In the nearly five years since I first began blogging about student rights here on The Huffington Post, I've written many times about the incredible case of former Valdosta State University (VSU) student Hayden Barnes, who was expelled from Georgia's VSU in April 2007 for peacefully protesting the...

In what has to be the most hilariously unconstitutional piece of legislation that I've seen in quite some time, senators in the Arizona state legislature have introduced a bill that would require all educational institutions in the state -- including state universities -- to suspend or fire professors...

As I reported back in September, a drama professor at a campus in the University of Wisconsin System appeared to be in danger of losing his job for two posters he had placed outside his door. The first poster included a quote from the beloved yet short-lived science-fiction...

Last week I wrote about a remarkable case of censorship at the University of Wisconsin-Stout (Stout). Stout Professor James Miller was threatened with "disorderly conduct" for posting outside his office door a quote from the beloved yet short-lived sci-fi TV show Firefly, and a second

A time comes in the life of every campus leader when a regrettable or silly mistake is made. If you serve long enough, errors are inevitable, but leaders should be judged not for their errancy, but how they handle mistakes when they do come up. By that measure, let's take...

Freshmen arriving at Harvard this year may not know it, but they are making history -- and not in a good way. For the first time in Harvard's multi-century history, students are being asked to sign a pledge to warm and fuzzy values. Students will pledge...

In my last post, I talked about how Delta Kappa Epsilon's decision not to fight its suspension at Yale University could have serious ramifications for the free speech rights of college students across the country. In this post, I plan to take a step back and explain to...

This will likely come as a surprise to no one: Fraternities consistently produce some of the least sympathetic cases for campus free speech advocates. Those of you who have followed my work over the years know that college students can and do get in trouble for remarkably tame...

Yale University's decision last month to punish a fraternity that made pledges chant offensive slogans was heralded by some as a blow against sexual harassment in the college setting. But it may be the beginning of a new wave of campus censorship of politically incorrect speech. The...

When I first started at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), I wanted to make sure that we wouldn't just aggressively police violations of freedom of speech -- we also would credit universities that protected the First Amendment despite calls for censorship. Unfortunately, I soon learned that a...

In September, I wrote about a legal victory in the remarkable case of Hayden Barnes, a former student at Georgia's Valdosta State University (VSU) who was kicked out of his college for protesting a planned parking garage complex. As justification for expelling him, the university cited only a...

U.S. News can tell you which colleges and universities are ranked the "best," but what about your right to express yourself on campus? A critical part of the college experience is grappling with ideas that you might not agree with or that might even offend you. In fact, if you...

In the aftermath of the unconscionable events that took place in Arizona this weekend, there's been a lot of heated discussion about tone, rhetoric, and the consequences of "inflammatory" speech. Unfortunately, commentators have occasionally confused their anger and condemnation of some of the more overheated rhetoric in our political culture...

Check out Wendy Kaminer's great column, "Debating Hate Speech," over at The Atlantic:

Last week I engaged in an online Intelligence Squared debate about hate speech with Femi Otitoju, a British diversity consultant and unwavering advocate of hate speech legislation. I've participated in...

Last week I sat down for an interview in my backyard in Brooklyn with Brendan O'Neill, editor of the British online magazine spiked. Brendan has been filing reports for spiked from New York City and wanted to talk to me about my work dealing with censorship on college campuses as...

A ruling issued earlier this month by a federal district court in Georgia may be one of the most significant victories for students' rights in recent years. The decision has already sent shockwaves through the higher education community, and the reverberations may be felt for a long time to come....

Today, for the third year in a row, my organization, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, took out a full-page ad in the college rankings edition of U.S. News & World Report to highlight abuses of free speech on campus. This year, the ad focuses...

Is it wrong to admit that I love a married man? Well, I do and his name is Jonathan Rauch. You may know him from his work as a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution or his writings in The Atlantic, where he has been a leading voice...

Check out the latest issue of Free Inquiry magazine which features an article by my colleague Will Creeley and me that explores how censorship of campus speech ends up hurting all of us in the long run. The article, entitled "Is Campus Censorship the New Normal?", focuses on...

Back in 2005, Chris Lee, a student at Washington State University, set out to make a comedy musical that, in the tradition of South Park, offended as broad a spectrum of people as possible. Unfortunately for him, he succeeded. His musical--a very loose parody of Mel Gibson's 2004 film The...