Update on Legislative Committee Recommendations

Time for accountability

“The four recommendations call on public universities to ensure their free expression policies have built-in accountability measures to ensure enforcement, apply to students, administrators, faculty and staff and shield student grades from taking any impact for participating in protected speech.”

The Arizona Legislative Committee looking into free speech violations at ASU met yesterday and had a bipartisan vote to forward recommendations to strengthen free speech protections at university campuses. Sen Kern said they are filing bills to advance the recommendations in the coming days. “‘Now, I’d like to see us get out of the talking about it phase and getting to the doing something about it phase,’ Wadsack said.”

On their side, ASU says the recommendations are not new, and they are already doing them. This despite the testimony of their own lawyer that there were “‘communication breakdowns’ on the university’s part” last Spring over a conversation event. The vast majority of Barrett faculty signed a letter calling to prevent conservatives like Dennis Prager from speaking at Barrett. I’ve documented on this substack the kinds of events such faculty sponsor at Barret to highlight the grave inconsistency in their letter.

The issue has been whether ASU and the Board of Regents will hold faculty accountable for violations of ASU policy about academic freedom, free speech, and respectful disagreement. To date, this has not happened.

https://azcapitoltimes.com/news/2024/01/04/panel-forwards-ideas-to-strengthen-free-speech-on-state-campuses/