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…

In the past year, public colleges and universities across the country have been shrinking degree programs and terminating personnel--including tenured professors--in an effort to cope with budget cuts in higher education. The situation is not confined to a handful of mismanaged public institutions, as in the past. It is a national phenomenon and…

Jeremy Waldron, a professor of social and political theory at University of Oxford and also a professor of law at New York University, contends that laws against hate speech deserve further consideration, even if he doubts they "will ever pass constitutional muster in America." He contends that "The Harm in Hate Speech," as his…

The American Association of University Professors and its Canadian counterpart jointly issued a statement last week calling on colleges with campuses abroad to protect the rights of overseas workers and give faculty members more say in planning foreign programs. The statement, adopted by the AAUP's committee on academic freedom and tenure and the…

The memory of the academy is long, and its scope is national. Disagreements of no real consequence are remembered for entire careers, mutating and multiplying among allies and advisees into a kind of poisonous gas that can sour the air of an entire sector of the profession for generations. The author maintains that there is no other profession,…

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…

Steven Bitterman was fired by his school after he offended his students for telling them that they could easily appreciate the biblical story of Adam and Eve if they considered it a myth. Several adjunct and full-time professors who work off the tenure track have been fired after saying something, as Mr. Bitterman did, that offended students or…

For 10 years now, professors of the Belarusian Collegium have held classes in private apartments and rented offices. The institution, known as the "underground university," is not officially registered. Under the regime of Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, the dictator who has been in power for 15 years, professors who teach at the collegium face…

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…

Since 2003, the Teachers College of Columbia University has maintained a policy of evaluating students based on their "commitment to social justice." Before last summer, Columbia could blame the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education, the main accrediting body for schools of education, for those evaluation criteria. The…

On March 2, Michael J. D'Andrea, professor of counselor education at the University of Hawaii Manoa campus, received a letter informing him that "effective immediately upon your receipt of this letter, you are being reassigned to work at home with pay while the University of Hawaii ... addresses several issues concerning your alleged…

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…