By Angele Latham
According to the new data, if colleges and universities were being graded on their policies upholding the First Amendment, the average grade across the country would be failing.
But two Tennessee universities, Vanderbilt University in Nashville and Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, scored remarkably well, ranking in the top 20 on the list of over 250 schools.
[ . . . ]
Jacob Mchangama, executive director of the Future of Free Speech, an international First Amendment think tank based at the university, spoke with The Tennessean about the efforts to bridge gaps between students.
“Vanderbilt has had a very explicit goal about anchoring free expression, open dialogue and open inquiry as part of its DNA,” he said. “The school has also worked on its policy side to make some of its policies more speech friendly and more protected, and invited various speakers to campus with different viewpoints to ensure that students don’t just face one particular view.”
Mchangama said the overall goal is to expand free expression and “tackle some of the issues that that might lead to self-censorship.”
“I think if you try to inculcate a culture where you know that disagreement and different perspective is fine, and it’s not something to be avoided, then that is likely to have long-term positive effects for the attitudes towards academic freedom and open inquiry for students,” he said.
Read More
Jacob Mchangama is the Founder and Executive Director of The Future of Free Speech. He is also a research professor at Vanderbilt University and a Senior Fellow at The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE).