Thread by @PENamerica

🧵“This escalating battle for control over free expression in education should worry us all,” said PEN America CEO @SuzanneNossel in remarks before the House Committee on Education & the Workforce’s Subcommittee on Higher Education & Workforce Development. pen.org/pen-america-th…

Nossel: "The university campus is the incubator of democratic citizenship and the breeding ground for leaders in every sector of society. If we don’t get free speech and open discourse right on campus, we won’t get it right in the media, the courts, or out on the streets." (2/x)

Nossel: "At PEN America we argue that the essential drive to render American campuses more diverse, equitable, and inclusive need not—and must not—come at the expense of robust, uncompromising protections for free speech and academic freedom." (3/x) #DEI #FreeSpeech #Education

"If some students, by virtue of their background, gender, race, nationality, religion, or political views feel hindered from speaking up in class or voicing their opinions, the marketplace of ideas suffers," said PEN America CEO @SuzanneNossel in her opening remarks. (4/x)

Nossel also spoke out against a growing wave of educational gag orders: "We have confronted a new threat to open discourse on campus. We have documented proposed and enacted state legislation curtailing what can be taught and studied in college and university classrooms." (5/x)

Nossel: "There are seven laws across seven states that we classify as educational gag orders affecting higher education; we define educational gag orders as laws that explicitly limit what can be taught and studied on campus." (6/x) #GagOrders #Censorship #HigherEducation

Nossel: As of 3/16: "An additional 24 higher education bills (were) pending in 15 states... The wording of these gag orders is deliberately vague, casting a willful chill on a wide swath of speech as faculty & administrators struggle to understand where the lines are drawn" (7/x)

Nossel: "These bills... are intended not to keep speech open, but to put universities on notice that they are being watched and will face the consequences if their decisions fall afoul of politics." (8/x) #FreeSpeech #AcademicFreedom #Authoritarianism

Nossel: "In pushing back against orthodoxies the proponents of these measures have embraced and surpassed the very tactics they claim to decry, putting the weight not only of social pressure, but of government power, behind efforts to repress certain viewpoints" (9/x) #FreeSpeech

Nossel: "We are also seeing a spate of alarming new tactics being introduced to curtail open discourse on campus. These include the takeover of the public New College of Florida by a group of out-of-state trustees and the advancement of #HB999 in Florida, which would..." (10/x)

"... abolish certain courses of study. Those who believe in the #FirstAmendment understand its essence lies in restricting the power of government to meddle in the marketplace of ideas not in inserting the heavy hand of the state to dictate what can and cannot be taught." (11/x)

"Escaping this escalating tit-for-tat battle of assaults on speech on U.S. campuses will demand leadership. University presidents need to insist and ensure that all viewpoints — left and right alike — get a fair hearing on campus." (12/x) #FreeSpeech #HigherEducation

Nossel: "Efforts to foster diversity, equity and inclusion on campus should span the gamut of individual differences—racial, socio-economic, religious, ethnic, ideological, gender-based, political and more." (13/x) #Diversity #Equity #Inclusion #DEI

"We also need to introduce the norms and ideals of #freespeech to all students and teach them how to uphold it... (if not) the greatest casualty in this battle may be neither progressive nor conservative ideas, but the principle of free speech itself, said @SuzanneNossel. (14/14)