Aw man! U. of Vermont comes close, but no cigar on its protected and unprotected speech graphic. Kudos for recognizing that “hateful speech” and “offensive speech” are protected under the 1st Amendment. But encouraging students to “report” that speech anyway is a bad idea and still chills speech. Think it through: 1. Nobody agrees what speech is hateful or offensive, and some people are more sensitive than others, which is the classic problem. Here’s the “common ground value” UVM cites: “we unite against all forms of injustice, including, but not limited to, racism. We reject bigotry, oppression, degradation, and harassment.” To what degree, and on what topics? With no guidance, there’s only one answer - a viewpoint (un)popularity contest. And guidance that satisfies everyone is impossible. 2. Imagine a Ukrainian student says something offensive about Russians in light of the ongoing war. Is a Vermont admin really going to pull them in, sit them down, and tell them they need to cool off? How about a student wearing a “Punch a Nazi” shirt? That’s either not going to happen, in which case UVM's doing viewpoint discrimination in disguise, or it is going to happen, and UVM will be forced into increasingly foolish situations that make everyone look dumb. ("Look, I know Russia bombed your city to the ground and killed your family, but that's no reason to say mean stuff about Russians!") 3. Students will feel duped and betrayed when UVM’s bias response folks turn out not to be able to “solve” what they feel, rightly or wrongly, is a problem, especially when UVM says some speech is against its values. If you report something to the authorities, you expect something to be done about it. And if you have a “value,” people expect you to stick with it. On this one, UVM can’t actually do either. Far better not to send students these mixed messages.

This whole thing is ridiculous. You are telling me Cornell had to specifically ban skinning animals in dorms? That there were no general rules that this violated? If these guys kept it so clean that they were within the rules, there’s no reason to ban it!

Everyone should read @Tyler_A_Harper’s extraordinary Atlantic cover story, “Confessions of a Token Black Professor.” It is one of the best accounts yet of how bad American campuses became between roughly 2015 and 2025, peaking from 2020 to 2023. It was a disaster for academic freedom, free speech, and higher education’s credibility. It also helped destroy trust in shared facts, because people stopped believing that our supposed referees would scrutinize claims that fit their own ideology as aggressively as claims from the other side. Now there is a concerted effort to pretend either that none of this happened, or that it was merely a strange youthful indiscretion we can laugh off, much as people tried to do with the first great age of political correctness. We must not let them wish it away. If you experienced the quasi-religious groupthink that overtook institutions supposedly devoted to inquiry, write about it. Record what happened, what people were afraid to say, and why. Otherwise, this period will be rewritten by many of the same people who defended the status quo while casting themselves as brave underdogs. Looking at you, @rottenindenmark, among others. Doing PR work for a $1 trillion industry is not exactly fighting for social justice. I also have always seen this through a class lens. Elite higher education is a gigantic industry that disproportionately benefits people who are already well-off. Yes, people like me can get through it and have our lives transformed. But we are a small part of the story. There is an older intellectual history here. Thinkers such as Herbert Marcuse confronted a frustrating problem: the working class often failed to behave as intellectuals expected and an awful lot of working people hated intellectuals. Ordinary Americans liked their country, distrusted elites, and seemed perfectly capable of living without philosopher-kings directing them. The solution was an newideology that allowed highly educated elites to regard working-class people with contempt while still seeing themselves as champions of the oppressed. That became academia’s problem when universities built departments, bureaucracies, hiring systems, and professional cultures that treated deeply contestable political doctrines as moral dogma. You can see the results throughout Tyler’s story: classism, utter contempt for locals, exaggerated self-importance, ordinary disputes transformed into battles of good and evil, and politicized administrators remarkably skilled at weaponizing elite ideology against their own institutions. Tyler’s piece is both testimony and warning. There are excellent university presidents trying to right the ship, but too many faculty organizations and professional associations still seem to believe the ideology was never the problem—it simply wasn’t imposed consistently enough. We need to document what happened and build institutions less vulnerable to another episode like it. Because this was never some weird, isolated campus disaster. It spread into journalism, science, philanthropy, corporations, K–12 education, government, and politics. It damaged the credibility of the institutions we depend on to tell us what is true. A society that loses faith in its knowledge-producing institutions eventually loses something more important than the reputation of its universities: its ability to see the world as it is.

Some of my friends on the right would let U Washington off the hook WAY too easily, defending the disinvitation. Piker is a toxic nut. Dems - even the Social Dems - are running from him. But U Wash invited him when he was a rising progressive star. Make them smoke the whole pack. You don't get to walk away from this now. You invited the speaker. Enjoy the ride.

Folks, hate speech laws mean your society has decided free people must live by the norms of those in charge. It’s anti-democratic, anti-intellectual, and always enforced on the basis of politics. We should be thankful the First Amendment prohibits them—and fight those who try to circumvent that protection.

That’s why viewpoint diversity is central to @theFIREorg’s identity. We do not merely preach it. We practice it because intellectual seriousness requires people who challenge assumptions, test conclusions, and correct mistakes. My latest for ERI 👇

In Stargate SG1, Earth faced an existential threat in 37 episodes. For humanity to never fail 37 times in a row is a 1 in 57 trillion probability, meaning our Earth is likely the only one left unconquered by the Goa'uld.