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Article: Cracking the speech code.
- Article from:
- Reason
- Article date:
- July 1, 1999
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1999 Reason Foundation. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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When the University of Wisconsin sat down to evaluate its repressive faculty speech code, nobody expected free speech to win. Here's how it happened.
For some 15 dark years, American academia has acquiesced in, if not demanded, the suppression of its most fundamental fights. Speech codes - the "verbal conduct" restrictions in colleges' "harassment" policies - have been pervasive on our campuses.
During this time, there have been a few minor free speech victories. On some campuses, defenders of liberty modified the worst aspects of speech restrictions; on others, students or faculty used media attention and ridicule to force administrators to abandon the ...