Tag: speech

  • Supporting students and free speech on campus requires reform

    Supporting students and free speech on campus requires reform

    The recent polling on students’ views on free speech, published by HEPI, presents what looks like a confusing and muddled picture of students’ perspectives.

    On the one hand, today’s students appear more alert to the demands of safety and security than previous cohorts, with increased support for the use of content warnings, safe space policies, and a decent majority (63 per cent) who agree with the premise that protection from discrimination and ensuring the dignity of minorities can be more important than unlimited freedom of expression.

    On the other, the same cohort of students expresses support for a good number of principled free speech positions, with 70 per cent agreeing that universities should never limit free speech, and 52 per cent that education should “not be comfortable” because “universities are places of debate and challenging ideas.” There is also increased support for the proposition that “a lot of student societies are overly sensitive.”

    If you’re searching for coherence in students’ position then none of our collective mental models seems to apply – whether that’s a “woke” model (in the pejorative sense of snowflake students drawing equivalence of mild offence with grievous bodily harm), or from the classical liberal pro-free speech standpoint. These, we are forced to conclude, may not be the mental models current students are using in their understanding of navigating complex political territory.

    One of the characteristics of the free speech debate has been that a lot has been said about students, and the sort of environment they ought to be exposed to while on campus, but rather less attention has been paid to what students might want to say, or what purposes and values they attach to political debate and civic participation. The current political climate is, to put it mildly, grim as hell – raucous, accusatory, significantly short on empathy and compassion and, worst of all, not producing significant improvements in young people’s lives.

    Given that context, it might not be all that surprising that most students want at least one political party banned from campus – it was Reform topping the poll that caught the headlines last week, but I find more significant that only 18 per cent of students said that no political party should be banned from campus. Could it be that students don’t feel the parties have all that much to offer them?

    The winds are changing

    This is a deeply pertinent question for contemporary student leaders, who frequently find themselves in the cross-fire of these debates.

    Speaking to student leaders about free speech policy, particularly in the wake of the Office for Students’ intervention at the University of Sussex, there’s a growing challenge for institutions to confidently be a political actor on campus. And for students there is a real sense that their attitudes to politics at university are changing.

    On my regular briefing calls with student unions I run through the top ten things happening in policy that month, and recently there’s been a steady influx of questions about what happens when students get frustrated that there’s a new student society on campus that they ideologically disagree with.

    At one students’ union a group of Reform supporting students filed to be a registered SU society following the US election in 2024. Even if the Higher Education Freedom of Speech Act wasn’t around, the SU would still be required to register and ratify the society – the only difference now is it’s clearer they must follow the joint free speech code with the university. Students signed petitions and directed their anger at the SU for ratifying the society in the first place and any subsequent events held by ReformSoc were met with student protest (also protected under the terms of the new legislation).

    The protests centered around the events being a threat to safety on campus, fearing events would border on hate speech and that the SU no longer reflected or represented them. Students that protested likely support abstract principles of free speech, yet these don’t neatly map onto what they fear may be its results. The ratification and later protests did the rounds on social media and got the attention of the public at which point a rush of unpleasant comments and attacks headed towards the SU.

    In one sense all this is as it should be – the society was enabled to exist, those who wanted to protest did so – but it’s doubtful that much actual debate took place, or that many minds were changed. The SU leaders involved were left trying desperately to stick to the law, facilitate student political engagement, keep the peace, and protect themselves from increasingly vicious attacks for doing so.

    Statements and action about EDI, decolonisation or the recent trans ruling are wrapped up in a new sense of nervousness that will frustrate both ends of the student political spectrum, albeit in different ways. I did enjoy speaking to one team who told me the frustration from students about ReformSocs has led them to put on more EDI based events in the hope more students keep coming, find their safe spaces and recognise that the campus still represents them.

    Making it happen

    All this is contributing to a real tension when it comes to understanding how SUs can best support students and student leaders to become political actors, and agentive citizens. Both the toxicity of the current political environment and the regulations that are intended to try to lay down some principles to manage it, are difficult for student leaders to navigate.

    Now that the free speech legislation is in force, the next debate needs to be about how we get to a space where universities and SUs are agents of civic and political action which isn’t seen exclusively through the lens of “woke” or even the classical liberal position – but something more directly applicable to students’ lived experience of engaging with these tricky political issues.

    There needs to be a deeper understanding and discussion within the student movement, supported by institutions, of the importance of having a plurality of ideas on campus and recognition of the particularities of the current political moment. For university to be both a safe space and also a space to be challenged, the mode of challenge needs to be tailored to the issues and the context.

    In the conversations I’ve had there’s a willingness to try and convert the protest energy into political action, to push SUs to continue to be political agents and welcoming of debate, developing students’ civic identities. I’d love to see debates about free speech reframed as an exciting opportunity, something which already allows diverse student thought, often through student societies. But just sticking to the rules and principles won’t deliver this – we need to move the conversation to the practicalities of making this happen.

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  • Podcast: Free speech, Scottish budget, Mickey Mouse

    Podcast: Free speech, Scottish budget, Mickey Mouse

    This week on the podcast new polling suggests over a third of students think Reform UK should be banned from speaking on campus – a higher proportion than previous surveys found for the BNP or English Defence League. So what does this tell us about free speech in higher education?

    Plus Scotland’s budget settlement and legislative changes, and unpacking what “Mickey Mouse courses” really means.

    With Andy Long, Vice Chancellor at Northumbria University, Jess Lister, Director of Education at Public First, and Debbie McVitty, Editor at Wonkhe and presented by Mark Leach, Editor in Chief at Wonkhe.

    On the site

    41 per cent of Reform-voting undergraduates don’t think Reform should be allowed to speak on campus

    So you’ve been accused of harbouring “Mickey Mouse” courses at your institution… now what?

    Identifying “mickey mouse” courses

    Scottish Budget 2026 to 2027

    You can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, Spotify, Acast, Amazon Music, Deezer, RadioPublic, Podchaser, Castbox, Player FM, Stitcher, TuneIn, Luminary or via your favourite app with the RSS feed.

    Transcript (auto generated)

    It’s The Wonkhe Show. A third of students want Reform off campus. We’re talking about what’s really going on behind the data. It’s been a big week of fees and funding in Scotland and the Mickey Mouse row returns. But who’s really taking the mic? It’s all coming up.

    And it is obviously reasonable for people to question the value of university courses based on, for example, academic rigour, student outcomes, and broader societal value. But it’s not reasonable for them to arbitrarily decide on this based on no evidence. I’m afraid I see this article as really very lazy journalism.

    Welcome back to The Wonkhe Show, your weekly guide to this week’s higher education news, policy and analysis. I’m your host Mark Leach, and here to chew the fat over this week’s news, as usual, are three brilliant guests. In Newcastle, it’s Andy Long, Vice-Chancellor of Northumbria University. Andy, your highlight of the week, please.

    Thanks, Mark. Yesterday, we had a tour of our soon-to-be-opened North East Space Skills and Technology Centre. It’s going to be the home to some really exciting research and teaching on satellite and space science and technology, and we were accompanied by the North East Mayor, Kim McGuinness, who’s a great supporter of this initiative.

    Lovely. And with us is Jess, Director of Education at Public First. Jess, your highlight of the week, please.

    Hello, yes. Mine is a bit of a brag, I’m afraid. We launched our report this week on national numeracy. And usually when you launch a report, you’re looking for pick-up in The Times or The Telegraph, or one of the broadsheets. But I was delighted that for the first time, our report was discussed on This Morning, on the sofa. So there you go. A report launch first for me.

    Very good. And in North London is Demetri Onakés-Elizadebi. Your highlight of the week, please.

    Well, I had an excellent meeting of the Audit and Risk Committee of the organisation that I’m a trustee of, which is the National Institute of Teaching. It sounds terribly dull, but actually we had a very lively discussion about internal audit, and that was very much the highlight of my week. That’s pretty sad, but there it is.

    The Higher Education Policy Institute has conducted a third wave of polling of student views on free speech. The first of these waves was in 2016, around the time of Brexit. The second was in 2022, around the time of Covid. The latest was conducted in November and published this morning, and it’s trying to explore whether, as some commentators have suggested, the era of “woke” is over, in light of the election of Donald Trump and a supposed sea change in public views.

    What we see here is some really quite mixed results. There’s growth in the number of students who think universities are less tolerant of the expression of a free range of views. That’s up to 47 per cent, which is a little bit concerning. Fifty-two per cent think student societies are typically oversensitive. That tends towards the idea that students are coming away from what would be characterised as anti-free speech positions. But support for safe space policies and trigger warnings has grown over the same period, which points the other way.

    The eye-catching result that is all over the press this morning is that one third, about 35 per cent, think Reform UK should be banned from campus. Earlier waves polled on organisations like the EDL, BNP and UKIP, and around a quarter to a third of students in earlier waves expressed support for those organisations being banned from campus. Reform is obviously something a little bit different.

    DK has unpacked this on the site today, and one of the things he notes that is worth contextualising is that the number includes Reform-voting students, so there is something going on there. He also notes that only 18 per cent of students said that nobody should be banned from campus. There is clearly something going on here about students’ attitudes to political parties. There are loads of other questions in there about events, memorials and curriculum. One thing to take away is that a lot of students are in the “it depends” camp. There is more nuance here than it might look like at first blush.

    Yes, lots going on here. Just where to begin, because a lot of this looks quite contradictory on the face of it. For example, 41 per cent of Reform-voting students don’t think Reform should speak on campus. Is this about students in general and attitudes to politics, or is there a partisan thing going on here?

    One of the first things you learn when you start doing public opinion research is that people can comfortably hold competing views in their heads and not see the logical inconsistencies. This is a large sample of around a thousand students, done by a reputable polling company, and HEPI is a reputable outlet. It’s not possible to look at this and say the sample is wrong or the poll is wrong. What is interesting is thinking about what sits behind some of the questions.

    Take the headline that a third of students would ban Reform UK from campus. I’m interested in whether they want them banned, or whether they just do not want to listen to them. That has always been one of the tensions in free speech policy. You can have a right to lawful free speech on campus, but you do not have a right for anyone to turn up and listen to you, or to like you for your views. Sometimes all of this gets muddled up.

    It’s a really interesting finding. It’s going to wind up all the people who like to be wound up by these things. It should also cause everyone else to pause for reflection. This should not be dismissed. There is a conversation to have about what university leaders can do to break down polar opposites of views. “I do not mind free speech, I just do not want to hear from these people. I do not want to engage.” That is a substantive discussion.

    In terms of the polling, it would be interesting to follow this up. Polling shows what people think. It does not explain why. It would be useful to see more discussion about why students think parties should be banned from speaking, and what they mean by “banned” in this context.

    It makes me wonder whether students have a more nuanced view than this makes out. There is lots of support for safe spaces and content warnings. Does that suggest that this language of banning, and the binary debate that often dominates the free speech conversation, is not where they are in their heads?

    I think Jess captured it well. It may be about whether students want to ban things or whether they just do not want to hear them. Social media, and how people interact through it, colours expectations. In the past you might have expected to hear a range of views through different media. Now your social media channel can be largely focused on things you agree with, and you may be more reluctant to engage with those you do not.

    In the end, a proportion of the population will always want to ban things they do not like. Students may not be terribly different to the rest of the population. What we also know is that 18 to 24 year olds are far less likely to support Reform than, for example, the Green Party. A recent YouGov poll showed that 10 per cent of that age group supported Reform and 30 per cent supported the Greens. It’s interesting in this study that 7 per cent of people want to ban the Greens from speaking on campus. Put together, people often want to ban, or avoid hearing from, people they disagree with. If fewer young people support Reform, more of them want to see Reform banned, or just do not want to hear from them.

    It’s also interesting that in previous waves of this survey, parties asked about were more extreme than Reform. In 2016 and 2022, the survey asked about the BNP and the English Defence League, and similar older, defunct but still culturally present far right organisations. This year, if you put all the parties asked about on a left-to-right scale, Reform is the most extreme. It would be interesting to see whether the polling is showing that people do not want the most extreme parties to come to campus, or whether it is Reform specifically.

    What really matters is how universities respond to this. I see no evidence that they are banning speakers from different political parties. The only evidence I have is when we had hustings for the mayoral elections. Our students’ union organised those, all candidates were invited, and the Reform candidate decided not to come. They would have been welcome to come and put their case forward and answer questions from our students, but they did not want to.

    Student leaders are in a really interesting position here. I’m reminded of a conversation I had at the Festival of Education in November, around the time this polling was being conducted, with a student leader wrestling with her responsibilities around a Reform society on campus. Inevitably it was framed in free speech terms. The students who wanted to set up the society and invite speakers felt strongly about it, as did the students who felt it was inappropriate. As a student leader, she had to navigate that space. That nuance of how you listen to both camps, and what purpose political societies serve on campus in terms of civic engagement and political debate, is part of the picture.

    Mark asks about Reform’s deputy leader Richard Tice, who has jumped on the polling and called the findings appalling. He claims British universities have abandoned being centres of genuine learning, rigorous debate and intellectual challenge, instead becoming echo chambers of far left indoctrination run by activist academics. This is his long-held position already. It plays neatly into how he wants to talk about universities, and it frames the culture war quite starkly. There is a danger the nuance gets lost in the mainstream.

    Students having left-wing views should surprise nobody. That has been true for a long time. Richard Tice believing universities are far left indoctrination camps is also a long-held view. None of this is new. He did not use the “left-wing madrasas” line this time. What is interesting is the second paragraph of his statement, which arguably gives the sector an answer. He says universities bear responsibility for allowing this culture to fester. Universities do now bear responsibility for helping and encouraging as healthy a debate as possible on this topic. If I was a university vice-chancellor, I would be thinking about how to get better debates on campus. We are a long way out from an election, but this issue is going to bubble and bubble unless universities are seen to do something.

    This debate only ever interests the political elite. It is not usually a mass public opinion issue, but it acts like a barnacle on the sector’s reputation. The more work you see on how to have debate on campus, including with people you disagree with, the less weight these “echo chamber” attacks have. This also draws heavily from the US playbook. Under Trump, Republicans had universities in their sights and started stripping out grant funding, often using free speech as a rationale. You can see Reform dipping a toe in the water about something like that here in the UK, without really understanding the funding system they would be trying to reshape. They are pulling from what has happened in the US and trying to make it a UK-wide debate.

    There is also something about “woke” as a category. The origins of the term are about being attuned to social inequality and understanding how different groups can be marginalised, particularly around racial and ethnic marginalisation. But it has expanded and taken on a pejorative life of its own, used from a hostile ideological position towards universities. It would be odd if students themselves, who are not immersed in anti-woke discourse, were to treat a basket of positions around free speech as a coherent “woke” label. That coherence is often assumed by the people asking the questions or analysing the results, rather than by students themselves.

    In Wonkhe polling, there is also a link between a sense of freedom to speak on a personal level and being part of a marginalised group. We can too readily assume freedom of speech means freedom to attack left-wing positions. It can be as much about feeling safe, feeling part of a community, and understanding the purposes of speaking up as it is about entitlement to be exposed to controversial views. Now that the sector has been through the free speech debate, the legislation, the regulator, and the policies, there is a case for going back to students and asking what matters to them in taking part in a conversation, what the purpose is pedagogically, and what it does for development as a graduate and citizen in a complex political environment.

    Let’s see who’s important for us this week.

    Hi, I’m Shine Jackson, an employment partner at Mills & Reeve specialising in the sector. After months of parliamentary back and forth, the Employment Rights Act 2025 finally made it into the statute books just before Christmas, with wide-ranging implications for the sector. From new rules on unfair dismissal and zero-hours contracts, to tougher requirements on sexual harassment and major changes to industrial action, these reforms will have a real impact on how universities manage their people and risk. In my blog I’ve set out five things sector leaders need to know to prepare for these reforms, with a handy table of implementation dates.

    Now, Jess, it’s been a busy month in Scotland. Tell us what’s going on.

    It has. In Scotland we’ve seen the launch of a Future Framework for universities, a joint government and sector initiative to scope out the long-term needs of Scotland’s higher education system all the way to 2045. It’s worth noting this is not a full review. It’s more the start of an evaluation of the sector’s long-term financial sustainability, what it might need, and what Scotland’s economy might need. It is not a promise that anything in the current system is going to change. It is also a reminder that the Scottish system is much more reliant than the English system on direct government funding because students currently do not pay fees. So what the government decides its long-term settlement is going to be is key.

    We’ve seen indications the Scottish government is willing to provide some further support. There’s been an above-inflation increase in teaching and research budgets announced this week, perhaps in the hope of avoiding another Dundee-style incident. The final thing that’s interesting is that, similar to England and Wales, the Scottish government is now trying to scope out not just what a higher education funding strategy looks like, but a tertiary one too.

    Debbie responds that Scotland is already more “tertiary” than England in the sense of a post-16, post-18 offer across the system. There may be politics going on. Before Christmas the minister announced a plan to work with the university sector on the funding framework. Scotland’s universities face a genuine financial crisis, which is also a problem for the country. The framework plan may be designed to get under the skin of the issues and carry the conversation across the Scottish Parliament elections in the spring. The tertiary approach is also connected to the Tertiary Education Bill, and may reflect pressure from Scotland’s colleges that a higher education funding settlement implicates them too.

    Committing to a strategy is a step above annual budgets, and it signals a desire to link system sustainability to national goals. But there is always a risk that strategies keep the conversation going without real action. Funding higher education long term is difficult. The approach may be useful, but delivery remains uncertain.

    Andy notes that Scottish universities receive up to £2,000 a year less per home student than English universities do, and are even more reliant on international student income. There is also a relatively small group of Scottish universities that can do very well in international recruitment, meaning there is less to go around for others. England faces its own pressures, including undergraduate fees being flat for 11 of the last 13 years and recent reductions in international student numbers, but the challenge is greater in Scotland.

    Jess suggests that a joint government and sector review, without promises, could be a model for England closer to 2030. The question is whether it becomes a good conversation without political and funding heft behind it. Andy cites a London Economics statistic from a few years ago that in England students and graduates cover around 84 per cent of the total cost of higher education, with government funding around 16 per cent, and contrasts this with Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The rhetoric from politics recently has often suggested students should pay more, not less, which does not suggest a more generous settlement is imminent.

    There is also an acknowledgement that, despite everyone insisting the Scottish review is not just about fees, it inevitably is. The politics of “free education” remain a touchstone, particularly for the SNP, but there is a sense that without a clever political route to change, the funding crisis will continue. There are alternative models, such as salary-based graduate repayments, but implementing them is difficult. Scotland may choose to try something different.

    That’s about it for this week. Remember you can go in deep on anything we discussed today. You’ll find links in the show notes on wonkhe.com. Don’t forget to subscribe. Just search for The Wonkhe Show wherever you get your podcasts. If you want to get ahead of everything going on in UK higher education, hit subscriptions on the site to find out more. Thanks to Jess, Andy and Debbie, and to Michael Salmon for making it all happen behind the scenes. We’ll be back next week. Jim will be here. Until then, stay Wonkhe.

     

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  • Online speech is powerful. That’s why Iran is silencing it.

    Online speech is powerful. That’s why Iran is silencing it.

    This essay was originally published in The Washington Examiner on Jan. 14, 2026.

    If the Islamic Republic of Iran has its way, the news you read and the social media you follow won’t show the truth of the shocking events happening right now within the country. A mass internet shutdown orchestrated by the government this month is threatening to silence expression from courageous Iranians, at least 12,000 of whom are now dead at the brutal hands of the state, who are fighting back against their oppressors.

    Protesters took to the streets in late December 2025, furious over out-of-control inflation, empty shelves, and the country’s dire economic situation. Protesters’ outrage is not just limited to the economy, with widespread sentiment among demonstrators against the regime and its conduct more broadly. Some of the rhetoric echoes that from the 2022 protests against the theocratic government after the death of Mahsa Amini, arrested and then killed by police for violating the country’s mandatory religious dress code for women.

    Though censorship on the part of the government has made an exact analysis of the breadth and turnout of the protests difficult, reports indicate these protests are massive — and spreading. Demonstrators took to the streets in every province, reportedly turning out in at least 185 cities.

    Earlier in the protests, authorities promised a $7 monthly payment to residents in an attempt to paper over rising dissent. That effort failed. And the authorities’ tone — and behavior — has since swiftly grown more hostile.

    Attorney General Mohammad Movahedi Azad warned that “charges against all rioters are the same,” regardless of whether they “are individuals who have helped rioters and terrorists in the destruction and damage of public security and property, or mercenaries who have taken up arms and caused fear and terror among citizens.” Judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei promised that the state’s response would be “decisive, maximum and without any legal leniency.” Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has likewise made clear that he will not tolerate these challenges to his power, calling the movement terroristic and “mercenaries for foreigners.”

    Punishment for detained protesters may ultimately include the death penalty. These are not idle threats. Iran shocked the global human rights community last year with its spike in executions. By September, authorities had already executed over 1,000 people in 2025.

    Authorities’ ultimate aim is to limit what their subjects can say — and what the rest of the world can know about it.

    And protesters are already paying the price. Authorities arrested at least 10,000 demonstrators, and thousands upon thousands have lost their lives. Doctors report a gruesome scene at hospitals from security forces “shooting from rooftops and terraces” rather than “on the street where people can see and run away.” In northern Iran, a morgue and hospital were so full that the “bodies were placed on top of one another.” And another horrific relic from the Mahsa Amini protests is resurfacing: hundreds of patients in Tehran “with pellets lodged in their eyes,” intentionally blinded by authorities.

    But Iran isn’t just using brute force to escalate the crackdown on its people. It’s also deploying a repressive tactic that’s become increasingly common: suppression of the tools government critics use to broadcast their message on a mass scale. Authorities’ ultimate aim is to limit what their subjects can say — and what the rest of the world can know about it.

    Starting on Jan. 8, the Iranian government enforced a suffocating internet blackout on the country, with a shocking 90% drop in traffic within 30 minutes after the ban began. These blackouts are a favorite tool of the regime; the government enacted blackouts in 2019 and 2022, too, to limit the spread of protesters’ words and also global attention on security forces’ violence against them. But experts warn this latest one represents a “new high-water mark” of online censorship in the country in its breadth and precision.

    Iranian authorities have maintained their own internet access and ability to post on platforms such as X and Telegram while cutting off their people’s ability to do so. This suggests that the blackout is “more sweeping, but also appears to be more fine-tuned, which potentially means Tehran will be able to sustain it for longer.” In some places, authorities have even managed to inhibit access to Elon Musk’s Starlink system. Residents are experiencing a total cutoff of cellphone reception.

    Authoritarians would not work this hard to silence you if they believed you were powerless. This is always the case with censorship.

    Iran isn’t alone in using this tactic against its people. Last year marked the most severe year yet for internet shutdowns, with researchers tracking nearly 300 disruptions and blackouts in dozens of nations. India, Myanmar, Pakistan, and Russia stood among the worst offenders. “As internet access becomes consistently weaponized, restricted, and precarious, we are seeing pervasive patterns of crushing censorship and an urgent need for greater accountability,” Access Now cautioned.

    If the early days of this year are any sign of what’s to come, 2026 may prove to be yet another repressive one. “This might be for the long haul,” Doug Madory, a researcher of internet blackouts, told the Guardian regarding Iran’s censorship. “I’ve been doing this for a while, and I think it’s going to be a big one.”

    The killings, censorship, and shutdowns sweeping Iran are a tragedy and a warning bell. But they also signal a small spark of hope to the world’s oppressed: Authoritarians would not work this hard to silence you if they believed you were powerless. This is always the case with censorship. The more aggressively an authoritarian attempts to crack down, the more it advertises its weakness and its fear.

    The responsibility now rests on the rest of the world to make sure we’re doing all we can to listen — and to fight for the future of a free internet. That future hangs in the balance, with new threats every day, from every sector.

    Authoritarian regimes such as Iran, Russia, and China all exert varying degrees of vast power upon the internet, whether in outright blocks or technologically complex systems that place immense firewalls between their people and the rest of the world.

    But even freer democracies are trying their hand at alarming and illiberal tech regulation, from Australia’s privacy-threatening and speech-chilling social media age-gating to the recent, and ripe for abuse, United Nations Cybercrime Treaty, and the United Kingdom’s byzantine Online Safety Act. Indeed, because the content itself depicts violence — which is simply the nature of what Iran’s people are suffering — the Online Safety Act may even hinder U.K. citizens, young and old alike, from accessing information on the internet about what’s happening in Tehran. Censorship does not make the British safer. It just makes them ill-informed.

    Here in the United States, we are not immune from these threats either, from jawboning to unconstitutional state and federal legislation, which all too often receive support from across the political aisle. That has to change.

    As we advocate a freer future for Iran’s protesters, we also need to protect on a global scale the tools they need to share their story with the rest of the world.

    The future of freedom depends on the internet. We must start acting like it.

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  • Can the Pentagon strip Mark Kelly’s rank over speech?

    Can the Pentagon strip Mark Kelly’s rank over speech?

    Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says the Pentagon is moving to dock Senator Mark Kelly’s captain rank and retirement pension after Kelly released a video, joined by five Democratic congressional colleagues who also served in the military, saying “Our laws are clear: You can refuse illegal orders.”

    On Monday, Hegseth wrote on X that the video was “reckless and seditious.” Hegseth also accused Kelly, a retired U.S. Navy captain and current member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, of “reckless misconduct” and said the Defense Department has initiated proceedings under 10 U.S.C. § 1370(f), which governs the rank of retired officers. 

    Despite Hegseth’s comments, Kelly merely stated the law. Page 402 of the Manual for Courts-Martial establishes that while orders are presumed to be lawful, that presumption “does not apply to a patently illegal order, such as one that directs the commission of a crime.” Indeed, servicemembers are only bound to follow “lawful orders” — not unlawful ones. Hegseth wants to argue that Kelly encouraged dereliction of duty, but simply stating the law is protected under the Constitution.

    Here’s what you need to know about how the First Amendment governs active duty and retired servicemembers’ speech. 

    Can the government court-martial military retirees?

    Yes, Congress has established that military retirees remain subject to military courts under 10 U.S.C. § 802(a)(4). Kelly served in the Navy for 25 years, so he’s subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

    Do military members have First Amendment rights?

    Military members do have First Amendment rights, though military prosecution for speech-based offenses operates under a different constitutional framework than civilian cases.

    In Parker v. Levy (1974), the Supreme Court grounded limits on active-duty service members’ speech in “military necessity,” reasoning that the armed forces are a “separate society” dependent on rank, discipline, and obedience. That logic doesn’t fit for retirees, whose speech typically poses no immediate risk to day-to-day order and discipline.

    Can the military demote a retired servicemember?

    By law, a service member’s retired grade is based on the “highest permanent grade” in which the officer served “satisfactorily.” But § 1370(f) allows the government to reconsider a retiree’s rank for things like fraud. Additionally, § 1370(f)(2)(D) allows demotion for “good cause” — a catchall provision left to the Pentagon’s discretion. Hegseth is arguing that Kelly violated UCMJ articles 133 and 134, constituting good cause.

    Did Kelly commit “conduct unbecoming an officer” under Article 133?

    Article 133 bans “conduct unbecoming an officer.” The Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces (CAAF), the highest appellate court for military justice, applies a simple test here. The accused must have committed an act, or used language, unbecoming an officer. Hegseth believes the video in question qualifies. But the bar is high. In United States v. Voorhees (2019), the CAAF described unbecoming conduct as “more serious than slight” misbehavior “of a material and pronounced character.”

    When the alleged misconduct is otherwise protected speech, the CAAF layers on extra protections based on the First Amendment. The speech must pose a “clear and present danger” of “dishonoring or disgracing the officer, seriously compromis[ing]” the officer’s standing.

    In United States v. Howe (1967), the court upheld an Article 133 conviction for an active-duty officer who called President Johnson an “ignorant fascist.” The court reasoned that, in context, such contempt toward senior civilian leadership presented a “clear and present danger” to military discipline.

    Later, in United States v. Hartwig (1994), the CAAF upheld an active-duty officer’s conviction for sending a sexually explicit letter to a stranger he had reason to know was a minor. The court reasoned that this was inherently dishonorable.

    Notably, the government hasn’t brought an Article 133 case against a retiree since Hooper v. Hartman (1958), leaving little guidance as to whether the CAAF might layer on additional speech protections (like Article 134’s nexus requirement, addressed below). Indeed, Hooper wasn’t even a speech case. It involved a servicemember’s same-sex relationship, now constitutionally protected under Lawrence v. Texas (2003).

    Kelly didn’t dishonor or disgrace another officer, so the government’s theory must be self-disgrace. It’s hard then to see how accurately stating the law creates a “clear and present danger.” Unlike in Hartwig, stating the law isn’t inherently dishonorable conduct. The government will need to prove Kelly’s statement, not mere political disagreement, tends to disgrace him personally or brings disrepute to the officer corps.

    In fact, the military’s 2024 Operational Law Handbook (page 86) expressly states that troops should learn the duty to refuse “manifestly” illegal orders. If troops are regularly taught this basic law-of-armed-conflict precept, why would it be “seditious,” as Hegseth suggested, for Kelly to remind servicemembers of that obligation?

    A plaque at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point explaining that military officers must not obey illegal orders. 

    Did Kelly “prejudice good order” under Article 134?

    Article 134 prohibits “service discrediting” speech, meaning speech that could “prejudice… good order and discipline in the armed forces.” The Department of Defense Manual for Courts-Martial further states that under Article 134, “certain disloyal statements” may be “punishable,” including “praising the enemy, attacking the war aims of the United States, or denouncing our form of government with the intent to promote disloyalty or disaffection.”

    What civilians can say freely, active-duty troops often can’t. Parker v. Levy’s “military necessity” doctrine allows limits on active-duty troops’ exercise of First Amendment rights, even though military courts do sometimes impose constraints on speech-based court-martials.

    For example, in United States v. Wilcox (2008), the CAAF established a nexus test for service discrediting speech. If the speech is otherwise protected outside the military context, there must be a “reasonably direct and palpable connection between the speech and the military mission or military environment” before the court continues to balance First Amendment interests against the military’s interest in order.

    In Wilcox, an army paratrooper was court-martialed under Article 134 for posting online comments supporting the KKK. Because the record showed no evidence that his comments were directed at service members, reached his unit, or had any demonstrated operational or disciplinary effect, the CAAF held that there was no nexus and thus dismissed the case.

    In the retiree context, the nexus requirement functions as a free-speech safeguard. Without evidence tying a retiree’s comments to concrete disruption within the ranks of the military, an Article 134 court-martial will likely fail.

    Kelly is no longer in the military, but his remarks were directed toward active service members. Still, the content of those comments matter. Telling troops to “refuse illegal orders” is not the same as telling them to refuse duty. It’s an articulation of the very real legal boundaries that service members must respect, as outlined in Article 92. The government will have to show that Kelly’s comments had some operational or disciplinary effect. 

    Hegseth has not yet offered any such proof.

    What’s the significance of the Pentagon’s move against Kelly? 

    The law here is less developed than civilian First Amendment doctrine, making outcomes hard to predict. So, broad use of Articles 133 and 134 against retirees risks chilling their participation in public debate about U.S. military actions. This is especially risky for a sitting United States senator — one serving on the Armed Services Committee — elected by the citizens of his state specifically to debate and form U.S. policy, including military actions.

    Under Articles 133 and 134 — as well as many others in the UCMJ — the Pentagon can stretch vague wording to punish active duty and retired servicemembers for ordinary criticism. But if the First Amendment means anything, civilians and veterans alike should be free to discuss — or even criticize — military policy without fear of punishment. As Eugene Fidell, a military law expert at Yale, predicted: “None of this will stand up.”

    Many of America’s servicemembers have given their lives to protect these freedoms. Those who retire from service should not be refused those same liberties.



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  • The worst of both worlds for campus free speech

    The worst of both worlds for campus free speech

    This op-ed originally appeared in The Dispatch on Dec. 30, 2025.

    2025 was the worst year for campus censorship in decades, and that’s because it’s coming from every possible direction — especially the MAGAverse. 

    For most of my career, the biggest threat to free speech on campus came from inside higher education: the on-campus left (students, yes, but more importantly administrators) using the power of investigation and discipline to punish “wrongthink.” The right pushed, too, but those pushes overwhelmingly originated off campus. This makes sense, given that there simply aren’t that many conservatives in the student body, on the faculty, or — least of all — among administrators in higher education.

    In 2025, what changed was the balance of power and the source of the pressure. The federal government and state governments, using the levers of state power, are now the leading forces behind attempts to punish campus speech. In the data my organization, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, tracks — our Students Under Fire database — incidents involving censorship attempts from politicians or government officials jumped to roughly a third of all cases this year. In 2024, those incidents didn’t crack double digits. 

    It’s just as bad for faculty. This year, a record 525 Scholar Under Fire incidents occurred, far eclipsing the previous high of 203 in 2021. One mass-censorship incident at the U.S. Naval Academy accounts for almost three-fifths of the entries. However, even if we treat this event as a single incident, 2025 was still a record year in our Scholars Under Fire database, with 216 entries. Worse, from 2000 through the end of 2024, we recorded 102 entries with politicians as one of the sources of a cancellation campaign. This year alone, we recorded 114.

    This produces the bleakest speech landscape imaginable: Government pressure is skyrocketing, while the internal campus coalition that helped create this vulnerability in the first place hasn’t disappeared — creating a worst-of-both-worlds squeeze on the expressive rights of students and faculty.

    For years, the core campus free-speech problem wasn’t merely bureaucratic. It was an unholy alliance. Administrators, who had been a problem for my entire career (especially those whose job titles quietly evolved into ideological enforcement roles like “DEI dean”) joined forces with a wave of highly activist, more speech-ambivalent students that began hitting campuses around 2014. That was roughly when the first Gen Z students started to arrive on campus. This generation was more anxious and depressed than those that came before it (at least since World War II and the GI bill expanded the availability of higher education), and colleges either fed or accommodated these problems with trigger warnings, safe spaces, a hunt for microaggressions, and the blurring of the line between speech and violence. 

    That is where campus free speech is now: not just arguments about campus codes, but fights about whether the government can use its most coercive tools to enforce ideological conformity.

    The alliance between righteous students and crusading administrators drove some warranted investigations, yes, but it also got people sanctioned, suspended, disinvited, and fired. It made dissent from orthodoxy professionally radioactive. It turned higher education into a place where the easiest way to survive was to self-censor or seek employment elsewhere.

    That problem persists, but 2025 added something more dangerous: politicians and government agencies increasingly driving, directing, and escalating punishment campaigns from outside the university.

    That distinction matters because the government’s tools are not a dean’s tools. Government can threaten funding, immigration status, research grants, and institutional survival itself.

    You can see it in the Trump administration’s campaign against elite universities, especially Harvard. This year, the Department of Homeland Security moved to revoke Harvard’s certification to enroll international students, and a federal court blocked that move while litigation proceeds. The White House then issued a proclamation suspending entry for foreign nationals seeking to study at Harvard, framed as a national-security measure.

    We can debate Harvard’s sins — there are plenty. But what should not be debatable is that targeting a specific institution with immigration authority as leverage is not normal governance in a liberal democracy. It’s political payback that may be fun for some people in the administration, but probably won’t even fix anything.

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    Sadly, Harvard isn’t the only example. The administration has used frozen funds, threatened cancellations, and “make a deal or else” tactics against schools around the country — turning what should be a debate about institutional reform into a contest of political submission. Columbia, for example, saw hundreds of millions in federal funds cut and then faced enormous pressure to reach a settlement to restore support. Brown University and Northwestern University cut deals to restore research funding. 

    Once this becomes the model — political leverage first, negotiated compliance second — universities are no longer institutions that argue and persuade. They’re institutions that bargain to survive.

    The Trump administration even tried to formalize this approach through a so-called “higher education compact” — a document that asked universities to pledge support for a menu of administration priorities in exchange for federal benefits. It was stuffed with unconstitutional conditions, and it sent the message loud and clear: We will decide the price of doing business in American higher education.

    At the individual level, the chill becomes something else entirely — especially when immigration authority gets involved. Take Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish Ph.D. student at Tufts. In March, after the government revoked her student visa, masked plainclothes federal agents detained her on a Somerville, Massachusetts, street and put her into an unmarked vehicle, after which she was quickly moved to an ICE facility in Louisiana — over her lawyers’ objections and amid litigation over where her case should be heard. 

    The core speech at issue wasn’t a threat, a crime, or some exotic incitement. It was an op-ed she co-authored in a student newspaper arguing that Tufts should divest from Israel. You don’t have to agree with it — that’s not the point of free speech. The point is that in the United States, it should not be the case that a person here on a student visa can be detained and threatened with deportation for writing a political opinion that could have run in any mainstream newspaper in the country.

    And notably, when a federal judge later ordered her release, he described her detention as unlawful and tied it directly to First Amendment concerns. This is also why my organization sued Secretary of State Marco Rubio this year, challenging immigration law provisions we argue are being used to punish protected speech by legal immigrants.

    That is where campus free speech is now: not just arguments about campus codes, but fights about whether the government can use its most coercive tools to enforce ideological conformity.

    Now, some readers will object: “What about Obama and Biden?”

    Fair point. Prior administrations helped create the modern campus speech mess, and not only through cultural encouragement. They often worked more indirectly, through the Department of Education and its civil-rights enforcement machinery — guidance letters, compliance regimes, and expansive theories of harassment that were then eagerly operationalized by sympathetic campus administrators.

    We fought that too at FIRE, even when nobody cared.

    Years ago, for example, my organization criticized federal “blueprints” that encouraged universities to stretch harassment definitions in ways that risked swallowing protected speech. This wasn’t a partisan hobby. It was the same principle: The government should not be in the business of pressuring universities into punishing speech, whether it’s done through backchannel regulatory guidance or through overt political threat.

    But 2025’s shift is that the pressure is more direct, more punitive, and more personalized — less “guidance,” more “kneel before Zod!”

    And here’s the part I’m done being delicate about: For 25 years, we documented the free-speech crisis on campus while a lot of higher education either denied it, rationalized it, or treated it as a moral victory. We warned that turning universities into ideological enforcement machines would generate backlash. Not because we wanted backlash, but because anyone with eyes could see that a system that punishes dissent while claiming to pursue truth is not stable. It was going to trigger a reaction.

    The more higher education demonstrates it understands its own legitimacy crisis and is willing to reform, the less political oxygen there is for escalating reprisals from increasingly powerful state actors.

    Now I keep hearing a question — sometimes asked fairly, sometimes in a way that assumes the problem came from talking about it — along the lines of: “Don’t you feel guilty for contributing to the backlash?”

    No, because I did no such thing.

    Reporting on a crisis did not create it. Documenting censorship did not cause it. Warning about backlash did not summon it. The people who should feel guilty are the ones who are responsible: the administrators, faculty, and students who let the craziness on campus become normal and then acted shocked when the bill came due.

    And the bill is measurable. Public confidence in higher education has fallen dramatically over the last decade. Pew recently reported that 70 percent of Americans now say higher education is headed in the wrong direction, up from 56 percent just a few years ago. Gallup’s long-running confidence measure tells a similar story. Even after a recent uptick, only 42 percent of Americans say they have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in higher education — still far below the 57 percent who said so when Gallup first asked in 2015.

    Those numbers should have been a wake-up call. Instead, much of the higher-ed establishment has treated the credibility crisis as a conspiracy theory: a “moral panic,” a hoax, a right-wing plot, an exaggeration. We’ve seen this posture from influential voices who insist the last decade’s free-speech crisis was mostly manufactured — just a media obsession built from anecdotes. Professor Jason Stanley, formerly of Yale and now at the University of Toronto, has used exactly that frame. The American Association of University Professors and other gatekeepers have often treated calls for viewpoint diversity and institutional neutrality as hostile demands rather than basic components of truth-seeking.

    And you can see it in leadership rhetoric, too: the tendency to describe political attacks in vivid detail while taking almost no responsibility for the internal failures that made universities such an easy political target. When prominent university leaders frame the story as, “We are innocent, and this is being done to us,” they’re not just refusing accountability. They’re handing the backlash more fuel.

    Meanwhile, some of the behavior that helped bring us here continues — right out of 2021.

    Consider what happened at the University of Virginia Law School. Professor Xiao Wang helped win a unanimous Supreme Court decision in a case involving a legal standard that put a heavier burden on straight people to prove employment discrimination. In a healthy university, the response would have been to read the briefs, argue about the doctrine, debate the consequences, and learn something.

    Instead, Wang faced a wave of backlash that treated the case not as a legal question but as a moral betrayal — complete with pressure campaigns and demands that looked like ideological loyalty tests. That’s not a glitch. It’s a reminder: The internal coalition that drove the last decade’s crisis has not disappeared. It’s simply been joined by a much more aggressive external force.

    That brings us to the hard truth nobody wants to say out loud: Higher education really does need reform, and some of that reform will have to involve the federal government and state governments — because the government helped build the incentive structure that produced this mess, and because public universities are state actors. There are plenty of constitutional reforms available. Colleges can enforce viewpoint-neutral rules, strengthen due process in discipline, demand transparency, stop outsourcing institutional governance to ideological offices, and require that speech protections be real rather than a branding exercise.

    Why FIRE is now judging bias-reporting systems more harshly — and why I changed my mind

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    But there is also a difference between constitutional reform and a rampage. Universities have been strangely lucky so far that many of the administration’s most extreme tactics are the kind that courts can — and often will — stop. For FIRE’s part, we’ll keep fighting them whenever they cross the line into infringing on expressive rights. But universities need to do their share, too: Admit they have a problem, and start fixing it seriously.

    The more higher education demonstrates it understands its own legitimacy crisis and is willing to reform, the less political oxygen there is for escalating reprisals from increasingly powerful state actors. The more it stays in denial — insisting this vast, wealthy industry has nothing to fix, that the last decade of cancel culture and ideological conformity was mostly a hoax, and that the critics are all acting in bad faith — the more likely the backlash becomes uglier, broader, and harder to stop.

    Things that will not bend will break. And if higher ed stays in denial, it may find that 2025 wasn’t the bottom, but rather an alarm call. And if 2026 is worse, it won’t be able to say it wasn’t warned.

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  • Bari Weiss, UATX, and the Corporate Rewriting of “Free Speech”

    Bari Weiss, UATX, and the Corporate Rewriting of “Free Speech”

    Bari Weiss has built a powerful public identity as a defender of free speech against institutional conformity. From elite universities to legacy newsrooms, she presents herself as a principled dissenter confronting ideological capture. Yet her expanding influence across higher education and corporate media suggests something deeper than individual controversy. It reveals how elite institutions are increasingly repackaging control, consolidation, and risk management as rebellion.

    Weiss’s involvement in the University of Austin and her editorial authority at CBS News illustrate how the language of free inquiry has been absorbed into a broader project of institutional realignment rather than democratization.

    The University of Austin was launched in 2021 as a highly publicized response to what its founders described as illiberal conditions in American higher education. Weiss, as a co-founder and public face of the project, helped frame UATX as a refuge for intellectual risk-taking and heterodox thought. Yet the institution was not built from the margins of academia. It emerged through the backing of wealthy donors, venture capitalists, tech executives, and high-profile media figures who already occupy powerful positions within American public life.

    UATX’s critique of higher education centers almost entirely on cultural politics, presenting universities as hostile to dissent while leaving largely untouched the material structures that govern academic freedom. The casualization of academic labor, the erosion of tenure, donor influence over research agendas, student debt as a disciplinary force, and retaliation against labor organizers and whistleblowers rarely figure into the narrative. In this way, UATX offers not a systemic challenge to elite education but an exit strategy for those with the resources to opt out of public accountability.

    The same logic appears in Weiss’s role within legacy media. In late 2025, CBS News pulled a completed investigative segment from 60 Minutes examining the Trump administration’s deportation of Venezuelan migrants to a notoriously brutal prison in El Salvador. The segment had reportedly passed legal and editorial review. The decision to shelve it, attributed to a demand for additional on-the-record administration comment, sparked internal outrage. Veteran journalists described the move as political interference rather than standard editorial caution, with some staff reportedly threatening to resign.

    The episode carried a deep irony. One of the most prominent self-described defenders of free speech now presided over the suppression of investigative journalism within one of the country’s most storied news programs. Whether temporary or permanent, the delay signaled a shift in institutional priorities, where political sensitivity and corporate risk appeared to outweigh journalistic autonomy.

    This controversy unfolded amid broader upheaval at CBS News. Longtime anchors departed the CBS Evening News in emotional farewells as management reshuffled talent and redefined the network’s public posture. Inside the newsroom, morale reportedly declined as staff faced uncertainty about editorial direction, layoffs, and ideological repositioning. Weiss reportedly questioned journalists about public perceptions of bias, reinforcing a top-down effort to rebrand the organization rather than engage in collective editorial deliberation.

    These developments cannot be separated from the corporate transformation of CBS’s parent company. Paramount Global has undergone a sweeping restructuring shaped by its merger with Skydance Media, led by David Ellison, the son of Oracle founder Larry Ellison. Under this new ownership structure, CBS News has been encouraged to restore “balance” and credibility, language that often accompanies efforts to reduce investigative risk and align journalism more closely with corporate and political interests.

    At the same time, Paramount’s deal-making has intersected with elite political networks. Jared Kushner’s private equity firm was involved in related media acquisition efforts before withdrawing, highlighting the increasingly blurred lines between media ownership, political influence, and capital consolidation. In this environment, editorial independence is not abolished outright but carefully managed, constrained by the priorities of ownership and the sensitivities of power.

    What connects UATX and CBS News under Weiss’s influence is not ideology so much as structure. In both cases, authority flows upward while dissent is curated. Free inquiry is framed as a moral value but detached from democratic governance, labor protections, or accountability to those most vulnerable to institutional retaliation. Meanwhile, individuals and groups who experience genuine silencing in academia and media—adjunct faculty, student activists, labor organizers, whistleblowers, and critics of militarism or donor power—remain largely absent from this version of the free speech debate.

    This pattern is familiar within higher education. When institutions face crises of legitimacy, elites rarely pursue democratization. Instead, they create alternatives that preserve control under new branding: private institutes, donor-led centers, honors colleges, and parallel universities. Legacy media has followed a similar path, repackaging dissent while narrowing the scope of accountability.

    Bari Weiss is not an anomaly within this landscape. She is emblematic of it. Her influence reflects how “free speech” has become an aesthetic rather than a structural commitment, invoked loudly while practiced selectively.

    The danger is not that Weiss holds strong opinions. It is that her framework for free speech travels so easily across institutions precisely because it leaves their economic and power relations intact. The University of Austin does not confront the forces hollowing out higher education. CBS News, under corporate consolidation, risks muting the investigative journalism that once defined it. In both cases, freedom becomes a branding strategy rather than a democratic practice.

    For those concerned with truly independent journalism and genuinely democratic education, the lesson is clear. Speech is never just about speech. It is about ownership, power, and who bears the consequences when truth becomes inconvenient.

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  • DOJ plan to target ‘domestic terrorists’ risks chilling speech

    DOJ plan to target ‘domestic terrorists’ risks chilling speech

    Attorney General Pam Bondi reportedly sent a memo two weeks ago indicating how the federal government intends to target “domestic terrorist organizations.” That memo outlines how the Justice Department plans to implement President Trump’s National Security Presidential Memo 7. 

    To explain what’s wrong with Bondi’s memo, we need to bounce back and forth between it and NSPM-7. Think of it this way: NSPM-7 is an idea, and Bondi’s memo is a checklist in furtherance of that idea. At the same time, the memo isn’t quite a blueprint, because it still omits key details about what the Justice Department intends to do. But what it does include is alarming.

    NSPM-7 was issued in late September and announced a federal government effort to identify “domestic terror organizations.” It also listed specific ideologies, like “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity,” as “common threads” motivating political threats and violence.

    In the memo, the attorney general ordered all federal law enforcement agencies to “review their files and holdings for Antifa and Antifa-related intelligence and information” and turn it over to the FBI within 14 days. The FBI is directed to then report to the deputy attorney general which groups (if any) are engaged in acts that “may constitute domestic terrorism.”

    Bondi’s memo also includes two new elements in this process: promoting the FBI’s terrorism tip line, and establishing a cash reward system for reports that lead to the identification and arrest of the leaders of domestic terrorism organizations.

    A few problems jump out at me.

    The Bondi memo, like NSPM-7, blurs the line between investigating crimes and ideologies

    Like NSPM-7 before it, Bondi’s memo states that recent political attacks share common motivating ideologies, saying that groups are using terrorism to advance agendas like “radical gender ideology, anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, or anti-Christianity.” As I said in September, the government has inappropriately targeted groups by ideology in the recent past:

    During the Obama administration, the IRS targeted nonprofit groups with the words “Tea Party” or “Patriots” in their names, identifying groups by ideology and punishing them by subjecting them to extra processes. And its explanation was that this was just a “shortcut” — other organizations with similar profiles had violated IRS rules, so they jumped to targeting groups that used similar words.

    In 2023, the FBI distributed an internal memo linking “ethnically motivated violent extremists” to traditional Catholic ideology, a call for viewpoint-based targeting that was only exposed by a whistleblower and oversight from Congress. In 2022, an internal FBI memo linked the Gadsden flag and other patriotic symbols to violent extremism. And while such links do exist, and it makes sense for law enforcement to identify them, it also risks sweeping up ordinary Americans.

    These tactics create the risk that any member of any political movement could find themselves added to a government list and subjected to special scrutiny if others with the same ideology commit an ideologically motivated crime. But it’s not a crime (terrorism or otherwise) to hold “radical” beliefs about “gender ideology” or to take positions on core American values that contradict the government’s view.

    This happened before during the McCarthy era. Communist rhetoric resonated with some 1950s Americans who wanted working people to have decent wages, but that did not mean most American socialists were Soviet spies or conspired to overthrow the government. Nonetheless, accusations of vast criminality were used to justify sprawling government investigations into groups that espoused socialist views.

    You can’t vindicate American values against anti-American ideologies with un-American practices like warmed-over McCarthyism.

    I want to be clear that saying ideology should not be the starting point of an investigation is not at all to diminish the very real, ideologically-motivated threats faced by government employees, politicians, and political actors. The memos mention Charlie Kirk’s assassination and the October shooting at a Dallas ICE facility among other incidents; they could just as easily include the assassination of Minnesota State Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, the 2011 shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, or the 2017 shooting of Rep. Steve Scalise. There are people who want to hurt or kill public officials and public figures for doing their jobs, and those people will often offer ideological reasons for doing that.

    However, that some terrorists have an ideology does not make everyone with the same ideology a terrorist.

    And that is the core problem with this whole endeavor. People who conspire to engage in actual criminal behavior should be investigated, arrested, and prosecuted. But these memos aren’t narrowly focused on groups that exist for the purpose of ideologically motivated violence, which act to bring about violence; they broadly condemn particular viewpoints and lay a foundation for a government watchlist of American groups which share those viewpoints. And where does that get us? You can’t vindicate American values against anti-American ideologies with un-American practices like warmed-over McCarthyism.

    ‘Domestic terrorist organization’ designation is still a matter of AG whims

    While the phrase “domestic terrorist organization” sounds very official, it doesn’t have a statutory definition or accompanying due process protections, unlike its nominative counterpart, the foreign terrorist organization. NSPM-7 delegated to the attorney general the ability to recommend which groups should be so designated, but not whether they will be.

    Bondi’s memo directs federal law enforcement to provide information to the AG’s office that would presumably guide those initial recommendations, but offers no further information on duration or appeals. It doesn’t even suggest that a group so designated would be given notice of that designation.

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    NSPM-7 essentially argues a domestic terrorist organization is an organization with members who commit acts meeting the statutory definition of domestic terrorism. That definition includes unlawful “acts dangerous to human life” that “appear to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population” or “influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion.” It includes no requirement that the organization itself have unlawful aims or that the members’ actions are in furtherance of them. 

    By asking the FBI to compile “a list of groups or entities engaged in acts that may constitute domestic terrorism” as defined by statute, Bondi’s memo at first seems to be more narrowly focused. But that limitation remains an exercise of discretion, and could change as directed by the president or a successor. And it’s not even entirely clear that the list provided by the FBI is the exclusive source in Bondi’s decision-making process, or what that process looks like after she received the list. 

    One reason to question how much this definition is cabined in practice is that the administration has designated Antifa a domestic terrorist organization. But Antifa is mostly an ideology, not a defined organization, as such. There might well be domestic terrorist organizations that hold Antifa-aligned tenets, but a philosophy is not an organization, even if some organizations refer to it in their names. Designating Antifa as a terrorist organization is a little like planning to meet someone at a restaurant and you pick the restaurant “hamburger.” 

    Doxing isn’t ‘domestic terrorism’

    The Bondi memo also repeats, and expands on, NSPM-7’s decision to treat doxing (publishing information online that makes specific people identifiable) as a crime that counts as “domestic terrorism.” But as I said in September, it often isn’t:

    Doxing is protected speech unless it violates some other existing law. After all, doxing describes much of the basic activity of news media, where otherwise unknown information is found and published, and frequently, that information is personally identifiable. That’s especially true when the “doxing” the government is upset about is information related to public employees in the course of their duties, such as the location of ICE agents.

    Bondi does not agree. After someone developed ICEBlock, an app for users to share the locations of ICE activity, Bondi said in an interview: “We are looking at it, we are looking at him, and he better watch out, because that’s not protected speech.”

    Note that ICEBlock is, in fact, protected speech. The ability to share facts about public employees in the execution of their duties in public spaces is not a gray area under the First Amendment; it’s protected speech.

    The theory under which Bondi seems to be operating is that if people know where ICE activity is happening, they will use that information either to engage in violence against agents or to evade lawful court orders. In July, congressional republicans sent Bondi a letter stating: “Sharing real-time locations of ICE officers paints targets on their backs, increasing the likelihood that they face immediate resistance.”

    ICEBlock was removed from the Apple store in October (as were similar apps and groups on other platforms), with Apple saying it took that decision “based on information we’ve received from law enforcement about the safety risks associated with ICEBlock.” Earlier this week, ICEBlock’s developer sued the Trump administration, arguing that pressure from the government led to the app’s removal.

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    ICE agents have indeed faced violence, including a July shooting at a facility in Alvarado, Texas and a September sniper attack in Dallas that left two detainees and the gunman dead. So far, however, there is no evidence these actions were related to ICEBlock or any other ICE-tracking app or website. And there are lots of legitimate reasons people might want to know the location of ICE activity that don’t involve violence or frustrating the enforcement of laws — like avoiding traffic delays or not wanting to be caught in the middle of a mass arrest that doesn’t involve them. An app that shows the location of ICE raids no more aids terrorism against ICE agents than a street map showing a residential area aids home invasions. 

    References to doxing as “acts of domestic terrorism” in the Bondi memo could be the administration doubling down on its condemnation of ICEBlock and similar apps, hoping to at least chill their use by implication, if not outright threaten to prosecute them for aiding domestic terrorism. Treating doxing (which is protected speech) as domestic terrorism opens the door to government investigations of people who oppose ICE with truthful, public information.

    Anonymous tip line exacerbates potential for abuse

    The president and AG have identified a number of ideologies shared by domestic terrorists, argued these shared ideologies indicate group sponsorship, and want to encourage people to make more reports (anonymous or otherwise) about the topic. The FBI already has a tip line, and it accepts anonymous reports. Bondi’s memo just directs that the FBI consider how to better promote it for this specific purpose. 

    But what is the specific purpose that the administration intends to promote? Both NSPM-7 and the Bondi memo seem to target both crime (which they should) and beliefs (which they should not). Blurring the line between the two could make this a hotline for reporting wrongthink. We have seen the effect of anonymous reporting hotlines for ideological wrongthink in the context of campus Bias Response Teams:

    They frequently record accusations without providing a method of contesting their reports or even identifying the accusing party. Vague accusations of racism rooted in innocuous behavior is an exceptionally common feature of cancellation attempts. In promising to punish (potentially with police help) accusations of racism while obscuring the identity and motives of the accuser, BRTs are perfect engines for ideological abuse.

    Bondi, Vice President JD Vance, and Stephen Miller have all recently called for punishing non-criminal behavior through either state power or cancel culture. An FBI hotline collecting reports of non-criminal activity (like doxing) would be a troubling escalation — one that should trouble even those who agree with the spirit of Bondi’s memo. That’s because the power the hotline grants would exist for the next administration, too, which might not see the world in quite the same way. 

    All of this creates a real chilling effect

    As I wrote in September, “when the president uses his pen to take aim at anything, it will cause a chilling effect.” The attorney general’s pen is no less frosty as it conveys the message of likely or possible criminal prosecution.  

    In a footnote, Bondi’s memo says that “no investigation may be opened based solely on activities protected by the First Amendment” or other civil rights. But it also identifies protected speech — doxing — as a criminal act of terrorism. What other non-criminal activities might yield investigations? Presumably things related to the viewpoints listed in NSPM-7 and reiterated again in the Bondi memo. In turn, Americans will act rationally — and become less likely to say what they really think.

    We might know more in 30 days, when the FBI reports to the deputy AG the results of its review of groups. Check back then for more.

    (H/t to Ken Klippenstein for actually publishing the memo)

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  • How schools still abuse ‘institutional neutrality’ to silence speech

    How schools still abuse ‘institutional neutrality’ to silence speech

    Defending the rights of students and faculty to speak freely has been part and parcel of FIRE’s mission for 26 years. We’ve seen universities try all sorts of ways to restrict expression, from free speech zones and excessive security fees to extensive pre-approval requirements for events. But one technique is particularly disturbing — using ostensibly pro-free speech policies to chill student and faculty expression. 

    As my colleague Graham Piro recently wrote, colleges and universities regularly claim to embrace “institutional neutrality” — an institution’s commitment to refrain from speaking out on the issues of the day — only to silence speech in the principle’s name. Under a genuine policy of institutional neutrality, students and faculty are empowered to debate such issues, without feeling as if the school administration has declared the matter settled.

    As the University of Chicago’s Kalven Report famously warned, a university “cannot take collective action on the issues of the day without endangering the conditions for its existence and effectiveness. There is no mechanism by which it can reach a collective position without inhibiting that full freedom of dissent on which it thrives.”

    Institutional neutrality must not be used to prevent student groups or the wider campus community from expressing their views.

    FIRE is quick to celebrate whenever a college or university adopts a policy substantially similar to the Kalven Report, which is the gold standard of institutional neutrality statements. Schools that make this commitment are rewarded in our College Free Speech Rankings and recognized on our Official Adoptions page. But as Graham explained, adopting the report doesn’t automatically translate to neutrality in practice. FIRE is concerned not only with colleges improperly applying institutional neutrality to infringe on free speech, but also with imperfect adoptions that leave wiggle room in the policy language for universities to apply standards unevenly.

    To the first concern, UT Austin used institutional neutrality to stop its Graduate Student Assembly from considering resolutions expressing opposition to a state law that ended university DEI programs.

    An administrator claimed the resolution constituted “political speech that is not permitted to be issued by a sponsored student organization in their official capacity.” But as FIRE and the ACLU of Texas explained in a letter to UT Austin, institutional neutrality must not be used to prevent student groups or the wider campus community from expressing their views. UT Austin didn’t stop in response to our letter, prompting FIRE and the ACLU of Texas to write another letter urging the university to apply its institutional neutrality rules to itself, not student speech.

    Unfortunately, UT Austin is not alone. At North Carolina State, Palestinian-American author and publisher Hannah Moushabeck was initially barred from reading her children’s book at an event in the name of institutional neutrality. North Carolina State Libraries had invited Moushabeck to participate in various campus events — including “storytime” sessions for local families and students. NC State, under the impression that its duty to neutrality “regarding matters of contemporary political debate or social action” extended to speakers coming to campus, blocked the reading. 

    UNC System Vice President for Communications Jane Stancill told Heterodox Academy’s Free the Inquiry blog that the decision at NC State was “to expand the scope of a proposed event to accommodate more voices,” and that “the author was welcomed to campus and read from her book, along with other authors in attendance.” She further clarified that “nothing in the UNC System’s neutrality policy should be interpreted as constraining individual faculty or visiting speakers.” 

    Indeed, institutional neutrality does not create an obligation for events to give equal time to every perspective on an issue — it merely requires that university leadership refrain from endorsing one perspective. FIRE is pleased to see that the UNC System clarified this point. But the example serves as a reminder for institutions to give clear guidance to those applying institutional neutrality on the ground, and to ensure neutrality is not construed to silence protected expression.

    Meanwhile, a University of Florida “Institutional Neutrality” policy threatens to put leaders’ thumbs on the scales of debate and chill faculty and student voices: 

    UF institutional and unit leadership teams may not make statements or proclamations regarding Social Issues or other issues not directly related to UF’s mission, governance, or operations . . . The authority to make any such statement or proclamation is limited to the President in consultation with the Board Chair. 

    This seems to imply that the president can make statements about issues not directly related to UF’s mission, governance, or operations. To be fair, a message from Interim President Donald Landry does seem to help. Writing to employees, he said the president should only speak out on issues tied to the university’s core mission. Great. But unless that language is actually written into the policy, it doesn’t solve the real problem. The policy still leaves people guessing about when leadership can speak out on issues of the day. 

    The policy also includes a footnote disclaiming that it does not prohibit incidental personal use of communication resources for statements on social issues. While this is an important clarification, UF’s email signature rules, mentioned in the policy, are confusing because they ban personal quotes, statements, and links to personal websites in university emails. UF should clarify that, even though there is an official email signature format, faculty and staff are free to include personal statements, quotes, or links in their emails, even if they touch on social issues.

    When universities attempt to avoid controversy by restricting discussion of social issues, they undermine academic freedom and interfere with meaningful debate.

    FIRE is also concerned that the policy treats “instructional activities” as “university business,” which must avoid all statements on social issues. Such an overly broad prohibition could discourage faculty from teaching controversial but important topics. Faculty should be free to teach their students as they see fit, provided the material is pedagogically relevant and follows the law and university policy. They should also have the academic freedom to make fleeting, non-disruptive personal remarks — even controversial ones — without fear of punishment.

    When universities attempt to avoid controversy by restricting discussion of social issues, they undermine academic freedom and interfere with meaningful debate. Narrowly tailored guidance, as outlined in the Kalven Report, offers a better path forward. By protecting open inquiry and expression, universities can avoid silencing speech while preserving their role as forums for intellectual discovery.

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  • 2025 sets new record for attempts to silence student speech, FIRE research finds

    2025 sets new record for attempts to silence student speech, FIRE research finds

    PHILADELPHIA, Dec. 16, 2025 — The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression reports a record number of campus incidents involving attempts to investigate, censor, or otherwise punish students for protected expression in 2025.

    FIRE has documented 273 efforts — so far — this year in which students and student groups were targeted for their constitutionally protected expression. This breaks the previous record of 252 set back in 2020, the first year of the Students Under Fire database, during the unrest prompted by Covid-19 lockdowns and the murder of George Floyd.

    “These findings paint a campus culture in which student expression is increasingly policed and controversial ideas are not tolerated,” said FIRE Senior Researcher Logan Dougherty. “College is supposed to be a place where ideas are freely shared, not where students should be concerned about whether their comments will be subject to university scrutiny.”

    Some especially grievous incidents include the arrest of Columbia University pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil; Indiana University’s censorship of its student newspaper (and firing of the director of student media) over an editorial dispute; the University of Alabama’s decision to shutter two student outlets because they supposedly ran afoul of U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi’s guidance about D.E.I. programs; and, for good measure, a student at Weber State University in Utah who was directed to censor a presentation — about censorship.

    FIRE’s Students Under Fire tracking relies on publicly available information to document various details about these controversies, including but not limited to the source calling for punishment, the speech topic of controversy, and the political direction of the attempt in relation to the targeted speech. Consistent with other FIRE research, the Students Under Fire database observed an uptick in attempts by the political right to silence speech in 2025.

    The database is unprecedented both in type and scale, offering the most detailed collection of campus controversies involving students’ protected speech to date.

    FIRE also noticed another troubling trend in 2025: A surge in attempts by government officials to influence how universities respond to student speech — especially following the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Some recent examples include:

    We also saw executive orders at the state and federal level used as justification to impose system-wide bans on student-organized drag shows, cancel student film festivals, and outright disband numerous student groups. 

    In all these cases, students were targeted or punished not because their speech was unlawful — but because it caused controversy.

    “Aside from the harm on the individual students involved in these incidents, such actions could have the effect of chilling speech across an entire campus — and across an entire generation,” Dougherty said. “What kind of lesson is that? That the safest move in college is to keep your head down and your mouth shut?”

    The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to defending and sustaining the individual rights of all Americans to free speech and free thought — the most essential qualities of liberty. FIRE educates Americans about the importance of these inalienable rights, promotes a culture of respect for these rights, and provides the means to preserve them.

    Karl de Vries, Director of Media Relations, FIRE: 215-717-3473; [email protected]

     

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  • Free speech advocates rally to support FIRE’s defense of First Amendment protections for drag shows

    Free speech advocates rally to support FIRE’s defense of First Amendment protections for drag shows

    Drag shows are inherently expressive and protected under the First Amendment. That’s what a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held back in August, reversing a district court’s decision that had upheld West Texas A&M University’s campus-wide drag show ban. 

    Yet several weeks later, the Fifth Circuit elected to vacate the panel’s decision and rehear the case en banc, meaning the full Court will consider whether the First Amendment permits government officials to ban a drag show because they disagree with the show’s message. As FIRE fights to preserve the panel’s decision upholding the right of public university students to engage in expressive conduct, a broad coalition of free speech advocates has rallied to file “friend of the court” briefs in support.

    Here’s what happened: West Texas A&M University maintains Legacy Hall as an open forum for students and the public to interact and engage in expression. FIRE’s client in this case is Spectrum WT, a long-recognized student organization that seeks to provide support for and promote acceptance of the LGBTQ+ student body. To that end, Spectrum WT hosts a wide range of campus events, both social and educational, to raise awareness of issues important to LGBTQ+ students and foster a strong sense of community and acceptance.

    The Constitution prohibits University officials from censoring student expression on campus because they happen to disagree with its underlying message.

    Several years ago, Spectrum WT began planning a charity drag performance to be held at Legacy Hall. Proceeds from the event would benefit the Trevor Project, an organization dedicated to suicide prevention in the LGBTQ+ community. 

    But eleven days before the performance’s scheduled date, the university’s President, Walter Wendler, canceled the event. In a lengthy public statement, Wendler announced that “West Texas A&M will not host a drag show on campus,” even while conceding that drag performance is “artistic expression” and that “the law of the land” requires him to let the show go on. According to Wendler, he opposes drag’s underlying “ideology,” believing it “demeans” women and that there is “no such thing” as a “harmless drag show.”

    West Texas A&M President cancels student charity drag show for second time

    West Texas A&M President Wendler enforced his unconstitutional prior restraint by canceling a student-organized charity drag show for the second time.


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    That’s when FIRE stepped in. Our country’s universities are bastions of free expression, exploration, and self-discovery. They are uniquely places where young adults may have their opinions tested and viewpoints expanded. And the Constitution prohibits university officials from censoring student expression on campus because they happen to disagree with its underlying message. 

    That was what the Fifth Circuit panel held when it heard this case on appeal. Yet several weeks later, the court decided to vacate the panel’s decision and consider the case a second time. So the fight to preserve First Amendment protections for students’ artistic performance, regardless of whether university officials agree with the message, continues.

    Last week, a bipartisan coalition of university professors, prominent legal scholars, and no fewer than thirteen organizations filed five amicus briefs in support of Spectrum WT:

    • The ACLU of Texas and Equality Texas highlight the district court’s doctrinal errors in upholding Wendler’s blanket drag ban, including the court’s failure to recognize the message, history, and context of drag performance and its reliance on a standard for protected expression the Supreme Court has explicitly rejected. As the ACLU of Texas and Equality Texas explain: “The district court’s narrowing of the First Amendment’s protective scope sets an alarming precedent, which, if left uncorrected, could extend beyond the drag performance at issue in this case.”
    • The First Amendment Lawyers Association argues that the lower court’s decision violates the “bedrock First Amendment principle” that government officials may not censor speech merely because they dislike the message. They emphasize how this violation is even more egregious in the university setting, “where speech rights are particularly important.” As FALA describes, Wendler “suppressed protected speech, impoverished public discourse, and denied students and the broader community the right to engage, critique, and learn in a free marketplace of ideas.”
    • The National Coalition Against Censorship, Dramatists Guild of America, Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, Fashion Law Institute, Authors Guild, Woodhull Freedom Foundation, Freedom to Read Foundation, American Booksellers Association, and Americans United for Separation of Church and State emphasize the evidence establishing that Wendler’s blanket prohibition was inherently a viewpoint-based prior restraint that finds no support in First Amendment law. They argue that Wendler’s prohibition is, in fact, “a ‘classic’ example of a prior restraint” that is “unmoored from any objective standards” constraining his censorship authority. As they explain, such prior restraints are unconstitutional as reflected in the “text, history, and tradition of the First Amendment.”
    • The CATO Institute and renowned legal scholars Eugene Volokh and Dale Carpenter describe the applicable legal doctrine to explain why it ultimately does not matter whether Legacy Hall is classified as a limited public forum or nonpublic forum: because Wendler’s viewpoint discrimination is impermissible everywhere. They argue that drag performance is clearly protected expression under the First Amendment and that Wendler violated that protection by censoring drag performance because he disagrees with its message.
    • A coalition of eight professors specializing in LGBTQ+ studies delve into the history of drag performance as artistic expression. They describe how drag has long existed as a medium to celebrate the LGBTQ+ community and defy gender norms and stereotypes. They argue that its message is unmistakable among the general public, and that Wendler’s sole motivation in censoring this artistic expression was his personal disagreement with that message.

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