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Via Bitch PhD and Inside Higher Ed comes word of new directives on political speech sent out by the ethics office of the University of Illinois system to all university employees.
According to the directives, university employees are not permitted to engage in the following activities “while working, when on University property, while using University resources … or when acting as a representative of the University”:
- Preparing for or participating in any rally or event related to a specific political candidate, party, or referendum – this includes preparation and circulation of campaign materials, petitions, or literature
- Soliciting contributions or votes on behalf of a particular political party or candidate
- Assisting at the polls on behalf of any political party, candidate, or organization
- Surveying or conducting an opinion poll related to anticipating an election outcome, or participating in a recount challenge related to an electionoutcome
- Running for political office
The message goes on to say that wearing pins or t-shirts that support specific candidates or parties, “distributing, producing, or posting flyers or other campaign literature on campus,” conducting voter registration work that is identified with a particular candidate, displaying partisan bumper sticker’s on one’s car, and attending on-campus political rallies, even on one’s own time, are all prohibited activities.
Discussion of these regulations has so far focused on their effect on faculty free speech, but they are explicitly identified as applying to all university employees, including professional and non-professional staff. On their face, the rules would appear to apply to student employees of the university as well — did the university really mean to suggest that if you work as an RA or in a dining hall or staffing the check-out desk in the library a few hours a week, you’re not allowed to wear an Obama pin to class or attend a rally for a local candidate?
We’ll be following this story.
The New York Times reported yesterday that the troubled Wachovia bank has restricted colleges’ and universities’ access to a $9.3 billion fund in which more than a thousand American higher education insitutions have money invested.
On Monday, Wachovia announced that it has cash on hand to cover just 26% of investments in the fund, and that it would be capping withdrawals from the fund at 10% of any institution’s stake.
For some small colleges the fund represents a major portion of their short-term investments. The University of Vermont, for instance, told the Times that half of its $79 million in liquid operating funds was held by Wachovia.
Monday’s action raised concerns about the safety of other investment funds serving colleges and universities in a general climate of financial uncertainty. In an unrelated move, Boston University on Tuesday announced that it was suspending all hiring except for public safety officers effective immediately, and that it was halting all new construction on campus for the indefinite future.
It was reported last night that Sarah Palin, when asked by Katie Couric to discuss a Supreme Court case other than Roe v. Wade, couldn’t come up with a single one.
In the course of a discussion of this piece of news, a friend of mine mentioned the case Wisconsin v. Yoder, which I was vaguely familiar with, but hadn’t ever read, and so I went and looked it up.
Yoder was a 1972 case in which, to quote Wikipedia, “the United States Supreme Court found that Amish children could not be placed under compulsory education past 8th grade, as it violated their parents’ fundamental right to freedom of religion.” The case was decided in a unanimous 7-0 ruling, but Justice William O. Douglas filed a partial dissent, and it’s that dissent which makes the case relevant to this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The Court’s analysis assumes that the only interests at stake in the case are those of the Amish parents on the one hand, and those of the State on the other. The difficulty with this approach is that, despite the Court’s claim, the parents are seeking to vindicate not only their own free exercise claims, but also those of their high-school-age children. … On this important and vital matter of education, I think the children should be entitled to be heard. While the parents, absent dissent, normally speak for the entire family, the education of the child is a matter on which the child will often have decided views. He may want to be a pianist or an astronaut or an oceanographer. To do so he will have to break from the Amish tradition. It is the future of the students, not the future of the parents, that is imperiled by today’s decision. … It is the student’s judgment, not his parents’, that is essential if we are to give full meaning to what we have said about the Bill of Rights and of the right of students to be masters of their own destiny. If he is harnessed to the Amish way of life by those in authority over him and if his education is truncated, his entire life may be stunted and deformed. The child, therefore, should be given an opportunity to be heard before the State gives the exemption which we honor today.
Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper has outed Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s chief speechwriter as a former “radical student activist.”
According to the Daily Mail‘s report, speechwriter Kirsty McNeill, 28, was the president of the Oxford Student Union during her undergraduate days, “devoting herself to leading sit-ins and mass protests” against Tony Blair, Mr. Brown’s immediate predecessor as head of the Labor party.
She was, the paper said, a protest organizer for the “Campaign For Free Education – an alliance of hard-Left causes that united in opposition to tuition fees” at Britain’s universities.
Conservative columnist Rich Lowry, blogging just now:
One side effect of McCain’s debate gambit is, I’m told, that everyone at Ole Miss now hates him. It will make for a very hostile audience tonight among those students and faculty attending. He might have to apologize for creating the uncertainty or make some explanation up front, which is never ideal.
studentactivism.net 
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