Let’s take a look at how the Republican war on speech and academic freedom is going. While conservative attacks on universities are nothing new, the recent success they’ve had in using the levers of state power is relatively new. The most recent skirmish took place in Indiana, but they are by no means alone in their attempts to turn their public universities into conservative mouthpieces.
On Thursday, Reagan-appointed federal judge Sarah Evans Barker of Indiana dismissed a lawsuit filed by four professors from Indiana who want to prevent the state from enforcing its “intellectual diversity” law. The Lawwhich came into force on July 1, requires public universities to grant, review and deny tenure on the basis, among other things, of whether the professor promotes “a culture of free research, free expression and intellectual diversity” and whether he or she confronts students with a “diversity of political or ideological frameworks”.
If that sounds vague and bad, that’s because it is. The bill was pushed by conservatives who believe that conservative students and views are discriminated against in higher education.
The use of the term “intellectual diversity” is a clue. It’s a popular term for the right to complain that conservative views aren’t sufficiently promoted in higher education. It’s also the only kind of diversity that conservatives really like.
Indiana’s Law defined “intellectual diversity,” but does not explain what “free inquiry” and “free speech” mean. The very legitimate concerns of the professors who have spoken out against the law are twofold. First, “intellectual diversity” is defined as whether the professor presents “diverse, divergent, and different scholarly perspectives on a broad range of policy issues.”
One of the professors who filed the lawsuit teaches about the Holocaust and explained that different perspectives in Holocaust research contain complete denial or revision of the Holocaust. Another teaches about slavery, and dissenting academic works on the institution of slavery contains the idea that slavery benefited black people. By law, these professors would have to teach these debunked and dangerous ideas to demonstrate their commitment to “intellectual diversity.”
The lack of a definition of the other term creates another problem. If no one knows what “free inquiry” or “free speech” means under this law, no one knows how to avoid running afoul of it. Laws like this are unconstitutionally vague and suppress speech because people start to censor themselves.
In dismissing Judge Barker found the lawsuit premature, but said no harm had yet been done to the professors because the policies that universities would have to adopt based on that vague language did not yet exist. So Indiana professors begin the school year with a law that applies to them and could cause them significant professional disadvantages, but with no guidance on how to avoid it.
These professors got an insight into what Indiana means by free will when Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita argues their case. He was of the opinion that it should be dismissed because the statements made by university professors were actually government speeches and the university could therefore control what they said.
This claim contradicts every existing court decision on the academic freedom of professors. These are decisions that completed routinely that the First Amendment to the Constitution protects freedom of expression at public universities when that expression is related to teaching or scholarship.
Rokita is not alone in coming up with this idea—Florida has been using this argument for some time to support its own version of Indiana’s law. In June, an attorney representing the state told A federal appeals court ruled: “In the classroom, the professor’s speech is the government’s speech, and the government can restrict professors’ content and prohibit them from expressing opposing views.”
Florida offers a valuable glimpse into what will happen when conservatives seize control of public universities. There, Governor Ron DeSantis has made the war on higher education a priority. Give up control of New College, a small public liberal arts college, to anti-education freaks like Christopher RufoOn Tuesday, New College Hundreds of books in a garbage container when the Gender and Diversity Center was emptied. The school abolished Gender studies last year.
In the meantime, Ohio is pouring millions of taxpayer dollars into its “Centers for intellectual diversity” is now required by law at several state universities. Lest anyone wonder whether these are anything but conservative, taxpayer-funded complaint centers, Ohio State University has just Lee Strang to direct the newly opened Salmon P. Chase Center for Civics, Culture and Society.
Strang, former law professor at the University of Toledo, conveniently helped drafting the law requiring centers for intellectual diversity is a prominent Anti-abortionists who believes in the personhood of the fetus. He boasts that the center will help people “thrive as citizens in our pluralistic republic.” That’s a bitter pill to swallow considering he apparently believes that someone with a uterus is not a full citizen.
And speaking of abortion, Idaho believes so much in the marketplace of ideas at public universities that it a law in 2021, which prohibits public universities from using taxpayer money to “promote abortion, counsel for abortion, recommend abortion.” Several university professors sued against the law, but their lawsuit was thrown out earlier this year for similar reasons as in Indiana – that no harm had been done to them so far.
The Attorney General the court announced that the professors would not be prosecuted for teaching and doing research on abortion. That’s great, but it still leaves everyone else vulnerable to a law that doesn’t even define what it means to support or advocate abortion in the first place.
In Texas, criticism of the lieutenant governor can lead professors to examined and officially reprimanded. This happened to opioid expert and Texas A&M professor Joy Alonzo after she gave a speech commenting on Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick’s handling of the opioid crisis.
Not surprisingly, Patrick is also at the forefront of Texas’ attempt to Abolish term of officewhich is another way red states try to control public universities. North Dakota conservatives failed to end the tenure of most community college professors in their last legislative session, but they are preparing another attempt. If they succeed, they will join In Iowa, Montana, Nebraska, South Dakota and Wisconsin, permanent employment of community college professors is already restricted.
Over the past decade, complete bans on leasing have been proposed in Oklahoma, Iowa, Mississippi, Missouri, South Carolina and West Virginia. current study found that when Republicans controlled the state legislature and the governorship, the likelihood of a bill banning term limits being introduced almost five times larger than in other states.
The Conservatives will continue to do so because their war on higher education is part of their general war on modernisation and multiculturalism. They are angry that they are losing in the marketplace of ideas and they will continue to attack their own universities until they collapse under the strain.
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