Conservative attacks on free speech are coming to a campus near you

Let’s check in on how the Republican war on free speech and academic freedom is going, shall we? While conservative attacks on universities are nothing new, the recent success they’ve had in using the levers of state power is of a relatively recent vintage. The latest skirmish is in Indiana, but they’re in no way alone in their attempts to turn their public universities into conservative mouthpieces. 

On Thursday, Indiana federal judge Sarah Evans Barker, a Reagan appointee, threw out a lawsuit filed by four Indiana professors seeking to block the state from enforcing its “intellectual diversity” law. That law, which went into effect on July 1 requires public higher education institutions to grant, review, and deny tenure in part based on whether the professor fosters “a culture of free inquiry, free expression, and intellectual diversity” and whether they expose students to a “variety of political or ideological frameworks.” 

If that sounds vague yet still bad, that’s because it is. The bill was pushed by conservatives who believe that conservative students and viewpoints are discriminated against in higher education.