ACLU on Campus Free Speech
From ACLU’s Mar. 4 Open Letter to U.S. College and University Presidents:
This letter is prompted by two Executive Orders—Executive Order 14161, titled “Protecting the United States from Foreign Terrorists and other National Security and Public Safety Threats,” signed on January 20, 2025, and Executive Order 14188, titled “Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism,” signed on January 29, 20252—and related communications from the White House.
Executive Order 14161 states that it is the United States’ policy to “protect its citizens” from noncitizens who “espouse hateful ideology,” and to ensure that noncitizens “do not bear hostile attitudes toward [America’s] citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles, and do not advocate for, aid, or support designated foreign terrorists and other threats to our national security.” The Order directs the Secretary of State to “[r]ecommend any actions necessary to protect the American people from” noncitizens who, among other things, “preach or call for … the overthrow or replacement of the culture on which our constitutional Republic stands.”
Executive Order 14188 requests from the Attorney General “an inventory and analysis of all court cases … involving institutions of higher education alleging civil-rights violations related to or arising from post-October 7, 2023 campus anti-Semitism” and directs the Secretaries of State, Education, and Homeland Security to recommend ways to “familiariz[e] institutions of higher education with the grounds for inadmissibility under 8 U.S.C. 1182(a)(3) so that such institutions may monitor for and report activities” by noncitizen students and staff and ensure that such reports lead “to investigations and, if warranted, actions to remove such aliens.” In a fact sheet explaining Executive Order 14188, the White House described the Order as “forceful and unprecedented,” made clear its purpose of targeting “leftist, anti-American colleges and universities,” and described it as a “promise” to “quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before.” …
In combination, these orders, the accompanying fact sheet, and other communications from the Trump Administration are intended to enlist university officials in censoring and punishing non-citizen scholars and students for their speech and scholarship. As you well know, this would intrude on academic freedom and equal access to education….
Institutions of higher learning play a key role in our democratic society. As spaces committed to academic freedom and open discourse—and which are often home to a diverse group of people with a range of different backgrounds, bringing together scholars and students from throughout the United States and all over the world—college and university campuses have been central to political expression and the development of ideas throughout the history of the United States. American campuses also enable non-citizen students and faculty to more freely express themselves—including by expressing views that might be subject to heightened repression and censorship in their countries of origin—through poli
Article from Reason.com
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