Watch them all online anytime at booktv. Org. You can also find us on twitter, facebook and youtube at booktv. Journalists and academic participate in a Panel Discussion on free speech and due process on college and University Campuses. The event from the National Press club is about an hour and ten minutes. [inaudible conversations] good morning, everyone. Welcome Tour Presentation on the unsocial network, how administrators hijacked the College Experience. This point presentation is organized by de lafayette group, with support from acta, the American Council of trustees and alumni, campus reform and my organization, the foundation for individual rights and expression. Im bob cornrevere, chief counsel at fire, and just a little bit about where i come from. Fire has fought for free speech and due process in Higher Education for the past 25 years. In the last few weeks and it our mission to move the on just free speech on College Campus issues to free speech in society in general. But in the years that weve been addressing these questions, there is been a common theme, and one thing that we found is that campus freedom has declined in direct proportion to the rise of the administrative class on University Campuses. As Thomas Jefferson wrote in the declaration of independence, men are endowed by their creator, and women, with certain unalienable rights here and among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But increasingly it seems that todays College Campuses are where these principles go to die, particularly the pursuit of happiness part and this part of what we are going to be talking about today. I mentioned one example of this in my book, and im mentioning this only because my Publisher Cambridge University press told me never to pass an opportunity to plug your book. So in the mind of the sensor and in the eye of the beholder, one example i mentioned in passing, it is an incident at 2017 at the American University where the school did decline to approve a fundraiser that was proposed by the Sigma Alpha Mu Fraternity entitled bad mitten and it was a play on hiphop song but the administrators claim that this was insensitive appropriation. And as assistant director of fraternity and sortie life wrote, i want to continue to encourage a culture of controversy prevention among great groups, and suggested staying away from any themes that involve gender, culture, or sexuality for titles. Apparently feeling sufficiently empowered, the fraternity canceled the event. These are the kinds of things that were seeing increasingly on University Campuses. And thats the theme that we are going to explore this morning, the rise of bureaucracy on University Campuses tends to be antithetical to the values of Free Expression, due process, and also fun. So this morning we have a terrific panel of speakers to address those issues. I will introduce a and then we will get into it. First let i me introduce Ginevra Davis who is a 2022 stanford graduate you convert to a former reporter stanford review. She is currently a writer at palladium magazine where she wrote a pathbreaking article that has engendered a lot of conversation called stanfords war on social life. Next we have francesca block was a 2022 graduate off Princeton University and she was also associate podcast editor at the daily princetonian. She is reporter for the Des Moines Register and covers breaking news on events like nikki haley 2024 president ial bid and as a writer for the free press, and her article on the same issues is stanfords war against its own students. Now as a scent will be talking about these issues in general but we will also focus in particular given these panelists on whats going on at stanford. Next we have Zachary Marshall who is professor of university of kentucky as well as editor in chief of the Leadership Institute scalpel reform. He and his team campus reform. Reform. Break is the Higher Education and this series academically speaking reveals of radical ideas originating in academia affect americans daily lives. And finally we have dr. Steve mcguire. Dr. Maguire is the paul and karen leavy fellow campus reform at the American Council of trustees and alumni where he writes podcast and speaks on free speech and Academic Freedom in the context of contemporary campus issues. Also assist with acta and responses, reports at initiatives, priests was a director of the Matthew J Ryan center for the study of free institutions and the public good, and associate teaching professor in the augustine and cultural Seminar Program at philadelphia university. Now with that lets get into it. I want to take this in three parts and then we will get to questions from the audience. First, the general atmosphere on campus, the new Higher Education experience. We would like to explore that a little bit. So let me ask the panelists, and i will start with ginevra. What challenges in terms of due process and freedom of speech Free Associations are students facing these days . But thank you for having me. I think one of the things that really motivated me to write the article that i did about how sort of stanford and menstruation was different social groups on campus was that i noticed how a lot of students were internalizing kind of the result of the bureaucracy as failures of their College Experience,ge so stanford was in contact. Its a very Diverse School and very competitive school. You have kids are coming in from athletes, coming in from all over the country, kids from a lot of different socioeconomic brackets. Its more than like harvard and princeton oron yale or become Traditional Ivy League schools, really point of the kinds of kids. Historically stanfords has this patchwork of social groups that cover each type of person that comes on campus. So you have fraternity life, sorority life, get the coop experience, you have ethnic themed houses that cover different subgroups like french, german, italian and also hispanic house and blackouts. The result of these talking to alumni was every student would find a subgroup that set the identity on campus and build what were very divergent that all very rich in meaningful College Experiences in the subgroups. What was happening at stanford is the administration was for an arbitrary reason slowly chipping away at each one of these groups for various reasons. You had like a fraternity with the incident at the party, no more fraternity and they replaced the fraternity houseve which it served as a Cultural Center for certain kind of person with a generic house that would house like a mix of students who had nothing in common. When you don this again and agan and again and again, you go down for may be like 30 to 50 social groups on campus to like ten. Everyone else was not in one of these specialized social groups gets sort of pushed into this generic category of notin being able to find connections on campus. You live in isolated houses and farflung places around school. So instead of recognizing this as an administrative issue where students associate with being suppressed by the administration where you had a social group that was supposed to exist to serve a certain kind of student and it was being destroyed, you might kids would come in really, really struggle to find the group because the group that had been created for that type of person at stanford had been destroyed and then blame it on some sort of failure, like im having a bad politics experience, im not having enough fun, im not making friends, and lonely. These are objectiveec experienc, youre 18, 19, nowhere to go out at night, no community, feel surrounded by people different from you come you dont have that foothold and then kids would become very lonely and depressed. Youd see it in their body language and mannerisms a lot of them which stanford has developed of weird culture kids going with him campus all the time, that spending time at school, sort of detaching from the school. What a really want to shed light on was how when you inhibit students freedom for expression it has these devastating selfesteem issues whether start toti feel like we have this myth the American College experience and its this place response. Youre on identity and when you inhibit peoples ability to experiment and also to find people like themselves, it inhibits at identity because they dont learn where do i fit to get the message i dont fit in on the campus so i dont fit in anywhere and that is a damaging thing to tell young people. I do think when people talk about freedom of expression theres always this emphasis on what are you allowed to say class, what are you allowed to say in a talk, and is very formal settings . What were seeing with the administrativeg state actually n evening students ability to express themselves in termss of finding the identity and private spaces. That was what i wanted to shine some light on. Thats also what you see with like frannie where when you punish student. Throwing parties you cut down the number of parties in campus, kids feel like they cant go to party, the kepler, can explore, get one of themselves or and that produces a very repressed inhibited and self explored student body. Theres been a lot of writing of the high levels of depression among students currently college age. So you are tracing it to the social environment on campus and restrictions on that. Has that been your experience . . When campus was fun how would you describe this today . s detailing what happened at stanford, my look was more the perspective of due process and through the own process and the think has a profound impact so i wrote a story on stanford students and he is the president of virginity for a party and the university investigated for allegedly serving alcohol to at least one person under the age of 21. The university hired outside counsel to conduct the investigation but the student who is in my place so we working on fraternitys defense. He was really struggling about life in college and his work was finishing and had to drop out as a result. There was a huge impact and to get more insight, there are two types of investigations that can be done. Over 400 students under these two laws. 97 of those investigations were about undercooked or they were cheating investigations. What happens is of the university of six months to conduct an investigation before you decide whether or not to file formal charges after that six month deadline the University Filed 201 formal charges that year. Out of those 201 students who were formally charged, only five were found not guilty. So this process that i investigated, what many of my people told and what this data shows is theres this process stacked against the students pick the university inside and outside counsel risk students to have representation of their own and lest they can afford to go get somebody else to help them through this process. It can take months, they can take so much physical energy, mental energy, focus them away for the classes, wherefrom social experience at college at all. Many of the courses i spoke to both students and alumni are saying they dont want universities to make it easier for students to cheat theyre not trying to create an environment which is easy to cheat and cheating is rapid of the elves whatever process thats fair to students and also whatever process in which students feel like they are respected and appreciated. They are presumed innocent before proven guilty. These basic values after process are completely thrown out the window Distribution System implemented by the University Expert thank you. I want to make this more of a conversation among the panelists so let me bring dr. Marschall and dr. Mcguire into the spirit let me ask each of you, is this discussion of whats going on currently on campus by people who are there e recently that i was consistent with what you have seen . And if so, if or if not, hows it . Yeah, there were, the problem in my opinion this phenomenon we have a cadre of zealous bureaucrats in the deans office, in the offices that come up with every social crisis and demonstration that reads other culture wars can contribute you see that being reflected in the personnel that is being created on College Campuses here in the reason that youre seeing the lack of due process or a kind of marginalization or limitation of violent is because these bureaucrats are the beneficiaries of spending that never goes down even when you have public universities, having to cut back especially post covid. The money and resources they get are far disproportionate to the more poor academic subjects. With those resources and infrastructure, the problem becomes if theyre trying to manage interdiction pick the same thing universities are treating students like their children and through the lowering of academic standards and through positions like chief experience officer which is something that the university of utah is posting for this year, trying to hide what i looked into it. I dont see the difference between that job and a cruise director on the cruise ship. But thenceforth one side of the contradiction with the other side is the also the same time see them as children they require them to be perfected molded adults. You have response teams, speech codes that punish penalize and seek out students if they make the tiniest infraction, the tiniest mistake. The same time youre treating 18yearolds like children you are also not giving them the room in time for them to grow into adulthood which is what college was supposed to be about, and in that messy state experience was the fun sport i agree with zach the entrance of the general picture overall in Higher Education what we see is costs are going up while the quality of education freedom to express yourself and intellectual diversity are all going down. In terms of quality of education just for example, if you look at active, but with project which evaluates the core requirements, stanford get a d. Thats, tickets, many of our elite institution for the donation of the students graduating from the institutions, met with a kind of wellrounded robust education you would want somebody to after entrance of Free Expression on campus i find stories from francesca and ginevra, its shocking but not surprising is how i will put it. The bureaucrats are one of the chief problems in the ratchet goes in one direction. They just keep growing. They multiply. Work for themselves. When you dont have enough of the real work to do things that other things to do. I think of things like the elimination of harmful Language Initiative at stanford where they wanted to outlaw the use of all sorts of language that people deemed offensive. Maybe they should have fewer people on staff who are attending to actual idea issues and that they wont have time to read about the kind of language people using. In terms of the Student Experience that bureaucrats, these are often people who have quite a bit of contact with students your First Contact h students to think about new Student Orientation students are getting their first ascent of what is going to like on campus, whats the culture, what are the expectations. They have these programs that are run by nonstructural staff get a lot of these people are totally in the tank for things like diversity equity and inclusion. They want to control how people think. They are coddling students enter the students pick up on that. I think to some degree they have this influence in students were students themselves start to think in these terms so fire wednesdays campus of research service. We set stanford about 60 of students report censoring themselves at least occasionally. You look at on the other hand, they are also inclined to send to others or to shut down speech that they dont like. Where our Students Learning this behavior . People are not naturally born thinking this way. They pick it up somewhere. I think the bureaucrats are a large problem. They are growing and they really get the hooks in the students. Ive heard them say before at other institutions they really think of themselves as the primary educators of the students but let me ask you about that because its been true for a number of years on many campuses the number of administrators outnumber faculty. On some campuses there are as many administrators as to our students or more. Whats your sense of the numbers of those kinds of questions . I mean, at stanford they have a bureaucrat for every two students. Thats double the average of other r1 institutions where they have a bureaucrat for every four students the average across higher ed is at one bureaucrat for every ten students. Which is already insanely high, in my view. Then you look at these elite institutions they are even worse than stanford is at the very top. Compared to faculty where you maybe have one faculty member for every 16, 20, 30 students. So this way my bureaucrats oncampus than our faculty members did you hear people say things like its almost like theres a personal butler for every student on campus. Its not far from true. Wouldnt be bad to have a personal butler. Let me ask you, is that true in your experienc