Full disclosure update: For all I know this program is a noble one. See the comments. But the provenance and timing is suspicious, I don’t have the $1,000 Dave Hubin would presumably charge me to seen the public records that would establish this, and he’d redact them anyway. 11/24/2014: My…
Posts tagged as “free speech”
This is good news, just in time to celebrate the 4th of July: The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a.k.a. theFIRE.org, has just announced a major new legal initiative. In the past FIRE has worked as an advocacy group, and co-ordinated free speech lawsuits on behalf of students and…
The people at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education are dogged fighters for campus free speech rights. They’ve now given UO a “red-light warning” on its free speech policies, as explained here. While UO has a strong policy on freedom of speech, signed by President Lariviere and approved by…
Today’s Register Guard has an op-ed on Academic Freedom from the presidents of the UO graduate student union (David Craig), the UO faculty union (Michael Dreiling), and the UO staff union (Carla McNeely): On April 9, the elected UO Senate unanimously approved a statement on academic freedom that is among the…
4/8/2014 update: Not entirely, but this new UO legal services policy, to be debated and voted on at the Senate meeting this Wednesday, will sure put a crimp in his style. Among other sensible and long overdue restraints on our chief attorney:
Prior to any decision to participate in litigation not directly involving the University as a party by filing an amicus curiae brief, the General Counsel shall notify the President of the Senate of the intention to do so.
Kudos to Gordon Sayre (English) and Tom Lininger (Law) for getting this done. Maybe Geller will react by firing off another email like this one?
Or this unlawyerly stupidity, which made it into the Oregonian?
4/2/2014: Randy Geller’s anti-free speech brief fails, OSU pays out $101K
In brief: UO paid our General Counsel to help write an anti-free speech brief to the SCOTUS. From the timing, it looks like President Gottfredson authorized this.
Back in 2009 OSU staff trashed the news boxes of a student publication called “The Liberty”. Liberty sued OSU over a First Amendment violation. The 9th circuit court said OSU should pay damages. OSU tried to appeal the case to the SCOTUS, and a group of other universities wrote an amicus brief, taking a firm first amendment stand: against free speech, and for the OSU administration. Our own Randy Geller joined in:
The Senate Ad Hoc Freedom Committee, chaired by Michael Dreiling (Sociology prof and faculty union president) has now met several times with President Gottfredson and his advisers. The Committee has posted its draft Academic Freedom policy on the Senate website, here, along with an explanatory memo. (Full disclosure: I am part…
11/12/13: I recently received the “demand for retraction” below, from Thomas Herrmann, legal counsel to the UO Foundation, presumably writing on instruction from the Foundation’s Chairman Jon Anderson, a former marathon runner with longtime Nike connections, and the Foundation’s 2013 Chair-elect and committed athletics booster Stephen Holwerda. A bio-piece on Mr Holwerda…
Update: UO administration time-travels back to 2009, finalizes UO’s draft Academic Plan.For four years, the official copy of UO’s Academic Plan – ballyhooed today by President Gottfredson in the Senate – made clear it was just a draft: Now it’s suddenly been post-dated a day, and it’s final.Sporadic Senate live-blogging.…
10/19/13: “They think I have damaged the image of the school of economics and … University.” Oh wait, that’s in China. Whew. The NY Times has the story.
Synopsis: I apologize for the skimpy notes below. The Senate spent a fair amount of time on the Academic Freedom policy passed in April, but never signed by President Gottfredson. Neither Gottfredson nor Randy Geller was present to explain precisely what objections the administration had. Senate Pres Paris appointed a…
6/8/2013: Powerful Op-Ed from UO undergrad Joe Jacklin in the RG on the investiture demonstration: This was not some haphazard show of frustration where we all celebrated the fact that we’d caused a disruption. As reported in Diane Deitz’s May 31 article, we went so far as to apologize to Gottfredson…
5/14/2013: Sexual assaults by University of Montana football players lead the DOJ and DOE to require all universities to ban free speech about sex, as harassment. The DOJ report states: A former University student informed the University that she had not reported being assaulted when she was a student because…
2/1/2013: The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education helped the student pursue the case: A federal jury today found former Valdosta State University (VSU) President Ronald M. Zaccari personally liable for $50,000 for violating the due process rights of former student Hayden Barnes in the case of Barnes v. Zaccari.…
Update: Idaho athletic director Rob Spear suspends quarterback for tweeting that Idaho athletic director Rob Spear is “stupid”. And petty and insecure as well. Chip Kelly got a lot of buzz for saying, in response to WSU coach Mike Leach’s twitter ban, “If you can’t trust a player with twitter,…
from the law professors at the The Volokh Conspiracy: I’m pleased to report that our local counsel, Benjamin Souede of Angeli Law Group LLC, and I will be representing the defendant blogger in Obsidian Finance Group, LLC v. Cox (D. Or.); we will be filing a motion for new trial,…