Department of Education Taps Free-Speech Warrior to Oversee … – LifeZette

In testimony on Capitol Hill this week, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos said the Department of Education will devolve power from the federal government to families, unleashing a new era of creativity in education.

But big changes may also be underway forthe departments stance on political correctness on college campuses in America, and the all-too-frequent trampling upon the free-speech rights of both students and professors, which has been going on for at least the past 25 years.

Adam Kissel, a free-speech advocate whos gone head-to-head with American universities over speech codes and denial of due-process rights and has almost always succeeded in getting them to back down has been appointed the agencys deputy assistant secretary for higher education programs.

Kissel now works for the Charles Koch Foundation, on grants to colleges and universities, but prior to this, he worked for FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, where he was one of the strongest and most active defenders of free speech on American college campuses.

At FIRE, Kissel shot off letters to college administrators nationwide, usuallyon behalf of particular students and professors who had been accused of some minor infraction, often involving expressing an unpopular view, and were being railroaded out of a job or kicked out of school.

In 2008, he wrote a letter to the head of the University of Oklahoma, David Boren, a former governor and United States senator, about the university's new rule that university employees couldn't support or oppose political candidates, and couldn't use the university email system to forward any political commentary or political humor.

"If what the university intended to do was to prevent state-university employees from creating the appearance that the university endorses a particular political candidate, it has wildly overshot," wrote Kissel in his letter. "While it is true that colleges are required because of their tax-exempt status or status as government agencies not to, for example, endorse a candidate, it is simply absurd to argue that any partisan political speech in which employees or students engage using their email accounts can be banned."

"Indeed, by placing such a blanket restriction on political speech, the University of Oklahoma is in clear violation of its legal obligation to uphold the First Amendment on campus. As a public university, Oklahoma is legally bound by the United States Constitution's guarantee of freedom of speech. Students and faculty at Oklahoma enjoy this right in full."

He ended the letter by requesting a response not later than "5:00 p.m. EDT on October 10, 2008."

The request for a response was therebecause FIRE doesn't just ask that universities abide by the Constitution: It holds them accountable by waging public-relations battles and taking universities to court when they persist in their violations of constitutional rights.

A Jewish professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, very nearly lost his job when two students, backed by the Anti-Defamation League and other pro-Israel groups, came after him for critical comments he made about Israel's assault on Gaza in 2009. He wrote in an article in Truthout in 2014 that it was a group of graduate students and Adam Kissel at FIRE who defended his right to free speech.

"On June 10, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Education (FIRE), a Pennsylvania-based nonprofit, had come to my defense in the name of First Amendment rights and academic freedom. One of their attorneys, Adam Kissel, wrote the chancellor warning him that if all charges against me were not dropped by 5 p.m. on June 24, his organization would launch a major media campaign and a lawsuit against the University of California. An hour or so before this deadline, the university chose to inform me of the decision, made six weeks earlier and kept secret, that the charges against me had already been dropped."

Kissel's writing, however, shows not just a rapid-fire response to free-speech violations on campuses, but a deep understanding of the level of thought control that has developed, and the ways in which students are pressured, under threat of expulsion and ruin, to comply.

"A female freshman arrives for her mandatory one-on-one session in her male RA's dorm room," Kissel wrote in a piece published on the FIRE website on October 30, 2008, entitled "Please Report to Your Resident Assistant to Discuss Your Sexual IdentityIt's Mandatory!"

"It is 8:00 p.m. Classes have been in session for about a week. The resident assistant hands her a questionnaire. He tells her it is 'a little questionnaire to help [you] and all the other residents relate to the curriculum.' He adds that they will 'go through every question together and discuss them.' He later reports that she 'looked a little uncomfortable.' When did you discover your sexual identity?" the questionnaire asks. 'That is none of your damn business,' she writes. 'When was a time you felt oppressed?' 'I am oppressed every day [because of my] feelings for the opera. Regularly [people] throw stones at me and jeer [at] me with cruel names. Unbearable adversity. But I will overcome, hear me, you rock-loving majority.'"

There is a story about the University of Delaware's dormitory diversity program, in which every single incoming freshman is forced to undergo Marxist-inspired questioning and thought-moderation.

The program, Kissel wrote, "crossed the line not just a little, but extensively and in many ways from education into unconscionably arrogant, invasive, and immoral thought reform. The moral and legal problems posed by the residence life education program were abundant and cut to the core of the most essential rights of a free people. What made the program so offensive was moral: its brazen disregard for autonomy, dignity, and individual conscience, and the sheer contempt it displayed for the university's students as well as the so-called dominant culture that made them so allegedly deficient."

As the new deputy assistant secretary for higher education programs at the Department of Education, Kissel will oversee a part of the agency that includes FLAS grants for foreign language study, Fulbright-Hays grants for study abroad, and numerous programs that serve black students, historically black colleges, Hispanic students, students who are veterans, and students with disabilities. It's unclear whether all of these programs will be continued, or whether some will be cut as the department reorganizes to accommodate the 13 percent cut in the president's budget. It's also unknown whether new initiatives will be started under Kissel to correct or prevent abuses on college campuses related to free speech and due process.

Kissel is slated to start hiswork at the department on Monday, June 19.

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Department of Education Taps Free-Speech Warrior to Oversee ... - LifeZette