In his remarks upon accepting the 2018 Jerry L. Martin Prize for Excellence in College Trusteeship, former University of Pennsylvania trustee Paul S. Levy condemns the group think that is squelching civil debate and freedom of expression on college campuses. He offers recommendations to trustees on how to combat it and reclaim the ethics of higher learning. The award was presented on October 12, 2018.
The Honorable José A. Cabranes, United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, warns of the destructive synergy of non-academic administrators and student activists on freedom of expression at America’s colleges and universities. He gave this speech upon accepting ACTA’s 2019 Philip Merrill Award for Outstanding Contributions to […]
Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr., president of Purdue University, paid tribute to the transformative nature of the liberal arts when studied rigorously and in an atmosphere where the robust clash of ideas is allowed to flourish. He gave this speech upon accepting ACTA’s 2018 Philip Merrill Award for Outstanding Contributions to Liberal Arts Education on October […]
Wallace Hall, former regent at the University of Texas, courageously flagged admissions corruption and malfeasance in the system as far back as 2011. He faced scathing criticism and censure before being fully vindicated years later. He gave this speech upon accepting ACTA’s Jerry L. Martin Prize for Excellence in College Trusteeship on October 17, 2019.
Today’s colleges seem to be dominated by identity politics and progressive calls for more “diversity” and heightened attention to sustainability efforts. Surveys show that the already strong leftish orientation among faculty has strengthened over the years. At the same time, however, there is a smaller but growing counter movement. Academic traditionalists are worried about the […]
Free speech advocates were enraged when Middlebury College students in 2017 drowned out a planned talk by the author Charles Murray, whose writings many consider racist. The students’ chants prevented Murray from speaking. Some protesters surrounded and jumped on his car after he was ushered out of the lecture hall. Conservative lawmakers, academics and other observers pointed to that […]
Speech First launched the first public interest litigation project against campus bias response teams, and in retrospect it’s easy to see why it took so long. The membership association failed to get an injunction against the University of Michigan’s team, the subject of its first lawsuit, even as it scared UMich into revising some definitions used by its team. Another judge […]
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