FIRE celebrates its 10th anniversary tonight in New York City.  David French, director of the ADF Center for Academic Freedom, will be in attendance.  Through the years, FIRE has been a stalwart advocate for the constitutional rights of students, faculty and staff on America’s college and university campuses.  On several occasions ADF has been blessed to team up with FIRE to restore constitutional protections on campus. 

In 2006, as a part of its speech code litigation project, FIRE assisted students at San Francisco State University as they faced a student conduct investigation after holding an anti-terrorism rally on campus.  SFSU administrators used a speech code that applied to every California State University campus to investigate the students for being “uncivil.”  FIRE’s efforts resulted in SFSU dropping the charges.  ADF later filed suit on behalf of these students and secured an injunction against the Cal State speech code.

In 2008, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit rendered one of the first appellate decisions addressing a university speech code.  DeJohn v. Temple University is now the standard bearer for the constitutionality of student harassment policies.  ADF and FIRE collaborated on the DeJohn litigation, and its principles have led to injunctions against similar speech codes in California, Pennsylvania and Washington.

It has been our privilege to partner with FIRE in these and other efforts.  Indeed, some of our own staff have worked for FIRE in the past. 

As all of FIRE’s staff prepare for and enjoy tonight’s celebration, we congratulate them on 10 great years and wish them many more successful years protecting liberty on campus.

The audio recording of Tuesday’s oral arguments in ASU Students for Life v. Crow can be found here.  ADF Center for Academic Freedom attorney Heather Gebelin Hacker argued on behalf of ASU Students for Life.  A decision is expected in several months.

On Monday, Travis ably deconstructed the University of Wisconsin’s position on what students and society want from higher education.  But it’s important to point out one particular portion of the article in Insider Higher Education by Kevin Reilly, President of the University of Wisconsin System: 

To have more secondary students graduate, and do so better prepared for postsecondary success, colleges and universities will need to redouble longstanding partnerships with the schools. This also includes changing the higher education culture so that we act as a compelling magnet for talent earlier in students’ lives, even if that requires that we cross some well established boundaries that we have grown all too comfortable respecting. Beyond traditional approaches, we need to reach pre-college students directly through their families, computer screens, cell phones, and iPods. We also will need to create thoroughgoing relationships with local community and religious organizations that serve as trusted interlocutors for many first generation and minority Americans and their children.

Oh really?  As Travis points out, the University has repeatedly discriminated against religious students on its campuses.  How could it possibly want to partner with religious organizations when it consistently fails to extend equal rights to Christian students?  Indeed, next week, the University’s lawyers will argue to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit that the University would violate the Establishment Clause if it allowed a Catholic student organization at UW-Madison to have the same access to student activity fees that secular student groups receive. 

If President Reilly wants to talk about working with religious organizations to higher education, perhaps he should start by providing the religious student organizations on his campus with the same constitutional rights as any other organization.

At Inside Higher Ed, Kevin Reilly outlines his prescription for curing popular frustration with higher education, one that ignores the systemic illness while suggesting no real changes.  His strategy—dubbed the “Four Pillars of Promise”—calls for “better preparation, more graduates, more research, and better dissemination and commercialization.”  So in his mind, the public is frustrated simply because it wants more of what it has been receiving.  This “more of  the same” approach brings to mind Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity:  “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

More importantly, Dr. Reilly overlooks the far more fundamental, far more obvious ills of modern academia:  as the wholly-owned subsidiary of the radical left, it blends intellectual repression with moral hedonism.  Whether it is imposing speech codes, kicking religious groups off campus, or adopting ideological litmus tests for certain programs, universities send a clear message to students:  “You can engage in any form of perversion you want as long as you think the way we tell you.” 

As President of the University of Wisconsin System, Dr. Reilly should be especially familiar with these problems.  As its institutions have been sued at least six times, the University of Wisconsin System embodies many of them and is well on its way to winning the ADF Center for Academic Freedom’s “Most Frequent Defendant” award:

• In 2000, UW-Madison lost the landmark Southworth case where the Supreme Court declared that universities can only charge student activity fees if they allocate those funds in a viewpoint neutral way.
• In 2005, UW-Eau Claire prohibited RAs from holding Bible studies in their dorm rooms, only to back down in the face of litigation.
• In 2006, UW-Superior kicked InterVarsity, a Christian ministry, off campus because it wanted to have Christian leaders.  Weeks later, UW-Madison did the same thing to the Roman Catholic Foundation because it allegedly only let Catholics become members and leaders.  Two lawsuits later, both groups returned to campus.
• Despite Southworth, UW-Madison continues to give funds to groups it favors (e.g., Sex Out Loud, Wisconsin Public Interest Research Group) and to deny funds to groups it disfavors (e.g., Roman Catholic Foundation, Conservatives for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT)).  Because it refused to comply with the clear requirements of the First Amendment, it became the target of two still-ongoing lawsuits, one from Roman Catholic Foundation in 2007 and another from CFACT in 2009.

Sadly, Dr. Reilly’s four pillars of insanity fail to address the real sources of frustration toward higher education:  an ivory tower mentality that derides and undermines values that most Americans cherish, silences any dissenting perspectives, engages in indoctrination rather than education, and openly disregards the elementary requirements of the Constitution.

Next Tuesday, October 20th, ADF Center for Academic Freedom attorney Heather Gebelin Hacker will argue ASU Students for Life v. Crow to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.  Last week, the Court released the names of the panel who will hear the case:  Hon. Sandra Day O’Connor, retired Associate Justice for the United States Supreme Court, Chief Judge Alex Kozinski and Circuit Judge Sandra Segal Ikuta.

The argument will take place at the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law at 10 a.m.  The case involves several First Amendment issues, including whether ASU’s campus is a public forum for students, whether ASU can require students to obtain insurance before they engage in speech, and whether ASU can limit outdoor space reservations for student organizations to one zone per day.  More information about the case is here and here.