The 10 most egregious violators of student free speech rights in 2017 include prestigious institutions like Harvard University and University of California, Berkeley, according to a Monday report.
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) drew up a list of the top 10 academic institutions when it comes to clamping down on students’ First Amendment rights. Public and private schools fill out FIRE’s top 10, which are not assigned individual rankings.
Harvard achieved the distinguished censorship accolade by penalizing students who join single-gender groups like frats and sororities, revoking 10 students’ admission offers upon discovery of a private chat in which they shared memes deemed offensive, and rescinding a fellowship offered to Chelsea Manning after public pressure.
WATCH: Dr. Jordan B. Peterson Blasts Harvard’s Stance On Frats
Drexel University also made the list for not defending professors’ free speech rights by banning former professor George Ciccariello-Maher from campus after he said “all I want for Christmas is white genocide,” and the Las Vegas massacre “is what happens when [white people] don’t get what they want.” The university claimed it prevented Ciccariello-Maher from coming on campus to guarantee his own safety, as well as others associated with the university. Ciccariello-Maher left the institution at the end of 2017, taking a position as a scholar at New York University.
The free speech nonprofit ranked The Evergreen State College of Washington state as a another notable free speech silencer. The school descended into protests in May when former professor Bret Weinstein refused to participate in the annual “Day of Absence.”
Evergreen switched up the day — on which black students and faculty typically left campus to demonstrate how much the community relies on them — by encouraging white students and faculty to leave instead. Weinstein objected to the school asking white community members to leave campus and students alleged he was racist, demanded he resign, and swarmed campus spaces with demands for more diversity initiatives.
“College administrators, and sometimes even students, are going to greater and greater lengths to justify muzzling expression on campus,” Robert Shibley, executive director for FIRE, said in a press release obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation. “This type of censorship makes for a sterile environment where lively debate and discussion can’t thrive. The public deserves to know which colleges will defend free expression — and which ones will go to seemingly any length to silence it.”
FIRE also included Albion College, Fordham University, Los Angeles Community College District, Northwestern University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Texas State University in its top 10 ranking.
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