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Joanne Jacobs
Dec 23, 20221 min read
AI is learning to censor social media, and your taxes are paying for it
President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan includes half a million dollars for research in technology to detect and remove...
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Joanne Jacobs
Dec 23, 20223 min read
Mastering newspeak at Stanford
Will Stanford continue to award master's degrees? Will my daughter's major -- American Studies -- need a new name? Stanford's IT...
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Joanne Jacobs
Oct 16, 20222 min read
Diversity is skin deep at Harvard
Stanford discriminated against Jewish applicants in the early 1950's, admitted President Marc Tessier-Lavigne, who issued an apology last...
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Joanne Jacobs
Sep 3, 20222 min read
School can't ban Christian club, OK 'Satanic Temple'
You don't have to be Christian to join the Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) at Pioneer High School in San Jose. You don't have to...
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Joanne Jacobs
Jun 14, 20221 min read
‘Proud Boys’ interrupt Pride event
Drag Queen Story Hour was starting at a Bay Area library when a group of men entered shouting homophobic and transphobic slurs, reports...
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Joanne Jacobs
Jun 7, 20222 min read
Teens back free speech for unpopular views
U.S. high school students and their teachers agree that people should be allowed to express unpopular opinions, according to the Knight...
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Joanne Jacobs
Jun 7, 20223 min read
FIRE expands free-speech advocacy
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education is renaming itself the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (still FIRE) as...
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Joanne Jacobs
May 22, 20221 min read
If you want to speak up, you’d better be a saint
Princeton’s president wants to fire a tenured classics professor, but claims it’s not because he criticized “anti-racist” proposals,...
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Joanne Jacobs
May 22, 20222 min read
‘Loyalty oaths’ return as ‘diversity statements’
Professors who want tenure or promotion at the University of Illinois will have to submit a statement declaring how they support...
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Joanne Jacobs
May 15, 20222 min read
The young Puritans
Overprotected by their parents, Gen Snowflake demands that college “make them comfortable,” argued Greg Lukianoff, a First Amendment...
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Joanne Jacobs
May 10, 20222 min read
Causing discomfort remains legal
Lessons that cause students discomfort remain legal everywhere, even in Florida, writes Peter Minowitz, a Santa Clara University...
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Joanne Jacobs
Jan 16, 20221 min read
Did feds solicit ‘parents as terrorists’ letter?
A National School Boards Association (NSBA) letter suggesting protesting parents may be guilty of “domestic terrorism” launched an FBI...
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Joanne Jacobs
Apr 30, 20191 min read
What About The 1st Amendment?
Remember that “free speech movement” that started in Berkeley? It didn’t stick: Middlebury College’s Student Government Association has...
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Joanne Jacobs
Apr 27, 20191 min read
It’s Not Just The President
In the wake of President Trump’s executive order last month to protect free speech or lose funding, some in higher education join the...
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Joanne Jacobs
Sep 5, 20182 min read
Spoiled children
A college education isn’t intended to make people think any more, write Greg Lukianoff, a First Amendent specialist, and Jonathan Haidt,...
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Joanne Jacobs
May 31, 20181 min read
Free speech trumps ‘offensiveness’
Oregon’s Liberty High School must respect a student’s free-speech rights to wear a “Donald J. Trump Border Wall Construction Co.”...
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Joanne Jacobs
May 26, 20182 min read
Do We Have A Right *Not* To Be Offended In School?
Is this a 1st Amendment issue? Or does the school have a blanket policy against the wear of *any* seemingly-political messages on student...
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Joanne Jacobs
Mar 15, 20181 min read
Can school OK some protests, but not others?
If a school lets students walk out, without penalty, to protest gun violence, is it obliged to allow walkouts for other issues? What...
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Joanne Jacobs
Feb 23, 20181 min read
Don’t talk about guns — or square-root signs
A Louisiana teenager who joked that the square-root sign looks like a gun has been barred from school and faces an expulsion hearing,...
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