Weekly Media Round-up: FIRE’s Policy Statement on Political Activity a Needed Voice of Reason on Campus

As Will wrote here on The Torch this Wednesday, FIRE released its 2008 Policy Statement on Political Activity on Campus this week. FIRE's Policy Statement comes on the heels of controversial restrictions on protected political expression at such institutions as the University of Illinois, the University of Oklahoma, and the University of Texas at Austin, among others. The Policy Statement has drawn praise from students, teachers, and individuals and organizations of all different interests and persuasions (not to mention some of the more than one thousand members of FIRE's Campus Freedom Network).

Greg's most recent column at The Huffington Post discusses how common sense is necessary when it comes to political expression on campus. Says one blogger of our Policy Statement: "Thank God for FIRE. Can you imagine how bad things would be without them?" Given the reminders we have had to send to the University of Illinois and the University of Oklahoma, things could be very bad indeed.

Elsewhere, FIRE's efforts at the University of Delaware (UD) continued to gain notice this week in an article in The Review, the UD student newspaper. FIRE's Adam Kissel serves as a primary source for the article, observing that, so far, UD's ResLife programs seem to be steering clear of previous efforts at indoctrination. Also this week, FIRE's work at Central Michigan University forms the core of an article in the student newspaper Central Michigan Life, in which Adam lays out FIRE's constitutional case against CMU's attempts to charge the Campus Conservatives the cost of providing needed security for a lecture by David Horowitz. (The event seems, so far anyway, to have gone off without a hitch.) And as Erin mentioned yesterday, be sure to check out FIRE co-founder Harvey Silverglate's extended take on changing our campus culture published this week on Minding the Campus.