Morning Wire XX
[0] A University of Washington computer science professor is suing his employer, claiming his First Amendment rights were violated.
[1] This is just the latest battle over freedom of speech on college campuses.
[2] In today's episode of Morning Wire, contributor Carrie Sheffield digs into what's happening on college campuses and which organizations, if any, are fighting back.
[3] I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire editor -in -chief John Bickley.
[4] It's July 24th, and this is your Sunday edition of Morning Wire.
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[11] More and more college professors seem to get canceled every year.
[12] Ideas and free thinking have become dangerous to professors on both the right and the left as college campuses become less tolerant of dissent.
[13] Recently, a Georgetown University law professor said he resigned rather than work in an environment hostile to the free exchange of ideas.
[14] Harvard suspended a black economics professor who challenged orthodoxy on race and police violence.
[15] And the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a leader in the fight for what it calls campus freedom, is expanding into other battlefronts.
[16] Here to discuss is Carrie Sheffield, senior policy analyst at Independent Women's Voice.
[17] So, Carrie, this is an issue we've been hearing about for a few years now, but just this month we saw another professor resign.
[18] Before we dive into those specifics, tell us what's been happening on college campuses.
[19] Thanks for having me, Georgia.
[20] Well, we are seeing an epidemic of self -censorship.
[21] College campuses are kind of the epicenter.
[22] but we're really seeing it everywhere.
[23] In July of 2020, the Cato Institute released research about political expression and self -censorship.
[24] It found 62 % of Americans say the political climate prevents them from saying what they believe.
[25] Majority of Democrats, 52%, independence, 59%, and Republicans, 77%, feel they cannot express their views.
[26] And out of all the groups surveyed, only self -identified strong liberals, reported feeling comfortable sharing their views.
[27] That was 58%.
[28] Now, the same Cato study also found that 50 % of strong liberals support firing individuals who made political donations to President Trump, whereas 36 % of strong conservatives support firing Biden donors.
[29] Why this matters on college campuses is because Democrat donors far outnumber Republican donors.
[30] A Cornell study from 2020 found that 98 % of employee, professor donations go to Democrats, and left -leaning pass.
[31] compared to less than 2 % that go to the GOP or right -leading causes.
[32] Now, I think it's also important to note here that it's not just conservatives that are being censored on campuses.
[33] Absolutely.
[34] There have been a couple notable examples of left -wing individuals being punished for political speech.
[35] For example, the University of Alabama's Jamie Riley, the former dean of students, resigned after conservatives resurfaced past tweets where Riley criticized the American flag and made a connection between police and racism.
[36] More common, though, are instances of left -wing professors being punished for questioning established academic findings.
[37] For example, in 2019, Portland State University began disciplinary proceedings against atheist philosophy professor Peter Pogosian for his role in challenging the so -called grievance studies.
[38] Begogsian's team, which describes itself as left -wing academics, sought to challenge what they saw as poor scholarship and eroding criteria in several academic fields.
[39] His team submitted bogus papers to academic journals in race, gender, fat, and sexuality studies to determine whether they would pass through peer review and be accepted for publication.
[40] Now, several of these bogus papers were later published, which the authors cited in support of their contention.
[41] Bogosian resigned in October as a result of ongoing harassment.
[42] I'm not a victim in this.
[43] I fought back against a bunch of things.
[44] I fought back against, in the liberal, censorious ideology, I fought back against the people who hired me to do a job that they themselves prevented me from doing.
[45] There was only so much I can do against the institution and ultimately I lost.
[46] Another example came out of Fordham University.
[47] In October, Professor Christopher Trogan was fired after he confused the names of two black students, a mistake he denied making on the basis of race.
[48] The incident actually happened in an incident.
[49] English class that was focused on justice, equality, and inclusion.
[50] The professor sent a mass email apologizing for the incident, explaining that he had dedicated his life to social justice.
[51] That email rubbed some students the wrong way, and the professor was subsequently fired.
[52] So in addition to these cases, at the top of the segment, we also mentioned a Harvard professor who was suspended.
[53] What happened there?
[54] Yes.
[55] Harvard economics professor Roland Friar Jr. was one of the most renowned professors in the country.
[56] In 2008, Economist magazine named him one of the top eight economists in the world.
[57] His prowess earned him an appointment to the executive board of the American Economic Association and a MacArthur Genius Grant.
[58] He also won the John Bates Clark Medal given to the best economist under age 40 in the entire world.
[59] Now, Friars, groundbreaking research touched on performance gaps in low -income K -12 institutions, the cultural and socioeconomic factors that influenced black student achievement, law enforcement, use of force, and racial bias.
[60] His findings in a 2016 paper were extremely controversial because he found that black suspects were not more likely to die of lethal force at the hands of police than their white counterparts, though they were more likely to experience non -lethal force.
[61] His findings completely contradicted narratives many at Harvard and throughout academia wanted to promote.
[62] Friar, who is black himself, reported of being shocked by the findings, but he stood by his work.
[63] And then in 2018, Friar was investigated for sexual harassment.
[64] He was banned from campus and his award -winning research lab was shut down.
[65] But that was all in direct conflict with the recommendation from the investigators who simply suggested that he receive an HR training.
[66] Harvard later reinstated Professor Friar's teaching privileges in July 2021 after a two -year suspension.
[67] However, they have yet to clear his name and continue to subject him to conditions on his teaching and research and have barred him from holding any supervisory position until 2023.
[68] Now, tell us about this most recent case at Georgetown.
[69] We just saw a very high -profile resignation over this very issue.
[70] Sure.
[71] Legal scholar Ilya Shapiro resigned June 6th from Georgetown University Law Center.
[72] On June 2, Shapiro was reinstated as senior lecture and executive director for the Georgetown Center for the Constitution after a 122 -day.
[73] investigation, which began before Shapiro started his first day on the job.
[74] Georgetown investigated Shapiro after he tweeted that Sri Shrinivasan, the chief judge of the U .S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, would be President Biden's best pick for the Supreme Court.
[75] He continued, quote, but alas, Srinivasa doesn't fit into the latest intersectionality hierarchy, so we'll get a lesser black woman, close quote.
[76] Shapiro said his phrasing of lesser black woman was imprecise due to Twitter's character constraints and was meant to state someone less academically and professionally credentialed.
[77] Shapiro said he was upset because he felt that Biden was wrongly narrowing his candidate pool based on gender and race rather than job qualifications.
[78] Shapiro's phrasing gained considerable attention on Twitter and within the Georgetown community and led Georgetown Law Dean William Traynor to denounce the tweet as appalling and at odds with everything we stand for at Georgetown law.
[79] Shapiro spoke to Daily Wire about what happened.
[80] I deleted the tweet and said, look, this is a distraction.
[81] phrased this poorly.
[82] I gave my political enemies a weapon to in bad faith, misconstrued what I was saying, so I'm just going to delete it, and sorry if anyone was offended.
[83] I'm totally open to criticism and discussion and debate and all that, but the point is speech should not subject one to investigation and punishment, unless those limited First Amendment style exceptions, actual harassment of a specific person, incitement of violence, child pornography, those sorts of But ultimately, Georgetown reinstated Shapiro.
[84] So why then did Shapiro choose to resign?
[85] Georgetown says it did not make a finding as to whether Shapiro violated university policy because Shapiro technically sent the tweet a few days before his actual employment was set to begin on February 1st.
[86] So there is some question about whether the rule should even apply.
[87] But Georgetown Law Dean Trainer's findings letter and email to law school alumni characterize Shapiro's comments as harmful and antithetical to the work of Georgetown law.
[88] Shapiro pointed out that other Georgetown professors had made statements deemed offensive to people on the right side of the political aisle.
[89] Shapiro claims these professors received no similar censure or warnings.
[90] In his Wall Street Journal op -ed explaining his resignation, Shapiro wrote that in 2018, Georgetown Foreign Service Professor Carol Christine Fair tweeted during Justice Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation process, quote, look at this chorus of entitled white men justifying a serial rapist irrigated entitlement.
[91] All of them deserve miserable deaths, while feminists laugh as they take their last gasps.
[92] Bonus, we castrate their corpses and feed them to swine, yes, close quote.
[93] At that time, Georgetown held this to be protected speech.
[94] Later in 2020, Georgetown law professor Heidi Feldman tweeted that, quote, law professors and law school deans should not support applications from our students to clerk for judges appointed by President Trump.
[95] To work for such a judge, Feldman continued, indelibly marks a lawyer as lacking in the character and judgment necessary for the practice of law, close quote.
[96] And this April, Feldman tweeted, quote, we have only one political party in this country, the Democrats.
[97] The other group is a combination of a cult and an insurrection supporting crime syndicate.
[98] She went on, the only ethically and politically responsible stance to take toward the Republican Party is to consistently point out that it is no longer a legitimate participant in U .S. constitutional democracy, close quote.
[99] Georgetown took no action for either tweet.
[100] Shapiro told me he felt like he'd been targeted because his worldview leans right.
[101] Here's Shapiro in his own words.
[102] Both the dean and the diversocrats insinuated in their statements and their writings and their report that had I'd been an employee, I definitely would have violated their policies.
[103] And so I could not fulfill my duties, you know, as a Supreme Court commentator, as a teacher, you know, meeting with students, you know, whenever somebody would complain, that was it.
[104] And so there was no way for me to do the job that I was hired to do.
[105] And so what I had to do then was get out on my own terms and shine a light on these weak need spineless administrators who are placating the radical woke mob.
[106] and showing the rot at the heart of Georgetown and more broadly academia.
[107] Now, Shapiro was represented by a really interesting organization.
[108] Tell us about fire.
[109] Right.
[110] Shapiro's legal defense was paid for by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, or Fire.
[111] On June 6th, Fire actually announced that it was moving beyond college campuses to protect free speech for all Americans.
[112] Now, some analysts say Fire's new expansion postings, poses a possible challenge to the American Civil Liberties Union, or the ACLU.
[113] The ACLU has faced criticism in recent years for drifting from its unapologetically pro -free speech roots and taking a more direct role in overtly political fights like supporting abortion and defunding police.
[114] Politico reported that many of Fires, founders, and backers are former leaders of the ACLU, who grew disillusioned with the group under its current executive director, Anthony Romero.
[115] Now, Romero's predecessor, Ira Glasser, moved to serve on a fire advisory board and told Politico that he strongly encouraged Fire to broaden its free speech work because the ACLU seems to be shying away from that role.
[116] Now, how established is Fire at this point?
[117] It's actually been around for about 23 years.
[118] In that time, Fire says it has won more than 500 direct advocacy victories on behalf of college students and faculty members, with thousands more resolved behind the scenes.
[119] Now, I'm assuming if they are purposely hiring ideologically diverse employees, then they're also probably diverse in who they take on as clients?
[120] Yes, fire defense speech from both the left and the right.
[121] Now, we have some really interesting data about the state of ideological diversity on college campuses.
[122] Tell us about that.
[123] We do.
[124] A 2016 Econ Journal watch study examined voter registration of a variety of faculty members at 40, leading universities in the field of economics, history, journalism, law, and psychology.
[125] It found Democrats outnumber of Republicans nearly 12 to 1, and the disparity may only get worse with time.
[126] The study noted the liberal ratio among faculty under age 36 was 23 to 1.
[127] Now, Samuel Abrams, a Sarah Lawrence College Politics Professor, found similar trends in his 2018 survey of 900 university administrators, the people who manage professors and campuses.
[128] He reported that only 6 % of campus administrators identified as conservative to some degree, while 71 % classified themselves as liberal or very liberal.
[129] Last year, student newspaper, the Harvard Crimson, surveyed 236 arts and sciences faculty members, and a mere 3 % described themselves as somewhat or very conservative versus 76 % who identified as somewhat or very liberal.
[130] That is a ratio of 25 to 1.
[131] Harvard student Natalie Khan wrote of the study that while the university has made a concerted effort across the past decade to promote gender and racial diversity among its faculty, Harvard has not made any explicit attempts to bolster representation from across the ideological spectrum.
[132] Right?
[133] It's a very scary time for a lot of professors and students.
[134] Carrie, thanks so much for reporting.
[135] Thank you.
[136] That was Carrie Sheffield, senior policy analyst at Independent Women's Voice.
[137] And that brings us to the end our episode today.
[138] As always, thanks for listening to Morning Wire.
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