure theres intellectual diversity, especially around controversial issues that are identified in the measure. Opponents say its an assault on academic freedom.

The bill was voted out of committee just a few hours earlier, as protestors with black tape over their mouths sat silent in the hearing room.

The bill's sponsor, Sen. Jerry Cirino (R-Kirtland), said Senate Bill 83 will change the direction of higher education in Ohio.

If we do not act now, I fear we will continue down the path of servitude to a woke agenda from which there may be no return," Cirino said in arguing for the bill on the Senate floor.

The bill has sparked protests and drew more than 500 people to submit or sign-up to give testimony most of it against the bill in a hearing that went for more than seven hours last month. Cirino noted the stir the bill has caused and said, "This bill isn't even law yet but it's already served as an agent of change."

The bill bans most mandatory diversity, equity and inclusion training except when related to accreditation, licensing and grants. It prohibits faculty strikes and ideological "litmus tests" in hiring and admissions. It bans universities from taking public positions on controversial topics, though they can lobby lawmakers on issues. It clarifies that the ban on financial partnerships with China doesnt include tuition from Chinese students. And it says no topics are banned, but faculty must allow intellectual diversity to be expressed on specific "controversial issues identified as "climate policies, electoral politics, foreign policy, diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, immigration policy, marriage, or abortion."

Republicans have been supportive of the bill. Sen. Rob McColley (R-Napoleon) cited a study from a conservative academic journal that showed the ranks of self-identified liberal-leaning faculty are growing while conservative-leaning faculty numbers are shrinking. McColley said the bill re-centers free speech on students over faculty and creates a non-biased environment, saying "the classroom is becoming forum for the political weaponization by the left."

But Democrats are outraged. Sen. Bill DeMora (D-Columbus) said Senate Bill 83 will stifle free speech, hurt diversity, and drive away good professors and students to other states. He said it's also "an assault on workers' rights" because it bans faculty and workers from striking. And DeMora recalled the last law that made big changes to collective bargaining for public employees Senate Bill 5 was overwhelmingly overturned by voters in 2011.

Minority Leader Nickie Antonio (D-Lakewood) said there haven't been many "culture war" bills in the Senate, but "this bill brings that to an end." She noted one required reading in the bill is "Letter from Birmingham Jail" by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., but said the bill prohibits professors from talking about racism and why he was in jail in the first place. And Antonio said shes heard conservatives embrace the free market, "but yet the General Assembly would come in and micromanage higher education to this level?

Three Republican senators joined all seven Democrats in voting against the bill: Bill Blessing (R-Colerain Township), Nathan Manning (R-North Ridgeville) and Michele Reynolds (R-Canal Winchester). It now goes to the Republican-dominated House.

A similar measure, House Bill 151, has been proposed by Reps. Steve Demetriou (R-Bainbridge Township) and Josh Williams (R-Oregon). Its nine co-sponsors are some of the most conservative Republicans in the House.

The rest is here:
Republican bill regarding 'free speech' on college campuses passes ... - The Statehouse News Bureau

To the Editor:

In its May 2 article entitled A decade later: a split legacy for Eisgruber, the Daily Princetonian erred in saying that Edward Yingling 70 and Stuart Taylor 70, co-founders of Princetonians for Free Speech (PFS) argued that Eisgrubers decision to fire then-professor Joshua Katz would destroy Princetons acclaimed free speech rule making the free speech rule one that would protect only a small subset of the speech that the rules language and intent clearly do protect.

In fact, this was a Yingling-Taylor criticism not of President Eisgruber, but of a December 7, 2021 letter-ruling by Vice Provost for Institutional Equity and Diversity Michele Minter, which removes Rule 1.1.3s protection from almost all instances of harassment for speech. Minter, in consultation with then-Vice President for Human Resources Lianne Sullivan-Crowley, found explicitly (and absurdly) that University harassment policy protects speakers like Katz from harassment or abuse only if it is based on a protected characteristic of the speaker (such as race, creed, color, or sex) despite the fact that Rule 1.1.3 does not even contain the words protected characteristic.

Eisgruber left the Minter letter-ruling in place, saying nothing for months about mounting criticisms by national free speech groups and others, including PFS, of his administrations treatment of Katz including the portrayal of Katz as a racist by Princeton administrators both on a University website in a presentation called To Be Known and Heard and in the 2021 freshman orientation over an article that the latter wrote in July 2020, which very strongly criticized the Black Justice League. The Black Justice League was a group of students that was active on campus from around 2014 to 2016.

Then, on March 27, 2022, Professor of Politics Keith Whittington wrote Eisgruber a strongly worded open letter on behalf of the Academic Freedom Alliance, a diverse coalition of faculty members from across the country. Whittingtons letter said that professors should not have to anticipate that the university administration will place members of its faculty in the pillory as an object lesson for each class of entering students to learn where the boundaries of acceptable speech can be found. In Eisgrubers public response four days later, he stated that University staff members enjoy free speech rights along with other members of our community and refused the AFAs request that Princeton delete (censor) from its official website his subordinates use of University resources to smear Katz as racist.

The website was shown to the Class of 2025 during its mandatory orientation. The smears remain on the website, alongside this statement: President Eisgruber condemned the words used by Katz, stating, While free speech permits students and faculty to make arguments that are bold, provocative, or even offensive, we all have an obligation to exercise that right responsibly. Eisgruber said that in July 2020. He also admitted that Katzs words were protected by Princetons free speech rule. Katz has said publicly that Eisgruber knew then that the words used by Katz were accurate.

Eisgrubers response to Whittington, and his similar responses to criticisms by Professor of Mathematics Sergiu Klainerman and others, plus the never-revoked Minter letter-ruling, mean that the Eisgruber administration has quietly eviscerated the free speech rule that Eisgruber claims to support.

Edward Yingling 70 and Stuart Taylor, Jr. 70 are co-founders of Princetonians for Free Speech.

Link:
Letter to the Editor: Eisgruber's administration has quietly ... - The Daily Princetonian

Our newJournal of Free Speech Law is faculty-edited, but we'd love to have help from students with cite-checking. Our American law professor authors generally have their own research assistants do that, but some of our authors are from outside the U.S., and some are practitioners or professors in other fields; for them, we do offer cite-checking. We publish both electronically and in print, and we've already published many articles, with many more in the pipeline.

If you'd like to join our team of Production Editors (this is the title we give, on our site and in our print issues), please e-mail me at volokh@law.ucla.edu. In particular, we'll need several people who can work on several articles over the next few weeks.

As you might gather from the job description, one thing we need is attention to detail. If your mind just absorbs information from written text, and doesn't bother you by alerting you to typos in citations and quotes, then this will be a frustrating task for you. On the other hand, if errors just jump off the page at you as you read, you'd be perfect.

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Law Students: Interested in Helping With the Journal of Free Speech ... - Reason

Why has the Royal Society of Chemistry published a 37 page opinion piece entitled Academic free speech or right-wing grievance? in their new journal Digital Discovery?

Digital Discovery publishes theoretical and experimental research at the intersection of chemistry, materials science and biotechnology focusing on the development and application of machine learning. So it is a little surprising for them to publish a piece that argues that those who wish to have an honest debate about the limits around freedom of speech need to engage that conversation in a manner that avoids resonance with the language of White (heterosexual, cisgender male) supremacy, lest their arguments provide intellectual cover to those who would attack historically marginalised communities.

Why have they published an entirely derivative, factually inaccurate opinion piece, in a journal dedicated to an entirely unrelated topic

The article has nothing new to say about chemistry, but disappointingly it has little new to say about academic free speech either. The authors central argument that free speech should not mean freedom from consequences echoes a quotation often attributed to Idi Amin that there is freedom of speech, but I cannot guarantee freedom after speech. However, Amin is one of the few people not cited in the articles staggering 713 bibliographic references.

The author, Prof John Herbert, an ostensibly white male physical chemist at Ohio State University does not propose imprisoning those whose speech offends him. However, he does acknowledge that some of the protests directed at feminist academic Kathleen Stock might be characterised as harassment but then goes on to argue that a competing viewpoint is that one should not expect outspoken bigotry to be met with polite debate. Unfortunately, it seems that, despite the 37 pages in which to put his argument and the 713 references he had studied, Herbert was unable to include an actual quotation from Stock to justify any accusations of outspoken bigotry.

Herberts article would also have benefitted from some fact and sanity checking. He asserts that 18 states have banned transgender athletes from participating in youth sports, when one might think such a well-read researcher would know that all these states have done is bar males from participating in the female category. In all these states, transwomen enjoy the same sporting opportunities as other males. In his discussion of Stocks case, Herbert fails to mention UK anti-discrimination law which outlaws harassment on the basis of gender-critical belief, yet this is surely something the reader might want to bear in mind before petitioning universities to investigate scholarship that undermines trans identities.

So why have the Royal Society of Chemistry decided to publish an article about academic free speech and identity politics in a journal that one would expect to be dedicated to science?

A partial answer to this is that science does not exist in a vacuum. It is entirely proper for a science journal to contain the occasional opinion piece discussing political matters related to science. Identity politics is relevant to science because of equalities efforts to ensure that minority groups are properly treated in research and education. Moreover, the Royal Society of Chemistry made it essential for chemists to start discussing free speech by publishing controversial new guidance on offensive or inappropriate content in journal articles which banned anything that might reasonably offend someone on the basis of their religious or political beliefs.

So the question should not be why the Royal Society of Chemistry published an opinion piece. Instead, the question should be why they have published an entirely derivative, factually inaccurate opinion piece, in a journal dedicated to an entirely unrelated topic. Particularly so when the opinion piece is ten times the recommended length for opinion pieces in that journal and when the opinion piece might be understood as endorsing harassment.

This is where we finally get to some science. I hypothesized that the reason the Royal Society of Chemistry might publish such an article was that Herbert was already acquainted with the journals editor in chief Aln Aspuru-Guzik. To test my hypothesis, I searched for collaborations between the two. I discovered that they had co-authored an opinion piece for the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters entitled Words matter: On the debate over free speech, inclusivity, and academic excellence. This was consistent with my hypothesis.

Despite its manifold flaws, Herberts article does contain some valid observations. One is that we do not have as many female or black scientists in academia as we should. Scientists have a duty to investigate the causes of such disparities and to consider what steps we may need to take to remedy them.

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Herbert puts forward one possible explanation of such disparities. He notes that it is hard to hear the phrase merit-based hiring as anything but a dog-whistle whose real meaning is to encourage a process that protects existing power structures and sees such an approach to hiring as a form of ambient White supremacy.

However, I would like to put forward an alternative hypothesis: is it conceivable that the advantages accruing to white males in university science departments are not due to ambient White supremacy as such but simply good old-fashioned nepotism?

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What the Royal Society of Chemistry gets wrong about free speech - The Spectator

HYDE-SMITH, COTTON INTRODUCE BILL TO PROTECT FREE SPEECH ON COLLEGE CAMPUSES

WASHINGTON, D.C. U.S. Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.) on Wednesday joined forces with U.S. Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) in introducing legislation to protect the First Amendment rights of students at public universities from unconstitutional speech codes and so-called free speech zones.

The Campus Free Speech Restoration Act (S.1511), includes provisions to assure free speech rights at public and private nonreligious institutions, in addition to creating a U.S. Department of Education review process and legal cause of action in federal court.

Its baffling that so many Americans accept the fact that colleges and universities, including some of the most elite in the nation, willingly suppress free speech, Hyde-Smith said. Our First Amendment rights are at the foundation of what makes our democracy unique, and I fully support this measure to restore free speech rights on college campuses across the country.

Too many of Americas public colleges have attacked the First Amendment rights of their students using so-called free speech zones and unconstitutional speech codes. This bill fights back against campus censors in order to defend open debate and free speech, which lead us to truth, said Cotton.

Additional original cosponsors include Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and U.S. Senators Steve Daines (R-Mont.), Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), Mike Braun (R-Ind.), Katie Britt (R-Ala.), Rick Scott (R-Fla.), Ted Budd (R-N.C.), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), and Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) cosponsored the legislation.

S.1511 would:

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HYDE-SMITH, COTTON INTRODUCE BILL TO PROTECT FREE ... - Cindy Hyde-Smith

MADISON, Wis. (AP) The fight over racial equity and free speech on Wisconsin college campuses is intensifying, mirroring a national battle as Republicans work to close campus diversity offices and demand that students and faculty treat conservative speakers with respect.

In the past two weeks, the states top Republican announced a push to defund the University of Wisconsin Systems diversity efforts a move the Democratic governor lambasted as ridiculous. Nonetheless, the UW Systems chief announced Thursday that he has barred schools from asking job applicants how they would support diversity.

Meanwhile, a UW-Madison student has posted racial slurs online, triggering bitter protests but no announced discipline. And a state medical college canceled a diversity symposium featuring Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson out of concerns the discussion would be too disruptive, resulting in cries of bias from conservatives.

Amid that backdrop, Republican legislative leaders held a hearing Thursday with only invited speakers to discuss how the lack of free speech and intellectual diversity on college campuses affects the quality of higher education.

I think people are talking about viewpoint diversity as being as important or more important than other types of diversity, said Republican Rep. David Murphy, chairman of the state Assemblys colleges committee, who presided over the hearing. And I think (diversity efforts arent) showing any benefits.

Paulette Granberry Russell, president of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education, said its disheartening to see a hearing on free speech with only invited speakers. She said the GOP is trying to paint diversity offices as giving minorities an unfair advantage when theyre only trying to help everyone understand a broad range of perspectives.

Contrary to those opposed to these offices, our work includes protecting free speech, she said.

Republicans argue that diversity offices, designed to help minorities navigate academia, only heighten racial tensions. And the GOP has maintained for years that colleges dont give conservative presenters the same opportunities as liberals to speak on campus.

A survey released in February by the UW System, which includes 13 four-year schools, found almost half of the students who responded at least somewhat agree that administrators should bar controversial speakers if some students find the message offensive.

The issues have bubbled to the forefront this month, starting with Assembly Speaker Robin Vos announcement last week that he wants to defund campus diversity offices. He called the offices a waste of taxpayer dollars and said they exacerbate the racial divide.

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has called Vos proposal ridiculous, but Vos plan tracks with a national GOP push to dismantle campus diversity offices.

Republican lawmakers in at least a dozen states have proposed more than 30 diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in higher education, according to an analysis by The Associated Press using the bill-tracking software Plural. Some proposals would ban DEI offices or any funding for them. Others would forbid administrators from considering diversity as part of the hiring or admissions process.

Facing potential budget cuts, UW System President Jay Rothman announced Thursday morning that he ordered chancellors on Wednesday to stop asking job seekers to supply statements on their applications describing how they would support equity and diversity.

Asked during a news conference if the move was a concession to Vos, Rothman responded by saying applicants may view the requirement as a political litmus test and not apply, hurting recruitment efforts.

Last week a white UW-Madison student posted a racist screed online in which she said she wants to see some Black people enslaved so she can abuse them. The post triggered two days of protests on Wisconsins flagship campus with students demanding the student be expelled. University officials condemned the posting but said they cant take action against legal free speech.

Meanwhile, officials at the Medical College of Wisconsin decided to cancel Fridays campus symposium focusing on the uses and abuses of government-sponsored diversity programming on college campuses and in medical, science and tech education.

The colleges president, John Raymond Sr., sent a message May 4 to students and staff saying he canceled the symposium because discussions about the event have become unacceptably disruptive. Raymond issued the message on the same day as one of the UW-Madison protests.

Johnson was slated to take part in the symposium along Murphy and John Sailer, policy director at the National Association of Scholars, a conservative group that advocates against diversity policies. Sailer posted a copy of a letter that faculty sent to Raymond on April 30 saying they opposed the pseudo-academic and potentially harmful meeting.

Sailer tweeted that the letter was a textbook hecklers veto. Johnsons office said the symposium will now be held online but the senator said in a statement that he hopes to meet with medical college leaders to discuss why they felt they couldnt host the event.

Murphy kicked off Thursdays hearing by complaining that the medical college had canceled him.

Daniel Hughes, who said he is a student at the college, told the committee that the institution leans so far left that its diversity stances sometimes trump approaching problems scientifically. For example, he said hes been taught that biological differences between races are a result of systemic racism, not genetics.

Democratic state Rep. Katrina Shankland questioned Hughes claims, saying there was no way to verify them since no one else from the college was invited to speak. A spokeswoman for the medical college didnt immediately respond to a message seeking comment Thursday.

Rothman addressed the committee for two hours, repeating his mantra that inclusion must mean something or the system will lose potential students and faculty.

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Free speech, racial equity battles are playing out on Wisconsin ... - The Associated Press

In their coverage of Thursdays Faculty Senate debate around the presence of Rupert Murdoch and Rebekah Mercer on the Hoover Institutions Board of Overseers, The Stanford Daily and the Stanford Report offered a number of quotations from President Marc Tessier-Lavigne and Hoover Director Condoleezza Rice that form the basis of this essay.

Murdoch had been criticized for facilitating the spread of dangerous misinformation about the 2020 Presidential election. He had admitted as much under sworn deposition during the defamation lawsuit brought against Murdochs Fox News by Dominion Voting Machines.Mercer was criticized because her own media empire has promoted the dangerous Great Replacement Theory, a virulently antisemitic, white supremacist doctrine that holds that white people are being replaced by Jewish people and other racial groups. This theory has been evoked by various mass murderers in the manifestos. A resolution was presented that the association of Rebekah Mercer and Rupert Murdoch in all positions of responsibility or honor at Stanford University be terminated due to their promulgation of dangerous, racist, and antisemitic disinformation.

Although I have strong objections to Mercer, I have chosen to focus on Murdoch because his case allows us to adjudicate whether Stanford does or does not condone misinformation.Based on the test case presented yesterday, apparently it does, via this sleight of hand misinformation is welcomed at Stanford if it is framed as simply one viewpoint amongst many and protected as free speech. The repetition of exact phrases and terms leads one to believe that Tessier-Lavigne and Rice are reading from the same script:

President Marc Tessier-Lavigne urged the senate to vote against the resolution, calling it chilling and an imposition of institutional orthodoxy during the Faculty Senate meeting. (Daily)

The Senate just reaffirmed its commitment to [academic freedom], Tessier-Lavigne said, referencing apreviousfaculty senate meeting. For the senate to adopt this resolution would be to set itself up as a thought police. (Daily)

Tessier-Lavigne spoke against the motion, which he said in effect calls for the Senate to act as an institutional body to censor two overseers. Free expression of ideas is the lifeblood of the University and its essential to our research and teaching missions, he said. (SR)

The senates foundational statement of academic freedom holds that expression of the widest range of viewpoints should be encouraged free from institutional orthodoxy and from internal and or external coercion, [Hoover Director Condoleezza] Rice said. (Daily)

The University has been very clear that we are going to uphold not just academic freedom, but standards of freedom of speech, Rice added. And I would say that freedom of the press goes along with that. (SR)

The problem is, even if we frame this as a free speech issue, we find that free speech is not completely free. In Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), the Supreme Court established that speech advocating illegal conduct is protected under the First Amendment unless the speech is likely to incite imminent lawless action. Foxs repeated assertions that the election was stolen did in fact incite people to besiege the Capitol, violently attack those attempting to protect members of Congress and call for the murder of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and the lynching of Vice President Mike Pence.

Ben Smith, writing in The New York Times, reminds us of how Foxs campaign of misinformation did in fact incite imminent lawless action High profile Fox voices, with occasional exceptions, not onlyfedthe baseless belief that the election had been stolen, but theyhelped frameJan. 6 as a decisive day of reckoning, when their audiences dreams of overturning the election could be realized.

It is remarkable to me how quickly, easily and absolutely Tessier-Lavigne and Rice erase the fact that the speech they are so passionately attached to protecting is speech that incited an attack against the democratic process and an assault on the peaceful transfer of power, one of the signal points of pride our country celebrates. Foxs lies were relentlessly blasted out before, during and after the Insurrection, but as the comments quoted above indicate, for Tessier-Lavigne and Rice, Murdochs case is simply one of a point of view that has to be protected like any other one. When law professor Deborah Hensler expressed concern that Tessier-Lavignes statement seemed to indicate that seemingly anyone, no matter their views, should rightfully be considered a candidate for a university institutional leadership appointment, in the interest of assuring freedom of expression, Director Rice told her, You have been a problem this entire time.

Now what sort of speech is so precious that Tessier-Lavigne and Rice wish to protect Murdochs free speech right to broadcast them? Here are some examples of the kind of speech that Murdoch admitted he could have stopped, but did not:

[Lou] Dobbs: How important do you believe are the concerns being expressed in a number of states about the ability of these [Dominion Voting Systems] machines not to be hacked?

[Rudy] Giuliani: The machines can be hacked. Theres no question about that. Their machines can be hacked. But its far worse than that, Lou. Dominion is a company that is owned by another company called Smartmatic It was formed really by three Venezuelans who were very close to the dictator Chavez of Venezuela and it was formed in order to fix elections.

[Sidney] Powell: The money creating [Dominion] came out of Venezuela and Cuba It is one huge, huge criminal conspiracy that should be investigated by military intelligence.

[Jeanine] Pirro: Yes, and hopefully the Department of Justice, but who knows anymore.

As NPR points out, the Dominion lawsuit disclosed texts from each of these news anchors showing that they knew what they were saying were lies.

Astonishingly, in their rush to protect Murdoch, why do Tessier-Lavigne and Rice not pause to consider the protection due to the victims of the violence Fox helped incite through its reckless and self-serving spreading of misinformation? Here is part of the testimony of US Capitol Police Sgt. Aquilino Gonell:

My fellow officers and I were punched, pushed, kicked, shoved, sprayed with chemical irritants and even blinded with eye-damaging lasers by a violent mob who apparently saw us law enforcement officers, dedicated to ironically protecting them as U.S. citizens, as an impediment in their attempted insurrection, Gonell said.

In his opening statement, Gonell said that he could hear officers screaming in agony as the mob crushed them and that he heard specific threats on the lives of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and then-Vice President Mike Pence, who was presiding over the event to certify the presidential election in Bidens favor.

For the first time, I was more afraid to work at the Capitol than during my entire Army deployment to Iraq, he said. In Iraq, we expected armed violence, because we were in a war zone. But nothing in my experience in the Army, or as a law enforcement officer, prepared me for what we confronted on Jan. 6.

The Guardian reported that members of security details were so terrorized that many said goodbye to their loved ones:

The official said: The members of the VP detail at this time were starting to fear for their own lives. There was a lot of yelling. There were a lot of very personal calls over the radio, so it was disturbing. I dont like talking about it.

There were calls to say goodbye to family members, so on and so forth for whatever reason it was on the ground, the VP detail thought this was about to get very ugly.

Such terrified and panicked messages were relayed from the Capitol around the time Trump tweeted to his supporters a now infamous 2:24 p.m. message in which he did nothing to calm the riot.

It is beyond belief that anyone, much less the president of a university, would claim that what Rupert Murdoch did in facilitating Foxs attack on the truth should not only be condoned, but even protected by, of all things, his academic freedom. Yes, Tessier-Lavigne called critics of such reckless and dangerous misinformation, members of his own faculty, thought police because we are supposedly infringing upon Murdochs academic freedom, and Rice repeated the same charge.

I have made clear my feeling that academic freedom has been devastatingly cheapened and instrumentalized at Stanford, and this is exactly what Tessier-Lavigne and Rice are doing. As far as I know, Rupert Murdoch is not (yet) a member of our faculty. Protecting the dissemination of misinformation under the umbrella of academic freedom is a tremendously dangerous move to make if this were to be established as legitimate, it would exonerate anyone accused of any kind of research misconduct. Yet when faculty object to these violations of ethics we are accused of imposing an orthodoxy. Such an accusation is an affront to every decent person at Stanford University.

Why are we so anxious to maintain our relationship with Rupert Murdoch, whose actions stand in direct opposition to Stanfords supposed commitment to truthful information and to producing knowledge for the public good? Why should the public ever trust us if we harbor and protect Rupert Murdoch? What does this say about Stanford University?

Since neither the University president nor the provost nor the director of the Hoover Institution, all addressees of our faculty letter, have answered the question we posed why is Rupert Murdoch affiliated with Stanford? we are free to draw our own conclusions. Two reasons stand out money and connections. Put in that light, let there be no mistake, Stanford University and the Hoover Institution are accepting money derived from corporations that have made that money by, among other things, fueling the Insurrection with misinformation and pushing antisemitic hate.

That the president of our University and the director of an institution premised on, among other things, the protection of democracy from authoritarianism, should collaborate, using such shabby pretenses and threadbare evasions, to protect the worlds largest purveyor of misinformation as he uses his vast media network to pollute public discourse and threaten the democracy of the United States, is an insult to intelligence and morally appalling. This episode may well go down in not only the history of US higher education, but even in the history of our country, as a dark stain. Tessier-Lavignes and Rices cynical, instrumental and illogical use of concepts and values we hold dear free speech and academic freedom points to a cancer deep in our leadership that seems to be metastasizing daily.

And last but not least, their high-handed bullying of the faculty and personal vendettas against those who dare call out each and every one of these transgressions shows their utter contempt for those who use their free speech in ways that displease them.

I was chastised by Director Rice for mentioning the Jeffrey Epstein case at Harvard. I did so because I wanted to remind us of what a university president can be. Here is how I ended my comments at the Faculty Senate meeting:

On Sept. 13, 2019, Harvard President Lawrence Bacow issued a statement dissociating Harvard from Jeffrey Epstein. Even though the Epstein case is not perfectly similar to that of Rupert Murdoch and the Sacklers, one thing Bacow said strikes me as relevant today:

Jeffrey Epsteins crimes were repulsive and reprehensible. I profoundly regret Harvards past association with him. Conduct such as his has no place in our society. We act today in recognition of that fact Harvard is not perfect, but you have my commitment as president that we will always strive to be better.

At stake here is the question as to whether or not Stanford has the courage to, regardless of how some may characterize the action, declare that someone who knowingly allowed the spread of misinformation which presents massive public harm has no place in our society.

On behalf of over one hundred members of the faculty of Stanford University, I ask again, what value does Rupert Murdoch bring to Stanford that overrides the damage he has brought to our country?

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From the Community | When misinformation is free speech - The Stanford Daily

The video-sharing platform Rumble is expanding into podcasting with a deal to buy Callin, the San Francisco-based podcasting and live streaming platform. We believe the addition of Callins user-friendly app and post-production tools coupled with Rumbles substantial creator and user communities will create beneficial synergies, improving the experience of Rumbles creators and their fans, Rumble said in the announcement. It says the Callin team will continue to develop live streaming capabilities as a part of Rumble.

The addition of Callins talented team and the capabilities of its product signifies a major step in our journey to deliver greater value and tools to our creators, which will further enhance our user engagement, Rumbles Chairman and CEO Chris Pavlovski said in the joint announcement.

How much it is paying for Callin remains a work in progress, however, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Rumble told shareholders that it is an all-stock deal yet the company is still in the process of evaluating and determining the fair value of Callin.

Launched in 2021 by technology entrepreneur and investor David Sacks and Axel Ericsson, Callin bills itself as a social podcasting platform that is a mashup of live audio and podcasting. Callin offers listeners a live-stream audio listening experience to call in and ask questions similar to what they have done for decades on talk radio. Once the show is over, it becomes an on-demand podcast.

I am excited to expand Callins capabilities by joining forces with Rumble, a platform with significant size, influence, and reach. As an avid proponent of the creator economy and the free flow of ideas, said Sacks. It was my own experience with the All-In Podcast that gave me the idea for Callin: I discovered how much work goes into producing a show and wanted to radically simplify the experience. I teamed up with Axel to launch the first social podcasting platform, where users can easily stream, take questions, record, edit, publish, and share content with their audience.

Sacks is a former COO at PayPal and is also a co-founder and partner at Craft Ventures, which was one of the early investors in Callin alongside Sequoia Capital and Goldcrest Capital. Under the terms of the deal, Sacks is slated to join Rumbles board of directors in the second half of June.

We remain in the position to empower and welcome independent creators offering a world class experience and the best economic toolkit on the internet, Pavlovski said in a statement. This commitment is exemplified by the acquisition of Callin where an opportunity presented itself to greatly accelerate our product roadmap and enable us to build a world class live streaming experience.

Rumble has grown popular with conservative content producers, including Dan Bongino, during the past several years for its light touch approach to content moderation. Its expansion into audio comes as the number of conservative-targeted podcasts continues to grow.

Rumble had $17.6 million in revenue during the first quarter, a 336% increase compared to a year ago which it says was driven by more ad dollars and the addition of new content. Rumble says it had an estimated 10.8 billion minutes of video watched per month during the first quarter, and its hours of uploaded video on a year over year basis increased 82% to 11,181.

We continue to capture market share from traditional streaming service providers, and most importantly Rumble is becoming home for not only our creators, but also our audiences, best evident by the increase in consumption, Pavlovski said.

The rest is here:
Free Speech Video Platform Rumble Makes Its Move Into Audio With ... - Inside Radio

There they were, back again last weekend, a small crew of masked bigots who use a Highway 101 overpass in the small San Luis Obispo County town of Templeton as a stage to proselytize for white pride.

This time, there were four men instead of two, and their hateful messaging was even uglier. The Embrace White Pride banner first displayed on April 23 had some additions three Nordic runes described as hate symbols by the Anti-Defamation League.

Two of the men wore T-shirts emblazoned with The White Race in large lettering with Save European Identity in smaller print underneath, next to what looked like The North Face corporate logo. (Does The North Face know their brand has been co-opted by racists?)

One member of the group even gave the Nazi sieg heil salute to passing motorists, according to one of the observers who showed up on the bridge to counteract the message of hate.

Several men with masks hold up an Embrace white pride flag on the Vineyard Drive Highway 101 overpass on Saturday, May 13, 2023.

So what now?

How do we let these racists know they are not welcome?

A well-attended Rally Against Hate held on the Templeton overpass on May 10 obviously didnt faze them. Neither did the condemnations posted online and in the media.

Will calling them out, once again, only serve to give the attention they crave and provide more fodder for them to post on social media?

Or would ignoring them from here on out give the impression that were giving up and moving on?

At Tuesdays meeting of the San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors, Board Chairman John Peschong who attended the May 10 counter-protest said hes been working with Caltrans on a solution. He didnt elaborate because the item was not listed on the agenda, and a prolonged discussion risked violating the Brown Act, Californias open meeting law.

During the public comment portion of the meeting, however, several speakers pleaded with the board to do something to prevent the overpass from being used as a soapbox for hate.

I cried when I saw that sign, said North County resident Yvonne Baughman, in reference to the white pride banner. I cried for all the people and all the children this was really going to affect.

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Her husband, Tom Baughman, suggested enforcing a no loitering policy on the overpass which would essentially prohibit all gatherings there, including the MAGA displays that regularly take place there.

Yet banning displays on one overpass in Templeton if that were legally possible would most likely drive the haters to another overpass.

Then what?

Ban them from all overpasses in the county ... or the state?

While it is illegal in California to affix signs to an overpass, it is not a violation to hold signs, flags or banners, as the white supremacists were doing.

As terrible as the message is, the Constitution does allow them to stand there, Supervisor Peschong said during a break in the meeting.

Since Caltrans not the county controls the bridge, any change in policy would have to originate with the state.

And yes, it may have to apply to all overpasses in California not just to the ones where demonstrators congregate.

Thats a major undertaking, but Peschong said he isnt giving up. If state legislation is required, hell take that up with local lawmakers.

These vile messages really do hurt people, he said. You dont want people feeling that they (arent) safe in their own community.

Demonstrators walk to the Vineyard Drive Highway 101 overpass in Templeton for a rally on May 10, 2023, in response to a social media post showing two people holding an Embrace white pride banner there last week.

Could government argue that a ban on loitering on this particular overpass is needed to protect public safety?

It could try.

Theres no question that motorists take note of whats happening and many of them respond in a variety of ways honking, yelling, giving protesters the finger.

Yet theres no hard evidence of a threat to public safety. Political demonstrations on the overpass have never been reported as a contributing factor to a crash, according to CHP Public Information Officer Patrick Seebart.

There is a potential for violent interactions, however. Indeed, progressive activists were pepper-sprayed in September during a pro-democracy rally on the bridge, resulting in the arrest of an Arroyo Grande man.

That points to a need for monitoring by the Sheriffs Office, but not necessarily to a blanket ban on free speech.

So, again, how should we react?

There have been calls to out these masked cowards so they can be held accountable for fouling our county with their bile.

That could be one powerful deterrent, as cockroaches tend to scurry when you shine a light on them. Men like these deserve no safe harbor in decent society.

Another approach could be to put up a stand-against-hate billboard near the overpass as a show of support for those targeted by their hate campaign.

Meanwhile, the group that organized the Rally Against Hate is planning future events, and the Democratic Party is putting together a list of people willing to converge on the Templeton overpass to counter-protest whenever white supremacists show up.

We know this is likely not ending anytime soon, and we plan to continue countering their efforts, the group said. If youd like to be part of an email or text alert when these individuals are on the bridge, please let us know.

Thats a giant step, but heres another idea: Maybe the local Republican Party which has been noticeably silent about the sudden appearance of neo-Nazis could join in driving these Ku Klux Klan 2.0 wannabes from our midst. Same goes for the independents and the apolitical.

Because this isnt about politics.

This is about standing up for our community and telling racist haters that while they may have the right to wave their Nazi banners and salute like Brownshirts to passing motorists, they have no home here.

Their brand of hate has no place in San Luis Obispo County, and no place in California or our nation, either, because its downright un-American.

If we cant prevent them from putting their small-minded ignorance on public display, lets drown it in rainbow-colored messages of inclusivity and love.

We dont have to silence them to stop their hate.

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Neo-Nazis have arrived. Is it time to ban free speech on this California overpass? | Opinion - Yahoo News

Chico State speech pathology students gather for a photo at the annual Speech & Hearing Fair. Photo taken May 6th by Kaitlin Moore.

On May 6th, the Chico State Clinic for Communication Disorders hosted its annual Speech & Hearing Fair, where members of the public got the opportunity to receive free speech, hearing and language screenings. The event served people of all ages, and included food, games, and prizes as well.

For this event, we look at testing peoples speech and hearing. We also test cognition and language using screeners, so its really been an all-hitting event. We really want the community to come in if they have any sort of concerns, as this is a good place to do it, Chantel Bebee, a graduate student in the Speech Language Pathology, or SLP, program said.

The event has been hosted annually for over 20 years at Chico States Clinic for Communication Disorders, and is organized entirely by first year Masters students in the SLP program, who use this as an opportunity to give back to the community, raise awareness on speech and hearing health and also to grow in their own clinical experience.

It gives them an important experience, as theyre going to be practicing clinicians someday, Anita Anderson, one of the clinical supervisors for the SLP program at Chico State, and an alumni of the program, said. Here is a great place for these students to take what theyre learning and put it into practice.

The fair is hosted in May to help promote Better Hearing and Speech Month and bring greater awareness to speech and hearing care. Ivy Gomes, a final year graduate student in the SLP program, offered some helpful advice on maintaining good hearing and voice health.

With hearing, its important to watch the volume levels on what youre listening to, since you dont want anything at too high of a decibel level, she said. For your voice, watch for good vocal hygiene. Drink a lot of water and avoid coughing and clearing your throat as much as you can.

If you would like to learn more about what the Clinic for Communication Disorders offers to the community, please visit their website at http://www.csuchico.edu/cmsd/clinic.shtml or call 530-898-5871.

Kaitlin Moore can be reached at [emailprotected]

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Chico State's Speech Therapy Clinic hosts annual free Speech ... - The Orion