Browse by Tags

All Tags » education (RSS)

A conservative academic for Colorado: A specimen Margaret Mead would love?

By Harvey Silverglate As engines of creativity and innovation, colleges are always pushing the envelope on scholarship. While this is usually good – since it broadens our culture’s collective knowledge – occasionally you see some really idiotic proposals...

This Just In: Federal appeals court upholds student speech

Back in January, Wendy Kaminer posted here about a federal case in which a high school student was challenging her school's decision to suspend her for wearing a shirt that said "Be Happy, Not Gay." Following up on that post, the U.S. Court...

Justice Brandeis would be proud … or would he?

The Waltham-based university named after the late and great Supreme Court Justice, Louis D. Brandeis, champion of free speech and free thought, has just achieved the dubious distinction of winning one of the “muzzle awards” given out annually by the highly...

"Douchebags in the Central Office" Censor Student Speech

By Wendy Kaminer Not content to regulate student speech in school, or at events subject to school supervision, administrators are now punishing students for what they say on their own time and their own computers: Last spring, Avery Doninger, a junior...

Separating the Girls from the Boys

By Wendy Kaminer Next fall, all academic programs in Greene County, Georgia public schools will be segregated by sex, if the Greene County Board of Education has its way. Last week, the board voted unanimously to mandate single sex education in all county...

No Straight Talk Allowed

By Wendy Kaminer Last year, high school senior Heidi Zamecnik sued her school for prohibiting her from wearing a t-shirt expressing her preference for heterosexuality. “BE HAPPY, NOT GAY,” her shirt read. According to the complaint in her case (filed...

This Just In: School Censorship 4 Texas High Schoolers

By James F. Tierney In a story we missed when it first broke a month ago, a federal appellate court upheld a Texas school's decision to suspend the high school sophomore for writing a violent fictional short story that school administrators interpreted...

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet

By Harvey Silverglate For quite some time, I’ve been griping about what I call “the corporatization of the American university” – the trend in which our colleges and universities have prioritized their role as businesses over their role as educational...

This Just In: Opinion Released in SFSU Civility Code case

By James F. Tierney Two weeks ago, Harvey Silverglate blogged about a federal Magistrate Judge, Wayne Brazil, who overturned a “civility code” at San Francisco State University on the grounds that it targeted speech and expression that falls under the...

Making Harvard “Safe” for the World’s Most Pampered Faculty

By Harvey Silverglate H. L. Mencken, late in life, allowed himself to be interviewed by a young reporter from his hometown newspaper. The interviewer asked the grand old curmudgeon, "why, if you find so much that is unworthy of reverence in the United...

“Thou Shalt Be Civil, Or Else….”

By Harvey Silverglate One of the craftiest semantic tricks adopted by campus censors since the mid-1980s used to suppress unpopular viewpoints and supposedly offensive speech on campus has been the “civility code,” a close relative of the “harassment...