Search for: "Keith E. Whittington"
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18 Feb 2022, 1:53 pm
[The lieutenant governor of Texas elevates the idea of ending tenure at public universities] Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick held a press conference today to respond to the Faculty Council of the University of Texas, which recently passed a resolution reemphasizing the importance of academic freedom at the university and denouncing political interventions in the university curriculum. At the center of the dispute is the ongoing political fight over "critical race theory."… [read post]
15 Dec 2021, 8:50 am
[I've heard that breaking constitutional norms is a bad thing] I joined Jonah Goldberg of The Dispatch on his podcast, The Remnant, to discuss possible reforms to the Supreme Court, the work of the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States, and the challenges to judicial independence and constitutional government. We also touch on impeachments and the work of the January 6th committee. And I try to bait David French and Sarah Isgur into inviting me onto their niche… [read post]
10 Dec 2021, 2:24 pm
Today was independence day, in a manner of speaking. The Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States has completed its work and submitted a report to the president. The Commission was not asked to make recommendations, and it did not. I hope it offers some helpful analysis of reform proposals surrounding the Court. Now that the report has been submitted, individual commissioners are free to offer their own personal views on these issues. Co-blogger Will Baude has done so… [read post]
8 May 2023, 6:38 am
[Revised SB 18 has major problems] Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick has been set on killing tenure at Texas state universities ever since the University of Texas faculty senate had the temerity to object to his proposed ban on critical race theory. SB 18 fulfills that mission. It passed the Texas state Senate, but is expected to fail in the House. The House Education Committee is set to take up the bill today, but a new version the bill is now making the rounds. The substitute version of SB 18 would… [read post]
16 Sep 2023, 5:00 am
[An unusual move in an unusual impeachment] In a hotly contested election, the voters of Wisconsin flipped control of the state supreme court from the Republicans to the Democrats. The election of Janet Protasiewicz gave the liberal wing on the officially nonpartisan court a 4-3 majority. Protasiewicz won by a sizable margin in a contest widely understood to be about the future of abortion rights and legislative apportionment in the state. Over the summer, Republicans in Wisconsin began to talk… [read post]
14 Aug 2023, 11:33 am
An encouraging sign for the future of American higher education has been the emergence of local faculty groups organizing themselves to advance free speech principles at their particular institution. The latest is the Cornell Free Speech Alliance at Cornell University. Of particular interest is their new report on policy recommendations for universities. The key points can be found here. The full report is here. Although motivated by the specific situation at Cornell, the policy recommendations are… [read post]
26 Jan 2023, 6:58 am
[A proposed bill would do just that] It is hard to know when to get excited about bills introduced in state legislatures. There is a lot of performative stuff with no chance of passage that nonetheless can get a lot of attention from activists and the press. When the House majority leader of a state legislature introduces a bill, however, I think you have to take that seriously. And the majority leader in North Dakota is now pushing a doozy of a bill. Inside Higher Ed has a good rundown: North… [read post]
20 Dec 2022, 11:05 am
[District court's opinion in Gruber v. Bruce shows problem with how Pickering balancing is done] Fearless blog leader Eugene Volokh highlighted a recent federal district opinion involving the First Amendment and political speech by state university professors. Unfortunately, the opinion illustrates the problem with how many courts conduct a Pickering balancing test in university settings. An appellate court could productively correct this error if it paid head to my forthcoming Wake Forest Law… [read post]
26 Sep 2022, 1:47 pm
[Guidance given to faculty about effects of state abortion law raise troubling academic freedom questions] According to various reports, the general counsel at the University of Idaho has issued guidance to university employees regarding the state's new abortion law. Of particular interest is the guidance to university faculty about their teaching. Classroom Discussions. Classroom discussion of the topic should be approached carefully. While academic freedom supports classroom discussions… [read post]
22 Feb 2022, 7:38 am
[The AFA responds to the Texas Lieutenant Governor's proposal to abolish tenure at state universities] Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick held a press conference last Friday to respond to the Faculty Council of the University of Texas, which recently passed a resolution reemphasizing the importance of academic freedom at the university and denouncing political interventions in the university curriculum. Patrick declared that he would make it a top priority in the next legislative session to… [read post]
7 Jan 2022, 9:10 am
The Omicron wave of COVID has many institutions scrambling. Depressingly, many are acting as if there have been no advances over the past two years. Despite requiring that everyone on campus be fully vaccinated, including boosters, my own university continues to impose aggressive masking requirements, comprehensive asymptomatic testing, extended isolation for asymptomatic individuals who test positive, and draconian restrictions on normal campus activities. In an effort to create some modicum of… [read post]
17 Dec 2021, 8:36 am
Tara Leigh Grove and I discuss our work as commissioners on the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States and various proposals for reforming the Supreme Court on the latest edition of the We the People podcast. We the People is a production of the National Constitution Center and hosted by the NCC's president, Jeffrey Rosen. Listen to the whole thing here. The National Constitution Center, based in Philadelphia, has a lot of interesting public programming and is a… [read post]
15 Dec 2021, 6:26 am
[Legislatures and regents across the country are restricting intellectual freedom] The Academic Freedom Alliance was founded with a particular concern for defending individual instructors and scholars at universities whose rights to intellectual freedom were being violated. Many universities in the United States have reasonably good contractual protections for academic freedom on the books (though there is room for improvement), and the First Amendment provides some protection for professors at… [read post]
17 Nov 2021, 6:00 am
[Officials would prefer to keep the university's presidential transition under wraps] Indiana University recently got a new president. A law professor there wound up trying to peer into the process of how the old president was departing and how the new president was selected. The university preferred that such information remain behind closed doors. Next thing you know the professor was getting public record requests from a local law firm for his emails on his university account. The law firm… [read post]
18 Feb 2025, 9:07 am
[Conversations on campus free speech with Timothy Zick, Jennifer Ruth, and Michael Berube] In recent weeks, the Academic Freedom Podcast has released two new episodes focusing on campus free speech issues. First up was a conversation with Timothy Zick, the John Marshall Professor of Government and Citizenship at William & Mary Law School. He is the author most recently of Managed Dissent: The Law of Public Protests. The episode focuses on the law surrounding public protests on and off college… [read post]
29 Jan 2024, 4:28 am
[Universities should not be in the political activism business] The University of California system is debating whether to allow academic departments to issue political statements. Barnard College is currently in the midst of a campus controversy over college officials removing a political statement from a department's website. Should departments be issuing such statements, and who should be understood to control the content of a departmental website or social media account? In an essay in the… [read post]
18 Mar 2013, 9:00 am
" – Keith E. [read post]
26 Mar 2025, 12:57 pm
[A conversation with David Cole] A new episode of the Academic Freedom Podcast has been released. The podcast is sponsored by the Academic Freedom Alliance and the Center for Academic Freedom and Free Speech at Yale Law School. This episode features a conversation with David Cole about the current situation at Columbia University. David Cole is the Honorable George J. Mitchell Professor in Law and Public Policy at Georgetown University Law Center. He is also the former National Legal Director of the… [read post]
31 Jul 2024, 6:23 am
[So much for constitutional norms] New from me in The Dispatch is a breakdown of the administration's newly announced "reforms" for the U.S. Supreme Court. The announcement is remarkably light on details, and there are better and worse directions that the Democrats could go with this. So far the Biden/Harris team has declined to endorse the progressives' most favored proposal of expanding the size of the Supreme Court, but even this is a big shift to the left by the White House… [read post]
13 Aug 2025, 1:31 pm
[My new paper on judicial independence as a constitutional construction.] I have posted a new paper on "Judicial Independence as a Constitutional Construction." The paper builds on the notion of constitutional construction and the role constructions play in our constitutional politics and in structuring the workings of our constitutional system. It focuses on the specific context of judicial independence and contestation over how valuable that ideal actually is and how it should be… [read post]
