Overview

A white professor of philosophy, who is Jewish, writes in a magazine article that blacks have been less successful in school than whites not because of racial bias, but because the average black is significantly less intelligent that the average white. A faculty colleague on the same campus, who is African-American, charges at a state-sponsored arts festival that there has been a conspiracy, planned and plotted and programmed out of Hollywood, where ...Russian Jewry had a particular control over the movies, and their financial partners, the Mafia, put together a system of destruction of black people.A senior professor of electrical engineering at a Midwestern private university insists that the Holocaust never happened. He attributes the death of millions of Jews in Europe during the 1930s to illness and suicide. An African-American professor at an eastern state university tells his students he sees Zionism as one prime example of reactive racism, his other example being Nazism. Help! Here's a crisis we never expected - but maybe that's the definition of crisis in our business. The Black Student Alliance has invited Khalid Abdul Muhammad to campus next fall as part of an African-American awareness program. They've filled out all the right forms, and provided the necessary information. The auditorium is (I'm sorry to report) free on that evening. The question of the hour is whether we have to provide a forum on our campus for someone we know will surely spew hate against almost every group in sight.In the last three weeks, we have had dozens of different complaints about the uses and abuses of campus computers. Some people have called the campus police to say they have heard our students have been using the computing system to post really vile and revolting stuff on the Internet, and they want us to stop it. In fact, these complaints run the gamut of cyberspace...What troubles me most is that we are about to enter a brand new legal world with hardlyh any policies or rules that cover electronic speech. These are examples from some of the cases, all of them based on real situations, which are treated in this timely book. Bob O'Neil, a former university president, asks the question: Should speech on the university campus be freer than speech on the streets, in the malls, and parks?He dramatically illustrates the many types of problems that confront university administrators today, frequently using imagined characters and exchanges of memorandums to present the issues. All of the issues that are likely to come up involving different situations and media are dealt with in this book. Should speech and other first amendment freedoms be freer on the college campus than in the society at large? How should these issues be dealt with? ""Free Speech in the College Community"" has the answers.

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9780253332677

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Reviews

O'Neil's book deals with campus speech codes, speech and technology, off-campus speech, groups (gays, Greeks), free press, artistic expression, academic freedom, religious speech, and freedom of speech at private institutions. His postscript contains seven carefully crafted premises that should guide all discussions of freedom of speech issues on campus. The book ends with a seven-page annotated bibliography that cites some of the major literature, including William van Alstyne's brilliant work and William A. Kaplin and Barbara A. Lee's comprehensive and essential The Law of Higher Education (3rd ed., 1995). Lucidly written, the book can be read and understood by many audiences from student organizations to board members. O'Neil describes in adequate detail cases on larger campuses, most less than five years old, and quotes central passages from judicial decisions. The book displays the wisdom a former research university president (Virginia and Wisconsin) should have. O'Neil, now director of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression, writes from the perspective of someone who has Been there, struggled with that. Essential for all college and university libraries.--G. L. Findlen, Western Wisconsin Technical College Choice (01/01/1997)

<p> O'Neil's book deals with campus speech codes, speech and technology, off-campus speech, groups (gays, Greeks), free press, artistic expression, academicfreedom, religious speech, and freedom of speech at private institutions. Hispostscript contains seven carefully crafted premises that should guide alldiscussions of freedom of speech issues on campus. The book ends with a seven-pageannotated bibliography that cites some of the major literature, including Williamvan Alstyne's brilliant work and William A. Kaplin and Barbara A. Lee'scomprehensive and essential The Law of Higher Education (3rd ed., 1995). Lucidlywritten, the book can be read and understood by many audiences from studentorganizations to board members. O'Neil describes in adequate detail cases on largercampuses, most less than five years old, and quotes central passages from judicialdecisions. The book displays the wisdom a former research university president(Virginia and Wisconsin) should have. O'Neil, now director of

<p> O'Neil's book deals with campus speech codes, speech and technology, off-campus speech, groups (gays, Greeks), free press, artistic expression, academic freedom, religious speech, and freedom of speech at private institutions. His postscript contains seven carefully crafted premises that should guide all discussions of freedom of speech issues on campus. The book ends with a seven-page annotated bibliography that cites some of the major literature, including William van Alstyne's brilliant work and William A. Kaplin and Barbara A. Lee's comprehensive and essential The Law of Higher Education (3rd ed., 1995). Lucidly written, the book can be read and understood by many audiences from student organizations to board members. O'Neil describes in adequate detail cases on larger campuses, most less than five years old, and quotes central passages from judicial decisions. The book displays the wisdom a former research university president (Virginia and Wisconsin) should have. O'Neil, now director of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression, writes from the perspective of someone who has Been there, struggled with that. Essential for all college and university libraries. --G. L./P>--G. L. Findlen, Western Wisconsin Technical College Choice (01/01/1997)

O'Neil's book deals with campus speech codes, speech and technology, off-campus speech, groups (gays, Greeks), free press, artistic expression, academic freedom, religious speech, and freedom of speech at private institutions. His postscript contains seven carefully crafted premises that should guide all discussions of freedom of speech issues on campus. The book ends with a seven-page annotated bibliography that cites some of the major literature, including William van Alstyne's brilliant work and William A. Kaplin and Barbara A. Lee's comprehensive and essential The Law of Higher Education (3rd ed., 1995). Lucidly written, the book can be read and understood by many audiences from student organizations to board members. O'Neil describes in adequate detail cases on larger campuses, most less than five years old, and quotes central passages from judicial decisions. The book displays the wisdom a former research university president (Virginia and Wisconsin) should have. O'Neil, now director of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression, writes from the perspective of someone who has Been there, struggled with that. Essential for all college and university libraries. --G. L. Findlen, Western Wisconsin Technical College, Choice, July 1997

Reasonably and a bit skeptically, O'Neil reviews the recent high-wire act that higher education has performed over free speech for students and professors, from Stanford's student speech code to classroom content warnings in Iowa. Picking up from his Classrooms in the Crossfire (1981), O'Neil examines free-speech skirmishes between the camps of political correctness and neoconservativism that began in the '80s. Comparatively recent scandals include the anti-Semitic and racist opinions of, respectively, professors Leonard Jeffries and Michael Levin at New York's City College; incidents involving a perceived racial insult and student thefts of an unpopular undergraduate publication at the University of Pennsylvania; and the rape-torture fantasy a University of Michigan undergraduate posted on the Internet. With experience as president of the University of Virginia and the University of Wisconsin, O'Neil has considerable sympathy with institutions, administrators, and faculty having to deal with such problems. But he has an uncompromising regard for intellectual freedom in education and a clear understanding of the various legal rulings on the First Amendment, which he spells out in case discussions and administrative guidelines. Ironically, in all of the above cases, the courts found against the colleges and universities that attempted to penalize students, often basing decisions on rulings from the McCarthy and Vietnam War eras. O'Neil also addresses issues of religious speech, academic independence, freedom as it relates to student organizations, and the nature of artistic expression, cataloging object lessons in well-intentioned institutions' hasty and ill-conceived actions when they feel the freedom of ideas risks the stability of the ivory tower. A pragmatic, libertarian-minded, and well-informed legal handbook for the First Amendment on campus, albeit less likely to find a place in the student union or the faculty lounge than the administration offices. (Kirkus Reviews)

O'Neil's book deals with campus speech codes, speech and technology, off-campus speech, groups (gays, Greeks), free press, artistic expression, academic freedom, religious speech, and freedom of speech at private institutions. His postscript contains seven carefully crafted premises that should guide all discussions of freedom of speech issues on campus. The book ends with a seven-page annotated bibliography that cites some of the major literature, including William van Alstyne's brilliant work and William A. Kaplin and Barbara A. Lee's comprehensive and essential The Law of Higher Education (3rd ed., 1995). Lucidly written, the book can be read and understood by many audiences from student organizations to board members. O'Neil describes in adequate detail cases on larger campuses, most less than five years old, and quotes central passages from judicial decisions. The book displays the wisdom a former research university president (Virginia and Wisconsin) should have. O'Neil, now director of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression, writes from the perspective of someone who has Been there, struggled with that. Essential for all college and university libraries.--G. L. Findlen, Western Wisconsin Technical College Choice (01/01/1997)

Author Information

Robert M. O'Neil is Director of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression and author of Classrooms in the Crossfire: The Rights and Interests of Students, Parents, Teachers, Administrators, Librarians, and the Community. He is also former President of the Universities of Virginia and Wisconsin.

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