My colleague, David French, remembers September 11 in this post today.

Camille Paglia writes this today about the problem of indoctrination in higher education:

But affluent middle-class Democrats now seem to be complacently servile toward authority and automatically believe everything party leaders tell them. Why? Is it because the new professional class is a glossy product of generically institutionalized learning? Independent thought and logical analysis of argument are no longer taught. Elite education in the U.S. has become a frenetic assembly line of competitive college application to schools where ideological brainwashing is so pandemic that it’s invisible. The top schools, from the Ivy League on down, promote “critical thinking,” which sounds good but is in fact just a style of rote regurgitation of hackneyed approved terms (“racism, sexism, homophobia”) when confronted with any social issue. The Democratic brain has been marinating so long in those clichés that it’s positively pickled.

It is an insight into the obvious to say that student speech is no longer limited to the classroom or campus quad, since increasing numbers of students are turning to the Internet to express their ideas. Administrators have taken note. With the Proliferation of blogs and social networking sites that allow students to post their thoughts (even streams of consciousness) online, campus administrators are stepping up their efforts to monitor this expression.  In so doing, they are extending the long arm of their student codes of conduct to punish student expression—not just on campus, but online. 

For example, Johns Hopkins University investigated a student for posting an “offensive” Halloween party invitation on his Facebook profile last year.  FIRE has been on the case, but so far, the university has persisted in its investigation. 

Likewise, a high school in Connecticut punished a student for venting about school policy on her blog.  The student sued and the district court held that her speech disrupted the school environment, even though there was little evidence that students actually knew about her blog rant.  That case is now on appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and you can bet money that university attorneys are watching closely.  Free speech advocates are also watching—see the amicus brief recently filed by Student Press Law Center.

Contrary to their oft-advertised commitments to free speech, universities love to cite primary and secondary school case law that takes a limited view of students’ constitutional rights on campus.  This limited view of students’ rights coincides with their views on “diversity” and desire to create a “utopian” (read:  single-minded) campus community. 

So what is a college student to do?  Stop posting invites to your student club meetings on Facebook and Twitter?  Shut down that blog discussing pro-life issues?  Absolutely not—continue speaking out on issues that are important to you.  The First Amendment protects your right to express your views, via the Internet or more traditional means.  And if administrators come knocking at your dorm room door because of your expression, contact the ADF Center for Academic Freedom.

The Michael Medved Show interviewed my colleague, David French, today regarding the current threats to religious freedom on America’s public university campuses. French discusses the ADF Center for Academic Freedom’s efforts to restore the marketplace of ideas and ensure that college students learn how to think, not what to think. He also retells the story of Jonathan Lopez, who was censored and threatened with expulsion for talking about Christianity and marriage during an open-ended public speaking assignment at Los Angeles City College.  A federal court recently enjoined the College’s unconstitutional speech code after Lopez filed suit.

Student groups at America’s public universities are increasingly learning that, as in real estate, what matters most is location, location, location.  On Friday, the ADF Center for Academic Freedom and the Christian Legal Society appealed a lawsuit against the University of Montana School of Law concerning the denial of official student organization status to the local CLS chapter.  The University denied CLS official recognition because the group requires voting members to affirm CLS’s statement of faith, but the University argues that its “nondiscrimination” policy requires student groups to be open to all individuals.  In other words, the University believes that students’ constitutional right to associate freely with other students who share their beliefs is of less value than the University’s desire to root out alleged “discrimination.”  The federal district court agreed with the University’s position based on the Truth v. Kent School District decision issued by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.  My colleague, David French, has written about Truth’s impact on public university students here.  Because of Truth, students in Montana, and in nine other states within the Ninth Circuit, have virtually no free association right to define their organization around a set of beliefs and central message if their university has a nondiscrimination policy.  This is why ADF has asked the United States Supreme Court to review the Truth case and reverse the Ninth Circuit’s evisceration of free association.

 On the other side of the country yesterday, the ADF Center for Academic Freedom and FIRE secured a significant victory for free association at Wright State University.  The Campus Bible Fellowship had been derecognized by the University earlier this year because the University determined that the group violated a “nondiscrimination” policy by requiring members and leaders to affirm the group’s statement of faith.  After ADF and FIRE sent letters to the University, it relented and agreed to grant CBF an exemption from the “nondiscrimination” policy.  The University rightly recognized that the group’s freedom of association was paramount in comparison to the University’s policy.

 These two situations, occurring over the span of only a few days, but miles apart in result, demonstrate the growing divide in free association jurisprudence.  Student groups at public colleges and universities within the Ninth Circuit have been hamstrung by the Truth decision (this was demonstrated most blatantly by the Ninth Circuit’s cursory decision in Christian Legal Society Chapter of the University of California Hastings College of the Law v. Kane) and at this point do not possess the same legal protections of student groups elsewhere in the country.  CLS students in Montana are second-class citizens when compared with the CBF students at Wright State.

 The federal circuit courts of appeals are in conflict with one another on the free association issue.  The Ninth Circuit greatly restricted this right in Truth.  The Seventh Circuit found that the right broadly protected student groups in Christian Legal Society Chapter at Southern Illinois University v. Walker.  And the Eleventh Circuit is due to rule any day on this issue in Beta Upsilon Chi at the University of Florida v. Machen.  The split between circuits on this issue continues to grow, despite the fact that several decades ago, the Supreme Court held that student groups have a right to freedom of association on public college campuses, including the right to define their groups around a core set of principles.

 The growing divide in free association jurisprudence is driving a wedge between Christian students and the ability to form student organizations defined by certain values.  The result is that student organizations in Ohio receive more protection under the Constitution than student organizations in Montana.  The Truth cert petition is one of the petitions to watch according to SCOTUSblog.  I’m certainly watching.  It’s time for the Court to take a free association case and reaffirm that the constitutional right to associate freely with like-minded people is one of highest values in our country.