A How-To Guide for Handling Campus Speech Controversies

"In the years since free speech and academic freedom experts Erwin Chemerinsky and Howard Gillman published their book Free Speech on Campus, which explained the importance of free speech at colleges and universities, much has changed as colleges faced new pressures and tests and sought to adapt to the changing political climate. Institutions created-and later abolished-diversity initiatives in response to the Black Lives Matter movement. Campuses weathered the brutal COVID-19 pandemic. State legislatures increased their meddling in what public university faculty can and cannot teach."

"Chemerinsky and Gillman's second book, aptly named Campus Speech and Academic Freedom ( Yale University Press, 2026), addresses complicated questions that aren't necessarily answered by basic speech principles. For example, what obligation do universities have to cover security fees for controversial speakers? Or, does an institution have a responsibility to protect employees and students who are doxed for online speech?"

""Our editor at Yale Press told us he was never so pleased to have a manuscript come in late," said Chemerinsky, dean of the law school at the University of California, Berkeley-2024 ended up being a year ripe with speech-controversy examples that ultimately strengthened the book, including college responses to the Oct. 7 attack; congressional testimonies from the presidents of Columbia University, Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Rutgers University, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of California, Los Angeles, about campus antisemitism;"

Colleges and universities have encountered intensified free-speech challenges amid shifting political and social pressures. Diversity initiatives were created and later abolished in response to the Black Lives Matter movement. Campuses endured the COVID-19 pandemic while state legislatures increased oversight of what public university faculty may teach. New institutional questions include whether universities must pay security fees for controversial speakers and whether they must protect employees and students targeted by doxxing. A delayed publication allowed inclusion of 2024 events such as responses to the Oct. 7 attack, congressional testimonies about campus antisemitism, and campus encampments protesting Israel.

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