Florida wants colleges out of politics. But…
The board that oversees Florida’s public universities wants them to embrace institutional neutrality, but Ryan Ansloan warns that a carve-out in the proposal allowing schools to “condemn” allegedly unlawful expression could turn a promising policy into yet another license for administrators to weigh in on political disputes.
A federal judge revives an old American promise
As the Trump administration sought to deport noncitizens over pro-Palestinian expression, FIRE’s victory in Stanford Daily v. Rubio vindicates the old American principle that the government cannot make a person’s presence depend on whether they say the “right” thing. As I wrote this week:
When voices fold into silence, we not only lose their unspoken perspective, we lose touch with what it means to be American, and lose our grip on the very promise of our republic.
Below the fold
A Minnesota federal case could expose how far Homeland Security went to monitor political dissent — including infiltrating a church where congregants appear to have done nothing more than gather and speak, while agents built dossiers and demanded records from journalists, unions, and activist groups.
International
Chinese officials recently got a Texas conference speaker canceled. You read that right. After Chinese officials confronted a board member of the U.S.-China Catholic Association about Purdue professor Fenggang Yang’s planned appearance at a Houston conference, the group disinvited Yang over his criticism of Beijing. This illustrates how transnational censorship succeeds not merely because authoritarian governments demand silence, Sarah McLaughlin writes, but because institutions in freer countries agree to provide it.
China is prosecuting people for the crime of remembering — Hong Kong convicted longtime organizers of Tiananmen Square vigils, mainland China sentenced artist Gao Zhen to three years for satirical works mocking Mao, and Beijing’s efforts to suppress criticism continue spilling overseas.