thought reform - Free For All

May 30, 2008

This Just In: Take me out to the ballgame, but don't boo
By Harvey Silverglate

The Chicago Tribune is reporting that the owners of the Chicago Cubs are considering enacting a de facto "civility code" at Wrigley field, in response to some Cubs fans who have taken to booing the underperforming left fielder Alfonso Soriano. As Sports Law Blog notes, Wrigley and the Cubbies are privately-owned, so fans don't have First Amendment rights to express their disappointment at their team's defensive performance.

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censorship, free speech, popular culture

April 29, 2008

This Just In: Colorado College's Injustice Toward Students
By Harvey Silverglate

Last month, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (disclosure: for which TheFreeForAll blogger Harvey Silverglate serves as Chairman of the Board) noted that Colorado College had punished several students who published a parody of a campus feminist publication. FIRE is now reporting that the College has denied the students' appeal.

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censorship, First Amendment, free speech

November 19, 2007

Coercing Speech
By Wendy Kaminer
By Wendy Kaminer

Coerced speech is as much an affront to liberty and human dignity as coerced silence. In extreme cases – think of prisoners of war or terrorism reciting “confessions” dictated by their captors – the affront is obvious. But it’s easy to overlook the abuses occasioned by routine impositions of political orthodoxies on people either too disadvantaged or too craven to challenge them.

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5

First Amendment, free speech, political correctness

November 04, 2007

Re-Thinking Thought Reform
By Wendy Kaminer
By Wendy Kaminer

University of Delaware President Patrick Harker grudgungly terminated the ideological re-education program exposed by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (and reported here last week.) FIRE has the story, which includes troubling accounts of threatened retaliation against students who declined to defend the now defunct "residence life" program and to demonize FIRE as an ideologically biased, conservative organization.

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1

free speech, higher education, thought reform

November 01, 2007

Thought Reform U.
By Wendy Kaminer
By Wendy Kaminer

Earlier this week, a smart, worldly civil libertarian queried me about an email reporting that Harvard Law School had expelled a student for indirectly citing a work by a Holocaust denier in a paper about the Nazi’s judicial regime. The report was easily exposed as satire; but serious people took it seriously enough to wonder if it were true, and that was telling.

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censorship, free speech, higher education

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Boston Phoenix
Can Harvard deal with cops, even Harvard cops?
Published 8/29/2008 by Harvey Silverglate
I came upon an article in Wednesday's Boston Globe about possible reform measures for the Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) following recent allegations of racist conduct. I...

Boston Phoenix
This Just In: Take me out to the ballgame, but don't boo
Published 5/30/2008 by Harvey Silverglate
The Chicago Tribune is reporting that the owners of the Chicago Cubs are considering enacting ...

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