For years, libertarians had fought laws and policies barring Communists from teaching as direct assaults on the First Amendment, while supporters of loyalty programs had painted all Communists as mental slaves of Moscow. In 1952 the Supreme Court upheld New York's 1949 Feinberg Law, which required detailed procedures for investigating the loyalty…

The author reports on the ruling of a divided appellate court that held that the state law unconstitutionally made it harder for minorities to seek preferences than for other groups. The court struck down a voter-passed ban on the use of race-conscious admissions by Michigan's public colleges, holding that the measure had unconstitutionally put…

Recent court rulings have challenged the long-held concept of academic freedom for faculty members. As an associate professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, Kevin J. Renken says he felt obliged to speak out about his belief that administrators there were mishandling a National Science Foundation grant to him…

When people gathered last May for the commencement ceremony at the University of California at Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law, they were greeted by chanting activists from the National Lawyers Guild and other left-wing groups. The university, protesters shouted, should fire John C. Yoo, a tenured professor who has taught at the law school…

The Supreme Court's landmark ruling overturning Washington, D.C.'s handgun ban could have implications for colleges that prohibit firearms on their campuses. Last month the court declared for the first time that the U.S. Constitution's Second Amendment protects an individual's right to keep a gun, not just the right of states to maintain armed…

The historic institution of tenure is rapidly becoming history. The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has for almost a century advocated for tenure as the chief guarantor of a faculty member's academic freedom. But today tenure and academic freedom are viewed less and less as crucially intertwined. Academic freedom has widely…

This article reports that the U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments in December in a case that could make it more difficult for plaintiffs to win sexual-discrimination or sexual-harassment lawsuits against colleges and other educational institutions. The justices will decide whether to uphold a decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for…

Most college and university speech codes would not survive a legal challenge, according to a report released in December by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a watchdog group for free speech on campuses. The report labeled many speech codes as overly broad or vague, and cited examples such as Furman University's prohibition of…

A decade ago, the Supreme Court was almost ready to confer First Amendment protection on the "Internet" believing that it was sufficiently benign. Little did everyone anticipate how different that rosy view might seem today. Several troubling developments have occurred within the past months. Megan Meier, a 13-year-old in Missouri, was apparently…

The old childhood ditty "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me" has proved wiser than the avalanche of commentary provoked by the recent insults by Don Imus and the killings at Virginia Tech. Our society forbids public name-calling but allows sticks and stones. Anyone can acquire a gun, but everyone must be…

A case pending in a federal court of appeals in California may clarify a surprisingly murky question: Do faculty members at public universities enjoy a special privilege to speak freely about institutional matters, or, as far as the First Amendment is concerned, are they just another category of government hirelings? Juan Hong, a professor of…

A software program that searches for offensive content on college athletes' social-networking sites has drawn skeptical reactions from legal experts, who say it could threaten students' constitutional rights. Billed as a "social-network monitoring service" and marketed exclusively to college athletics departments, YouDiligence was on display at…

Since President Bush named Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. to the Supreme Court, speculation has run high as to where the new court may be headed. Citing three recent cases ("Morse v. Frederick", "Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights, Inc." and "Garcetti v.…

Just a few days before the shootings at Virginia Tech, officials at the University of Delaware received a complaint from the family of a female undergraduate student. The family said that Maciej Murakowski, a 19-year-old student who lived in the same residence hall as their daughter, had posted material on his Web site that made the woman fearful…

Last December saw another predictable report from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), a self-described watchdog group, highlighting how higher education is supposedly under siege from a politically correct plague of so-called hate-speech codes. In that report, FIRE declared that as many as 96 percent of top-ranked colleges…