Fla. Gov. DeSantis, Fmr. Sec. Summers represent bipartisan support for more free speech on campus
Summers’ recent criticism that higher education opportunities for free speech aligns with similar comments made by Republican politicians Ron DeSantis and Kat Cammack this month.
Rep. Cammack recently spoke with ‘Campus Reform’ about her new Campus Free Speech Caucus.
Concern over the lack of free speech and intellectual diversity on campus is a bipartisan issue.
On Tuesday, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed House Bill 233, legislation that safeguards “intellectual freedom and viewpoint diversity” within the state’s public universities.
As Campus Reform’s Angela Morabito writes, the new law denies students the right to safe spaces, as well as public universities’ ability to “shield” students from on-campus speech they find triggering.
Earlier this month, Lawrence Summers, former president of Harvard University and Treasury Secretary in the Obama administration, criticized higher education for stifling intellectual diversity on campus.
Speaking on PBS’ “Firing Line,” Summers said that there aren’t enough opportunities for progressives to openly debate conservatives. “Too often in recent years, [universities] have seen themselves as social just warrior institutions,” said Summers.
”I think universities need to see themselves as places committed to intellectual excellence and openness to all ideas...Too often in recent years, they have seen themselves as social justice warrior institutions.”
—Former @Harvard Pres. @LHSummers on PC campus culture@PBS pic.twitter.com/m9gpkolk0Z— Firing Line with Margaret Hoover (@FiringLineShow) June 11, 2021
Summers promotion of free speech may be motivated by his tumultuous tenure as president of Harvard University.
Peter Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars, told Campus Reform that he considers Summers an “early victim of what we now call the cancel culture when he resigned from the presidency of Harvard in 2006 after a no-confidence vote by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.”
Cherise Trump, executive director at Speech First, told Campus Reform that colleges and universities “shut down ideas that oppose their woke ideology by implementing Orwellian reporting systems where students are encouraged to report each other whenever they witness bias or offensive speech.”
Campus Reform continues to cover discrimination against conservatives and the promotion of free speech on America’s college campuses.
Campus Reform reporter Ophelie Jacobson recently interviewed Representative Kat Cammack (R-FL), the co-founder of the Campus Free Speech Caucus.
“We’re seeing a result of all this liberal indoctrination on our campuses playing out in our society today, between community activists and community organizers and the social justice warriors,” Cammack told Jacobson. “That really is causing chaos and destruction within our communities today.”
Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @Jess__Custodio
