FIREwire — August 15, 2025
Harvard nears $500 settlement, WH orders review of Smithsonian, and NYC lawmaker threatens not to fund anyone who takes a photo with Mamdani
Harvard and Trump administration near $500 million settlement
The settlement to restore federal funding and end investigations over campus antisemitism and political retaliation would be the largest financial penalty yet imposed on an elite university under Trump’s higher-education crackdown.
Federal judge lets Alabama restrict ‘divisive concepts’ in public colleges
“Yesterday, a federal court endorsed the dangerous idea that in-class faculty speech is government speech,” FIRE commented. “At odds with 70 years of Supreme Court precedent, this decision could allow states to muzzle faculty and declare any topic off-limits. Public university professors aren’t government mouthpieces.”
White House orders review of Smithsonian museums
“We want their museums to talk about the history of our country in a fair manner,” Trump told reporters Thursday. “Not in a woke manner or in a racist manner, which is what many of them, not all of them, but many of them are doing.”
The review will ensure exhibits are pro-American, ahead of the nation’s 250th anniversary next year, but the Smithsonian is congressionally established and not part of the executive branch, so Trump cannot unilaterally impose narratives of any nature.
NYC lawmaker to deny funding to any who take a photo with Mamdani
“I will NOT fund organizations whose leadership supports Hamas sympathizers and October 7th apologists,” said Councilwoman Inna Vernikov, “so if you want to be like @MarkMeyerAppel, and support or do photo ops with @ZohranKMamdani, don’t even bother calling.”
Aaron Terr, FIRE’s head of public advocacy, explained, “Denying government funding in order to penalize protected speech or association violates the First Amendment.”
Also in the news
The Supreme Court has temporarily allowed Mississippi to require age verification on social media platforms like Facebook and X.
A federal judge struck down parts of a Florida law used to ban school library books.
Although I certainly agree that the principle of free speech is at issue in the two cases about government speech, I have some practical questions about what limiting the scope of government speech will do.
For school library books, does that mean I would have the right to have books of my choice in school libraries? Could I successfully sue a school to force it to include Mein Kampf in their collection? What happens when they run out of space and need to reduce the size of the collection? Do they need to select books at random, or perhaps by something like student popularity, when removing them? If a school already had Mein Kampf in its collection and the librarian decided that it'd be the first book to go when they ran out of space, would that be illegal content-based discrimination?
As far as teaching goes, if a biology teacher were to decide thay they'd prefer to teach creationism instead of evolution, would the state have a recourse? What if the school district itself replaced evolution with creationism in their curriculum? Would the state's hands be tied?
Edit: Teaching creationism would actually violate the Establishment Clause, so replace that example with rejecting genetics in favor of Lysenkoism.