How to Fix the Bias Against Free Speech on Campus
A recent investigation of eight abortion-rights supporters at American University, in Washington, D.C., offers yet more evidence that college administrators and diversity-and-inclusion bureaucrats—some of whom undermine free speech as if their job duties demanded it—need new checks on their power.
This matter began in May, shortly after the Supreme Court’s draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization leaked, prompting numerous law students at American to join an online chat about the impending diminution of abortion rights. One student fretted about whether conservatives would overturn other precedents conferring rights to buy contraception, or to marry a partner of the same sex or of a different race. “What are they going to go after next?” the student wrote. “Griswold? Obergefell? Loving?”
A classmate replied, “As a Republican, I find it insulting that conservatives would be thought of as overturning people’s civil rights.” After another classmate interjected, “Can we shut the fuck up about personal opinions while people process this?” the Republican student responded. “I find it interesting how the call to silence our personal opinions happens after I defended my deeply-held religious beliefs and yet nobody has mentioned that same sentiment about the pro-abortion posts.” The discussion was
