University of Alabama: Faculty Senate ‘Hate Speech’ Resolution

Case Materials

• "University of Alabama Student Senate (2004-2005) Resolution #R-98-04," February 28, 2005
• "Students Fight Back: Free Speech Resolution Targets Faculty Push for Speech Code," FIRE Press Release, February 28, 2005: In a remarkable display of intellectual independence and moral courage, the University of Alabama (UA) Student Senate last week passed a "free speech" resolution that directly opposes a "hate speech" resolution passed by UA's Faculty Senate last fall. The students' resolution, which urges the UA administration and faculty "to adopt policies that explicitly protect free speech for all students at the University of Alabama," comes after close consultation with FIRE and follows an open letter FIRE sent to the UA community to protest the faculty's proposed regulations.
• "FIRE Protests So-Called "Hate Speech" Resolution at University of Alabama," FIRE Press Release, November 11, 2004: Freedom of expression is once again under assault at the University of Alabama (UA).  In September, the UA Faculty Senate passed a resolution that threatens to severely restrict free expression on this public campus by regulating speech in approved university activities and contractually restricting outside speakers whose speech might be deemed to be “demeaning.”  Yesterday, FIRE submitted an open letter protesting this policy to hundreds of members of the UA community.
• "University of Alabama Faculty Senate "Hate Speech" Resolution," November 11, 2004
• "FIRE's Open Letter to the University of Alabama Community," November 11, 2004

Media Coverage

• "10 great cigars and why I smoked them," Mike Adams, Townhall.com, June 13, 2005: I smoked my first CAO Cameroon the week that the FIRE defeated speech codes at two American campuses on two consecutive days. Where do these guys get all their energy?
• "An illiberal left," Anthony Dick, The Cavalier Daily, March 15, 2005: IT ISN'T often that a group of college professors is soundly and thoroughly embarrassed by a collection of mere students in an intellectual arena. But that's exactly what happened at the end of February, when the University of Alabama's Student Senate passed a sharp resolution directly opposing a heavy-handed, short-sighted and illiberal "hate speech" resolution that their Faculty Senate had already passed. The Faculty Senate's original resolution called for the creation of a series of new regulations which threatened to drastically curtail First Amendment rights at their public university. With their remarkably independent and sophisticated response, UA's students have schooled their teachers with a much-needed lesson in the fundamentals of a free and open society.
• "Students Frown on UA Faculty's Free-Speech Shutdown Attempt," Jim Brown, Agape Press, March 3, 2005: University of Alabama students are reacting to a perceived attack on their First Amendment rights.
• "Speech resolution draws ire," Marlin Caddell, The Crimson White, November 15, 2004: The UA Faculty Senate is a free speech violator and created a "speech code" with its resolution that condemns hate speech, officials at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education say.